New M6500 Discussion Thread

I have been reading about CS5. Everything I have read is "hype" about the NVIDA video acceleration. One article with the headline of "Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine for CS5 is CUDA-only!" goes on to say that it's CUDA in the initial stages, until the openCL API from Apple, Intel, and AMD is more mature (estimated 9 month timeframe).

I can tell you that all of the features in Photoshop CS4 that use the GPU for processing are based on openGL, and are supported for both the ATI and NVIDIA cards. NVIDIA touts this Photoshop acceleration in their marketing material, and implies that it is only performed by the CUDA engine. This is false. The Photoshop GPU acceleration is based on openGL and runs on both ATI and NVIDIA. Been there, done that, and I haven't seen anything that states that this will change in CS5. As a matter of fact, when Adobe was asked point blank if they would port the video acceleration over to openCL, they reiterated their strong support for a non-proprietary solution (meaning they would prefer openCL over NVIDIAs proprietary offering.)

The marketing hype over NVIDIA and CS5 is just that, 95% hype, and 5% substance (if even that much). As I've said in the past, NVIDIA is very good at (somewhat misleading) advertising that implies that CS5 (and CS4 before that) is only accelerated using the NVIDIA solution.

To be honest, I'm having a difficult time separating the "facts" from the advertising/hype surrounding NVIDIA and CS5. I can also say that it took a bit of digging to determine that all of the GPU enhancements in CS4 would run on anything but NVIDIA cards. The situation doesn't seem to have changed.

I don't mean to harp on this issue, but it irks me when consumers are misled into believing something that isn't true. In this case, NVIDIA is doing a masterful job. The only advantage for NVIDIA right now (and with CS5) is in video processing, and this advantage is short term, and in Adobe's words, limited to very few high end desktop cards in order to "guarantee a consistent level of performance." The only cards supported (for video acceleration in CS5) at this point are: GTX285, Quadro FX 3800, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX 5800, and Quadro CX. They also specifically state that they currently won't enable video acceleration in CS5 on any laptop/notebook cards, so that makes this kind of an academic discussion for those of us on notebookreview.com.

Keith

 

what a bummer...i was hoping the 2800 would support it too...I found a "deal" online for $752 off the m6500 but the sad part was I couldn't go below 4gb ram (I have my own) and I couldn't choose the ATI card so I only ended up saving about $50 off a comparably configured machine with the ATI card (which I really wanted), bummer.

 

Well there is no "M" in the name of the card Adobe lists as one of the five that is currently enabled to perform video acceleration in CS5. So unless someone "hacks" the software to enable video acceleration with the 3800M, then it won't be enabled for that card, at least in the current version of CS5.

 

I just noticed that on Nvidia's website. Good info. That's why a vendor had told me to spec the 3800 for CS5 on a workstation I guess. Interresting none of the mobile chips do. Definitely a point that could get lost in comparing the mobile cards. I'm happy with the 2800 in any regard ;-)

John

 

Hopefully we will see acceleration on our notebooks after Adobe helps Nvidia sell a few desktop workstation cards. The 3800M has 128 pipes which (I think) is the same as the desktop equivalent FX 3700.

I 100% agree with you - its hype. 2 companies that used to rule their domains and are now being challenged. I know that the Adobe Creative Suite is still a must have, but the web apps like Dreamweaver (and even Flash) are showing cracks in their facades. For now, I need Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premier Pro.

I ordered the 3800M based on past experience with Nvidia and Adobe. What they do next will help me decide on what laptop I buy in 15 months.

 

That makes sense and that's probably the reason, why skypx wasn't able to install the drivers.

Concerning the Photoshop and video card discussion: If I check in Photoshop's OpenGL activating dialog which functions are supported/accelerated from the GPU, it is not so much. I did some macro stacking exercises yesterday and used CS4 functionality with five 21MB raw pictures. My old laptop refused to do that, now the job is done in 20 seconds and the fans don't even start. i7-820 together with 8GB RAM are doing a great job.

 

Just what I need, something else to spend money on.....

 

Hype it is, but there is nothing to deny there are significant more software packages supporting CUDA over OpenCL at the moment.

But if my experience with video encoding in TMPGENC is anything to go by the i7 820 does around 78% of the encoding whereas CUDA on the 3800M is only 22%, meaning that CUDA is not a significant aid to rendering/encoding.

With the excessive premium on the 3800M any non covet M6500 spec with it is simply overpriced. On the Covet model the cost of the nvidia chip is somewhat swallowed.

NVIDIA's on saving grace is that I still think the nvidia binary drivers / setup under linux is significantly better... saying that if Dell had offered me the covet even £100 cheaper to take the ATI, bring on the ATI.

 

Hello everyone, I'm new here.
I've been following the thread for long time and it helped me to decide to get this wonderful (hopefully) machine so thanks to everyone for the great and detailed posts.

Just got my M6500 after waiting a couple of weeks (I'm in the UK).

Everything seem to be working fine even if I got (like lot of people here) issues to get good colors the RGB screen (my screen seems to be an LG) and some initial trouble with the graphics card (M7740) solved doing a fresh installation of the OS and installing an older version of the driver.

However I'm having a strange issue with the new NEC USB 3.0 controller.
Actually I can't get it works in any way.

This what I tried to do:

after enabling it in the bios, installing the driver from dell website (NEC USB 3.0) a device is recognized but it cannot start so those two ports are on the left side are not working.
The controller works fine if the USB 3.0 option is not selected in the bios but of course it's recognized as USB 2.0.

Going and checking in the device manager I see that the controller (NEC electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller) has a yellow exclamation mark next to it.

On General tab of the controller properties in the device status field there is written: "This device cannot start. (code 10)"
and in the Resources tab: "This device isn't using any resources because it has a problem"

Am I missing something?

I already contacted the Dell support service and they said that it's a driver related issue so there is not support at the moment for Windows 7 64bit (they said it should be fine with the 32bit variant) - this after he spent about 40 minutes installing and re-installing the chip set driver soooo many times.

It sounds too odd. Is it really possible that DELL sells system that has no support for some component under W7 64 bit?

Any suggestions? has anyone got the USB 3.0 working with a similar configuration?

thanks for any help


here the essential points of my configuration:

i7820
8 GB RAM
ATI M7740
RGB screen (I think it's a LG)
Windows 7 OS 64bit

 

Adobe has a history of 'hyping' their products early. They have great products and great marketing to go with it. By the time they release CS5 'sp1', OpenCL will most likely be supported.

In one of their promo CS5 video's, they did mention the Quadro cards (no laptop version) yet did not mention what 16 cpu processor they were using.

Tony