Live from AU 2009: Dell Precision M6500

Written by Greg Corke

Published Tue 1 Dec 2009

Dell chose Autodesk University in Las Vegas to launch its brand new Core i7-based mobile workstation, the Precision M6500. Like its predecessor, the Precision M6400, the M6500 is a beast of a laptop and with a 17-inch screen, up to 8GB RAM, support for RAID hard drives and a choice of high-end graphics cards it’s more of a desktop you can move around than an outright portable.

The big news for the M6500 is the inclusion of Intel’s Core i7 mobile CPU. Replacing the Core 2 Duo, the Quad Core chip has been scaled down for the mobile platform and Dell’s Precision M6500 is the first mobile workstation from a Tier One manufacturer to feature the chip, and quite a chip it is.

It features all the same architectural benefits of its desktop counterpart, such as an integrated memory controller (which is great for memory intensive tasks such as CAE), HyperThreading for eight virtual cores (ideal for accelerated rendering in 3ds Max) and Intel’s Turbo Boost technology which boosts the clock speed of the CPU in single threaded CAD applications such as Inventor. On the mobile platform it also plays a major role in keeping the power consumption and heat production down, which was is a major challenge in all mobile workstations.

Dell offers a choice of three chips in its Precision M6500 and while all three have relatively slow clock speeds, Turbo Boost can increase single threaded performance by as much as 1.3GHz. This is a much bigger boost that is available with Intel’s desktop Core i7 processors. For example, a 1.60GHz Corei7 720QM has a maximum turbo frequency of 2.80GHz, a 1.80GHz Corei7 820QM goes up to 3.06GHz and a 2.0GHz Corei7 920XM goes up to 3.20GHz.

While this is great news for single threaded CAD applications, which should run at similar speeds as they would on Dell’s desktop Precision workstations, it does mean that the Precision M6500 won’t be able to compete under multi-threaded applications, such as 3ds Max.

Of course the Precision M6500 offers much more than just a new CPU, and while 
It has many similarities to the M6400, including the same chassis, there are many more improvements.

The first is the increased 3D performance and the M6500 has a choice of three 1GB graphics cards – AMD’s ATI Fire Pro M7740, and Nvidia’s Quadro FX 2800M and Quadro FX3800M. All three are powerful cards, at peak using more than the 45W assigned to the CPU, and Dell has used some clever thermal engineering to accommodate the FX3800M in particular.

In terms of memory, Dell remains the only mobile workstation to offer 8GB in 2GB DIMMs. This makes much more economical than competiting machines which require 2 x 4GB DIMMs and means it can support up to 16GB in total. The M6500 also supports faster 1,600MHz DDR3 memory, which will be critical to certain memory intensive applications.

There are plenty of options for storage, ranging from solid state drives up to 256GB and 7,200RPM free fall sensor mechanical drives up to 500GB. There are two hard drive bays, but there is also an option of a 64GB SSD mini card. According to Dell, this makes it possible to have a RAID 5 configuration, with data spanning over three drives for performance and redundancy, but this is likely to be a very niche solution.

A more typical three-drive setup would be to run OS and applications off the mini drive and data off two standard hard drives, either mirrored or striped for performance. The machine also includes an e-SATA interface for external storage.

From what we have seen the Precision M6500 looks to be another excellent mobile workstation from Dell. The introduction of the Core i7 will bring a huge boost to CAD on the mobile platform, just as it did on the desktop. We’ve yet to put the Precision M6500 through its paces, but with units set to ship just in time for Christmas we hope to bring you a full review early next year.