Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

@RealJEDI

On further experimentation, the situation with the 31MU97-B's is even worse than I thought. They don't seem to work AT ALL with the m6700. The display flickers on and off and is completely unusable. Same symptoms with both of two new monitors, so very unlikely its a defective hardware issue. The monitors do work with a desktop computer I tested them with, so the issue is my K3000M cannot drive them for some unknown reason.

In fairness to LG, the K3000M is not on the supported GPU list for these monitors. But I assumed that was because they are not rated for 4096x2160. I figured that if the K3000M can drive Dell monitors at 3840 x 2160, it should have no trouble driving the LG. But that's not the case - I can run two Dell P2715Q's just fine at 3840x2160, but I can't get even one LG monitor to run at any res higher than 1920 x 1080.

I definitely don't recommend these monitors. And unfortunately I'm in Canada where apparently the "Anything purchased on a credit card is returnable for 30 days" rule doesn't apply, so I'm stuck with them. $3k down the drain. Hopefully they'll work ok with my desktop system when I get home, but I bought them for the m6700 and they definitely don't work with it.

xPat

 

Were these Dell P2715Q's running at 60 Hz? And what LG monitors do you have exactly? 31MUY97 doesn't bring back any results..

 

@ijozic

LG 31MU97-B's And yes, Dell P2715Q's running 3840 x 2160 @ 60Hz.

 

Stupid question, but did you try a different DP cable (if you're using the one which came with the monitor)?

That uncommon resolution seems to be more taxing on the DP 1.2.. E.g. K5000 (desktop card) runs it at 50 Hz max it seems:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-k5000.html#pdpContent=2

 

@ijozic

These monitors come with a warning to only use the supplied cable. That unto itself makes them useless because I would need longer cables for my application. The firmware in the monitors often pops up a message warning only to use the supplied cable. This happens both when using 3rd party cables and when using the supplied cable!

Overall, my sense is these monitors can't reliably source the UHD res signal. It works at 24 Hz on bank holidays provided you have a compatible video card and you used the included 6' cable. And it doesn't work the rest of the time. They work fine with other desktop computers I have around, but they just plain won't work with the m6700 and K3000M GPU.

xPat

 

Well, since I finally got off my lazy rear and calibrated my M6700's display, here are the results for the LG Phillips 1080p display.


Overall, not too shabby for a TN panel and it puts a fair amount of the IPS displays we've recently seen in new laptops to shame in terms of color accuracy. Viewing angles are still better with IPS, but still that display is one of the reasons why I'm finding it so hard to land a replacement for the M6700.

 

I'm still kicking myself for returning my M6700 with IPS panel, because of BIOS problems...

Since then, I got two M6800s with TN panel and returned both of them due to the terrible color reproduction and vertical viewing angle.

I have high hopes for the M6900. Hopefully, Dell comes to their senses and bring back an IPS option.

 

I'm hoping they do as well, there have also been rumors of QHD or better 17" panels finally making an appearance, I'd expect those to be at least IPS or something similar. HP still offers their DreamColor 2 displays in the ZBook 15.

Anyways, do you have any idea what TN panel you ended up with in your M6800, I remember Dell sourcing multiple 1920x1080 TN panels from different manufactures for the M6700 and quality varied among those. I got the better one of the TNs fortunately. It's sitting beside a LG IPS 226 21" desktop monitor and color accuracy is pretty similar on both and there isn't much of a difference once calibrated, so it's enough to make me happy.

 

Fingers crossed...

Unfortunately, I didn't check the make and model of the TN panel. I was very disappointed about the panel's vertical viewing angle.

As a quick test, I used the Lagom LCD monitor test pages:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/viewing_angle.php

With the screen in solid blue and viewing at a 90° angle, I could see three different colors on the panel: blue in the center, a magenta hue near the top and a cyan/green hue near the bottom (or was it the other way around?). By changing the vertical viewing angle, the hue near the top / bottom got predominately worse. I couldn't find a viewing angle that showed solid blue. Horizontal viewing angles were OK.

The IPS panel in the M6700 showed solid blue on the entire screen, no matter what angle (horizontal or vertical) you looked at it.

If I can't rely on a solid color being solid, the panel is useless to me.

 

For TN
ChiMei: not very good: http://www.chimei.com.tw/en/
AU Optronics: considered the standard.
LG: So So... they flicker on the lowest 3-5 gradients in the brightness settings.

Also, LG makes the IPS which is great but is does have a high pitch hum sound at full brightness on the M6600.