new Dell Precision 5510 (Twin of XPS15)

Check this out:



While the M1000M is a capable unit, I wonder if 2GB of memory is a little small if you choose the 4K screen. Not sure if the GPU can "share" system memory like its GTX 960M brethren. So it could be beneficial if you do complex 3D work with texturing in 4K... Or just get a 7710 with 8GB Quadro....

 

Indeed, numbers are looking pretty good. Not sure how much of the PCIe-x16 bandwidth a card actually uses/needs, my complete guess is it helps at times for loading the card full of data but once it is in the graphics RAM then the bandwidth usage drops off.

 

HP is offering a ~27% discount on customized ZBook Studios now, similar to Dell's discount on the Precision 5510.

I ran the customizer on both Dell's and HP's website, decking out a Precision 5510 and ZBook Studio with Xeon, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, 4K display, 3 year warranty, etc. They both ended up right around $2900.

As a bonus, it looks like you can get the ZBook Studio with Xeon and 32GB of ECC RAM now. The extra 16GB of RAM is about $200.

 

Have you verified that in person? I just checked a similar ZBook (which looks like it has the same keyboard as the ZBook Studio) and an XPS 15, and the XPS 15's up/down arrow keys were either the same size or a little bit smaller than the ZBook's keys.

 

The picture I saw had the keys as described.... the left and right arrow keys are "full size" and the up and down half-size.

Here: (scroll down)
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/zbook-studio.html

Actually, looking at HP's site, it looks like the zbook 17 has the same arrow keys.... in their product videos as well...

 

Yes, true; thanks for the photo Louie.

I was just noting that the up/down arrow keys on the Precision 5510 keys are the same half-height size as the ZBook (or maybe even a tiny bit smaller), rather than a larger 2/3 size. The Dell arrow keys do seem to be a tiny, tiny bit wider than regular keys which "stretches" them to the right edge of the keyboard--which may be what you were referring to as 2/3 size. [The ZBook up/down keys share a similar slight width enlargement.]

Here's a photo of the Precision 5510 keyboard (fourth photo in the main slideshow). The two keys combined plus the space in between them equals one regular key row.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd?oc=xctop551015us

I've seen some desktop keyboards go this way too... I'm not sure if the bonus size of the full-height left/right arrow keys on the ZBooks is a big plus or not, but it seems to make the keyboard feel a little more aesthetically balanced, in the eyes of this beholder.

 

While the up/down arrow keys on the 5510 are half the height of the spacebar and other keys on that last row, the keys on that lower row are wider (front to back) than the other rows; unlike the zbook studio where that spacebar row is the same width.

 

Oh my. I never noticed that. Clever keyboard engineers.

Thanks for educating me on this one. I still don't notice the difference between the two keyboards--but I can "feel" the subtle difference now in key size. I just wish that the space bar worked more consistently for me on this XPS 15 without banging on it...

 

I was wondering about that too, but i found this nVidia video: Why 4K for CAD? So nVidia promotes 4K on a Quadro K620 which has 2GiB 128bit DDR3; bandwidth: 28.8GB/s == 28.125 GiB/s.
The M1000M (inside the Precision 5510) uses the same GM107 chip as the K1200, but with 2GiB instead of 4GiB VRAM. Too bad the 4K display option for the 5510 isn't anti-glare...

 

A large tablet screen protector would probably work wonders if it can be cut and installed nicely.

Thinking about this [frame buffer size] again, though, at 3840x2160 and 24 bit color depth, that's only about 24MB per frame, so 2GB should be big enough for many applications. But with a memory bandwidth of 80GB/s to me it would seem you couldn't write to the frame buffer memory fast enough.