Precision M2400 Owner's Lounge

To the lucky owners of the M2400, could you run 3dmark06? Vista score seems a bit low indeed but its not really that reliable.

 

will run it tonight (downloading it as we speak), i'm not very familiar with it, anything spesific you want ,me to test or is it prety straight forwards ?

 

Ok so i think that either there is something wrong with my set up or i'm not running it correctly.

I get the folowing result:

3dmark06 :1633
sm2 score :556
HDR/SM3 :604
CPU :2300

seems very low to me... what do you all think ?

Ok - Lowering the test resolution to 1024*768 i now get

3dmark06 :1853
sm2 score :615
HDR/SM3 :710
CPU :2280

Still seems low - but what do i know ?

 

Thanks a lot!

Well, it is kind of slow but seems consistent with the technical data of the card (8 units, 64 bit), a bit better than the NVS in the E6400 and quite similar to the ATI 3470 in the T400.
Guess one really has to go up to the 15.4 class if the 3D performance is important.

 

sorry for the late reply, i had wanted to get this done earlier but didnt realize the benchmark was like a half a gigabyte download .. anyway, without further ado :

3dmark06 :1728
sm2 score :549
HDR/SM3 :600
CPU :2311

i think this is pretty consistent with guillakunst's posts. no idea if this is fast or slow, but the machine's plenty speedy for me. my benchmark app is itunes, and it's working bearably on this machine. so that's already excellent in my book.

ps. i've found the audio sounds much better (both louder and fuller) using vista's default "High Definition Audio Output" drivers rather than Dell's IDT audio drivers. Has anyone observed this ? (uninstall IDT Audio, then go to hardware manager to scan for hardware changes).

my 6-cell battery life is 3 to 5 hours using wifi and screen on low to medium brightness, working mostly in firefox and photoshop.

 

I also just received the E-laptop stand and the Standard E-Port docking station. Both fantastic quality and work great. There is space for miscellaneous items on the bottom of the E-laptop stand (for keys and phones I guess), I've found the space fits my lacie 3.5" external drive exactly. Great space saver for me that is

I am actually very very happy with my Dell purchase.

One tiny bug that is replicable between reboots - I played a few divx files in windows media player, no problems. Then I open another one, and no sound is output (via displayport). In fact, no sound from any apps whatsoever. A reboot fixes this, but I guess it must be some bug in the audio / video drivers.

 

Sounds like something is locking the sound card and not letting go, maybe? If you are not bent on WMP, I suggest switching to VLC (videolan.org) or MPC (Media Player Classic). VLC will literally play anything that remotely resembles audio or video. MPC is more like the old school media player (from Win98), without all the bloat. You still need to install codecs with MPC, but not with VLC.

Anyway, my M2400 is probably going out for delivery today. If I haven't mentioned it before, I hate DHL:

Shipping to: Johnson City, TN
Shipping from: Nashville, TN
Path: Nashville, TN -> Atlanta, GA -> Roanoke, VA -> Bloutville, TN (Johnson City) -> Delivery

... ...Yes, I know about all the hubs and what-not...but, really, was that necessary?

 

Got mine today. That thing is heavy as a brick. It feels that my D810 is lighter.

 

The new Precision M2400 is awesome, my brother just purchased one. I'm a bit disappointed in the weight, while its not really heavy (I'm used to carrying around my 7 lbs laptop), it was advertised to be below the 5 lbs mark, which it is not, even with SSD, weight saver, and 6-cell (as per how Dell says they calculated the weight).

Also, I wish they added more options to their: CPU list (P9500 is available for E6400, why not the M2400?),

memory (ok so there is no 2x4GB DDR2-800 kit yet but that would be really useful for serious number crunching programs such as MATLAB),

GPU (FX 370M is roughly 9400M GS aka G98, which is pretty low on the list of GPU power, a FX 770M (approx 9600M GT) is doable, albeit at the cost of needing a better cooling system, which might lead to a slightly thicker notebook),

and the 410 BT+UWB card hasn't been released yet.

 

Mr. DHL man just dropped off my package right before class tonight. The thing is heavier than I thought, but still acceptable. The screen can be flexed if you really try, but shutting it with one corner doesn't produce ripples.

I'm really pleased with the 1280x800 screen. The thing is really sharp (more than my i8600) and plenty bright. I've actually turned the screen down a couple of notches. The backlight has some bleeding at the bottom, but nothing serious. The color looks a little yellow--I'll probably run calibration on it later.

First thing I did was to play around with Vista, then reinstall Vista x64. There's two drivers I'm still looking for, but everything seems to work. I'm disappointed that RMClock doesn't work, but I'll need to do a little more research.

The blacklit keyboard is nice, thankfully you can change the brightness level.

Overall, the machine is rather peppy, the Vista ratings are on par with my dual-core s939 desktop, so I consider that pretty good. I should get some more benchmarks setup tomorrow after work.