Dell Precision 5490 workstation review: Now with Intel Meteor Lake-H vPro

[Redaktion]

One of Dell's smallest Precision laptops gets the Intel AI treatment. Otherwise, raw performance hasn't improved by significant or even moderate margins over last year's model.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Precision-5490-workstation-review-Now-with-Intel-Meteor-Lake-H-vPro.829082.0.html

[NikoB]

What I see! Finally, Dell marketers realized that USB-C power supplies needed to be installed on both sides, and they finally allowed the engineers to do this. How many models can you think of with the same layout?

But I have a question - where did the engineers get 8 free pcie-e 4.0 lines (16 pci-e 3.0), because...the author assures that there are 4xTB4? Will they all work at the same time?

And is it true that each of them, according to the TB4 standard, has 2 independent DP1.4b ports? Does that mean 8 video outputs? Are there exactly so many of them on igpu+dgpu, taking into account that one more is needed for the screen panel? Just questions, but the author again did not disclose them.

The memory is not configured very well in terms of read speed - a drop of 10GB/s relative to the write and copy speed. But in general, everything is not bad, except for the overall latency (i.e. random access speed) - it is depressing. And it gets worse and worse every year.

Taking into account a very weak processor by 2024 standards and a very weak video card, almost at the level of 4060, the price of $3800 looks clearly too high, especially against the backdrop of only 64GB of RAM (however, the processor no longer supports lpddr mode) and a slow ssd even without dram buffers are not at all corporate level, which kioxia with plp (power protection) has. With 64GB of RAM and such a price and such mediocre performance, the buyer has the right to expect an enterprise-level 4TB SSD with PLP on board.

I would say that the price will be reasonable around $2000-2300 no more. Probably, it is at this price that one should expect it at sales, because for such a price the buyer has the right to expect processor performance 1.7-2 times higher, taking into account that such models (with such a price) are bought for a period of use of at least 6-7 years, and The processor no longer shines...what will happen after 3-4 years?

[PHVM_BR]

Note that consuming a similar amount of Watts (50-55W) in every sustained task with high CPU demand (Prime95, Cinebench R15) the performance is practically the same, but there is a detail not mentioned by the author.

In these sustained applications the 5490 is suffering severe constant thermal throttling while the 5480 is not.

Constant and time-consuming thermal throttling causes clocks to drop and consequently performance drops considerably.

Dell has a huge problem with quality control when applying thermal paste, in addition to using compounds of low or, at most, average quality.

It's a lottery that varies a lot from unit to unit...

[ikek]

"AU Optronics is once again the supplier for the QHD+ panel for the third year in a row. While it was outstanding when it first launched for the Precision 5470, the panel is now starting to show its age in the face of newer OLED and higher refresh rate alternatives. The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s G4, for example, ships with an 1800p OLED option which is not available on the Precision 5490."

I don't see what's the problem with a good LCD screen, and one that has no PWM on top of it.

Is the reviewer a blind fanatic that chases after every marketing trap?

[LL]

Waste of money. 27 sec on Blender Optix GPU  Classroom is almost as high as a 3060 mine from before generation. Does it in 29 sec.

[NikoB]

I don't see what's the problem with a good LCD screen, and one that has no PWM on top of it.

The problem is that she is never good. Low contrast 1200:1, and not the guaranteed minimum from the factory of 1500:1+, but better "Black IPS" from LG with 1800:1+. Terrible response time. And the lack of 4k resolution is fully compatible at the pixel level with 4k/fhd video. Moreover, ppi does not reach at least 220-230. Better yet, 300+ for perfectly clear text.

Here (and in all laptops for work/multimedia) you need a 4K panel at 120Hz, with a real response time of no more than 1000/120 ~ 8ms on G2G/B2W. With real (guaranteed contrast) from 1500:1. With real viewing angles of 178/178.
With a color space of 95%+ AdobeRGB and the correct factory driver for converting all possible screen output APIs for Windows (from software that thinks it draws in sRGB space) into sRGB space.

With such a panel, any laptop will be used 100% until it falls apart from old age. What more could the owner of a working device want? Well, except for the stability of the backlight (increased resource of 25-30k hours) and the absence of glare thanks to multi-row backlighting. Of course with high frequency PWM from 1.25 kHz.

AMOLED will become interesting only when the minimum PWM frequency exceeds 1.25 kHz at any brightness level and it will be semi-matte, not glossy, with a resource of 15k hours (minimum up to 50% brightness loss of 100% white background) and of course a normal subpixel structure which guarantees compliance with the declared resolution in both black and white and color. And of course, with high color accuracy at low brightness levels and in dark shades with a real color depth of 30 bits. Then I have no questions about AMOLED and its safety for health, as well as the profitability of such a deal.

Today there are no good screens in laptops - there are sad compromises everywhere. But only IPS with high-frequency PWM is safe for vision and the nervous system.