should I hold out for the M6600?

SO... Im currently running an older M90, the poor thing is maxed out and im alwasy waiting for it to load :\

i have the cash and im ready to jump on a 6500 but I read last month that the M6600 is due to launch soon....

not many details but for sure sandybridge and new GPUs

hold out or hit buy?

my m90 is still doing the job but at times i can feel the lack of ram, its starting to bug me.

also how much better are the sandy bridge chips? ive seen them on a few of the consumer models already....

 

I am also waiting for this to appear. Hopefully soon there will be a customization page up. I want to know how much it's going to cost me. Sandy Bridge chips will be much better than current ones if you do encoding, editing, number crunching or rendering.

 

This might be worth the wait, in this particular case. My guess is that the new models will be available within the next few weeks, no later than February.

 

I would wait for the new generation of notebooks. I doubt they will drop the M6500 a huge amount, but at least you'll be able to get newer technology for ~same price and you get better battery life, faster processing power.

 

And quite possibly a 16:9 screen.

 

Well you can't have everything in life. I thought the M6500 was still 16:10? Crap you maybe right, I see many articles stating the M6600 might be 17.3" which would mean 16:9. Darn you Dell, resist the 16:9!!!

 

There's a reason I jumped on my 8740w even as late in life as it is. Well, apart from the fact that it's replacement probably won't arrive for another quarter to half year, but it was mainly the worry that they wouldn't continue to buck the trend and offer 16:10. The M6500 is still 16:10 as well, but unlike the 8740w, which has a specialized screen that they might carry over to the next iteration, there's less reason for the M6600 to stay 16:10, especially since the M17x R3 apparently has a 16:9 LED screen that they could put into the M6600 (it's only WLED in the M17x R3 so far, but a "simple" backlight change could happen).

 

I too would have to wait for the new M6600 mostly if you are going with a quad core option, from my understanding the dual cores didn't really receive much just lower power consumption and cost if I am not mistaken. The M6500 likely won't drop much in price because of the M6600.

The M6500 is indeed 16:10@ 17" (which still has ever so slightly more surface area then the 17.3" 16:9, I think it's like a 2 inches squared difference so it's moot point.
Personally 16:9 or 16:10 do not make a difference for me, which ever is the best deal or has the highest performance will do depending on my needs.

The M6600 is definitely 16:9 since no manufacturers are producing 17.3" 16:10 LCD's at all.

The Nvidia GPU's should be based on the latest 40nm Nvidia Quadro Mobile GPU's, similar to the Quadro 5000m (being the flagship card based on the GTX 480m fermi card) that came out in options for the HP/Dell/Lenovo flagship mobile workstations not too terribly long ago. The new 3000m-4000m will be the slower versions of the 5000m. Reason why I don't think it's based on the GTX 580 (desktop) is because time frame does not match. All quadro/firepro are released considerably later on, compared to the Radeon or Geforce versions.

The new 40nm Firepro series (I am pretty sure it will be 40nm) should be based on the HD 6970m 6950, 6870 etc etc series.

 

Well I meant I hope the articles are wrong about the M6600 going to 17.3".

I think going 16:9 is bad at both extremes. 1920x1080 you lose 120 pixels of vertical real estate which makes a big difference.

That would make Dell's only non 16:9 screens for business the 14.1" which the E6420 might go 16:9. Le sigh I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle..

 

yeah i dont really card about 16:9 or 16:10
not do i care about the vid cards proformance in cad ETC...

I just need a beast of a machine with a dock and a GFX card thats powerfull enough to play games when needed

id also like an SSD + a regular low cost per GB drive without sacrificing the optical drive... so no HP and the dock on the IBM sucks

I also dig the 4 dimm slots.. it'll give me some desktop amounts of ram... hmmmm ram *drools*

I think thats what I miss most about my desktop... 16GB ram, stupid M90 is maxed at 3 .25 >_>