Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/426326
www.postmagazine.com 46 POST NOVEMBER 2014 f you were around in the 1990s, you probably remember the commercials that burned the saying, "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" into your mind. If you don't remember that, you most likely don't remember other things that make me feel old, like Beavis and Butthead. Other than fixing a couple of Dell computers while working as a com- puter repairmen at a local Best Buy, once I graduated from high school and moved on to college, I kind of forgot about Dell. Lately I've been bombarded with new mobile and desktop workstations to re- view and share my opinion on, including HP and even Lenovo's latest. One name that hasn't been talked about too much is Dell, and I'm not exactly sure why? I thought to myself: "I'd love to see some healthy competition in the post produc- tion workstation arena, so why not see what Dell is up to these days?" Before I go into the powerhouse tech- nical specs of the Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation, I need to quickly touch on the difference between a true "workstation" and a "high-end" computer. Workstation vendors' work directly with various software and hardware manu- facturers to create finely-tuned worksta- tions that work as fast as possible within certain productivity environments. The Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation I am reviewing here had been rigorously tested with the Adobe Creative Suite, Avid Media Composer and many others before it reached my hands to match the extremely-high ex- pectations of my demanding multimedia software needs. Many companies refer to this type of brand connection as "ISV certification" or Independent Software Vendor certification. Things like includ- ing Nvidia's Quadro K-series graphics card are examples of this ISV connection between Adobe, Dell and Nvidia. If you are a strong DIY PC builder, you may be able to build a "workstation" just as strong, but don't underestimate the value of a great warranty. Dell offers a standard one-year, next business day, on-site service after remote diagnosis warranty. You can even purchase up to five years of warranty coverage. The Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation comes with a blazing 2.2GHz (3.2GHz in Turbo mode) Intel i7 – 4702HQ mobile processor. The i7 is packed with four cores (Quad core) and eight threads. The more cores and threads you have, the more you can render simultaneously without slow- ing down. It can be configured with up to 16GBs of 1600MHz DDR3L (the "L" stands for lower voltage than standard DDR3 memory, which is another feature usually found in workstations, and offers lower overall power consumption). By far, my favorite hardware feature is the Nvidia Quadro K1100M with 2GBs of GDDR5 dedicated graphics memory. You usually won't see internal components like a Quadro in a consumer system; you would see something like the Nvidia GTX 760. Nvidia Quadros typically have lower power consumption while maintaining as many CUDA parallel processing cores and the largest memory bandwidth possible (this also causes the cost to rise substantially). There are two display options: the QHD+ 3,200x1,800 and the FHD 1,920x1,080. Both are 15.6-inches large, feature 10-finger touch, and are complete with the ultra durable Corning Gorilla NBT Glass display. Personally, the 10-fin- ger touch screen could have been left out. I did like being able to flick through Windows menus or occasionally pinch and zoom around Photoshop, but for the most part, it didn't matter too much and wouldn't have affected my decision to buy. When using the 3,200x1,800 resolution display, I had to break out my Wacom Intuos tablet for some fine detail "mousing" around because of the wealth of real estate. Luckily Adobe has made the UI text larger for high-reso- lution screens in its latest update, but if you have a pre-October 2014 version of Adobe CC, you will have a very hard time reading the UI text. Overall, the screen is beautiful when editing higher than 1080p video. I could really see where my 4K edits were going, even though I couldn't actually watch my 4K in its full glory. In terms of storage, there are a few options: standard SATA 6Gb/s, 2.5- inch hard drives in either 500GB or 1TB flavors at 5,400rpm speeds; a 500GB hybrid SSD with 8GBs of solid state storage; 256GB or 512GB SSD; or 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB mSATA. If you are do- DELL PRECISION M3800 MOBILE WORKSTATION BY BRADY BETZEL EDITOR BUNIM/MURRAY PRODUCTIONS VAN NUYS, CA BRADYBETZEL@GMAIL.COM THIS MOBILE WORKSTATION IS DESIGNED FOR CONTENT CREATION VITAL STATS MANUFACTURER: Dell PRODUCT: M3800 PRICE: $1,799 WEBSITE: www.dell.com • Extremely lightweight and portable • Blazingly fast mSATA storage options • High res 15.6-inch QHD+ touch-screen option I REVIEW