Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

I haven't run RAID 0 (or any other RAID configuration) for about 7 years since one of the hard drives died and took out all the arrays.

I am sure that there has been advances since then but I find it easier waiting that extra 0.02 seconds than having to go through that nightmare again.

Go with quad core, you will not regret it.

It may not be the fastest benchmark wise, but in real life when running multiple programs at once, it is faster than waiting due to limited cpu resources.

 

This is good point. Don't go RAID0 unless you have good backup. My data is stored on the server and only mirrored locally and I have an image of the disk (sans data) stored - so I can restore within about 30mins with no lost data.

 

What are you using for video editing? I use Vegas Pro 9 and it is very nicely multithreaded. This quadcore renders video very nearly 2x as fast as the dual core extreme I had in my old M6300... So I say take the quad.
Photoshop cs4, on the other hand, is not very multithreaded (or so I'm told)... but it still runs like a champ (64bit version in win 7 64) on here, as you would assume. Probably won't notice much difference in PS between the dual and quad core.

love this laptop...

 

I've always been afraid of RAID 0 for HDDs, especially in a laptop, but I need the speed for HD video editing. Also, I wonder if SSDs in RAID 0 are more reliable as they are impervious to shock and vibration.

 

I will be using Adobe CS4 Premier Pro. I am actually more interested in the multithreaded performance of Adobe Lightroom, as I'll be doing much more there than in Photoshop.

 

I can not comment on your specific programs, but I have a M6400 with 8GB and a FX3700M. Love it. I started with 2 320GB WD Black (7200RPM) drives in RAID 0. Performance was OK. I recently replaced one of the drive with an OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD. Dramatic improvement in performance over the RAID configuration (particularly with Reads). System feels a lot snapper. AutoCAD and Inventor load A LOT FASTER (faster than my desktop with twin 300GB V-Raptors in RAID0). This is all based on XP-64, so other OS's could impact my observations.

Based on my observations, I would go with the last option with a primary SSD and an mechanical secondary drive. But if you want extreme speed, two SSD in RAID-0 will I think give you that.

If you have no experience with SSD, I would strongly recommend that you to read some SSD forums and FAQs. They are different animals than mechanical hard drives and you should really understand the differences to tell how they may affect your application. Also, all SSDs are not created equal. Over the last 6 months to 1 year, the technology has improved dramatically in terms of speed for the lower priced drives (MLC vs SLC).

 

From what I've read about photoshop and lightroom, it totally depends upon what you are doing. Some features/plugins/filters are multithreaded and some are not. I took the attached screenshot while exporting a bunch of 10mp .dng raw files >> jpg using camera raw (this is on my M6400). I'm fairly certain that the file-handling backside of camera raw is very much the same as lightroom even if the UI and options are different. You can see that it is doing a pretty good job of hitting all the cores. CPU usage stayed up between 60-98% during the entire process.

hope this helps.

 

Thanks. I've been doing quite a bit of research on SSDs. I'm looking at the Samsung 256GB MLC drive, which uses 32MB of cache and the latest Samsung controller. I've seen how others have had trouble with stuttering and whatnot with the JMicron controller.

 

When I use the displayport to HDMI adaptor the external LCD monitor does not power down when the notebook lid is closed (or when the notebook goes to sleep).

When the same monitor is connected via the VGA port - no problems - monitor powers down.

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks for the help. I pulled the trigger on the M6400 yesterday. I should have it by the end of this week.

QX9300 Quad Core 2.53Ghz
8GB RAM
FX3700M 1GB
1920x1200 RGB LED (Anti-Glare)
2x Samsung 256GB SSD in RAID 0