Dell M6500: A Precision Strike on Bling
by Jarred Walton on March 9, 2010 3:00 AM ESTDell M6500 Workstation Performance
As expected, SPECviewperf shows real benefits from the hardware features enabled in NVIDIA Quadro GPUs; here the difference between the two otherwise similar systems is night and day. Watching the M6500 run through the SPECviewperf tests compared to the W870CU (and really, we're comparing the GTX 280M to the FX 3800M) is like watching a game running on a moderate IGP compared to the same game running on a top-end GPU (think HD 4200 compared to the HD 5870). Real-time interaction with the type of applications tested in SPECviewperf is possible with an FX 3800M, but it's very choppy with the GTX 280M. The Quadro FX 3800M turns in performance that's anywhere from 4x to 14x as fast as the GTX 280M.
One of the features enabled in the Quadro drivers/firmware is improved antialiasing (particularly line antialiasing), which gives us results like the above table where the GTX 280M lists "no result for multisample performance. That's because SPECviewperf deemed the performance as "too low" or "unacceptable". Looking at the M6500/FX 3800M result, we see that most of the tested applications can run with antialiasing at 2x or 4x with little impact on performance, with 3ds Max able to run at 16xAA with acceptable performance. Note that SPECviewperf considers a result "too slow" if it's not within 10% of the baseline (0xAA) score. Let's look at the detailed multisample results table.
Besides better antialiasing performance, the Quadro chips also support up to 32xAA (compared to 16xAA on GeForce cards). As you can see in the above table, while the GTX 280M is able to run at roughly the same rate with or without antialiasing in many of the tests, the final speed is still much slower than even the worst Quadro result. At worst, the 32xAA on Quadro 3800M still turns in performance that's 2.7x faster than a GeForce (e.g. ensight-03); at best it's an order of magnitude faster at equivalent settings.
Wrapping up with multithreaded performance, we see that the W870CU fails to ran many of the quad-core tests, which is why those sections of the table are blank. This is most likely a driver/firmware/OS incompatibility, and it goes to show that having a certified system can make a difference. Like the other results, the M6500 is still 6 to 13 times faster than the W870CU. Let's wrap things up with SPEC's LightWave benchmark.
In contrast to SPECviewperf 10, and similar to the x264 encoding and Cinebench results on the previous page, the LightWave tests depend almost entirely on the CPU in your system, so the scores of the M6500 and W870CU are close. The M6500 scores higher in the "Interactive" benchmark of LightWave while the W870CU scores higher in the Render and Multitask LightWave tests. Differences in drivers and the type/configuration of RAM may account for the slight discrepancies, but largely we're looking at CPU tests that show the two notebooks as being equal.
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geekforhire - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Some things I forgot to note:The cost of mine was a little more than half the amount quoted in the article - complete. This a beast of a machine is available for a modest premium if you just resist the temptation of designing with only bleeding edge equipment.
When I ordered mine, the Core i5 processors were not available for the M6500. That may be part of the intent as part of the prerelease whisper from the manufacturer, but as of yesterday they still aren't available for the M6500.
There's a wonderful article on the virtues of the Core i7-720QM processor from last fall, here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i7...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i7...
geekforhire - Friday, March 12, 2010 - link
Here's a link to the Core i7-790QM processor spec sheet from Intel:http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43122">http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43122
Here's a link to a page on the Intel website which helps decode what the processor numbers mean.
http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ind...">http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ind...
The i7-720QM has a 45W package, 4x1.6 Ghz processor cores with HyperThreading, 6M cache, DDR3-1066/1333 memory, 8GB max physical memory limit, and a "Turbo Mode" which allows a few cores to spin up to 2.8Ghz (note that all processors cannot operate at this speed simultaneously, but is available when some cores have been dynamically turned off and the TDP would not be exceeded).
Naina - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 - link
I like what you said about the Dell M6500. I am a photoartist and work mostly with Photoshop. I do thisprofessionally and I am travelling a good deal. I like the Dell M6500 but am not sure what configuration to look at which would meet my need for speed and space.
I wonder if you could make a suggestion.
Naina
icrf - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
I've been using an M6400 at work for the last six months, which is very similar to this. The chassis looks the same, but it's generation older hardware (Q9100 / FX2700M).On the docking station front, I apparently ended up with the cheaper one. It has DVI, DP, and VGA ports, but it won't drive both the DVI and DP, so I have to run one of my two external displays on an analog VGA connection.
hko45 - Tuesday, March 9, 2010 - link
I haven't seen any other comparable docking station to the E-Port Plus -- to be able to connect to two monitors through the same kind of ports (DVIs or DisplayPorts). When you're editing images, you need to make sure that both monitors are reasonably alike. That's why I would only buy Dell's Precision or Latitude (not all) laptops -- just for to be able to use that docking station.icrf - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
Some of my co-workers have dual-DVI (but no DP) docking stations. We're just developers, so the accurate color reproduction isn't all that important. Honestly, if I could have gotten the thing without the Nvidia graphics, I'd of been better off. I never render anything in 3D. I was just looking for a 17" 1920x1200 chassis with a speedy quad core and 8 GB of RAM. Unfortunately, the office wouldn't spring for a SSD, as I think that would have made the most difference. I get the feeling random read is the biggest bottleneck.Fanfoot - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
The laptop I see on Dell's site doesn't appear to bear much of a resemblance to the one you describe. The one I see has a max of 4GB of RAM, comes with 32-bit Windows, has no USB 3.0 support, and is very expensive. Even basic WiFi isn't included in the price of this thing. Three drives? Where does it say that? I assume one of the drives you're counting is the special 64GB Flash drive, probably a mini PCIe card, but still, show me where it says you can swap out the SLOT LOADING DVD for a second full sized 2.5" drive, something I'm used to with Thinkpads, but that is otherwise uncommon.From the machine that I appear to be able to configure on Dell's website, I'd say both HP and Lenovo have better, more capable, machines in this range available today. The one you talk about sounds fine, but I see no way to configure a machine like that on Dell's website...
holytouch - Sunday, April 11, 2010 - link
i think you should go back to dell.com and try again. the laptop he describes is there, and contains the specs within the review. make sure you look at the 6500/6500 covet. i ordered mine with win7 pro/64bit with no issues.honestly, it couldn't be any easier to see that the machine he describes is on the site.
tozndsand - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I have heard that i5-i7 processors are not supported by Adobe CS5. Is that correct? That would be a deal breaker for many. ThanksDellVictim - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
I am frustrated with how many positive editorial reviews this machine is getting. I bought one with all the trimmings (twin HD's with RAID etc) and before long at all, started having lots of issues. One of the HD's has been replaced 4 or 5 times, the motherboard 3 times, the graphics card twice, the screen, and it's currently broken, again, despite two dell technician visits - the last of which left telling me the RAID was rebuilding and all was good. Less than 30 minutes after he left, there was a beep, the computer restarted, got stuck in the dos BIOS screen and when I pressed F1 to continue it told me that there was now NO bootable disk! I'm fusious. I have been without my laptop and important data now for over three weeks. So much for next day service, everytime they need to get parts, they seem to be out of stock for several days, then they don't ship them early enough in the day for me to get them next day. They leave voicemails saying they'll call you later and they don't. They won't give you a direct dial number to your service representative. They won't pass you through to the team that deal with refund/replacement requests and that team seems to take 3-4 days to decide that despite the appaulling history or clearly recurring problems with this machine, they don't feel it deserves either a replacement or refund. Instead, they'll send someone out a week later with insufficient parts to make it worse!I don't think I need to explain the moral of the story here folks.