Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Hi everyone.

I used to be really active in this thread. I've been out for about a year... Got some catching up to do.
I got a new job and it took a lot out of me at first. Also, no longer using my Precision for work, I sort of fell away from this forum.
I'm now using a Precision at work again (brand new M4800) so maybe I'll be around more often. I still have the M6700 which I use for other things at home.
Anyway...

I'm writing in about the annoying auto brightness/contrast problem that appears while on battery, with newer NVIDIA drivers, with Optimus disabled. I had this issue and I know a few other users did as well. It only appears with NVIDIA drivers newer than 325.xx. Did anyone ever solve it?

My new M4800 had the exact same problem and I was able to solve it by going to Power Options -> Advanced -> Display -> disable "Adaptive backlight" (different than "Adaptive brightness"). Turning it off solved the issue right away. Thinking I could apply the same fix on my M6700, I upgraded the driver only to find that that particular option is not available. I found where the value is saved in the registry on the M4800 and applied that on the M6700... Didn't fix it. Spent the evening trying some other stuff to no avail. Back to an old driver I go.

 

It seems that the Maxwell cards do work in Precision M6700:

http://www.nhl.pl/index.php?showtopic=80714&st=0

Not many details are given, though.

Does anyone have any shots of the M6700 GPU cooler's bottom side? I've seen that some Kepler MSI coolers had to be slightly modified (some heatsink bump for the VRMs needed to be trimmed as one of the VRM chips were removed I think).

Regarding the adaptive brightness, 327.62 here on the work OS and the Adaptive Brightness option is shown in Advanced Power Options. Will check on the other OS later on for the newer drivers.

 

The option that actually solved it for me on the work PC (M4800) was called "Adaptive backlight" which is different from "Adaptive brightness." "Adaptive backlight" is specific to the NVIDIA drivers but I think "Adaptive brightness" is a Windows setting.

If anyone wants to see what I'm talking about, if you have a M6700 with an NVIDIA GPU and Optimus disabled, put it on battery and load up this page on the laptop internal display:
http://stuff.aaron-kelley.net/2013/12/black.html
Scroll up and down (to move the white box on and off the screen) and see if you can notice changes in the screen contrast. For me, it happens every time if I'm using drivers 325.xx or later.

 

Just tried it and the dimming was there, but when I disabled Adaptive Backlight in the power options (set it to none), it's no longer present. 344.75 drivers (albeit Geforce, not Quadro).

Thanks for the hint as the same thing drives me crazy on my 13" Sony so I hope it'll work there, too.

 

Alright, awesome. For me, "Adaptive backlight" is not even an option in the power options control panel on my M6700, but it is on my M4800. Are you running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1?

 

Windows 7. But, I have to note I don't have hybrid graphics on mine (since it has the IPS screen). I'm mentioning this as I noticed my hybrid Sony doesn't have this option, at least when the Intel GPU is active so perhaps it's some driver configuration for the hybrid systems that was changed by Nvidia afterwards cause you not to see the Adaptive Backlight option.

 

Thanks for the info. I have Optimus ("hybrid graphics") disabled on both of my systems. In fact, this issue goes away if Optimus is turned on, but I prefer to have it off for other reasons. Another difference between my systems is my M4800 is running Windows 7 and my M6700 is running Windows 8.1. Only the Windows 7 machine shows the "Adaptive backlight" option. I was wondering if this option might only show up on Windows 7 for some reason, and (with the very limited data set collected here) that seems to be the case so far.

 

Update on the auto contrast on battery issue. I did a Windows 10 install with the most recent preview build and NVIDIA's new beta Windows 10 drivers, and I was unable to reproduce the issue.

Unfortunately, the Windows 10 NVIDIA drivers will not install on any older OS, so I'm not able to see if they fix the problem on my current Windows 8.1 install. However, with any luck, my production system will not demonstrate the issue after the Windows 10 production upgrade later this year.

 

I am still on the A13 Bios on my M6700 and wondring if I should Install A14. Anyone have issues with it? Also, does the bluetooth module show up on the bios? Mine does not but it works in windows. Dell Tech Support said it may be a faulty module and sent me a new one, but I do not want to change it if there is nothing wrong with it.
thanks,

Mike

 

I've been using A14 for quite a while with no issues. The bluetooth module showed in the BIOS for me. I removed it after installing an 802.11ac card with built-in bluetooth, though. The new card does not show in the BIOS but works in Windows.