The official marketing brochure I have for the 840 lists empty weight as 6,702 pounds. That's before any options, of course. Incidentally, the 980 is shown as 6,801.
So 7000 is pretty reasonable. I think none of them were actually 6700 pounds even when new. Mine is right about 7,000 pounds now, and is pretty light-- no super sound proofing or heavy avionics.
My airplane, for unknown reasons, won't hold more than about 2850 pounds of fuel (and yes, it has the long range tanks). So it's not a big issue for me, and my wife doesn't like to be stuck in the airplane that long anyway-- so most of the time that I fill the tanks, it's just me.
3175 pounds gives you a real world endurance of 6 hours... that's a pretty long time, in a Commander. I can get 5+ hours out of my 2850 pounds, and have done so many times. One scenario where I do fill it up is if I am going somewhere which doesn't have fuel available, and I need to tanker some.
Ultimately, if you need to carry passengers and use the full 3,175 pounds on a regular basis, I would suggest that a 1000 is the right airplane. It will do that no problem.