M4800 Owner's Thread

To the owners who now have had this machine for a while....

Except that optimus is not working as desired, how does win7 behave under the qhd+ display? Is it working properly, do you see any scaling issues and etc?

Is there something else that you not like with this one ?

 

Sorry, I'm running Win 8.

On the Optimus side, does anyone know why Intel's page lists eDP as a valid graphics output? This would seem to contradict Dell's statement as to why Optimus won't work.

 

Scaling does not work very well with Windows 7 past 125%. As stated before, Chrome is bad (pretty much all OS), Adobe CS doesn't work, and on Windows 7, even many of the standard explorer Windows are missing text above 150%. I wouldn't use Windows 7 if you have the QHD+ unless you want the minuscule text to fit a lot of content.

Haswell graphics does support eDP. I don't understand why Dell doesn't want to change this. Probably because they need a reason to get people to pay more for the M3800.

 

Dell probably doesn't have the Intel GPU hooked up to the eDP port on the motherboard, it's wired to the discrete GPU only. For Optimus to work, the Intel GPU must be driving the display.

Possibly just a case of design neglect, borrowing too much from the previous iterations of the Precision, either without realizing it would break QHD+Optimus until it was too late, or making a decision somewhere along the way that it would cost too much to change. (M6600/M6700 have eDP but it can't be used by the Intel GPU; M4600/M4700 actually have two different motherboards depending on which display output is needed, and Optimus is not available on the eDP version.)

If this is the case, it would require a physical motherboard revision to resolve, a firmware update won't do it. As you say, that seems like a silly reason that it wouldn't work, obviously Optimus is working with the same screen on the M3800.

 

Thanks for this info. This is exactly why I cancelled my order last Friday - mainly the Windows 7 and Adobe scaling problems. I really, really hope Adobe and MS get this fixed soon. Crazy that manufacturers are selling this as a "mobile design workstation" when you can't properly display the OS or any of the common apps you'd need to run!

 

You can switch manually on Ubuntu by the command :
sudo aticonfig --px-dgpu for intel and
sudo aticonfig --px-igpu for amd

source : [all variants] AMD/Intel Hybrid Graphics works

Can you try it?
What is the battery life in windows and Ubuntu with intel? (6cells? or 9?)
Thx!

 

hi,

I'm thinking about upgrading to The Dell Precision M4800 laptop, but the Dell Website does not let me do much customization with the M4800 as it did with my old M4600.

The 30% sale right now has me wanting to order now, but I would like to add a Bluray player and finger printer reader like I was able to do with my M4600

I've also heard people mention an extra 20% off coupon that makes me think I should just jump on this M4800 now. I don't really want to wait another month to get bluray if I am going to miss this current sale.

Any tips or suggestions?

thank you,

Phill

 

Customization options are available only by calling or using a Premier account if you have one. I posted the 20% off coupon a few weeks ago, it expired early November and I have not seen one since. It was very hard to find the first time, I dug through about 10 coupon websites trying codes until I found this really obscure one at the bottom of some page.

The M4800 is a good system, but make sure if you get the QHD+ that you don't really plan on using the system on battery. Due to no Optimus, battery life is atrocious on those systems.

 

because i don't need pro graphics and the k2100 is much expensive!
if i have some times i will test the bench!

ok now enduro is working for me on windows, but i have many artefacts on the screen (it's light but they are present especially on the menu bar of firefox)
on linux cinamon (mint15) crash when enduro is enabled (pretty sure that's a driver problem)

an other thing to note the wifi on/off button (on the right side) doesn't work on linux (the wifi stay up when you set it off)

 

Check price on Blu-ray before you buy, this is something that's easy to add yourself. When I got the M6700 last year, I bought the Blu-ray drive separately for a little over $200, and it was $500ish to configure it as an option from Dell. You can now get the tray-loading BD-RE drive for about $140.