M6800 Owners' Thread

I finally received my M6800, the basic edition with FirePro M6100. Some feedback:

I had to update Bios to A03 to remove the DVD seeking noise.

No major issue except some crashes after going back from sleepmode --> password --> windows --> seconds later black screen --> had to reboot. Cause: The many drivers I update ? energy settings ? I don't know... But now everything is fine. This bug happens also after I interact with the HD graphics performance menu...

Noise (I'm in a VERY quiet environement):
At full load, the machine is clearly noisy, but it was with benchmark tool only. In medium load you can hear it but it is acceptable. In very low load the machine is almost inaudible with sometime fan waking up and flushing air strongly for one second or so.
This is in standard energy profile, with the quiet profile results are much better. Fans sound level are clearly lower and more stable even at full load (which stay high). The burst of air in low load don't seems to happen. But some performance are lost with this profile. For reference, Cinebench 10 gives 18778 points in multi-64bit.

Performance: Notebook check said that there M6800 gave 21426 on CB10 multi64bit. Here I got 26115 point with normal Dell energy profiles.
I also did a test with CompuBench (very specific to open CL). The FirePro perform extremely well in this area:
https://compubench.com/compare.jsp?config_0=14765049&config_1=14208199
Of course it is not representative of gaming GPU performance.

In the end, I'm very happy of this computer so far, and feel solid. It is a really powerfull machine. Even better than my desktop XPS 8500 in term of CPU.

 

What was the price of that touch panel option as compared to the regular FHD screen?

 

I believe it's around $265.

 

What is that belief based upon? Do you actually have the price list or have you bought one for around that? Because I was just told that the Wacom touchscreen in M6800 would be a whole lot more.

 

It is based on this post.

$332.52 - $67.32 = $265.20

In Europe, prices are usually a lot higher than in the US.

 

Any comments on the Dell Wireless 1601? Especially it's 802.11n performance and connection stability.

Also, what's the difference between a WiGig antenna and a standard wifi antenna?

 

OK, Thank you.

I do live in Europe, but the price I was given from Dell was many times that much.

That post seems to be from early September, so is it possible that there could have been some erroneous preliminary prices or what on earth is that price they have given me... Can anyone confirm the current pricing?

 

To give you an indication of the price difference:

When I ordered my M6700 last year, I had to pay an additional 616 euro for the IPS RGB screen. In the US, the same screen was only $214 extra (= 160 euro).

I asked my sales rep, why on earth they charged this much extra for the exact same screen. I never got a straight answer.

BTW, how much do they charge you extra for the touch screen?

 

I have the Dell wireless + WiGig card in my M4800, and haven't had any problems with it yet. I haven't used anything with the WiGig or Bluetooth yet, but the wireless performance has been good and consistent both at home and at work.

Michiko, I'm not sure exactly how the antennas differ, but it's likely due to the high frequency of WiGig (60 GHz, I believe).

 

They told me it would be way over thousand euros, at least six times that $265 US difference. Suffice to say it doesn't make any sense.

That's why I would really like to know what the current official price list has to say about that. I know that in the past the touchscreen wasn't that expensive option, but it has been changed from N-trig to Wacom, which probably makes some difference, but hardly that much. BTW, did the M6700 have N-trig as in M6600 or Wacom as in M6800?