Dell Precision 6300

Hi folks, I had some experiences to share with this notebook I bought Sep 2008. I have the nVidia Quadro FX 3600M graphics card. CPU: Core2 Duo 2,5 GHz. Windows XP. I installed the latest Dell drivers. The reason I bought the graphics card was because I also ordered a 30 inch screen that the sales person said would work fine in 2560x1600 resolution. It turned out that it didn't. I am an IT professional and only use the notebook for system development. I paid more than USD 2500 in Sweden for the notebook.


My GPU temperatures are quite high (70 degrees Celsius) even if I just have notepad open. One fan is always running on 25%. I contacted Dell support about this, but they said it is normal. They recommended that I try to clean it from dust. I find it quite annoying to listen to the notebook when just writing text, and it is louder than any other notebook I owned before.

When I opened the front panel to see if I could clean it (above the keyboard) I noticed that one screw holding the graphics card was hanging loose. The support just said I could tighten it myself, however I would prefer to send it in for a complete checkup.

I ran the Dell diagnostics test and found 3 hard drive errors, just 2 months after I got it.

I get a jerky picture if I try to watch high-definition movies on the pc. When I ran the DCP tool I found the latency spikes that others have reported here.

I got the result 2886 on 3DMark -06 - however most reviews on this notebook have reported above 8000 points with exactly the same specs, for example
Review of the Dell Precision 6300
This review reports 8236 points - almost three times higher than mine (but same specs!).

The notebook is sluggish for example when using an external monitor, or scrolling in a web browser.

I feel confused, Dell says everything is normal and says there is nothing to fix. They agreed to replace the hard drive but that's it.

Any suggestions how to fix these problems are very appreciated!

Best Regards,
Jonas