Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

M6400 max watt usage:
QX9300 45W
FX 3700M 75W
FX 2700M 65W

Which makes the 3700M more power efficient for what one is getting in return for that +10watts.

Previous HD power summary for 320GB, 7200rpm.
WD: Idle: 1.12w Full: 3.26w LS: 1.3w
Hitachi: Idle: 1.0w Full: 3.1w LS: 1.6w
Seagate: Idle: 0.95w Full: 3.03w LS: 1.9w

One hears a lot about HD heat and power consumption, 5400 vs 7200rpm, etc.

But comparing HD power usage to CPU/GPU in the M6400 justifies using the fastest and largest HDs and selecting the quietest HDs as notebooks are typically 2ft away from our ears.

By the way solid state drive power usage is about the same as above mechanical idle power usage.

Anyone have specs on 500GB 7200rpm notebook HDs?

 

This is my 1st post. I just received my M6400. My VMWare compile times were slow with just the single Seagate 7200 RPM 80GB drive. All 4 CPU's were barely working.

I replaced the single drive with 2 - Seagate 320GB 7200 RPM drives in RAID0 and ran SiSoftware Sandra benchmarks ($99 each from NewEgg, thank you very much Dell). Average RAID0 speed is 131MB/s with a range of [85.4MB/s to 169.6MB/s]. Subsequent compile speeds are up and the 4 cores are now having to work harder with the reduced disk bottleneck.

Has anyone else tried any optimizations (e.g. RAID0 with SSD drives)? If so, what drives did you use and what were your results? I would like to get more performance out of this workstation. The upcoming Samsung 256GB SSDs have good reported specs, but time will tell.

Tim

P.S.

The M6400 arrived with the eSATA DOA. Dell will be swapping out the MoBo. Also, the sharp 90 degree leading edge is cutting into my wrists. My M90 and M60 were much more comfortable in respect to this.

M6400 - XP with VMWare Fedora

• 1920x1200 WUXGA
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M
• Intel Core 2 Extreme Quadcore Q9300 @ 2.53GHz
• 4GB - 2 DIMMS
• RAID0 - avg. 131MB/s - twin Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
• Integrated Webcam
• Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-A/B/G/N WLAN
• eSATA - DOA

Also: Inspiron 7500, Precision M60, Precision M90

 

Hi, I have to do a lot of Video conversions, from AVI to MP4 or MP2 to MP4, etc., what is better the M4400 or the M6400 ?, I think having 2 HDs in RAID 0 would be much faster ???

Also which CPU would be more efficient, the 3Ghz Duo with 6MB Cache or the 2.53 Quad with 12MB Cache ?

Thanks a lot,

 

Tim,

How did you replace the HD? Clean new install or image original HD?

Sharp edge not good ...

Do your new HDs have free fall sensor?

 

Or.

Seagate 320GB as primarly HD for OS, apps, and permanent data files. Then get (when available) X25-E 64GB as secondery HD for fast read/write of temp files, hibernation, etc.
Better option than above dual HD with RAID 1 and 0 ?
Would have to do external backup. Definitely quieter. About the same in power consumption/heat but more expensive.

 

brosen, I don't know if you went to the Intel website and looked at their benchmarks for the QX9300. They compared it to the X9100. Don't know how much better in real life the quad would be, but according to Intel, most of their benchmarks have the quad doing about 20% better.

I can't post a link yet, so just cut and paste, intel.com/performance/mobile/extreme.

 

You should ALWAYS nuke the OS when you get a new system. Be it Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, etc. Every OEM install of Windows I've always found to be twitchy in some form or another. I've had people tell me I'm full of it but I will be blunt...I've never had problems with Windows and I'm certain part of that can be traced back to using a clean install of Windows, newest drivers, no helper apps installs, etc.

 

I did a clean install from disk after making the RAID0 configuration. I have 2 conversion kits from DriveSolutions.com that can clone drives up or down, but I don't know how to clone a non-RAID to a RAID except for a clean install. I have used the DriveSolutions USB2/SATA kit to upgrade my other laptops and their parallel kit before that, but they have all been non-RAID.

Another note on the sharp edges. Dell put in a full size keyboard which makes your left wrist fall off the left side, so both the leading edge and the left side cuts your wrists. I never use the keypad on the right and wish they would have kept the normal laptop keyboard centered. At least your left wrist would not be falling off of the left side of they omitted the keypad. I think this laptop is more meant for engineering than accounting. What were they thinking???

These are the drives that I bought from NewEgg. I am going to order another one to upgrade my M90 from 200GB to 320GB. According to Seagate, it has the GForce protection. I read the reviews on Tom's Hardware concering the laptop 320GB shootouts. Their top speed choice was this Seagate drive. I need speed, not battery life, else I might have chose the WD which was a close 2nd. I figured I would wait to see about the Samsung 256GB SSD drives that are supposed to come out at year end. 2 of these should double my existing RAID0 speed if there is any truth to their press releases. As for their price, it will probably be a lot more than $99 each.

• Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive (Bare drive) - OEM

Forum will not let me post the URL

Key Advantages

• Highest available notebook performance increases productivity in all environments.
• Developed with proven Seagate 7200-RPM laptop technology
• Available in capacities of 320, 250, 160, 120 and 80 GB
• SATA 3Gb/s NCQ interface
• 16-MB cache on every capacity
• G-Force Protection™ available for added robustness in mobile environments
• Green features:
• Leverages Seagate laptop power management technology, delivering the lowest-power 7200-RPM laptop hard drive yet
• Utilizes ramp load features which remove the head from the disk during idle periods, improving idle power consumption and adding to the durability of the drive
• QuietStep™ ramp load technology enables ultra-quiet load/unload acoustics
• Perpendicular recording technology
• Seagate 5-year limited warranty

Forum will not let me post the URL

M6400 - XP with VMWare Fedora

• 1920x1200 WUXGA
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M
• Intel Core 2 Extreme Quadcore Q9300 @ 2.53GHz
• 4GB - 2 DIMMS
• RAID0 - avg. 131MB/s - twin Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
• Integrated Webcam
• Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-A/B/G/N WLAN
• eSATA - DOA

Also: Inspiron 7500, Precision M60, Precision M90

 

All the drivers for Windows XP x64 are available for M6400 ?, thanks

 

The hard drives shouldn't have any real effect on it. A single 5400RPM drive should be fine, as presumably it's CPU bound.

Depends on what you're doing, but personally I want a quad core. For something like media encoding where additional CPUs are easily used, the speed should basically be double what two CPUs gives you.