Dell Pro Max 18 Plus Performance
On the performance side, the Dell Pro Max 18 Plus is a beast, and it needs to be because it is trading off portability. While in the past we might have just gone through engineering applications, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX is a high-end CPU, and the NVIDIA RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell is a big GPU.
Notable in this generation is that the CPU has eight performance cores and sixteen efficient cores, but all 24 of them lack Hyper-Threading.
We thought, why not just run through a ton of AI benchmarks on the CPU, iGPU, NVIDIA GPU, and NPU?
MLPerf Client v1.5 Results
MLPerf Client v1.5 has the capability to run across all of the compute elements in this system. That includes the NPU, which we often do not discuss, but here are the results:
MLPerf v1.5 has a ton of tests, and runs them ten times to get useful results, and so to give you some sense, there were so many results this took almost 24 hours to run.
Here are the first set of GPU results:
Here is the second set.
The NVIDIA RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell is a huge GPU and is in a different league in terms of performance.
Geekbench 5 and 6
On the more traditional compute side, we have Geekbench 5 CPU results. Since we typically do not test notebooks, here is a great look at this versus the Minisfourm MS-02 Ultra which is a desktop that uses the same Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX 24-core CPU:
That was a surprising result to say the least. Usually, if we have a larger desktop, it performs better because there is better cooling. We then went to check with Geekbench 6:
Geekbench 6 is challenged because it does not scale as well to larger CPU core counts, but these are the same CPUs and we see a similar, albeit not as stark pattern.
On the GPU side, this is a great illustration of how much the NVIDIA GPU helps.
A casual 1161% improvement is not bad at all.
Geekbench AI
We ran Geekbench AI on all of the numerous compute elements in this system. Here are the results:
Again, something that should be noted is that we have a CPU, iGPU, NVIDIA GPU, and a NPU that can all handle different types of compute.
Dell Pro Max 18 Plus RAID 0 Performance
We had two 1TB SSDs installed, so they were in RAID 0 using Intel RST.
That is great for performance, even if it is not the most secure way to store data. Just to give you some context around performance, here are two CrystalDiskMark runs:
That is really an awesome sequential read figure for a modern notebook.
Next, let us talk about power and battery.
It’s a nice machine, but it somehow feels a bit half-baked. That fingerprint reader seems to be the same thing they used on the E7270, back in 2016 and I can’t fathom what made them decide to use an internal SIM slot instead of a tray. It looks as if the whole thing was designed a decade ago, which may be the case because they simply don’t expect to sell large enough quantities of this to warrant designing a “proper” chassis for it, but if the MSRP is this close to the 5-digit territory, I would expect them to do better than this.
They were using that style fingerprint reader in the Precision M6600 (Sandy Bridge, 2011) mobile workstation era. Considering the Dell Pro Max Premium 16 (MA16250) sibling has a reader properly integrated into the power button on the keyboard, one has to wonder what they’re doing on this model.
So–they found room for a numpad but they couldn’t be bothered to include a proper tnav layout for the arrow keys? WTH Dell? Nor pgup/pgdn/home/end keys? It’s not like you don’t have room on that massive deck.
A $9k laptop, maybe not ruined, but with significantly impacted usability for the sake of a $17 part that can’t be changed out by the user later.
” It’s over 9000! ”
/ faints
Why do they need numeric keyboards?
I’d be more than happy with extra keys as long as the alphanumeric part is centered with screen and trackpad.
This is quite a refreshing break from all the race to the thin and light on the other side of the spectrum. Yes, it’s definitely not for everyone (not for me either), but it’s good to see it’s being made for those who need it.
Does anyone make something similar with an AMD CPU?
Some of the specs are impressive, like having more m.2 SSDs than most full-size ATX motherboards. Yet, the choice to go with RAID0 with two 1 TB SSDs is a bit unexpected. Wouldn’t it in most cases be better to get a single 2 TB PCIe 5.0 SSD instead? But maybe they want to find a way to use those four slots…