M6600 upgrade or get new 7720

Hi all,
I have a m6600 which run fine SSD and m5100 quadro added siringa this six years... Is it worth the upgrade ti the new 7720??? I use primary revit 2015 / 2018, AutoCAD non so much and 3ds max doing rendering lot od vegetation and buildings. and programming Java, HTML 5, CSS and php...
Thanks,
Marco

Inviato dal mio Nexus 6 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

The question is, does it do what you need, or is it too slow, or is there some particular feature of the 7720 that you want?

Also, what processor do you have in the M6600? The second generation i7 processors are quite a bit faster than the first generation; there's some improvement beyond that, but after the fourth generation (M6800) there's practically no improvement in CPU performance.

I have an M6500 which I'm in the process of replacing; when I do heavy photo/video editing, it simply bogs down. I also want the higher resolution screen. But for that, I'd keep going with the M6500.

 

The new video cards are on a whole other level than the M6600. The NVMe drives are also an order of magnitude faster than an SSD running at SATA3.

 

Thanks for the replies.
@rlk so would you take in consideration a m6800 refurbished?
@Bokeh your consideration go to buy a new 7220..

What about performance of quadro m2200 vs p3000?
And would you take in account to buy a 7520?
Thanks a lot.

 

There's no one answer to this.

I've been looking for a higher resolution screen than any offered on the M6800; 1920x1080 is somewhat worse than 1920x1200 that I have on the M6500. So I ruled it out for that reason. However, the M6800 offers more storage options (but not NVMe) than the 7710/7720. The 77x0 offers more memory capacity (64G vs. 32G), if that matters to you.

I would *not* rule it out on the processor; see what I said above. They *have* improved power consumption, though. But that said, if your M6600 has a top-end chip (i7-29x0XM), you're going to get something less than a 50% improvement. If it has a bottom end chip (i5 or low end i7), you'll get a more substantial improvement. I don't know whether the CPU can be replaced on the M6600; it definitely can't on Skylake and Kaby Lake, because all mobile chips in the 6th and 7th series respectively use BGA (ball grid array) connections that must be soldered to the motherboard.

You may find this thread interesting: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nvidia-maxwell-m6600-m6700-m6800-bios.805689/ . It involves putting newer graphics cards into older machines. It apparently doesn't work on the M6600 but does on the M6700 and M6800. It probably isn't for the faint of heart, and they aren't particularly cheap ($400 for a Quadro M4000M), and you need to buy another part also. But the higher end graphics cards on the M6800 aren't half bad either.

If I could live with 1920x1080 I'd have quite possibly saved a boat load of money and gone for an M6800, but the two big factors for me were really performance (not a deal breaker) and screen resolution (deal breaker). There are some bargains, but there are some that are surprisingly expensive on eBay, so you need to know what you're doing.

The 7710 and 7720 offer a really good screen as an option (the 3840x2160 IGZO). Color quality is much better than any of the others, and even the IPS panels are better (no color shift with angle) than the TN screens on the 6x00 series. But the big problem I have with them is that they only have three storage slots, two M.2's and one 2.5". The 6x00 have 2 2.5", a removable optical that you can (and I did) put another 2.5" in, and an mSATA. I have very heavy storage needs. I was almost going to go with an inconvenient workaround of using external storage, but in the end it looks like I've switched to the Lenovo P70. But it's really only for that reason.

Note that M.2 drives can have higher capacities than mSATA because they're bigger, but SSD storage is still much more expensive than spinning rust, but my heavy storage needs aren't particularly performance-demanding (image editing). NVMe drives (in the M.2 form factor for mobile) can certainly be very fast if you find the right one, but again, that's something you have to decide for yourself. The benchmark numbers I've seen for even the really good ones are disappointing where it comes to 4K random I/O, though. And you have to decide whether 1-3 GB/sec I/O rate (vs. 400-500 MB/sec for SSD) actually matters for you.

Finally, I just don't see a huge gain from Skylake to Kaby Lake. The 7710 and 7720 are otherwise very similar (as are the Lenovo P70 and P71 respectively), and you may be able to find better used/refurb deals on the previous generation machine.

 

P3000 is about 60% faster than M2200.

You can replace the CPU in the M6600, M6700, and M6800, but you must use a CPU from the same generation (2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen Intel Core series respectively).

The CPU performance isn't much if any better between the 7710 and 7720, but if you care about graphics, Pascal is quite a leap over Maxwell... The NVIDIA GPUs in the 7720 are each around twice as fast as the corresponding GPUs in the 7710 (i.e. P4000 vs M4000M, P5000 vs M5000M, etc.).

 

You CANNOT replace the CPU in 7720, it is soldered. So you must buy the intended CPU from the start.
Maintenance cost of 7720 will be higher. Replacing a fan will require replacement of the whole heatsink assembly. CPU soldered onboard is $$$.

M6600 has limited choice of GPU until Fermi only. Kepler Maxwell and above seems not supported. M6700 and M6800 Pascal not supported.

 

My M6600 is still doing well but I know its days are numbered and I really should be buying a 7720 so I could enjoy the improved performance. The battery on my M6600 is dead and I could not be bothered to buy a new original at over GBP100 and there are a few other issues too. I do look at the Dell website and configure my own machine from time to time but have not yet bought it.

I do not think buying a M6800 is sufficient of an upgrade, I think you either keep the M6600 or get the latest and greatest 7200. At least if you buy the 7200 you know it should last you at least 5 years without too much hassle, if you were to buy the M6800 you may want to replace it sooner.

 

I think that i should seriously go for buying a new 7220.... Thanks all' for the advices.

Inviato dal mio Nexus 6 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

Indeed, but I believe that this is the case with all 6th gen and up mobile systems, unless its a crazy one that uses a desktop CPU... A decision that came from Intel and not from Dell.