Quadros coming to Dell Alienware laptops? (3000m spotted)

Wholesale del M15x Quadro 3000M 2G DDR5 MXM3 VGA card
Of course, that could also be a 485m... Or a 4000m... or a 5000m like it says on the pictures.

Anyone heard anything about this? Could it be for the r2, m17x r3, or m18x and not the m15x? Or even an HP?

 

The entity selling these just labeled it as m15x. Trust me, you're not going to see a quadro in the configuration options on the AW site.

 

Well... Where do you think these cards are coming from then?

They haven't been out for that long. Maybe I should post in the HP section though, the HPs are the only business notebooks with MXM...

 

Probably not in the AW setup, but in the Dell Precision workstations, e.g. the 6600M, here's an interesting article, according to this it should be available in June, with a 5010m, and the author has been really precise with his information about Dell systems so far.

Might work in an AW system as well, but Quadro cards are usually really expensive... and I don't really know much about them, what's the big advantage of these cards?

 

Quadro graphics cards are designed for content creation on workstations, such as graphics design, rendering & CAD (computer assisted drafting), where quality & accuracy of the picture & colors at even insanely high resolutions are the highest priority.

GeForce graphics cards are designed for gaming systems, where quantity & frame rates at common resolutions take precedence.


For Dell to put Quadro cards into an Alienware system would be comparable to putting crème brûlée on a hamburger. Both items have a specific purpose that they are perfect for, but they do not go together.

 

NO they are not for Dells unless its Alienwares. Dell Precision do NOT use MXM.

Well there isn't any advantage, except that they may come down in price and this guy seems to be testing them in an m15x.

If the 4000m works, it would be the best nvidia card, am I right?

Got the specs from them... I mean I'm sure the clocks were already leaked or whatever, but just because its not on notebookcheck:

ROPS : 32, SHADERS: 240Unified , Pixel f: 14.4Gpixel/s ,memory: DDR5,bus width: 256bit , memory size : 2048MB, bandwidth : 76.8GB/S
GPU clock : 450MHZ ,Memory : 600MHZ , Shader : 900MHZ

Now we know why its only on par with the 460m

Yes, we know, or at least I do already. And I have to disagree with your analogy. There is already tons of redundancy going on. Say the 400 series is the last supported by some laptops, if it takes the 5010m to max some of them out then lots of people will be looking for them.

If you haven't noticed the 3800m has gotten as cheap as 200$, you can't find a 285m that cheap, you couldn't even find a 260m that cheap back when I first found a few of them.

 

I think the Area-51 m15x (pre-Dell) offered Quatro gpus. Still i dont think Dell would use them in the new AWs.

 

I think the accepted differentiation between the CAD vs gaming cards is getting blurred depending on the CAD programs used. CAD programs are being developed with direct 3d and not open GL. Autodesk's inventor is an example. Here is my summarization of the links below - Open GL is losing ground to direct3d and the industry is shifting towards direct3d as it is more dev friendly... Open GL based CAD software (catia, solidworks etc) require compatible hardware (expensive workstation cards) to produce accurate results, whearas the direct 3d model (Inventor) allows the program's accuracy to be scalable depending on the users budget... so a high end gaming card would offer great performance (depends on 'tessellation' ability) and a medium card would offer compromised accuracy.

These are links i found on the mcad forums - they give really good insight to anybody with the patience to read the articles!
mCADForums.com • 2011 DirectX problems with "gaming cards"
http://www.mcadforums.com/forums/download/file.php?id=2977
OpenGL 3 & DirectX 11: The War Is Over : Introduction

 

I don't know much about the Dell Precision Series... but it's hard to believe that they put a 5010m on the mobo... Here some specs of the 5010m (scroll down, "ultra high-end"), same core count as the 485m... and 4GB (!) GDDR5 RAM, seems to be powerful.

Would be nice to see in an AW system, though I don't really think it's gonna happen, wouldn't make much sense imo.


What's the biggest difference hardware-wise between the Quadro-Cards and the GTX cards? I still don't really get it.
GTX cards are totally capable of running CAD...


Edit: @Niffcreature: Nvidia lists the 4000m as a 336 CUDA cores card, see the link I've posted above, register card "High End".

 

I have seen in some cases where the only difference in bewteen the Quadros and the Geforce was the BIOS (same hardware)

they typically are more expensive cards, and in some cases really expensive cards so I doubt we would see them in a AW laptop.

 

Once you add "Professional" to the title of the card, the price increases greatly. In terms of ATI, the FirePro M8900 is the exact same card as the 6970m with difference firmware. You can actually flash them between the FirePro and gamer card relatively easily. Quite simply, the cost of the "Professional" cards are astronomical. Take the 6970m, it costs about $450. And the 485m, it costs $750. The 3800 Quadro is about $1100. I probably shouldn't list of the 5010m Quadro as you would probably be terrified of its monstrous price. Certainly there is no reason for such an increased price other than specific drivers and firmware but it won't change any time soon.

 

IRRC there are "other" benefits like nvidia's quadro help line/etc...

 

Benefits don't account for even a fraction of the price difference - they have to pay for some licensing stuff and claim to offer more stable drivers (basically tested a lot for reliability - not necessarily best performance). I'm pretty sure the extra cost is only cos businesses can afford to pay more than gamers, it must be part of the nvidia/ati business model to earn more revenue from the same hardware by charging a premium to the people who can afford it.

 

FWIW, the precisions that just came out use MXM 3. I would guess type A in the M4600 and B in the M6600 going by the gpus. The 5010M Quadro will be an option for the latter soon, if you want your price-be-damned "gaming card"

The hardware may be the same or similar, so count yourself lucky if you can simply flash a card to change its identity. What you are really paying for in the professional cards is the drivers that specifically support programs that care about exact accuracy.

Video games use a lot of tricks to boost fps in ways that our eyes can't see or brain doesn't care about. You can still frag the other guy even if his body isn't technically rendered 100% correct. (most games just use simple bounding boxes but you get my drift)

When you're prototyping a new part for a multi-million dollar design in CAD, you can't afford to be wrong about the fit.

 

Well I didn't think they did and I was right, but apparently they DO use MXM, including the m6500.
m6500 can take the 5010m.
the m4500 doesn't use MXM, hard to say about the m4600 unless they are now being manufactured by the same company as the m14x.

I expected them to have a 5010m on a separate proprietary board like the 3800m.

The hardware difference WAS nothing, except slight differences in chip binning. Quadros have higher numbers like 975 and 985.

Now the hardware difference is the RAM like you said, the number of shaders, ECC memory, floating point operations.
Some software DOES NOT support Geforce and ONLY supports quadros.

Yup. The 285m and 3800m are almost identical.
Not anymore. 400 series and gt200 based are all different.

Nope, no it isn't. Its about 200-400$. Which is why this is important.
Try cost of 3700m vs 9800m GT and fx 770m vs 9600m gt as well.

Enough. Off topic and not interesting/relevant information to why I posted this.

Thanks so much for bringing that to my attention, about new precision series.

Its not particularly lucky if you know what you are doing. You're right, there is no concrete way to tell, but once you have the experience you know E. G. Lenovo 3700m are based on the p612 board which works well with the 9800m GTX vBIOS, and the HP 3700m use the standard board and can sometimes be flashed to gtx 280m, as well as 9800m GT and gtx 260m.
And the less high end cards... they were identical to geforces.

Its pretty simple when everything is g92 or g96 based. Now its all changed. I don't think flashing from quadro to geforce or vice versa is possible at all anymore. If it wasn't impossible because of the hardware, Nvidia probably made a change to make sure it was impossible...

 

alienware did had a Quadro offering in the past i doubt they would bring it back consistently but seeing such cards pop once in a while in an alienware would not surprise me

but with the recent history of dell/alienware i would expect more to see a fire pro then a Quadro in an alienware

on nvidia's side the ovr price of thier buisnes linup is more evident then on ati's side also they now physicaly lock thier card so you can't flash them to properly deliver 100% of what a real Quadro would

and i think that some how ati is on purpose not locking thier gamer cards



that noted they have a del m15x card ....... and not a dell m15x card if the guy wanned to make it seem legit at least try to get it right