Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Since these machines are new -- I'd bet the techs have had little or no experience with them -- but that should not matter. May not be that the card is bad -- could be motherboard, drivers, or any other number of factors.

Techs usually deal only with the hardware side -- so if it is not purely hardware related then ....

 

This looks like "software RAID" (code loaded from ROM and executed in memory of the computer), as opposed to dedicated hardware RAID (code running in dedicated chips), which probably won't be as good. For example, if this thing allows you to set up a RAID 5 container when there are only two physical drives present, I would say that really isn't true RAID 5 protection. It's probably fine for RAID 1 or 0, though, just slower than true hardware RAID.

 

I had a discussion with the head of IT at my school about that. What he said is software RAID actually tends to win in performance, since the OS can be aware of the topology of the array.

I asked why use hardware raid, if that is the case. He said software RAID tends to be harder to administer, makes it difficult to do things like grow/shrink an array, have hot spares, all the things you do when maintaining a 100% uptime datacenter with hundreds of drives.

I wasn't completely clear on why that would be the case (software would be more flexible, no?) but he said from experience, maintaining a huge software raid with 100% uptime was impractical.


In the case of your personal computer or your laptop, I'd say software raid would probably be a GOOD thing.


Example: You have many small accesses to perform.

Hardware RAID: Each access aligns the disks and reads one RAID block of information (i.e. all drives), combines them, and reports the contents to the OS, which retrieves the part of them it needed.

Software RAID: Each access, since the OS is aware of the topology of the RAID, goes to the specific disks necessary. Disk 0 can be reading one small file while disk 1 goes on to the next access, assuming the next access is on disk 1.

At least, this is how he explained things to me. Logically I would think the hardware RAID would be capable of performing like that too, but he said there was something about the architecture of it that prevented that. Something related to block sizes and the methods used by the controller card for representing the array as a single drive to the OS. He's an experienced guy who's worked in several big datacenters so I trust his word on it.

 

I have been getting glitches in Vista's Aero interface (window borders, taskbar, random other things flashing between normal and black bars, screen blanking), and Maya 2008 SE crashed almost immediately after creating a polygon "soccerball" and switching to smooth wireframe mode.

The M6400 ships with old nvidia drivers... I updated mine to the ones on the dell website (.27 to .53 I believe but those are approximate numbers) and will be trying to work on it tonight for an extended time. We'll see how it holds out.

OS: Vista Ultimate 64
VC: Quadro 3700

So far, I have to say, this machine is not as stable out of the box as the HP 8710 was. But the 8710 was shipped near the end of its line's lifetime, the M6400 has only existed for a few months. (speaking of which... Why are the drivers old???)

If anyone has tips for figuring out which drivers on the Dell site are more recent than what you have, so that you can grab all the drivers you need and hack at it, I would like to hear... I really don't want to check all these unfamiliar programs and drivers one by one.

 

Yeah, the drivers do seem a bit behind for the graphics. Of course, i'm waiting for the Autodesk Certified Driver for the 3700M for 2009.
-Mark P.

 

I would estimate the reflections in my Covet are 30% to 50% the brightness of the objects it reflects.

This makes me kind of crazy really, because that kind of shininess only makes it look good when it's on the shelf turned off and you aren't trying to use it. Also because I am comparing my glossy Covet screen to my (arguably quite "glossy") CRT tube screens and television. I have one perfectly flat CRT screen that is a glass front. When I search for my reflection I can find it and it is a sharp reflection, but the reflection is extremely dim and difficult to even find. The same for my 27" flat screen CRT television, and also my other CRT screen which suffers brighter reflections because it is slightly convex.

To be very specific, I'll compare a light behind me that is reflecting, and match it to an on-screen color.

On my flat-front CRT, the light is very dim. Comparing the brightness of the reflection on the CRT with the brightness of a color on my Covet, the reflected light on the CRT is about 18% white. ("Covet" white... brightness at full.)

On the Covet, the same reflection is brighter than the default clock on the Vista Sidebar, and matches more closely the yellow used in the icon for a folder full of files. It's brighter than the windows taskbar in Classic mode, closer to about 90% "Covet" white.

To cover brightness differences between the screens... The Covet screen is MUCH brighter than my CRT. 50% gray on the Covet is about the same luminosity as the white of the text box I'm typing into on my CRT. (so, the reflection of the light is about 15% white on the glass tube screen, and 50% white on the Covet, when compared to 100% white on the Covet.)

My eye is somewhat trained for stuff like this, but I don't have any actual instruments to take measurements. Maybe I can get the same thing to reflect in both screens, take a photo, then take a photo of the object.


Note about the Covet screen... I am pretty sure the actual screen is matte finish. What's glossy is this stupid glass plate that covers the entire lid. That might explain why sales staff thought it was matte finish. That will protect the screen from friends' and coworkers' poking fingers, but that's all it's good for. Also I have a bit of a beef with the idea it is a color uniform screen for artists... Mine has a slightly brighter patch covering the upper left quadrant, when the screen is black. (92% black vs. 100% black, if 0% black is white e.g. the color of an open Notepad.) It also turns a few shades warmer at a 20 degree angle horizontally, and a few shades cooler at 20 degrees vertically. (a barely noticeable difference, something I can pick up but people not doing color-sensitive work probably won't notice.)

 

i have had the updated drivers for the video card since the second day i had the machine...

in regards to the techs not knowing this machine yet, this particular tech did not know much about anything. my machine was left in worse condition after each time he took it apart. now, there are scratches where he pried different parts open, and the screen lid does not know if it is closed so the screen stays on all the time. actually, he left me with a dead computer at first, saying i would receive a box to ship it back to get it fixed..i was able to take it apart enough to fix it enough to get it working in the mean time though. while the real issue may be with something other than graphics card, the reason i am sending my machine back is purely the techs fault. if they are not willing to provide me with a new machine after this i am returning it for a lenovo w700.

 

Very interesting and informative. Thanks. I can see how the hardware RAID would not know and read entire blocks across all drives, whereas the software RAID could do things more intelligently. I have a Dell Precision T5400 desktop computer that has an on-board software RAID controller (Intel), and I decided to purchase one of the Dell PERC 5/i controllers, and I can tell you that it was a heck of a lot faster after I put the dedicated RAID controller card into the computer.

 

I've been "expedited" too. We probably all have, and are therefore in the same state of waiting we were in before. lol.

At least you guys are getting communications. I've asked two reps, and both came back with scripted answers, but the 2nd one "expedited" me. The dude from dell that was on here, havoctex, offered to look into my order last week, but I never heard from him again either.

I thought customer service was supposed to improve during a recession...

Oh well, just glad to hear that the parts are in.

 

Are you using an out-the-box M6400?

The reason I ask is that often one hears problems and they can be the result of missing notebook drivers, etc.

Did you reinstall the OS (new HD's etc.)?

Any CPU/GPU overclocking?

Remove any part of the OS (yes some users do this...)?

If you did need to reinstall or update drivers it turns out the order in which this is done plays a role.
See: http://support.dell.com/support/top...&component=-1&lang=-1&doclang=en&toggle=false