Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

I thought I'd share this good news about using nvcleaninstall, apparently it negates the need for inf modding and automates it but I have not tried it as I no longer have one of these, mine burned out gpu and shorted mobo so I've parted most of it out(and made back more than I paid for it so far). Credit to @Mr. Fox post #275 here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-enterprise-ltsc-2019.833196/page-28

 

Funnily enough I've also seen system stutters with the K5000M without Optimus. They aren't super strong but they do happen in some 3D applications (especially older games like CS:GO) but could be a result of overclocking or my 5400 RPM HDD.

My M6700 has had some other system instabilities. The worst part is keyboard stutters in Discord and Word. They don't seem to happen anywhere else but in those two applications. I've done a bit of tweaking but have been unable to get the occasional split second freezing to stop when typing. I was also having problems with custom Nvidia color and display scaling settings, but I just reverted to color calibration in Color Management and 100% scaling with a scaleup of the system font. Overall fantastic system though, just with some outlying software instabilities.

 

In case my experience is worth anything, I have run Word every day for nine years with the K5000M and Optimus off - and I have never seen a system stutter that I can remember in the past seven or eight or nine years. I did not switch to Windows 10 until about 15 months ago when Windows 7 support finally was about to end. This M6700 still works well. I may upgrade if/when Dell releases a new 17 inch precision with 11th gen processors - maybe a 7760?

 

That's likely the right name for the next system... FCC filings appeared for the names Precision 7560 and Precision 7760 in March. 11th gen systems are probably a few months off (June-ish?). I've gotten a lot of life out of this system... I purchased it on the day the systems were first available for sale back in 2012. I am planning to upgrade when 12th-gen systems appear (Alder Lake's hybrid big/little architecture plus DDR5 are pushing me to wait one more year).

I have also never had keyboard stuttering in Word (Optimus on or off). I don't use Discord. I have had general stuttering issues with the system in the past, but I have always been able to track down the problem to a driver with LatencyMon and right now it is running super smooth.

 

I forgot LatencyMon was a thing that existed and lo and behold it may have solved my issue. I had two major hits to performance: one was the Nvidia driver kernel (which I can't do anything about because 426.5 is the newest possible version) and the other was the ndis.sys, which suggested my WiFi card. Turns out the drivers were the OG Windows 10 drivers from 2015, seems updating to 2019 drivers did the trick.

 

The NVIDIA driver is usually showing up near the top of the list for me as well but it doesn't seem to be causing actual trouble. I have had issues with it in some games that aren't quite "intense" enough to keep the NVIDIA card in the highest power state. It seems to cause stutters when it switches power states. You can address this by setting the power management option to "prefer maximum performance" for the specific game or application in the NVIDIA control panel. (Shouldn't be an issue for desktop-type work where the card can just sit in the lowest power state.)

I've had issues from both the Wi-Fi and Ethernet drivers (both from Intel in my case) ... some versions work fine and some versions cause spikes, it's bizarre. Whenever a major Windows 10 upgrade comes along it likes to "conveniently" upgrade the drivers so I have to go and check that they are both on a "good" version.

The ones working for me right now are...
Wi-Fi — 21.110.2.1 (Intel AX200 card), driver from Dell (Precision 7740 driver page), I tried a newer 22.x version and it caused latency issues, noticed audio popping while watching streaming video and LatencyMon showed spikes of over 10ms on ndis.sys
Ethernet — 12.17.10.8 (Intel 82579LM), this is actually the Microsoft one bundled with Windows 10; other drivers that I've tried from Dell or Intel seem to either cause latency issues or IPv6 issues for me

 

I still seem to be having issues with network driver latency, but there isn't much I can do with the 7260 AC. After the whole "Pin 51" issue way back from Day 1 I should've just moved on and bought an AX200 or something. Seems I'll be stuck with Bluetooth that occasionally times out and little to no driver support. I also figured out my stuttering was not related to latency; rather, my secondary hard drive's firmware was programmed to spin down after 8 seconds (NOT controlled by Windows btw) which made games wait for the drive to turn back on after that short amount of time. Just wanted to clarify Nvidia drivers are not the problem.

In other news, I got out on a tangent and was investigating the DMC slot to see what it did and I had to chuckle at the name listed in the MB schematics (see image). Seems it was listed as a "PP" slot elsewhere in X700 and X800 series documentation. I'm still uncertain about what its intended purpose was, outside of the Dell Crypto Data Encryption thingy. The reference to the chipset name (spelled properly elsewhere) and cartoon character is clever, though.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xkyHy2JlXjh7eTCmbbEQ47E9WMiCIOYx/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lAJUVPUKy9t0coBIDbPsrioDoXxcV93Q/view?usp=sharing
(Drive links in case images don't process)

 

Again it's me with my dumb problems... So i just "upgraded" my 4 modules of RAM to 2 of lower latency 9 and lower voltage. First thing i noticed the BIOS was sluggish but i just took them and cleaned them and boot again in BIOS and this time was ok, and it's not the first time i see that BIOS settings get restored to defaults? I wonder if i need to change the CMOS battery

Then again suddenly drivers went back to the 355.54 by Windows? I thought i had my inf on the laptop and suddenly it isn't working... Tried disabling driver enforcement stuff and booting on secure mode and just would not let me install the drivers.

Isn't any "universal" inf around there to install the GTX 970m? i haven't have any issues in a long time... I just was thinking on upgrade the SSD and bought an AX Wifi card and well was considering to upgrade to the GTX 980M because GPU are ridicously overpriced by now... Last year i saw GTX 1070 on less than 200 on eBay and now they are like 4x the prices.

Or there is some updated tutorial for noobs to install the damn drivers without getting mad at the process Lol

 

Hardware ID is different if you have optimus activated or not. When your BIOS goes back to default settings, it activates Optimus again, changing Hardware ID and forcing Windows to install the driver again.

When I installed my driver, I just changed the first result of "Geforce 970M" in nvdmi.ini (Display.Driver path). I could send this file if you are interested, but you will have to change those values every driver update and like I said: they are different with Optimus on and off.

And yeah, change the CMOS battery anyway, especially if you are planning to use laptop with Optimus off.

 

Yeah i would be glad if you can help me for now... Just have been very busy with college and now a suddenly intervention of my boss at the job with an Huawei certification, i have to sit down with time and patience and figure it out what is the "new" hardware ID of the GTX but now job and college are taking my time.