Dell Precision M6600 vs. HP EliteBook 8760w: Workstation Battle Discussion

[Charles P. Jefferies]

Mobile workstations are specialized brutes designed for professionals on and off the field including photographers, videographers, as well as 3D and CAD illustrators. Why choose one of these powerful notebooks over the other? Check out our roundup.

Read the full content of this Article: Dell Precision M6600 vs. HP EliteBook 8760w: Workstation Battle

Related Articles:

• Dell Precision M4600 Review: Mobile Workstation Muscle
• HP EliteBook 8740w Review

[Mitlov]

How's audio quality between the two? Fan volume? Battery life? Those are three other categories of info I'd like to see in a comparison.

I appreciate the comments about the touchpad and the keyboard though. I'm seriously considering getting one of these within the year, and that's a big deal to me (and I can't exactly go and look at either in person).

[knight427]

The nearly $1,000 price difference is an immediate concern; why so much? HP is notorious for overpricing its configured-to-order (CTO) business notebooks; it’s almost like they want to force customers to purchase preconfigured models. Buyers can usually negotiate a discount over the phone (up to 25% or so), so taking that into account makes the prices about even.

During the 8x40w generation, most everyone got 28% off with varying amounts of difficulty. Normally we would pass along rep names who gave us the 28% discount, so most anyone who was watching the Owner's Thread could get it. I haven't paid much attention to the 8x60w generation discounts though. But clearly a little teamwork can save everyone money. And at 28%discount, the HP is slightly cheaper.

The thing that really sucks about the 8760w (and the upcoming 8770w) is that HP abandoned the high end Firepro card, so non-CUDA users can only configure their 17" workstation with AMD's 15" class Firepro GPU or be forced to pay the Green Tax. Clearly anyone looking for the most bang-for-the-buck workstation should go with Dell M6600 for now, and M6700 in the very near future.

Independent Software Vendor (ISV) certification is a key reason for professionals to consider a mobile workstation over a cheaper business or consumer class notebook. Historically these certifications have been isolated to desktop computers; these two workstations in our article are some of the very few notebooks that have it (and you pay a premium for the privilege, naturally).

When I bought my 8740w (with Firepro GPU) I compared it to the most similar Sager model I could find, spec for spec (with the gaming equivalent of the Firepro card) the 8740w came out cheaper and its 3yr warranty was on-site rather than mail in. YMMV on value.

Technically this is even but the edge goes to Dell for offering the IPS technology at a few hundred dollars less.

$550 with 28% discount = $396...HP wins this one

The price difference even taking into account the HP’s possible discounts is too much to overlook; the overall winner is the Dell M6600

IMHO:
Configurations with AMD graphics go to Dell.
Configurations with Nvidia GPUs and IPS screens probably go to HP, though you might be able to play pricing games with Dell too.

Thanks for the review, especially going through all the trouble of getting their specs matched. But where are the benchmarks? Who had a better cooling solution? Which was quieter? Will they blend?

[Jaru]

i like dell precision design

[Luscious]

I think it's time 17.3" workstations went beyond the 1920x1080 resolution. As far back as 2004, I could get a 1920x1200 display on a high-end notebook. There's no reason why display manufacturers today cannot deliver over 2k horizontal pixels, regardless of the 16:9 or 16:10 (or even 4:3) argument.

[knight427]

I think it's time 17.3" workstations went beyond the 1920x1080 resolution. As far back as 2004, I could get a 1920x1200 display on a high-end notebook. There's no reason why display manufacturers today cannot deliver over 2k horizontal pixels, regardless of the 16:9 or 16:10 (or even 4:3) argument.

I agree. But I'm willing to bet Apple leads the way on this. HP and Dell probably want to keep their IPS panels as-they-are for as long as possible. As as long as the $400 IPS upgrade is 1080p, they will not offer a higher resolution TN panel. I hope I'm wrong though.

[Charles P. Jefferies]

I think it's time 17.3" workstations went beyond the 1920x1080 resolution. As far back as 2004, I could get a 1920x1200 display on a high-end notebook. There's no reason why display manufacturers today cannot deliver over 2k horizontal pixels, regardless of the 16:9 or 16:10 (or even 4:3) argument.

Agreed and it's one of the reasons I moved my laptop purchase up a few months. I got the previous-gen 8740w at a nice price and it has the 1920x1200 res instead of the gimped (IMO) 1080p res. The difference can be felt especially when you're working with documents that have a lot of vertical scrolling - Excel, Word, web surfing, etc.

During the 8x40w generation, most everyone got 28% off with varying amounts of difficulty. Normally we would pass along rep names who gave us the 28% discount, so most anyone who was watching the Owner's Thread could get it. I haven't paid much attention to the 8x60w generation discounts though. But clearly a little teamwork can save everyone money. And at 28%discount, the HP is slightly cheaper.

The thing that really sucks about the 8760w (and the upcoming 8770w) is that HP abandoned the high end Firepro card, so non-CUDA users can only configure their 17" workstation with AMD's 15" class Firepro GPU or be forced to pay the Green Tax. Clearly anyone looking for the most bang-for-the-buck workstation should go with Dell M6600 for now, and M6700 in the very near future.



When I bought my 8740w (with Firepro GPU) I compared it to the most similar Sager model I could find, spec for spec (with the gaming equivalent of the Firepro card) the 8740w came out cheaper and its 3yr warranty was on-site rather than mail in. YMMV on value.


$550 with 28% discount = $396...HP wins this one


IMHO:
Configurations with AMD graphics go to Dell.
Configurations with Nvidia GPUs and IPS screens probably go to HP, though you might be able to play pricing games with Dell too.

Thanks for the review, especially going through all the trouble of getting their specs matched. But where are the benchmarks? Who had a better cooling solution? Which was quieter? Will they blend?

Understood. For comparisons' sake it's hard for me to go off that since it's not an advertised price. I alluded to getting a better price by calling/emailing in the article, which is the best I can do.

How's audio quality between the two? Fan volume? Battery life? Those are three other categories of info I'd like to see in a comparison.

I appreciate the comments about the touchpad and the keyboard though. I'm seriously considering getting one of these within the year, and that's a big deal to me (and I can't exactly go and look at either in person).

It's a shame about the M6600 because the keyboards on the new Dell Latitudes are sooo nice. I don't understand why they botched it. The keyboard/touchpad are more than usable but ... ah, they should be better. No compromises at this price point please.

I would liked to have address the other items you posted about; only so much room in the article.
Speakers - the M6600 is better, the 8760w's are horrible just like they are in my 8740w.
Battery life REALLY depends on the config. The batteries are almost identical in power output so I'd expect the same assuming identical (or near identical) configurations.

[invisible]

It must just be the consumer models that I detest so much, because those workstations don't look half bad to me.

[knight427]

Understood. For comparisons' sake it's hard for me to go off that since it's not an advertised price. I alluded to getting a better price by calling/emailing in the article, which is the best I can do.

That's fair. I just wanted to make sure other readers knew that pricing is much closer than it appears, and in fact some might even do better on price with HP.

But why didn't you do any benchmarking? I would expect them to perform very close to one another given the identical configurations, but I'd still be interested in seeing the results. And regardless of benchmarks, there should be some differences in cooling (doesn't the M6600 have dual fans, while the 8760w has only 1?)

[cypherinfo]

Hello, the two topics was not dealt are:

• the authentication features
• support system

It is worth not to forget that elitebook offers many biometric authentications methods: the fingerprint one and the face recognition; last but not least the smart card authentication!

I owned a second hand elitebook 8540w which was not stable: it shut down randomly and overheating! After some month of feedback and technical chat I got a new elitebook 8560w and no problem now.

The US chat support, I'm from Italy, was able to help me even if overseas!
I do not know if Dell offers something similar!
I remember was comparing a Dell and HP notebook workstations before buying my actual elitebook; the Dell nearer to 8540w had graphc card with only 0,5 GB that was smaller than the one of the elitebook: 1 GB!

Thank you.

The comparison is not applicable here. Any pre configured model is always cheaper than any assemled/built-to-customer one!!

Thank you.