Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Yeah... for some strange reason I'm only getting the 4:3 options then 1920x1080. Which GPU do you have, and which driver version? I'm running Optimus on a K4000M, Intel drivers are 9.17.10.3040 and the NVidia drivers are 9.18.13.1110.

 

Only the Intel GPU drivers will affect which resolutions show up for the internal display if you are using Optimus. If you turn Optimus off then the NVIDIA GPU will be used to drive the internal display and you'll likely see the other options, but lose the battery life benefit that Optimus gives.

 

The Intle IGP should still show your display(s) native resolution(s) at the very least. What problems are you having exactly with your programs?

 

New NVIDIA drivers today, 320.49.
NVIDIA DRIVERS 320.49WHQL

A note on Windows 8.1. The Miracast feature is rather enticing to me but it has not received much attention in the press. I use the M6700 to drive a TV somewhat regularly and right now I just have a HDMI cable dangling across the room to use it. Going wireless would get rid of the trip hazard.

You need a WDDM 1.3 driver to use this feature — NVIDIA and AMD both have beta drivers available, and Intel drivers are available on Windows Update.

Would be interested to find a Blu-ray player that also functions as a Miracast receiver (since I haven't bothered to get a Blu-ray player yet), looks like those are coming.

 

That sounds reasonable. How much of a battery life boost is it? I'm seeing an approximate 5-5.5 hours with Optimus enabled at the moment, and that's on the maximum battery run time power option, with wifi on and doing some light Web browsing, instant messaging, and listening to music. Sounds a little low.

Yeah, I'm getting native resolution and I'm set at that. The problem is that it won't let me run any other full-screen programs in less than native resolution. That mostly affects games that don't support 1080p so it's not a huge deal, but there are a couple of apps that I test for friends that won't start. Since I'm getting ready to move all my external displays are packed away so I can't really test out on them.

Mainly, these are just minor teething issues in my opinion; definitely not 'make it or break it' quirks.

 

Is there any way you could add custom resolutions, nVidia and AMD drivers allow you to do that, no idea about Intel drivers.

That is kinda low in my opinion, on mine I get around 4 hours and a half doing what you do and I'm running off the AMD GPU all the time. do you have the 87mWh or the 97mWh battery?

 

That is a little low, but it's about in line with what I get. I think I could stretch it out if I went through some lengths to conserve power (lower brightness, only SSDs, kill background apps, etc.). Without Optimus I'm at more like 3.5 hours (which is plenty for me). Lately I've been running with Optimus disabled because I had some odd things happen with multiple displays running between the two GPUs.

 

Hm... you hit the nail on the head. You can add custom resolutions in the Intel control panel. I just added 1600x900 and 1366x768; both appear to work just fine.
Just make sure you select 60hz for the refresh rate. Thanks for the suggestion!

Gotcha. Since I'm running three platter drives as well as my SSD, I wonder if that extra current draw could be impacting battery life to that level; likely so. Still, considering the size class and computing power I'm not going to complain too loudly. Getting some of the kinks worked around or ironed out is part of the fun of getting a new rig, anyway.

Edit to avoid triple-posting:

A thought just came up. I've noticed that the indexing service is definitely working quite a bit; RAM usage at this point is around 160MB, so I'm assuming it's been keeping itself pretty busy with taking care of all the stuff I've put on this machine so far... about 1TB of various documents, music, and et cetera pulled over from my old G73. I'm assuming that might be playing a factor in battery life?

 

Yeah, it means the drives are working more than usual, same goes for the CPU so it will eat some of the battery life. Indexing is worth the time it takes to index the stuff though.

EDIT: Brightness still works on the new unified firepro driver with A10 BIOS at least.

 

Guys, where the mystery 3rd hdd placed in dell m 6700?
(a am not talking about 4 one with can be placed in dvd bay)

may be some one know the part number of RED IPS LCD Back Cover Lid?

thank you