Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

prob
I never use it on battery..always plugged in ..
you might go to 3 hours on your spec maybe though..

 

I've searched both threads but can't find any comment on the ATI™ FirePro™ M7740 over the Nvidia FX2700M.

I'm sure they're both good enough for my Photoshop needs, but which one produces less heat / less noise ?? I'm presuming they both have onboard fans ?

 

the fx2700m is like a.....? 9600Gt or better ?

 

I believe so ...

 

and the ati firegl ? is this like a 4670 or 4830 ??

 

I would never waste my time with ATI, don't go for ATI, go for Nvidia, such as my quadro card is slightly overclocked, i have the 3700M. It is awesome man. Running at 745 MHZ.

 

the raid controller is an intel ich-8m ?

 

I don't know alot about harddrives but own a dell m6400 i want to buy a new SSD drive to istall windows 7 on but am not sure what to get. I have about $350 bucks to spend on this puppy and was thinking of going with this one

Patriot PE128GS25SSDR Warp 128GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32999&vpn=PE128GS25SSDR&manufacture=Patriot

Is this guy compatible? does anywone know if this is a good drive or not perhaps there is something better I am open to suggestions. Please help

 

I'm sure it is "awesome" but if I chose the 3700M over the ATI it would increase the price of the machine by over 20% !!

 

I've done all the investigation possible on which SSD is the 'best'. And my, and most unbiased and qualified sources say the Samsung 64GB SCL SSD is the best of them all. It's numbers across the board can be bested (but not by a large amount) on single issues but overall, all reviewers and testers picked the Samsung SLC SSD and I agree totally with them, as that's been my main drive for 6 months and it still amazes me watching the seek times of .01 for everything. Read and write speeds are a bit less than some MLC SSDs but the Samsung is one of the few where read/write speeds are within 10% of each other. But lots of camplaints and total failures of these MLC disks that the evidence tells are not yet ready for prime time. And yes it's a bit small by todays standards but with the m6400 you put your OS on the SSD and everything else on a big platter drive.

And yes SLCs are more expensive than MLC drives and there's a good reason for that. the SLC is a better, longer lasting and less prone to errors and such. I had to hunt to get one for less than five hundred and more but found a place that sold them for $589 all day but between 1AM and 4AM they all went down to $408. And it's the best 408 dollars I've spent to speed up things. Boot time from power on till the desktop is up and ready to work is 30 seconds or less. My 7200rpm clone that I use about a day a month takes around 90 seconds for the same thing. It might be actually longer, I've not cloned it off the SSD for a while now because nothing's changed enough to take the trouble. My advice? Don't buy an MLC drive at this time, pay a bit more and get SLC. I know only what I read about MLCs and everything I read admits, even if they really don't want to, that a SLC at this time is more reliable, consistant and has a longer life than it's MLC cousin. Lot's of folks here would maybe take issue with me but I've studied everything available and think I'm correct on this. There are one or two SLC drives recently out that are quite a bit faster than the Samsung but both are a grand or more. And if it's your first experience with SSDs you'll be plenty wowed with the Samsungs .01 access and usually about 90/80 for read/write.