Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

Thanks again. After doing some back ups I just completed the upgrade seemingly without any problems. I notice that the Dell driver page for the M6700 (and for my service tag) with Win10 has shortened the list of drivers (such as no USB3/host drivers). Should I go looking for Win10 driver updates for the M6700 or does Win10 do all of this for me? Are there any particular drivers that I should seek out besides what Win10 might do automatically? Thanks for any further input on that and/or any general tips for using Win10 on M6700 for first time...

 

Windows 10 should have done a decent job automatically. I would install...
* Intel graphics driver if you have Optimus/graphics switching enabled (I prefer to use the one from Dell)
* Latest touchpad driver
* ControlVault driver & firmware if you have a fingerprint reader
* Latest BIOS update if you didn't have it already

...That's really about it, I think.

 

I give up with this laptop, received the GTX 970m today and i installed it and suddenly it begins to give me boot issues like the CMOS battery was removed or something and it didn't boot, this is like the third time in a while i saw this random boot issue, tried removing everything and it still the same issue, later tried turning it on but both fans spin for a few seconds and stop and just the hard drive led blinks. Now i try to look for a used motherboard and funny part is that there are no motherboard used on ebay. New ones on 200 bucks **** that.

M6800 is out of budget. Still have my old M4600 lying around there which has the m5100 broken and broken keyboard i could swap the keyboard but I am lazy and worst part is that I was playing all the modern Wolfenstein games and Resident Evil 2, but I guess I can't install the GTX 970m. Is there any alternative considering a price tag less than 200 bucks?

 

I'd check it twice though, make sure the card is sitting at the right height, the xbracket standoffs should be level with the top of the card, otherwise there could be a gap and it could be overheating upon startup and shutting down. Almost all the cards that come with xbrackets are the wrong height for the m6700, since it never shipped with those cards. Only the quadros have the correct xbracket. I had to use a spare xbracket I had from an old quadro 1000m to get the right height to make contact. And obv you need thermal pads for the inductors etc Another is make sure you repaste the cpu and gpu upon install. See the pic, that's a quadro k4000m installed correctly.

Well for less than 200 there's the 965m, 870m, 880m, 860m. I would think a quadro k4000m+ would do fine with those games on lower settings though, it's all about what performance you want and what fits that price unless you want to do some ocing which would need an unlocked vbios flash for serious oc. 870/860 should be less than 150/125. For previous generation, other than 780m, a 765m or 770m which should be around 125 or less.

 

Well actually could make it boot but... I am facing a new issue CPU is locked on 0.30 GHz... It's an 3740qm, I faced the same issue with my old m4600 and swapping motherboard resolved the issue. I have a k4100m playing those games so it's kind of " good" but I was referring upon another laptop easy to disassemble as this... Well kinda and cheap, this cost me 100 bucks on parts but of course it bought it for the CPU more than other stuff, I see this CPU on just 99 bucks or less 80

 

I don't consider the m6700 easy to disassemble to be honest, bc you have to take apart the cpu heatsink to take apart the gpu heatsink. I don't think the m6800 has that problem as they redesigned it but I've heard that the cooling is not as good as a result. But I've never had any other laptops so who knows. I would think the dedicated gaming laptops would be easier like alienware, clevo, sager etc But even older ones that can support the maxwell mobiles would be more than 200. I'd ask that question in the forums for those laptops.

 

Well actually have been able to identify that's something about the OS... Booted on my old SSD of the m4600 that had clean Windows 10 and it's running fine... However with the other SSD of the m6700 can't boot properly getting errors here and there but unable to boot with 16 gb will try to install drivers but this is weird, I don't want to do a clean install of Windows lol, will lose all my data on games.

And yes I have been seeing Alienware but they are too fancy for my taste, and Clevo and Sager and out of budget, what drives me nuts is the process of disassemble this laptop and the fragile and small keyboard connectors and related, considering getting a new or old palmrest, and the weird audio issue I am facing, which sounds plain and ugly

 

Yeah I hear your pain about all the small connectors, and keeping track of the screws, it's just have to relax and take your time. I had the keyboard connector pull off the board once and it was a hair raising experience putting it back into the pins on the keyboard, also have had intermittent touchpad going out for a bit then it decided to come back, no idea why. Must be the tiny connector that I've taken apart 6-7 times. Thankfully I'm done opening this thing, 980m is the end of that!

I'd def get hwinfo and watch your temps too. Hm audio issue is most likely drivers go get the dell ones for your OS and reinstall. Strange if you are on Win10, it should just do all that automatically that's what happened when I went from win7 to win10 on my m4600, works fine.

Usually you can backup your saves just look up where they are for each game and copy them to an external hard drive. So when you get a reinstall OS just put them back where they were located. I have a huge savegames folder on my external hdd just for that lol

 

Well actually seems one of my modules of RAM is broken somehow... And well GTX 970m just installed drivers normally through Windows update... I can't update to the newest version, but I will leave as is for now. I am on 1909, but the audio stuff I have changed two times the board and even the audio port, thinking it could be the reason, but audio from speakers is just horrible, compared to my old m4600 sound is amazing.

 

I certainly agree on the old gaming laptops, the prices for such old hardware, like like alienware 17 with a 285m etc are crazy, people just put things up there expecting or wanting way more than is warranted. The older precisions are comparatively well priced for what you get even with old quadros. Mine came with a k4000m which benchmarked the same FSG score as a 765m and when I unlocked the vbios and oc'd it like 60% it was 870m level. I got all that w a 3940xm, 16gb ram, 2xssd for 300 bucks and sold the k4000m which paid for a decent portion of the 980m card. I got really lucky and saw a 980m that was supposed to be defective for 100, ended up working fine and still working great. No way I could get that level of performance for that price all ready to go.