New M4500 Discussion Thread

It supports a castrated FX1800m with GDDR3, that will probably be as much of an upgrade as the FX770m to FX1700m rort.
No GDDR5 FX1800m, no USB 3.0, no RAID support, but it's the most powerful 15" workstation because of the 920XM alone.....why bother with more powerful GPU's in the M6500 then? why bother with dual hard drive support, why bother with releasing a USB 3.0 board?

Thats why your M6400 and M6500 have the top end graphics options in them as well huh?, you can buy a gaming notebook with a 920 in it, most people I know use workstations for the Quadro's alone [I'm talking mcad], if openGL software didn't run 50 times better with a quadro, I wouldn't bother paying the high premium for the priviledge, the cpu is very secondary to me, especially when talking heat output v extra [non benchmarked] performance v COST.My experiment with P8600 v X9100 in my M4400 proved to me that for my usage, a vastly faster cpu was good for keeping you warm and only increased noticable speed in very very few specific scenarios...even a cheap SSD has more felt speed difference

Sgogeta4 has valid points, except for the ATI thing .

Great point, although no one has actually recieved an 8540w yet either, but it is supposed to be available from retailers locally for me around now.

 

I was talking about CPU not GPU. Notebooks are always restricted by the CPU. You can't over clock them and your upgrade options are limited.

It's generally a good idea to get whatever you can afford right out of the gate.

GPU is all user dependent does not affect overall system performance as much as your CPU. I do a lot of rendering, video, 2D and many things that run better on an Nvidia GPU. Also I dislike ATI video drivers which in my experience are bug ridden and bloated.

 

ATI drivers kind of suck, I'll admit, but their hardware is great. If only we could combine nVidia drivers and ATI hardware

Depends on what types of work you are doing. The only point I'd make is that CPUs in pretty much all these workstations are easily user upgradeable, while GPUs are not - which is why I'd rather have a better GPU than CPU.

 

I certainly appreciate your reply. I was just hoping to hear something technical about how the m4500 will be more efficient at both power management and heat management. Is the case better designed? More or better fans? More or better thermal paste? Bigger power brick (big issue for the Studio)? That sort of thing.

I have high hopes for the m4500, I just want more info because it's either this or a W510 for me.

 

I've got an m4400 and an m6500 on order. The Precisions are in a different class than the consumer grade Studios and you pay for that. I would say they are better in all those categories. I thought about the 'StinkPad' (sorry, heard it from a lenovo tech on this forum, makes me laugh) myself but having owned a Precision previously I rejected that idea. I also on a Vostro 1220...for me I'd have to stay with Vostro, Lattitude or Precision. I AM a gamer btw.

 

I hear you. I've read mostly good things about the ThinkPads with a few exceptions, same with the precision models.

The thing is I need to order shortly and there seems to be no indication of how soon this will be actually be available and moreover how long it will take for Dell to actually ship.

 

Unfortunately, even the HP and Lenovo's "available now" are taking a few weeks to months to ship.

 

Is there a rough available date for the m4500? Are we talking about weeks, months, end of the year?

 

Usually a product launches 20-30 days after a press release with Dell.
So expect the end of the month for first few days in April.

 

I don't do rendering or video editing, the X9100 I tried made no difference to the speed of using solidworks over the P8600, it did run 25degC hotter though with associated heat transmitted through the bottom.I would imagine an i7-920XM being even worse, even if I did want to waste an obscene amount of money for what I need.
Better GPU is always welcome and advantageous being proportional with the size and geometry of the models/assy's to rotational speed,framerate,viewport refresh, especially when realview material rendering and VBO's are offloaded to the GPU by the software.

I'll personally take low wattage cpu's and a better GPU anyday in a 15" with a single fan.