Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

I think 6600, 6700 series and after are 1080p while the 6500 series is still 1920x1200. The 120 extra pixels is actually of great use to me.

 

double post

 

Having an issue where my Quadro K5000M wants to not go any higher than 542 MHz (core clock). The highest clock for the K5000M is normally 600 MHz, and I like to overclock to 720 MHz to match the speed of the GeForce 680M.

Not sure how long it has been doing this. I've just started playing games on the PC after many months of not, and I noticed it when games weren't performing quite as expected.

I tried lots of things to fix it. (Uninstall/reinstall drivers, lots of reboots, unplug power and battery, check all sorts of Windows and NVIDIA power settings, even tweak in NVIDIA Inspector to try to force it to clock up.)

What finally did fix it was a VBIOS flash from this thread, which bumps the core clock up to 758 MHz. It also seems to relax some throttling issues so the GPU has no issues going up to full speed, but at the same time, it clocks down to 135 MHz when idle and even shuts off completely if Optimus is on, like it is supposed to.

Downside is this VBIOS is based on the original Quadro K5000M VBIOS, and not the updated one that works with legacy option ROMs disabled (required for UEFI secure boot). So, you've gotta run with secure boot disabled, or with Optimus enabled.

Just thought I'd post this in case anyone else notices their GPU not going up to max speed anymore.

 

If that worked, why don't you post your newer UEFI-compatible vBIOS to that forum and kindly ask for them to unlock it? I did the same with my K4000M.

 

Did you get an unlocked one back? I checked the thread with the unlock requests and noticed that someone had already posted the updated K5000M VBIOS for unlocking, but never was never a reply.

I'll try anyway and see how it goes. In any case, it's not causing me any trouble, with Optimus enabled the UEFI/secure boot issue is not present.

 

Yes, I did (it was unlocked by the member named Klem) and I posted it in this thread already (if anyone else has the K4000M).

BTW, you need five posts made by your account to be able to download from there which I didn't have so either make four posts before this one or pay to be a premium member for a month in which case you can download without restrictions.

 

Yes, I paid $5 for unlimited access (for one month), rather than try to accumulate the 5 posts needed, because I don't plan on sticking around on that forum for now.

I posted and someone quickly replied with an "unlocked" VBIOS. This one was also handled by "Klem" and the original one was handled by someone going by "svl7". I appreciate the promptness but I can tell that it was not done as carefully as the mod for the original VBIOS that I am currently using... So I will probably stick with that one, as it is not causing me any issues (with Optimus enabled).

I opened it in Kepler BIOS Tweaker to see what he did and it looks like he just removed the 135 MHz overclock cap and set the speed of the highest performance level to 758 MHz. The next highest performance level is 542 MHz (what I was stuck at before). Now, I opened the modified version of the original VBIOS that I am currently using and expected to see the same thing, but it actually had around 7 performance levels added so that the GPU can clock at many different levels between 600 MHz and 758 MHz depending on load, but the new one jumps right from 542 MHz to 758 MHz. That's about all that I have the knowledge to check myself, but because of that, I'm going to stick with the one from the guy who seems to know more what he is doing, and seems more professional rather than a super quick hack.

 

I used the same app to compare my old svl7 unlocked non-UEFI K4000M vBIOS and the one unlocked by Klem and couldn't notice these differences. I see only three power states in both (e.g. P8, P5 and P0). The only thing I ever wanted was the 150 Mhz OC limit to be removed as I don't know how to that. Under which tab in the Kepler BIOS editor do you see these extra states?

In any case, I'd suggest you at least try out the new vBIOS and see how it works for you. You can always flash the old one back (as I did a few times while comparing the temperatures).

I also noticed that my laptop has problems cooling down the overclocked card (at e.g. 950 MHz clock) when it's used at 100%. I'm not sure if that happened before, but probably did as I then flashed the old vBIOS back and old Nvidia drivers, but to no avail. For some reason, the Dell doesn't seem to be using the highest fan state (the rather loud one) anymore no matter if I keep it in Balanced or High Performance state so the GPU temp can reach 87+ degrees C and then start throttling so perhaps there was some change in the laptop BIOS in the meantime (I'm running the latest A14 or whatever it is). I can't really comment on the heating issue as I used to always use the FPS limiter to limit the GPU usage and fan noise, but I'm convinced there was another very loud fan state before.

 

This is on the first tab, "Common". There are three drop downs with entries labeled "Entry #0", "Entry #1", "Entry #2", etc. If you examine these, you can see the different clock levels that the GPU can use.

Standard BIOS has 11 levels (#0 - #10) and they are spaced somewhat uniformly between 601 MHz and 135 MHz. (601, 542, 510, 470.5, 425, 405, 324, 270, 202.5, 162, 135)
The modified "new" BIOS is the same, except entry #0 is bumped to 758 MHz. So as I mentioned, a giant gap between 542 MHz and 758 MHz when it comes to clocking dynamically.
The modified "old" BIOS has entries up to #18, with new ones added at the front: 758 MHz, 745, 732, 719, 666.5, 653.5, 627.5, 601, 575, 542, ......, 135

I'm not sure but I think the entries from 719 MHz and down were taken from a GeForce 680M VBIOS, and the ones above that were added for overclocking.

Anyway maybe it doesn't make a big difference this the GPU will likely be at 758 MHz all of the time when under load. But it does look like more thought was put into the modified "old" BIOS.


I haven't had any issues with mine running too hot (but I haven't pushed it past 758 MHz). The laptop kicks the fan up pretty high. When I put it under load the temperature got up into the mid 70's (whereas with the standard clock the highest temp I ever saw was around the low 60's).

 

Hello, my name is Alejandro. I got a refurbished dell m6700 32gb Nvidia Quadro K5000m. The down side is that it came with a 160GB WD 7200rpm HHD, any recommendations to upgrade? Hardware upgrades voids warranty? I installed all the drivers from dell and I upgrade the bios to the M6700A15 (I forgot to do a backup of the bios). I did a system image with Clonezilla as a backup. Everything apparently is going well. Just, the temperature is around 55C when I'm browsing but when I do with Everest a stress test it raises until 100-101C is it ok? Thanks in advance friends. This is m first participation in the forum. I'm from Argentina, sorry for my quiet bad English.