Looks nice. I had an older version of its big cousin, the M6400, and loved it. I do hope when they update it to the M6900 it gets a nice hi-dpi IGZO display with Broadwell. I'd drop more than two grand on that.
I just configured one with 16GB RAM and 4K display for ~$1900. It seems reasonable considering the mid-range Quadro, 4K display, and TB2 port. But holy shiite, they want $1,000 for a 1TB SSD upgrade. LOL
By "Mid-range Quadro", you mean a GK107 with 800 Gflop/s, comparable to an iGPU intel Iris Pro, or an Vidia GTX650? It's entry-level GPU, on a par with AMD and Intel iGPU from 2014 , I don't think it have it's place on any computer on 2015.
Cheap as chips. Try configuring the same in the UK.
2400 GBP inc vat@ 20% (3200x1800 & 512GB ssd chosen). And then just before xmas the same was ~2050GBP. Why the UK gets this price gouging, I'll never know.
Dell's MacBook Pro ripp off with terrible battery life all wrapped in some false performance benchmarks against the MB pro presumably performed independly by a not so much independent organism. No thanks.....
Since when can the MacBook Pro be used to do "real" work? This has a Quadro, natively runs Windows without hacked half-ass drivers, with TPM and management engine.
This is much more than a MacBook. Albeit, it's a Dell, but the specs blow any MacBook out of the water.
The M3800 is a good machine, and its not a bad attempt to go against the rMBP. But to say you cannot do any real work on a rMBP is laughable. The Dell may have a "Quadro" branded card, but its still an older GK107, compared to the rMBP's GM107. Contrary to popular belief, Windows is not required to do work. Dell was losing a lot of corporate business because they had no competitor to the MBP, which was why they came out with this.
Be sure to let us know how well GM107 works when using any professional CAD/CAM software. Quadro cards trounce GeForce cards for non-gaming in performance and image quality, even generations removed. It's not even comparable.
I agree, however the amount of people that use these thin laptops for CAD/CAM are exceedingly small (I would be willing to bet its single digit percentage). The vast majority of people using these are in corporate environments. Sure Dell puts that low power Quadro in there, but its hardly something you want to use for daily work.
I think you're confusing this with low-end hardware or underestimating the strength of Quadro/Fire brand cards in general. They chose to use a fairly potent mid-range Quadro in this particular model which I would be more than happy to use in my daily work (3D-GIS). To put it in gaming terms this is the equivalent of a 660M, but it will run circles around a 660M for my needs. In fact, it will score 2-3X higher in SPECviewperf 11 than a desktop GTX Titan.
I do scientific / engineering work and love the M3800. Ditched a beefy desktop workstation + MBP for it -- I can just grab it and take it on the road when needed (nice and light too). It's not as powerful as the workstation but big jobs get run on HPC anyway. When running quadro / telsa clusters it's convenient to have a little quadro box to develop on so I couldn't be happier. It's a niche use case but I don't see why an M3800 or MBP is required for everyday corporate work. Excel / word / email / powerpoint run just fine on a lower end Dell or whatever... That new XPS thing that Dell has looks really good for that kind of stuff.
Oh, I like that the M3800 runs Linux fairly well (OSX != Linux).
Do you have any further reviews of your M3800? I have basically the same use case as you (scientific computing), and am looking to replace a top of the line 2015 macbook pro I've been working on recently. In particular, which battery do you have and how does it perform? Any 4K scaling issues when opening Matplotlib (or Matlab) figures? How's the keyboard and that rubberized surface? Is the trackpad decent under Ubuntu? Any advice would be appreciated!
Sorry, but particular branded cards, such as FirePro or Quadro are absolutely necessary in certain work. The regular cards are crippled beyond belief in some situations.
Weird, I have a building full of scientists doing a lot of real work on MacBooks. I wonder if they know that Samus says MacBooks can't be used for real work.
Not that weird. I know a lot of scientists that use their laptops mostly for running MS Excel (and if they need to compute something they use very serious servers). MacBook might be OK for software designers but for "scientists"? Not really. Those need CUDA :-)
I dunno, I think there's room for a high end portable workstation with only 16 gigs of ram. If you need more than that for your application, you probably also need a lot more cpu as well. So you're probably just doing test runs of whatever you're doing before you upload your code or project to a bigger box with more than 16 gigs of ram and more than 4 cores.
Consider the form factor, this one isn't aimed exclusively performance but also mobility. The newer and lighter W540 also supports only up to 16GB RAM.
If we're talking about the bigger 15.6 inch laptops, you should compare the older W500 series to the current P750ZM (i7-4790K + K5100M/980M + 32GB + 4K)
+1 Most of the Audio World (either events or recording related) share a need for longer battery life, portability, powerful CPU, large RAM plus, increasingly so Thunderbolt (by itself or to replace expresscards via adapter). Therefore NO discrete graphics is important to bring down costs and improve battery lifespan.
Pretty nice effort by Dell, but having used four generations of the Precision laptop series at work, I'm disappointed that they still insist on cooling intakes on the bottom, along with feet that attempt to keep the laptop's bottom off your work surface. This floor vacuum style cooling design always results in the same thing - works great for several months then either needs cleaning out or throttles performance way down with any heavy use. The fan speed and noise increase over time, as the laptop keeps your work environment and your lap dust and lint free by doing it's best imitation of a Roomba. For me it's disassembly 2-3 times a year. You won't see air intakes on the bottom of a Macbook pro, or protruding "feet". I'd like to see a battery run down test, too. My Precisions never did better than ~1.75 hours heavy use, or 3 light use with display brightness all the way down. Ever see Dell precision power adapters? Mine is 200W and actually larger in dimension and heavier than a standard masonry brick. I think they are getting closer, but can do better in a few key areas.
I can confirm the power brick is noticably smaller than my Acer 8942G's 120W unit. You might be impressed.
Yes, cleaning out fans is a pain, but not too bad - the whole bottom comes off with 10 torx screws. I only know this as I was trying 2133MHz RAM in the thing. (Which worked just fine WinSatmem= 29,020 Gb/s)
I believe the reason for dropping larger machines, such as an M18 R2, was due to there being no 'screens of acceptable specs / quality', as told by the Alienware boss on an AMA session this week.
But with what it takes to drive graphics at 4k, I think the 3200x1800 might be (marginally) better for laptops, or even less.
From the article: "...Dell also got a lot of feedback about storage options, and they are now offering a 1 TB mSATA SSD in addition to the second 2.5” hard drive bay which can also be outfitted with a 1 TB SSD, for a total of 2 TB of solid state storage. Also, in response to customer demand, Intel SSDs are now available.." I went to Dell.com, and asked the chat-person about this. OF COURSE they had NO idea what I was talking about and no access to specs beyond the highest level marketing materials. Message to Dell: make sure your sales-support people know what your P.R. people are putting out there. It actually matters to some customers...
You dont just flash the chip to a Quadro, those chips are all put through vigorous stability tests, making sure FP64 works at the normal frequency, checking for ECC errors, etc. those chips get "flashed" into a Quadro by NV, and noone else, and even a GK107 will give you loads more performance in the tasks where FP64 matters (rendering, compute) than even a GK110 GTX (apart from a Titan, since those have it unlocked as well)
Given the updates, and to avoid confusion, perhaps they should've upped the model #. Something along the lines of M3810 or M3850, for example.
As good as these improvements are, I'm looking forward to the next iteration (M3900?) when NVMe-Enabled PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs are supported. Bonus points if that includes Skylake and DDR4.
Lastly, I realize Dell price their SSDs according to what the market will bear, but it's annoying when a little research shows just how uncompetitive they are.
"I'm looking forward to the next iteration (M3900?) when NVMe-Enabled PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs are supported. Bonus points if that includes Skylake and DDR4."
Yes, except some of us have been waiting for ThunderBolt in a powerful, portable, long life batteried Windows laptop for more than a year, and in view of latest INTEL drag and continous delays, this is one of the (if not "The") best waiting-solutions till DDR4, DirectX-12 PCIe 3.0 obvious paradigmatic step up.
"That’s not light compared to an ultrabook, but it is in good company for other devices with a full quad-core CPU and a Quadro GPU onboard." A Quadro GPU isn't it the same weight as regular nVidia GPU? How is the weight of an expensive price tag and validated drivers?
I wonder if it's gravity or just dumbness that put a weight excuse on this laptop?!?
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
46 Comments
Back to Article
icrf - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Looks nice. I had an older version of its big cousin, the M6400, and loved it. I do hope when they update it to the M6900 it gets a nice hi-dpi IGZO display with Broadwell. I'd drop more than two grand on that.nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I just configured one with 16GB RAM and 4K display for ~$1900. It seems reasonable considering the mid-range Quadro, 4K display, and TB2 port. But holy shiite, they want $1,000 for a 1TB SSD upgrade. LOLBibliophile - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I just walked through a sample configuration and, upgrading from the standard 256GB SSD to a 1TB mSATA SSD was $735 (still expensive).iAPX - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
By "Mid-range Quadro", you mean a GK107 with 800 Gflop/s, comparable to an iGPU intel Iris Pro, or an Vidia GTX650?It's entry-level GPU, on a par with AMD and Intel iGPU from 2014 , I don't think it have it's place on any computer on 2015.
Notmyusualid - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
Cheap as chips. Try configuring the same in the UK.2400 GBP inc vat@ 20% (3200x1800 & 512GB ssd chosen). And then just before xmas the same was ~2050GBP. Why the UK gets this price gouging, I'll never know.
vasedgod - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
It was actually Principled Technologies who performed those tests, not Principle Technologies. :)nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
"I'm putting the 'pal' back in 'principal'!"hakime - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Dell's MacBook Pro ripp off with terrible battery life all wrapped in some false performance benchmarks against the MB pro presumably performed independly by a not so much independent organism. No thanks.....Samus - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Since when can the MacBook Pro be used to do "real" work? This has a Quadro, natively runs Windows without hacked half-ass drivers, with TPM and management engine.This is much more than a MacBook. Albeit, it's a Dell, but the specs blow any MacBook out of the water.
Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The M3800 is a good machine, and its not a bad attempt to go against the rMBP. But to say you cannot do any real work on a rMBP is laughable. The Dell may have a "Quadro" branded card, but its still an older GK107, compared to the rMBP's GM107. Contrary to popular belief, Windows is not required to do work. Dell was losing a lot of corporate business because they had no competitor to the MBP, which was why they came out with this.nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Be sure to let us know how well GM107 works when using any professional CAD/CAM software. Quadro cards trounce GeForce cards for non-gaming in performance and image quality, even generations removed. It's not even comparable.Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I agree, however the amount of people that use these thin laptops for CAD/CAM are exceedingly small (I would be willing to bet its single digit percentage). The vast majority of people using these are in corporate environments. Sure Dell puts that low power Quadro in there, but its hardly something you want to use for daily work.nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I think you're confusing this with low-end hardware or underestimating the strength of Quadro/Fire brand cards in general. They chose to use a fairly potent mid-range Quadro in this particular model which I would be more than happy to use in my daily work (3D-GIS). To put it in gaming terms this is the equivalent of a 660M, but it will run circles around a 660M for my needs. In fact, it will score 2-3X higher in SPECviewperf 11 than a desktop GTX Titan.ocross - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
I do scientific / engineering work and love the M3800. Ditched a beefy desktop workstation + MBP for it -- I can just grab it and take it on the road when needed (nice and light too). It's not as powerful as the workstation but big jobs get run on HPC anyway. When running quadro / telsa clusters it's convenient to have a little quadro box to develop on so I couldn't be happier. It's a niche use case but I don't see why an M3800 or MBP is required for everyday corporate work. Excel / word / email / powerpoint run just fine on a lower end Dell or whatever... That new XPS thing that Dell has looks really good for that kind of stuff.Oh, I like that the M3800 runs Linux fairly well (OSX != Linux).
ocross - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
*teslatds3 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
Do you have any further reviews of your M3800? I have basically the same use case as you (scientific computing), and am looking to replace a top of the line 2015 macbook pro I've been working on recently. In particular, which battery do you have and how does it perform? Any 4K scaling issues when opening Matplotlib (or Matlab) figures? How's the keyboard and that rubberized surface? Is the trackpad decent under Ubuntu? Any advice would be appreciated!Notmyusualid - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
+1piroroadkill - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Sorry, but particular branded cards, such as FirePro or Quadro are absolutely necessary in certain work. The regular cards are crippled beyond belief in some situations.Zak - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Weird, I have a building full of scientists doing a lot of real work on MacBooks. I wonder if they know that Samus says MacBooks can't be used for real work.lilo777 - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Not that weird. I know a lot of scientists that use their laptops mostly for running MS Excel (and if they need to compute something they use very serious servers). MacBook might be OK for software designers but for "scientists"? Not really. Those need CUDA :-)Beany2013 - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
I know at least one neuroscientist who rocks a MBP for research and work.I mean, it's not brain surgery....ah, wait, it sort of is. ;-)
(and I do actually know one, it's not just the basis of a pun)
elsassph - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I have the previous iteration and I LOL at your comment. Good machine but you have to tweak it a bit to fully enjoy it.Notmyusualid - Friday, January 30, 2015 - link
My Mrs. has an M3800, 4712HQ, 3200x1800, with 512GB LiteOn SSD.Build quality / screen / keyboard are the best I've used, seriously. When I touch-type on that thing I make less mistakes then I'm used too.
Dunno why people think the battery life is bad, it is 91whr on this machine. I had no idea it had a Thunderbolt2 port until I read this article. :)
aaronkulbe - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
With older machines like the Lenovo W500 series supporting up to 32GB of RAM, this hardly qualifies as a workstation, if you ask me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Wasabi_Vengeance - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I dunno, I think there's room for a high end portable workstation with only 16 gigs of ram. If you need more than that for your application, you probably also need a lot more cpu as well. So you're probably just doing test runs of whatever you're doing before you upload your code or project to a bigger box with more than 16 gigs of ram and more than 4 cores.edwd2 - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Consider the form factor, this one isn't aimed exclusively performance but also mobility. The newer and lighter W540 also supports only up to 16GB RAM.If we're talking about the bigger 15.6 inch laptops, you should compare the older W500 series to the current P750ZM (i7-4790K + K5100M/980M + 32GB + 4K)
aaronkulbe - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The W540 supports 32GB of RAM, as well.nevertell - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
The lack of windows laptops with a i7 QM processor and NO discrete graphics is enraging.Nexing - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
+1Most of the Audio World (either events or recording related) share a need for longer battery life, portability, powerful CPU, large RAM plus, increasingly so Thunderbolt (by itself or to replace expresscards via adapter).
Therefore NO discrete graphics is important to bring down costs and improve battery lifespan.
MicroGadgetHacker - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Pretty nice effort by Dell, but having used four generations of the Precision laptop series at work, I'm disappointed that they still insist on cooling intakes on the bottom, along with feet that attempt to keep the laptop's bottom off your work surface. This floor vacuum style cooling design always results in the same thing - works great for several months then either needs cleaning out or throttles performance way down with any heavy use. The fan speed and noise increase over time, as the laptop keeps your work environment and your lap dust and lint free by doing it's best imitation of a Roomba. For me it's disassembly 2-3 times a year. You won't see air intakes on the bottom of a Macbook pro, or protruding "feet". I'd like to see a battery run down test, too. My Precisions never did better than ~1.75 hours heavy use, or 3 light use with display brightness all the way down. Ever see Dell precision power adapters? Mine is 200W and actually larger in dimension and heavier than a standard masonry brick. I think they are getting closer, but can do better in a few key areas.Notmyusualid - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
I can confirm the power brick is noticably smaller than my Acer 8942G's 120W unit. You might be impressed.Yes, cleaning out fans is a pain, but not too bad - the whole bottom comes off with 10 torx screws. I only know this as I was trying 2133MHz RAM in the thing. (Which worked just fine WinSatmem= 29,020 Gb/s)
hrrmph - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
It's good to see progress in the 15" bracket, but we really need a 17" 4K display to replace some of the existing 17" machines.Notmyusualid - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
I believe the reason for dropping larger machines, such as an M18 R2, was due to there being no 'screens of acceptable specs / quality', as told by the Alienware boss on an AMA session this week.But with what it takes to drive graphics at 4k, I think the 3200x1800 might be (marginally) better for laptops, or even less.
baii9 - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
screams egpu, no longer need to get the zbook15 for Tb egpu.Bibliophile - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
From the article: "...Dell also got a lot of feedback about storage options, and they are now offering a 1 TB mSATA SSD in addition to the second 2.5” hard drive bay which can also be outfitted with a 1 TB SSD, for a total of 2 TB of solid state storage. Also, in response to customer demand, Intel SSDs are now available.." I went to Dell.com, and asked the chat-person about this. OF COURSE they had NO idea what I was talking about and no access to specs beyond the highest level marketing materials. Message to Dell: make sure your sales-support people know what your P.R. people are putting out there. It actually matters to some customers...Gunbuster - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Workstation meh, it's a rebadged XPS.dragonsqrrl - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
That's actually pretty much what it looks like, albeit with a GK107 Quadro instead of a GK107 GeForce.Gunbuster - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
That's what it is, it has none of the features from a real Precision like docking connector or vPro.They changed the screen printed logo, flashed the video card to Quadro and called it a day.
LukaP - Sunday, February 1, 2015 - link
You dont just flash the chip to a Quadro, those chips are all put through vigorous stability tests, making sure FP64 works at the normal frequency, checking for ECC errors, etc. those chips get "flashed" into a Quadro by NV, and noone else, and even a GK107 will give you loads more performance in the tasks where FP64 matters (rendering, compute) than even a GK110 GTX (apart from a Titan, since those have it unlocked as well)MTEK - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
Given the updates, and to avoid confusion, perhaps they should've upped the model #. Something along the lines of M3810 or M3850, for example.As good as these improvements are, I'm looking forward to the next iteration (M3900?) when NVMe-Enabled PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs are supported. Bonus points if that includes Skylake and DDR4.
Lastly, I realize Dell price their SSDs according to what the market will bear, but it's annoying when a little research shows just how uncompetitive they are.
Nexing - Saturday, February 21, 2015 - link
"I'm looking forward to the next iteration (M3900?) when NVMe-Enabled PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs are supported. Bonus points if that includes Skylake and DDR4."Yes, except some of us have been waiting for ThunderBolt in a powerful, portable, long life batteried Windows laptop for more than a year, and in view of latest INTEL drag and continous delays, this is one of the (if not "The") best waiting-solutions till DDR4, DirectX-12 PCIe 3.0 obvious paradigmatic step up.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
I wish Dell would update their XPS 15 with the 850/860m, they're still stuck with the 750m... sigh.kissiel - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
Possible mistake in Operating system list:Ubuntu 14.14 LTS
It probably should list 14.04 LTS.
editorsorgtfo - Thursday, January 29, 2015 - link
16:9 is not a professional aspect ratio, end of story.LukaP - Sunday, February 1, 2015 - link
Depends on the resolution. at 2160p, i would not complain about the lack of vertical space. with 1080p i would.iAPX - Saturday, January 31, 2015 - link
"That’s not light compared to an ultrabook, but it is in good company for other devices with a full quad-core CPU and a Quadro GPU onboard."A Quadro GPU isn't it the same weight as regular nVidia GPU? How is the weight of an expensive price tag and validated drivers?
I wonder if it's gravity or just dumbness that put a weight excuse on this laptop?!?