Dell Precision M6700 Owner's Review

No, the turbo you'll get is limited by the heat output of the CPU and that is managed by the CPU itself if i recall correctly. It's not something you can change in the bios. Also, look at what the mac=x turbo is for each CPU, the 3940xm should have a higher max turbo. Also, in my experience, the M6700 has good enough cooling for the CPU to stay at it's max turbo. My 3720qm stays at full turbo of 3.4GHz even when all 4 cores are fully used. I put it to the test a couple of weeks ago and it stayed at 3.4GHz for around 12 hours.

 

I only have the 3820QM (not an "XM" CPU) but I'll second this — it can stay in max turbo for an extended period of time with no problems. Mine goes up to around 3.48 GHz with all cores active (higher if you are only using one or two cores and set the process affinity accordingly).

 

If the bios is locked like the precision, the turbo is time based iirc. The cpu will sustain x sec under full load at certain voltage then drop to next clock.

The XM may worth it if real time CPU power is concerned, otherwise, skip the XM. It is hard to tell unless the application is known.

 

The software I use is CPU intensive it decompresses at time up to 64 H.264 streams simultaneously, all of the decompressing is handled by the CPU. I selected the K4000M GPU for its ability to buffer the video since it has 4GB of VRAM. The GPU is not utilized much. The main problem I will run into is running out of network, I can soak up the network pretty fast. Is there a difference in the cooling of system if you get the XM versus the QM?

 

Will be updating and finishing the review in the coming weeks now that my Covet has shipped. Will get unboxing and machine photos as well as updated benchmarks posted very soon. If you have any specific tests that you want me to run, let me know. This machine should be ridiculously fast. Some selected specs below...

1 225-3510 Dell Mobile Precision M6700 Covet
1 319-1558 3rd Gen Intel Core i7-3940XM(Extreme 3.0GHz, 8M cache, Upgradable to Intel vPro technology), Dell Mobile Precision M6700
1 319-0461 8.0GB, DDR3-1866MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMM, Dell Mobile Precision
1 320-3727 NVIDIA Quadro K5000M with 4GB GDDR5, Dell Mobile Precision M6700
1 342-4762 512GB 2.5" (SATA3) Mobility Solid State Drive, Dell Mobile Precision M4700/M6700
1 342-3591 512GB 2.5" Dell Mobility Solid State 3 Additional Hard Drive, 7MM, Dell Mobile Precision
1 320-3756 17.3" UltraSharp FHD (1920x1080) PremierColor IPS RGB Anti-Glare, Premium Panel Guarantee,USH,MobilePrecisionM6700,Covet
1 318-2283 Blu-ray Drive, Dell Mobile Precision M4700/M6700
1 312-1348 9-cell (97Wh) Primary Lithium Ion Battery, (3.0Ah) ExpressCharge Capable, Dell Mobile Precision P4
1 312-1154 9-Cell (97-WH) Lithium Ion Battery Slice, Dell Latitude E4

 

Congrats! I guess your old M6600 Will feel slow by comparison.

 

The jump in performance from the i7-920M in the M6500 to the 2920XM in the M6600 was a nice jump. The 2920XM to 3920XM is also a step up, but not as much as you might think. The 2920XM will still encode video faster than a 3720QM.

The Nvidia Kepler cards are a HUGE step up in the M6700.

 

You get a different CPU heatsink if you get an "XM" CPU. (So if you get a QM with the intent of upgrading later, you'll need to grab the heatsink as well.)

 

Upgrading is not really an option the one thing I have to keep in mind anything I get I will be stuck with for 3 years minimum. I am starting to doubt that the validity of the XM CPU

 

If you're going to use the CPU at 100% often, in the end you could save quite a bit of time with the xm or if you go to customers and you have to do on site renders, crunch numbers in front of them, etc. Otherwise, the xm isn't a necessity imo.