Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Wow, thank you! Can't wait to try it out!

Question, M6700 BIOS is A20 now. Do I have to downgrade to A14 here?

 

Another question. I read that liquid metal eats up aluminum, and diffuses into copper. What is the material of M6700's heatsink? Safe to apply liquid metal?

 

Yes, the heatsink is made of copper where it is in contact with the cpu so there is not issue using liquid metal, I recommand you to make a "foam barrier" to prevent the liquid metal spreading on the board, in my case I used some paper towel for about 6 month without leaking (even if I move it a lot)

 

Just curious is it really worth it to oc an xm though? I mean the 3.7ghz boost with 3 stock seems like it's fine for 99% of situations. Why do it? Does it indirectly boost your gpu or something? Would it help with streaming on one screen and playing a low spec game like borderlands 2 on the other screen?

 

Why not? The CPU that you paid is capable of doing such thing but is unfortunately throttled. I do compilation on my M6700, and better cooling and OC surely will help. I recently actually considered buying the latest 7740, but 6700 is still quite powerful, even bearing a 10-bit premiercolor screen that's not available anymore.

Have done M5000M GPU upgrade years ago. Can't wait for the arrival of liquid metal to give my old M6700 another boost!

By the way, my laptop warranty is way over. Nothing to lose here. Play time!

 

for an XM cpu you can get around 10~15% better performance with overclocking, in my case I got my 3920XM for cheap (like +20€ compared to the selling price of my old 3840QM) and I wanted to replace my actual secondary desktop which run a 3770K @4.5GHz (1.15v) and a GTX970, by overclocking my 3920XM I closed the gap compared to the 4.5GHz of the 3770K.
Also keep in my that my 3920XM is really bad at overclocking, at 4.3GHz the voltage is over 1.25v (reported VID by CPU-Z, I still never tried to measure it) and it stil doesn't run fine, I which I had an amazing 3920XM or 3940XM that could run with this voltage over 4.5GHz.
I need to overclock my 3920XM because it had to keep up with a Quadro P4000 in game which perform like a 2GHz+ overclocked GTX1060 while consuming less than 70w

 

Yeah you two seem to have some pretty serious gpu setups, esp the p4000, wow that's not too cheap from what i see on eb it's like double what I paid for my whole system from some sellers in china, which I'd never buy anything that expensive from. That must have been a pretty involved thing to get a p4000 working on an m6700?

No I get it it's free performance if you've got a good cooling system which the m6700 obv has, so futureproofing and gpu bottlenecking I get. But for me atm the stock speeds seem ok, idk maybe I could use it for the occasional sound crackling I get when playing/streaming I think audio stuff like that, is a cpu thing?

I also originally got my m4600 as a 3d cad box which I still have, have not done cad on the m6700. If I ever get that kind of work that needs cfd/heat flow simulation it would help there too. Yeah and audio/visual professional I could see it. So I get it I guess for specific reasons but if you don't have those needs seems just a standalone hobby really.

My old desktop I got for 200 bucks is a optiplex 990 which has an i7-2600 in it, it's in a storage unit now but I used it for 3-4 years and never had any problem with it, ofc my last full size card was a 1060 6gb half size so nothing too heavy. But it is rated at ~8000 on passmark, still competitive with some new chips. And I was looking up the cpu in a precision 7720 that's like 1000 bucks, a i7-7820HQ and it's only at the SAME or a little LESS passmark as my 3940xm! lol

My m6700 is off warranty too so not much risk to ocing still I don't have a pressing need for it atm. I decided to get a guaranteed working 970m off eb, I'm hoping that's just a plug and play thing, not sure what version it is exactly. Maybe if prices go down in a couple years get a 980m idk I have modest gaming needs esp locked into 1080p. I'll definitey try to oc the 970m once I get it working and know what version to look for an unlocked vbios for it.

 

Occasional sound crackling is generally caused by DPC latency; there is no way any of these CPUs wouldn't be fast enough to maintain a smooth audio stream. You can use LatencyMon to check on which driver may be responsible. Specific to the M6700, some issues that have caused latency spike for me are:

* Using the Sigmatel audio driver instead of the Microsoft one
* Using the Intel AHCI driver instead of the Microsoft one (the Intel RAID driver seems to be fine though)
* Using a Qualcomm/Atheros wireless card
* Doing serious 3D gaming without NVIDIA set to "high performance" (instead of "automatic") for that particular game

 

Hm good to know. yeah I switched to the ms audio driver, not sure about the ACHI thing, it only happens here and there and seems to have dropped off when I switched to ms audio driver a couple days ago. None of the other things on that list are a factor. I'll check out that program, thanks.

 

Heyy, I noticed you had a 17" 4k IPS panel in your M6700.
May I ask which panel and how you managed it? I've only heard of the expensive IPS panel with a thicker lid and the special cable, or the 3d screen done with it's eDP cable, which was my current plan, but I could possibly stretch the budget for a 1440p or 4k IPS panel just for the scaling factor and relief for my eyeballs.

Appreciate all of the info you've given on this thread keeping my old m6700 relevant and my primary machine for years to come!