Dell Precision M6700 Notebook Review: The Enterprise Split
by Dustin Sklavos on December 12, 2012 7:43 PM ESTWorkstation Performance
Here's the one place where the Clevo notebook will be unable to keep up: workstation performance. The Dell Precision M6700's i7-3920XM and Quadro K5000M can finally stretch their legs here, as these are the benchmarks the M6700 was really designed for. Since I only have results for a couple of mobile workstations, I'm including the desktop workstations I've reviewed as reference points.
The sheer brute force of the Quadro K5000M, despite its substantially weakened FP64 performance, is enough to get it to score consistently better than the last generation GF100-based Quadro 5010M. Unless you need a high end desktop workstation GPU and a chip with more than four cores, Dell's Precision M6700 is capable of being a very potent workhorse. Remember that a Quadro 5000 desktop card costs almost $2,000 on its own; that puts the M6700's steep workstation price tag into a bit of perspective.
The M6700's CPU unfortunately gets hit harder in SPECapc Lightwave. Faster CPUs with higher core counts are the order of the day here, and though the i7-3920XM may be able to keep pace with a top-of-the-line Ivy Bridge CPU in short bursts, eventually its turbo speed settles down. Switching to a desktop workstation can still shave 33% off of Lightwave's render time, but you'll pay through the nose for it.
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StephaneP - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
I'm using a M6500 since 3 years.I like it but it could be really better with :
- A better and larger touchpad
- A better fan controller (I hate the on/off behaviour when an intermediate speed could be near silent)
Even though I need the dock, the 2 hdd, the numpad, I don't need Firepro or Quadro. I would like a Mxxxx with a standard and much cheaper GPU option.
ijozic - Monday, December 17, 2012 - link
On my M6400, there's an engineering menu accessed by holding Fn+Shift while typing 15324. Then by pressing the Fn+R you get into a temperature overview GUI screen where you can input the fan speed manually. Be careful not to run any demanding applications while the speed is manually set as the fans won't increase their speed automatically.Pradip Gupta - Friday, December 14, 2012 - link
But can it run Crysis?Death666Angel - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - link
How can a battery ever be oversized? I could see that point being true when a battery offers more than 14 hours of productivity, because nearly no one is going to work more than that each day and when you are not working /are sleeping you can charge it. But other than that, it is pretty hard to imagine an oversized battery.Nenad - Thursday, March 14, 2013 - link
I have M6700, and it is great desktop replacement notebook, with few issues. Main issue I have is:EMBArraSSinglY bad FINGERPRINT LOGON:
1) when it fail to read fingerprint, it still show "logging in" message for 3-4sec, thus confusing you into thinking that scan was ok
2) after that it show 'fail' message and asks you to PRESS OK button , thus requiring you to move hand from reader and move mouse or press key
3) if it fail to read fingerprint few times, sometimes it move you to 'change user' instead of 'enter password' - so can easily enter your PASSWORD in PLAIN VIEW of anyone around
4) it always show DELL picture during login, not your account picture like normal windows login
This is part of Dell 'Data Protection', which is basically Embassy SW from Wave - and it has VERY BAD design (Since it is EMBASSY SW, it is EMBArraSSinglY bad ). On my previous notebook (Lenovo W700) , fingerprint reading was working as expected, which means it works so well that you dont notice it:
- while it match fingerprints, if says 'processing' instead of Dell's 'logging in' (thus not misinforming you)
- if it fail to match, it return you to same 'enter password or swipe finger' screen, thus not requiring you to press keys or mouse, just to swipe finger again
- if it fail multiple times, it leave you at 'enter password' manually, and NOT at 'change user', meaning you can not accidentally reveal your password to others if you start typing it after fingerprint reading fails
- it showed windows user icon instead of vendor one
I wonder if it was so hard for Embassy and Dell, after years and years of selling SW for fingerprints, to actually make something that is at least similarly useful as competition solutions.