Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

You should be fine. I just did a 150 photo export from Lightroom and it was pulling 100-129 watts.

Just opening 20 5Dmk2 RAW files in Photoshop was pulling around 120 watts. The Exports drew more.

As long as the battery is charged, 130 should work. 150 will be very safe.

 

that would mean I have to hit the F1 each time at booting, but not when starting from hibernation or stand-by, no?

the most powerful adapter for 12-Volt-car-batteries that I found is 150 Watt; would you think that this is enough for getting the big speed that I was hoping for, concerning opening large amount of large JPEGs?

somehow it's strange to buy a high-end notebook, only to be stopped by a lack of power; the primary reason for it, however, is the IPS-panel; if it weren't for that, I'd probably have gone to a much simpler solution;

the one bad thing is, that it seems it doesn't supply the lacking power by using adapter and battery simultanously;


Thanks all for input,


Aki

you've just been quicker than me

great information; strange, I wonder why it doesn't use all its power to open the files

 

Plugging in low watts after window boot will lock the multiplier to lowest hence the lag/slow down, and turning on throttlestop will get rid of it.

I ve been using a 130w with m6600 in school, there 2 possible concern/problem
1. with 130w , it literally wont charge no matter how much I try to save power (show +2.7W). However I think it does charge ok if you keep it off or sleep . Just sit in library for 3 hour and battery go from 58-64 just doing light browsing xD.
2. battery wear, just a speculation since I had not certain if it worsen it.

Anyways, 130w is more than capable to power up CPU task, consider all those machine out there with i7 quad +650m with 120W adapter...

 

The 3920XM pulls up to 56 watts fully loaded. The 3820QM, 3720QM, 3840QM, and 3740QM all pull around 45. I think they all idle in the 5 watt range.

Even with some GPU acceleration happening, the load is mostly on the CPU. The only way to get over 150 watts would be something like rendering that is stressing both the CPU and GPU. Just normal office work will be anywhere from 35-55 watts.

It doesn't use all of the power because Adobe Photoshop is not fully using the GPU. The only big draw is the CPU.

That is correct. There is some charging on the M6600, but not much.

With the machine off, it charges quickly.

I don't think there is much battery wear at all. There is just not a lot of power leftover to charge the battery.

I posted a lot of details about how different power adapters work with the M6600 in the review I posted. There is a link to it on the first page of this review.

On hitting F1, I am honestly not sure. You will have to try it to see.

The IPS panel is a very big deal for me too. The M6600 was the first notebook that I have owned that had a panel that was better than my desktop. You can absolutely trust that what you see on the screen with what you will see in prints. Just amazing. The M6700 panel is similar, and measures slightly better. The native white point is exactly 6500K.

 

Most machines don't use enough power for this to be an issue, but I'm actually not as familiar with machines outside of Dell. Though I very much suspect that you will find this to be true across the board. I think it might actually be a bit complicated (electrically speaking) to get a dual power source like this working, no surprise to me that you can't do it with the Precision. Probably not enough people drive around with the most power-consuming workstation-class notebook computer available connected to their car to justify the engineering effort.

Bokeh mentions that the machine performs better if you have the power supply connected at boot time. My limited testing involved only switching power supplies out while the system was running. So you should be able to get around this – though if your car does not continue to provide power while it is shut off (some cars do, some cars don't), you may end up having to reboot if you ever stop the engine.

 

You can choose to skip power warnings from the BIOS if you don't want to see it repeatedly.

 

Good idea!

the normal battery would be empty soon ... I have a 230 ampère second battery for this;

but probably it would be better not to have the adapter on current all the time, and leave it in stand-by-mode on the internal battery instead; this is how I have it with my current NB.

In case it will go to low-power not only after a fresh boot without adapter but also after returning from stand-by, the option of turning off throttle-stop that baiii mentioned might be the choice; don't have any clue about what this is, but can find out;

thanks for your reply

one technician told me that there are different options in the bios about when and how the battery should be charged. He advised me to activate the option that it should be charged only when the notebook is not in use;

Ok now I understood it. Thanks for the valuable informations!

 

Bokeh, you mention "4 way interleaving" in the review. In my BIOS, even with 4 memory modules, I see "dual interleave." What do you see in your BIOS?

 

Guys,
I'm not sure if I should post on this thread for help but I figured there are so many factors, dell drivers/ windows 7 settings.
I thought I should just post it anyways.
I didn't notice this until I was using programs that required smaller windows to be opened within the program like a save as window. and these windows would pop up behind the big fully maximised main program and I can't get to the smaller windows. or sometimes when I'm working with a lot of programs opened and have the mouse move around and suddenly it switches to another active program. or when I've already selected the second program through the taskbar, the first program is still displayed on screen.

Tried googling for help and the closest I could find was something to do with the aero function and i just had to swtich to a basic or classic theme. but after a while it comes back. it's pretty random and I really can't put my finger on it.

Anyone has faced something related or a solution to throw out? Thanks!

 

I actually have the same problem. It happens randomly but its very annoying. It usually happens when I'm using Indesign but also in other cases. No idea how to fix it!