Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Aaron is right, the HDMI on the M6700 is rev 1.4 which is technically capable of driving one 4K display.

 

Based on information I have received from Dell, I believe the recent comments about being able to use the DisplayPort on the laptop chassis at the same time as the 2 on the Eport dock are misinformed. But I'm also acutely aware of the possibility that it was the Dell tech "educating" me who was misinformed. So I'll just tell y'all what I think I know. I welcome enlightenment if it's wrong!

The M6700 architecture (and its various GPU options) support a maximum of four simultaneously active monitors. Of these four, one is the laptop's integral "lid" display. Translation: That means if you're not using the laptop lid, you only have 3 monitor outputs. You don't get to "use it for something else" - one of the four outputs is dedicated to the lid, period.

That leaves 3 remaining outputs, of which two are digital and one analog. Without the dock, only one of these digital outputs is active. That's the DP jack on the right side of the chasis. When docked, both digital channels go to the back of the dock. MEANING THE ONE ON THE CHASSIS IS DISABLED WHEN DOCKED.

The digital outs can operate as EITHER DisplayPort or DVI, but not both. You get a max of two (not four) simultaneously active digital outputs, and you get to choose DVI or DP for each one individually.

The analog output will indeed happily drive a 3rd monitor, but only at analog resolutions. I forget the max res on VGA, but it's just bigger than Full HD.

Bottom line, the 'absolute max" display capability of the docked m6700 is: (2) 3840 x 2160 4Ks on the DP outs, plus 1 VGA out (Max about 1920x1200, maybe a little more), plus the laptop lid display. That's it. End of story.

Again, I WELCOME enlightenment if the above information I got from Dell Tech Support turns out to be wrong.

In an effort to push the envelope a little farther, I just ordered two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812225084. My hope is to run a total of (4) 4K panels - 2 on the Dock's DP outs will be the main work areas, and then the remaining two monitors (limited to 30Hz refresh by the USB gizmos) will be the peripheral ones that display charts I need to see where refresh latency isn't important. I'll report back here when I get the USB gizmos and try it out.

xPat

 

p.s. IF the above information from Dell is correct, it would logically follow that when the m6700 is NOT docked, the two digital outs are the DP and HDMI on the laptop chassis. IF it works as I was told, both of them should be disabled when docked because the laptop's digital outs have been redirected to the dock's DVI and DP outs.

So that would imply you probably can't use the HDMI on the laptop when it's docked.

xPat

 

Well, the HDMi on the laptop is at the back, so it is physically impossible to hook a cable to it when docked.

 

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN133302/EN

With an AMD GPU, using the DisplayPort on the side *in addition to* the two on the dock is explicitly supported. You can have up to five displays (three DP + VGA + built-in).

With NVIDIA it looks like the max is four displays; you can only connect two DisplayPort devices.

I have NVIDIA and I've never tried to connect more than two DisplayPort devices. You can always try it if you have a spare display; worst that can happen is it won't work, but on the off case that it did work, it wouldn't be the first time that the official Dell documentation and what the techs are saying isn't quite right.

Regarding the HDMI on the back, there is room to connect a 90-degree "elbow" connector to it if you slide the plastic placeholder thing back. Again, never tried this so I don't know if the port would be active while the laptop is docked; just seems physically possible to make the connection...

 

Multiple monitors usually refer back to this


Recently, I use a esata cable on the back of the machine while docked to add one more drive, so I wont say it is physically impossible, just cumbersome if you need to constant plug and unplug.

I remember someone said all the back ports works when docked~~, but don't quote me on that.

Edit: according to this hdmi and dp1 on dock is the same so idk~

 

Thanks so much for this extremely useful information! Both pages clearly evidence that the information I was given by Dell was wrong, and that you can in fact run 3 DP monitors simultaneously. So at least one of the two devices I just bought was a waste of money. Sigh...

xPat

 

Well, you might as well try out HDMI too, may or may not work. Also, one USB3.0 adapter shouldn't be too bad, I'm sure there's at least one of your displays where you'll be displaying mostly static stuff, so hook that up to the USB.

Or you could hook it up through VGA or DVI and have it display at a lower resolution. You won't be able to use that sweet screen real estate, but at least the monitor will still be of use.

 

Okay... I haven't been on the forums in quite some time but I've been having this strange issue that is quite simply driving me up the wall. Currently I'm on the 'latest' Dell-supplied video drivers, but this issue is preventing me from flashing to a BIOS that's newer than what I currently have(A06). I've got an i7 3740QM, Quadro K4000M GPU, 16 GB RAM, and am running an mSATA SSD for my boot drive and three 1TB HDDs as internal storage. OS is Win7 Pro x64:

Upon any soft reboot or standby, the system just will not boot up at all or resume into Windows. The volume control buttons and power button remain lit up, but there is absolutely no activity from the computer whatsoever. This happens on every soft reboot or sleep event, and I haven't been able to figure out what might be causing this system to hang in Event Viewer. I'm going to try to see if switching to the discrete GPU exclusively in the BIOS does something about this issue, but I'm not very hopeful about it. When trying to reflash the BIOS, upon the system reboot it simply goes into this hanging behavior and upon restart the old BIOS version is still hanging around.

Any ideas about this? I really like this machine and would like to get it a bit more functional for my day to day use.

Edit: After disabling Optimus I'm still getting the same behavior. However, upon closer examination I've noticed the following: Upon trying to do the BIOS update Windows shuts down, but the power/volume buttons are still lit. This is where the system is hanging.

Edit 2: I think I've got this figured out and managed to get this beast working correctly! Here's what I had to do:

I had to make a bootable USB flash drive using DOS; there's a handy tool called Rufus that will do it for you. Copy the BIOS update(I used the latest A14) to the drive after it's been created. Press F12 on boot in order to get to the boot options screen, then boot to your USB flash drive. At the DOS prompt, type the file name of the BIOS update(if you don't have it written down, you can type in DIR then press Enter in order to view a list of files on the drive). That will start the BIOS update. There shouldn't be any problems with the machine hanging on rebooting.

The A14 update seems to have fixed my problem with soft reboots and hanging when going into sleep. That old BIOS update outright stunk. Eigh.

 

So I just got two big beautiful LG 31MU97-B monitors, intending to make them the primary displays for my docked M6700. The plan was to repurpose my current Dell P2715Q's as the 3rd and 4th monitors per the discussion a few posts back in this thread.

But to my surprise, the new monitors won't run any resolution tighter then 1920x1080 on the new behemoths (which look fantastic otherwise). The fact I can't run them in their "recommended" 4096 x 2160 res came as no surprise - my NVIDIA K3000M only goes to 3840x2160. But I expected to be able to run the LG monitors at 3840 x 2160, which the M6700 drives just fine into my Dell P2715Q's. The compatibility sheet from LG says you need a K6000M or better, but I assumed that was for driving 4096 x 2160. I figured that if my M6700 drives two Dell monitors at 3840 x 2160, then it should have no trouble driving the LG's at that res.

Any suggestions on what to try? I've installed the LG driver on the M6700, and the system regognizes it correctly and offers me res choices all the way up to 4096 x 2160. But any choice above 1920 x 1080 results in blank screen. This is all on DisplayPort using the two DP outs on the Eport+ dock and the cables that came with the monitors. What surprises me is that it DOES offer me all the res choices - it's not like the system isn't recognizing the monitor as 4K-capable. But when I choose any higher res (including 3840 x 2160 which worked fine with Dell monitors), I just get blank screen on the monitors. Behavior is identical on two new 31MU97's, pretty much ruling out a hardware problem with one of the monitors. (Odds of two new monitors showing up with identical defect close to zero).

Thanks in advance for any advice,
xPat