14 DAY TRIAL // We have just talked about the M4700 mobile workstation, the one with a 15.6-inch display, and now we're following through on our word that we'd cover the M6700 as well.
Verily, there are many things in common between these two, but the size automatically places the M6700 in a different league.
The 17.3-inch LCD comes in 1,600 x 900 or 1,920 x 1,080 pixel resolutions, but here is where things go a bit further than on the M4700.
While the PremierColor IPS option is still present, there is a fourth one too: a 3D Vision Pro Full HD screen.
That said, the graphics cards available to choose from go higher in image remembering capabilities too. In addition to AMD's 2 GB GDDR5 FirePro M6000 Mobility, there are three NVIDIA Quadro adapters to consider: K3000M (2GB GDDR5), K4000M (4GB GDDR5) and K5000M (again, 4GB GDDR5).
Needless to say, the NVIDIA Optimus is present and accounted for (except on the AMD model of course), so that the PC may easily swap between the discrete and integrated GPU when needed.
Speaking of which, the IGP is the Intel HD 4000, part of whatever Core i5 or Core i7 CPU lies at the heart of the machine (QM77 chipset). The strongest is Core i7-3920XM (quad-core, 2.9-3.8 GHz, 22nm, 55W TDP, 8MB L3 cache memory).
The rest of the specs are as high quality as they are easy to guess, although the max number of storage devices is unusually high (four).
Whatever HDDs (7,200 RPM) or SSDs (128 to 512 GB) are chosen, they will make for a solid and fast storage capacity, especially when RAID 0/1/5 modes come into play.
As for everything else, Dell offers some decent default components and a whole bunch of better alternatives (DVD/Blu-ray can be replaced by an HDD/SSD Caddy, for instance).
Finally, the Dell precision M6700 will have a starting price of $2199 and should start selling soon. Processing, display, storage, I/O and connectivity preferences, not to mention the battery, will dictate how much higher the figure gets.