Dell announces M4800, M6800 Precision laptops built for business pros

It's been just over a year since Dell updated its Precision workstations, but the time has come for some fresh hardware. This year's laptops, the M4800 and M6800, one up their predecessors in all the right places. That means 4th gen Haswell Core i5 and i7 silicon (with or without vPro), and the latest AMD FirePro or NVIDIA Quadro graphics, depending upon your preference. Additionally, the M4800 comes with a 400-nit, 15.6-inch 3,200 x 1,800 IGZO display, the same pixel-packed screen last seen on its M3800 sibling. The M6800, meanwhile, gets just a 1920 x 1080 LCD, but it comes with Wacom 10-finger multitouch capability to make up for its lack of pixels.

Both laptops can be had with up to 32GB of memory, and the 17-inch model comes with four bays that can be stuffed with up to 3.5TB of spinning or solid state storage (M4800 buyers get a mere three bays for a max of 2.5TB). As with the previous models, both laptops get up to a nine-cell 97Wh battery and users can double the juice by adding on a same-sized external slice power pack. Oh, and IT pros can pick which OS they'd like: Windows 7 or 8, and either Red Hat or Ubuntu Linux. You can dig into all the nitty-gritty customization options in the PR below, but we'll tell you here what you really want to know: the M4800 starts at $1,249, while the M6800 can be yours for $1,599.

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Dell Delivers Most Powerful Workstations Enabling Professionals to Design Faster Than Ever

 World's most powerful mobile workstations, Dell Precision M4800 and M6800, offer 15.6-inch QHD+ panel with highest resolution, optional 10-finger touch on 17.3-inch display and first WiGig wireless docking

 Dell Precision T3610, T5610, and T7610 tower workstations provide cutting-edge performance with new workstation-class storage solutions, graphics and processors

 Engineering, oil and gas, film and many other industries rely on powerful Dell workstations to develop and "render complex 3D designs in minutes instead of hours"

ROUND ROCK, Texas, Sept. 9, 2013 - Dell today announced it has expanded its workstation portfolio with the most powerful mobile and tower workstations, the Dell Precision M4800, M6800, T3610, T5610 and T7610, designed to seamlessly run the leading content creation, engineering, scientific and other professional software applications. Updated with the latest high-performance, workstation-class processors, graphics, storage, display and other technologies, the new systems demonstrate Dell's continued commitment to delivering unparalleled performance and reliability that creative, engineering and scientific professionals require to quickly develop and realize innovative ideas.

Ghost Town Media, a post-production company, relies on high-performance technology and collaboration to stay on the bleeding-edge of design to create the most robust and unique imagery in the industry – from music videos to visual effects for feature films. "Our latest project is CG-heavy so we needed strong processing power and speed," explained Brandon Parvini, principal and creative director, Ghost Town Media. "We turned to the latest Dell Precision tower and mobile workstations with NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics as we found they provide massive acceleration that facilitate lightning-fast rendering, allowing complex 3D scenes to be rendered in minutes instead of hours."

The most powerful mobile workstations in the market

Committed to improving the performance and personal experience and interaction with its new Dell Precision M4800 and M6800 mobile workstations, Dell is the first to bring a 15.6-inch Quad HD+ IGZO panel to the workstation market, with higher resolution than the Apple MacBook Pro Retina display, and the only to offer optional 10-finger Wacom multi-touch on a 17.3-inch display for intuitive control and interaction with creative and design applications. Dell is also the first to offer WiGig wireless docking and has improved audio performance with WAVES MaxxAudio Pro integration.

The new Dell Precision mobile workstations also deliver the highest performance with up to 16GB¹ of 1866MHz memory, fourth-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processor options up to Core i7 Extreme Edition, and AMD FirePro and NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics, with up to 8GB graphics memory¹ on the M6800 configured with NVIDIA Quadro K5100M, for handling complex 3D work, including rendering and simulation.

Both systems also provide superb reliability with all-day battery life², including a secondary slice battery, new AMD Enduro and NVIDIA Optimus, and industry-leading endpoint security solutions that include comprehensive encryption, advanced authentication and leading-edge malware protection.

New tower workstations designed for demanding software applications

Offering an award-winning chassis design and cutting-edge technology, the new Dell Precision tower workstations include next generation workstation-class processors and professional graphics, Windows 8 factory installed, new Intel Cache Acceleration Software, PCIe SSDs and updates to Dell Precision Performance Optimizer. Designed for scientific analysis, professional engineering and complex 3D

modeling, the new tower portfolio, adding to the Dell Precision T1700 Small-Form Factor and Mini-Tower, includes the Dell Precision T3610 with advanced single Intel Xeon CPU performance, the Dell Precision T5610, a high-power dual-socket Intel Xeon processor workstation in a small footprint, and the Dell Precision T7610, the world's most powerful tower workstation. The T7610 will offer up to 512GB¹ system memory and power up to three high-end graphics cards, including up to two NVIDIA Quadro K6000s cards starting in October.

Thierry Rouf, Director, FashionLab, said, "We work on the cutting-edge of fashion design, providing designers with sophisticated tools they need to employ the latest 3D technology in their high-end designs, so it's important that we always collaborate with the best. That's why we chose to work closely with Dell for a high-profile event in Paris. The workshop was supported without interruption by the latest high-end Dell Precision tower workstations."

Dell understands its workstation customers have specific needs for their workflows so is updating and offering new tools that enable maximum performance and reliability so they can remain focused on being creative.

 Dell Precision Performance Optimizer – DPPO, the world's first automated workstation performance tool that configures settings based on the software application, will be updated with new profiles for Siemens NX 8.5 and Dassault Systemes CATIA and French and German languages starting September 17 via online and factory install on new workstations in October.

 Intel® Xeon Phi™ co-processor 3120A PCIe card - The Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor is a new manycore x86-based computational architecture built for high efficiency and exceptional performance on highly parallel workloads. Offered as a coprocessor on a PCIe card, it works synergistically with Intel® Xeon® Processors to deliver accelerated performance on Dell Precision T7610 tower and R7610 rack workstations.

 PCIe Solid State Drives (SSDs) - Dell is the first to bring Micron PCIe SSD technology to the workstation market on its tower and rack workstations starting in October. The PCIe SSD is one of the highest performance storage options that merge SSD technology directly with the fast PCIe system communication bus.

 Intel Cache Acceleration Software – Workstation (CAS-W) - Dell has deeply collaborated with Intel to bring to market and tune the first workstation enterprise-grade storage acceleration software application, Intel CAS-W, which improves workstation application performance. It is available exclusively on Dell Precision rack and tower workstations starting in November.
"Dell Precision workstations with the innovative Intel Cache Acceleration Software-Workstation give a notable performance boost to Autodesk applications," says Maurice Patel, head of Media & Entertainment Industry Marketing, Autodesk. "We have seen a many-fold increase in some of our internal tests. As the demand for larger data sets increase with 4K, stereoscopic projection and next generation consoles, the performance increase will be a great benefit for our 3D animation customers."

As part of Dell's Technology Partner Program, Dell Precision works with the top Independent Software Vendors (ISV) to test and certify the leading software applications including Adobe Creative Suite, Autodesk Design & Creation Suites, Dassault Systemes CATIA and SolidWorks and PTC Creo, among many others, for maximum uptime and productivity. Additionally, many ISV partners also leverage Dell Precision workstations to develop and showcase their software capabilities. For example, PTC uses Dell Precision workstations to power its customer theater with a high-end, three-channel rear-projection active stereo 3D system with tracking that allows visitors to have a hands-on experience using PTC software in an immersive virtual reality environment.

Pricing & Availability:

The new Dell Precision tower and mobile workstations will be available worldwide on September 12 with US prices³ starting at $1,099 for the T3610, $2,729 for the T5610, $3,059 for the T7610, $1,249 for the M4800 and $1,599 for the M6800. For more information, visit www.Dell.com/Precision and access the Dell Precision Workstation Advisor, www.dell.com/wsadvisor for recommended configurations for specific applications and workflows.