Precision M2400 Owner's Lounge

Not sure, the website reads 17-Oct-2008, but I hope it is faster than that. I also have more time to contemplate on the vid card. I'm not sure if I should wait for the FX 1700M in the M4400 and should cancel it for later (already paid and in production right now). However currently I really have not found a major difference between the FX 770M and 1700M, the only difference being that the 770M uses less power than the 1700M (up to 35W compared to 50W). I have really thought about it and it is hard to conclude what's better since I probably have more of chance of oveclocking the 770M to match the stock 1700M speed, and less of an ability to do any real overclocking with stock values 1700M simply from the heat (might need to arctic silver or possible copper mod?). I gather it would produce a lot of heat already if 1700M is based on G9700M GT whereas 770M based on G9600M GT. At this stage I doubt the 770M can be much worse off, it's just a matter of getting that extra boost and whether I could probably softmod it to that end to achieve or pile on more cash and time. Speaking of cash, the rep gave me a $400 discount on my M4400 at point of sale over the phone which I think is a good deal anyway (~15% discount overall, too bad no AMEX or Mastercard for extra), since in Australia we never get discounts on the Precisions. Even Latitudes sometimes have discounts from vouchers as well as EPP, but never Precision.

Anyone want to give me a tip on the 1700M and whether to cancel and reorder when it comes out mid-September? I don't mind the wait, as the system will be my second and it's not super urgent.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html

EDIT: Added link

 

I'm really hoping their ship date is generous, as this waiting is driving me crazy. Mine is 9/9/08, which is a couple weeks away now...

 

Ordered my M2400 on Aug 18, and received it Aug 26. Estimated ship was Sep 03. Btw, this is from Dell Hong Kong.

Will post pics once I get the chance.

Key Specs :

001 Dell Precision M2400 1
5 Factory install Genuine Windows(R) XP Professional SP2 Edition(English) 1
9 Intel WiFi Link 5100 (802.11 a/g/n 1X2) MiniCard 1
32 4GB (2x2GB) 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM 1
39 8X DVD+/-RW Drive with RAM function 1
46 160GB Hard Drive, 7200 RPM drive with Free Fall Sensor 1
47 WXGA+ LED's Integrated 0.3 megapixel VGA webcam with single digital mic 1
50 14.1" Ultrasharp Widesreen WXGA+(1440x900) LED Display 1
59 Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, 2.40GHz, 1066MHz, 3M L2 Cache, Dual Core 1
61 NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) FX 370M 256MB Dedicated Memory 1
75 DisplayPort-HDMI Cable 1

Price was HKD 13,500 (USD 1,750)

Initial Observations :

Machine works great. Did a reinstall of XP SP2. Had to do this in order to totally get rid of Dell ConnectPoint (cant remember what it was called, but it seemed very pointless - I could set everything I needed in the control panel, and I dislike the popups for volume / brightness). A little disappointed with the Ultrasharp LED 1440x900 display. The brightness is far superior to the 3-year old LCD display of my Latitude D410, but the color gamut doesn't appear to have improved by much ... colors still appear somewhat dull, compared to external monitors. The hardware ID on the display was LPL something. It is noticeably behind in quality to the screens on Sony's top-tier notebooks.

I haven't figured out how to get the sound to be output via Displayport/HDMI yet, and I suspect that it's not possible.

 

I'm not completely familiar with the DisplayPort interface, but this document seems to suggest that it can carry audio, but is optional:

http://www.displayport.org/white-papers/whitepapers/DP_Overview_English.pdf (Pages 3, 4, and 6 have the info on audio)

It's quite likely that Dell's implementation does not support audio. Congratulations on your M2400! Waiting for some pics.

 

Marcuslai,
Can you comment on the build quality? In another thread someoene stated the m4400 was made of plastic. Can you comment?

 

marcuslai: Can you upload some pics?

Thank you!

 

These pics are from my phone, so the quality won't be great. The second pic is the notebook connected to a 52" Sony LCD :





I was very pleasantly surprised to see perfect HDTV output from the nVidia card, even with having to use a DisplayPort-HDMI conversion cable. Under Clone mode, I can show a maximum of 1440x900 on both displays. And when using the HDTV by itself, output could be set from 720p to the simply pristine 1080p, and 1080/24p.

Sound is also output from the DisplayPort as well (on Vista, but not XP). Absolutely fantastic, couldn't have asked for more.

Regarding the build, etc of the notebook, I have no complains. The lid design is great; it does look a tad more professional that the E6400s but of course really isn't that big a deal.

I have turned off the ambient light sensor as it seems a bit unstable -- in dim light, the screen sometimes brightens and darkens by a couple of shades all within one second. This happens about once every 10 mins, and is quite distracting.

Nothing else special comes to mind right now, feel free to ask any questions, I'll try my best to answer.

 

Here are the WEI results, you can find the spec of this machine a few posts up. I don't play games on this thing, so I am more than happy enough with the GPU results. I use Photoshop CS3 a good deal, and even with the display set at 1080p / 32-bit (the resolution below), I've found no lags at all in screen updates in the app, or just in the Vista Aero interface in general.

the full sized version can be found here.

 

One last thing I got very frustrated over yesterday ... the sound card drivers for XP do not support anywhere close to decent playback quality. All sounds appeas to be played ~ 8-bit 11 KHz, which is unacceptable. (This is essentially like playing a CD but having the music sound like it's coming from a small radio.)

This was so off-putting for me that I had called Dell for a refund. Unfortunately in Hong Kong, there is no such thing as a no-questions-asked refund policy. They wouldn't refund unless there was something wrong with the machine, or it didn't meet the quoted specs. And since Dell does not go into details re: the audio quality of the M2400 (other than that it has "Audio") on its website, I didn't have a strong case of returning the machine.

It was after I installed Vista (just for the heck of it) and saw that it had HD Audio drivers that I discovered the machine actually does have a very good sound card.

So .. long story short - if you are getting this with the intention of using XP, you will not get good quality sound. And as mentioned in an earlier post, you also don't get 1080p or sound output on the DisplayPort under XP.

 

That sounds like a rather severe bug in need of a driver fix. Clearly the hardware is capable. I foresee a strong push on Dell to fix this problem. Assuming the story is the same on the E6400, I can guarantee that my institution will not be pleased if you can't even get halfway decent audio for presentations and the like. Anyone who runs in to this, feel free to pester Dell about it.