Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Honestly, the jump between Vista and 7 is very easy, you should feel right at home for the most part.

 

Ahem, you mean W8 don't you?

 

As of right now I would suggest NOT getting the SSD from OEM Dell. Buy them aftermarket. They are much less expensive and better supported that way also.

 

Thanks Tijo!

I have been in several B&M stores over the past few months and Win8 kind of confuses me even with going to the "desktop". There are advantages for some folks but for me the Win7 things are more "comfortable".......


At some point....I would really LOVE to pump the collective brains here to figure out software and things to determine if this M6700 is running properly.

I must admit that I have been out of the software/hardware realm for about five years....since I built our desktop....

What I do NOT want to do is get our M6700 and discover that it is a "lemon".....doesn't anyone????


So if folks have some free software that you all recommend for discovering if our "baby" is acceptable I am all ears!!!!!!!!!!

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In about a month or so we will be getting a SSD....... Now we simply cannot afford it after the mega purchase (wife's term...not mine)......but soon it will be a good thing I think.

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NOW that we have a great workstation coming to us.....she is very interested (and I am as well btw) in looking at a stylus and pad to manipulate pictures....they utilize them in her classes and she raves about them......when I picked her up and saw what folks are doing with the editing things it was simply amazing to me (non photography guy)......but having a pressure sensitive pad opened up TONS of ideas for her (and for me)!!

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For now we want something inexpensive but until we both develop our photography editing.......this is a wish....we have been utilizing mice and GOD forbid the touchpads at times..... if I could get her a stylus/pressure(?) option to add to this purchase I would be VERY HAPPY!!!!



So......toooooo many questions for now but if I could get her a Mother's Day gift after this initial purchase I would be ecstatic!

Perhaps the photography/digital editing folks can chime in???? We are on a budget so even simple thing will help



Thanks for the responses...and I apologize for the long winded post...

Mike

PS....I KNOW that I got something that is well beyond what we actually need but I am looking to the future and as far as the business this is a good fit!

 

See Dell updated the video driver for our machine on their site finally... Nvidia updated to xxx.50 awhile ago on their site from the xxx.11 version, but Dell seems to of put out xxx.44 on their site just the other day... Weird as .44 was never a version nvidia used on theirs... Thought we were past the OEM specific driver version stuff that used to go on years and years ago at least between these 2...

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

@ coloradomike

For cpu (and its cooling system) stability i would run prime95 for couple of hours - on my desktop rig my minimum was 12 hours to be 99% sure that (current overclock) is stabile. I wouldnt stress any notebook for more than 2-3 hours due to fact that no amount of rendering/gaming can stress cpu as prime95 in its "max power consumption" mode can.

For memory - you can run windows memory diagnostic - So far I've been able to identify every memory module fail with it. But best program out there is "memtest" its run from DOS and 2-3 passes of it should cover memory.

For graphics card - run 3d mark 11 few times in a row and watch for artifacts. There is another option running Furmark - but no game/3d modeling software can put so much torture on gpu. Furmark will stress gpu to its limits and will also stress the cooling system.

For HDD - HDTune. Free version of it can scan for bad sectors, and that's pretty much what can you do for your HDD.

Although i've usually stress tested desktop rigs with a parallel running of prime95 + furmark i dont not advise to do it on notebooks. As this is the ultimate torture you will give to your components and cooling system. I would run them 1 at a time on notebooks. Because running them together will put more stress onto motherboard and cooling system that anything ever will.

 

Dell also has a diagnostics utility built into the laptop that you could run, I think it's accessible by pressing F12 on boot.

 

M6700 vs 4K?

I went on youtube to test the 4k playback and experienced some stuttering. I checked the Task Manager and noticed the Ethernet at 99mbs could this be causing the choppy payback?




Anyway, I asked because after the the video loaded it seemed to play smoothly. I then tested playback with a video from BSN and again the playback was not completely smooth.

NOTE: Select Original

 

I miss the orange. When I veer away from black and white/silver I've never been subtle, and TBH this colour sets my happydar going a bit. I honestly would prefer the brown of my 4700's if I could get the Covet hw spec in the regular model.

Also on an M4700 related note does anyone know why Dell is more reluctant to discount the Covet than the lesser models? I bought my follow-on M4700's for a hoooooooge discount (otherwise I'd never have considered them over the Elitebooks) but the discounts for the follow-on Covets have not been anywhere near as large, though still in the end way cheaper than the 8770W's - but ended up with me buying quite a smaller number than I intended, since I might still veer back towards the Elitebooks for the 17-inchers.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The M6700 JUST got in from our FedEx man!!!!!

I was helping out with a March of Dimes fund raiser yesterday and missed the package by about an hour yesterday....DAMN!!!! However, our FedEx man came to the house about 15 min ago and the box was here!!!!

Now I can tell you in no uncertain terms, I was VERY NERVOUS when this came in as it was from the Dell Outlet as a refurbished computer......OMG!!!

Let me tell you.......without a doubt my apprehension was unfounded....

The M6700 is in PRISTINE condition!!!! I will be running some stress tests over the next day or two but as far as cosmetics go my "baby" is PERFECT!!!!!

Some initial thoughts on boot up......WOW.....the M6700 compared to this "ancient" E1705 is night and day!

I am very pleased thus far and will post back once I get some tests done in the next day or two!

Mike

PS....can you tell I am happy now ?