Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

I have some trouble with the "quick removable" hard drive, it seems to be always detected by the "raid software" while posting (no raid is running, just using "intel raid" over AHCI protocol) but sometime in windows the drive isn't recognized (not even on device manager), maybe it's due to the fact that this is a SSHD drive with very poor implementation ? like when I got it I needed a software in order to "activate" the HDD part then I think I screwed up the partition and ended making on the first 120GB a "SSD" partition and the rest for the HDD

the SSHD review here : https://www.hardwarebbq.com/wd-black²-dual-drive-wd1001x06x-review/all/1/

 

I sold my Dell M6700 to a friend a year or two ago, but now he's complaining about some POST issues, like you turn on the laptop and the light goes on, but the screen remains off and it just stays like that. After several times turning it on and off, it would eventually start and boot up.

So, not sure if it is a battery, charger or perhaps a CMOS battery issue, but it could also be a mainboard failing?

I see there are two types of mainboards, DKT5Y and P7V6Y. Does anybody know what the difference between them is?

Mainly, do both have the EDP connector (as the LCD screen was RGB-LED on my configuration)?

AFAIK, they do have both EDP and LVDS connections and I think I can see two headers on both mainboards, though they look the same, but I guess that's OK as IIRC the connection is just routed to the back cover assembly to which the actual LCD is then connected to.

Thanks.

 

Hi, I think it's the gpu which is dying, and you can't boot of the RGB/eDP screen with the intel integrated graphics, did it work fine under GPU load/stress test ?
You can try the self diagnostic (F12 at startup then diagnostic) and maybe try different/remove ram/hdd/ssd or even dvd burner, if the problem is still present it is likely a motherboard or GPU issue

 

I believe that all M6700 motherboards are functionally the same. They all have both LVDS and eDP output.
If your machine had the RGP-LED display then it does not support Optimus, which means the dGPU is used to drive the display all of the time. In this case I think that either the dGPU is going out (as @TheQuentincc suggests), or the actual motherboard. No good way to test which it might be without actually procuring and swapping out parts. :-\
If it did allow Optimus then you could get Optimus enabled and that would take the dGPU out of the loop for bootup, one way to isolate a component.

 

The laptop supposedly works fine once it boots, not sure about any heavier GPU use. But, yeah, Optimus is certainly not an option.

The thing is, supposedly it starts on battery, but not on charger alone which makes me suspect it might be some charger issue or perhaps a CMOS battery or a motherboard problem. Luckily, my older M6400 is within reach and it has a 240W charger which should be compatible so we'll see if the charger is the culprit here.

GPU dying would show some black screens in Windows during use, I'd expect, but it's a possibility since it has the 980M, plus it's still with Prema vBIOS (so, slightly overvolted).

 

Charger and CMOS battery are pretty easy to test, at least. Fortunately, motherboards aren't too expensive. I had to replace mine last year and it was under $50. (Just sort of a pain to actually do the swap.)

 

Now I don't think the graphics card is the problem, there is some issues that start to appears on Kepler with age but nothing like that on Maxwell

 

I am considering buy an used m6700, but my main concern is the GPU upgrade after surfing the web, i see it can be upgraded to a 970m, 980m and lower grades 880m but seems that it gives a lot of problems when it is installed... in some forum outside here, a guy recomended to not install it with a XM CPU, but after that i have not seen nothing more about that.

780m seems good but also i have seen some R9 M290X, W7170M at the same price 200 bucks, both AMD have DX12 but the 780m does not have it. But 780m seems to have better performance.

Funny part is that the 880m on ebay is around 200 bucks and it is 8GB and with DX12 and claims to be compatible with Dell laptops, however 970m is 6GB and 980m 8GB are beyond 250 bucks...

And being 2019 seems that is not defined really which are the best options for upgrade the GPU on the m6700... The list on here and other forums is somehow outdated. Some people has working the AMD working with no problems but others can't get it working, also seems AMD cards can't get working the GPU fan working correctly, does it matters when using the laptop? I have medium to high knowledge on this field, but i don't want to be messing with BIOS mods or drivers mods or INF mods... just to get working some of this cards...

I am thinking just get or the k4100m or the 770m that are on 100 bucks, k5000m its around 150 or more but seems a little upgrade or almost none from the k4100m, and avoid so much trouble and no definitive answers, of course i would love to upgrade a better one but its kind of annoying that those list are in that way, a bit confusing and misleading.

My future configuration would be
Core I7 3740QM
16GB RAM
480 SSD + 1 TB HDD
And the GPU?

I would love the 880m because it's price performance its the best for 200 bucks barrier and my budget, 250-300 for now it's beyond my budget, but can somebody give me an accurate answer which one of these cards would be the best? And with not so much trobule of mod system stuff, just plug and play? Also i have the 180w adapter should i get a bigger one?

780m
880m
970m
980m
R9 M290X
W7170M

 

You really want to upgrade to GTX970M or GTX980M, I'm having no trouble running a XM cpu @4.2GHz (on all core) and a GTX970M @1250MHz with my 240w adapter, if I remember correctly the CPU and GPU would throttle with the 180w adapter from with (sold) M4700.
You should look after 970M, they could be "findable" for less than 200 bucks for sure, it got the same performance as a desktop 770 (which is faster than the 880M) and consume less energy, the only "drawback" of maxwell GPU on M6700 is that you need to modify the .inf file (of the nvidia driver) in order to install correctly the driver.

All GPU from fermi and more recent support dx12 for nvidia, since it was annonced in 2014, there is some website that didn't update their database and still show them as "only" dx11 compatible.

 

So i bought an k4100m and i didn't see Nvidia was going to stop giving support to Kepler architecture what the hell, 970m is the option but is pricey