Dell Precision M6700 Owners Thread

As I said on different thread, my M6700 got bios corrupted after CMOS reset. Isn't that wonderful? lol.

I'll put the whole process inside a spoiler below, so it won't pollute the thread.

Spoiler

Still, what you have to do is going to Device Manager, RMB on your device and then going to details to verify Hardware ID. It'll be a screen like this one:



This is what you need for driver modification. Usually some of first 4 hexadecimal numbers on Subsys are different, depending if you have Optimus on or off.



Then you have to extract your nvidia driver, you can do that with WinRAR, just RMB on file and you have the options. After that, go to the path you extracted the files > Display.Driver and you have to look for nvdmi.inf file. Open it and look for "970M" inside it. You'll probably find something like this:



As you can see, there are 5 different 970M drivers. Which one is the right one? That's a great question, because there's no way to know which one . It varies completely from card to card.

You have to test every single one for stability and BSODs. If it works perfectly, but with low performance, it's also a bad driver.

But how to modify these, you ask? In this example, if I need to install GTX 970M on my computer, it'll show as DEV_13D8&SUBSYS_06DA1028, so, as you can see, DEV code will change, but subsys will not. Why? Because subsys is the hexadecimal code for the whole system. So it doesn't really matter which card I use here, it won't change this value, only DEV.

To guarantee installation, you have 2 options in this file. If I want to install in my system, I'll have to do something like this:



Or:



Both methods will work. Second way is easier, but it's not guaranteed that it will work. You probably deduced already, but: last 8 hexadecimal numbers need to be the same as your subsys, only being split with a dot.

After that, you have to look for DEV.13D8 (the same dev code for GTX 970M) and look ABOVE in this file. You'll find something like this.



So, following the modifications we did at where device is, we have to do the same here. So it'll be:



Or:



I don't know if you have to align, but the example I followed did that, so do it too.

It's important to modify the right ones, like, I'm modifying the first 970M on the list, so it needs to be first DEV.13D8 here too. If you want to modify the second on the list, needs to be the second here too and so on, or driver will fail to install and/or being even more unstable that is supposed to be.

After doing those modifications, save the file and proceed to restart Windows holding Shift. You'll have a screen with Recovery options and you have to find something like "Startup options" or something like that. I can't confirm here which steps are correct because I'm using a Brazilian Portuguese version of Windows, but you will know the right one if it says something about "Safe mode" or "enforcing driver signature" on screen.

After restarting, you'll have 9 options to choose, choose seventh one, that disables driver enforcing signature. You'll start windows in what it seems to be "normal" Windows, but now you have driver enforcement signature deactivated and you can install the modified driver. Just go to the same path location you extracted drivers before and run setup.exe. In the middle of installation, it'll warn about this driver not being signed, just confirm it. It'll probably install without any issues and you'll have a new version of the driver installed.

Windows will probably rollback drivers to 2015 version sometime because the driver you installed doesn't have a valid signature. For stopping that, you'll have to follow these steps or... I'm pretty sure Aaron talked here about doing a valid signature yourself, but I can't find where. Maybe he can help.

Aaaaand that's it. Like I said: you'll have to do this process again if you activate/deactivate Optimus because this changes SUBSYS value. Sorry for being so vague, but without my M6700 working properly I can't show everything. I just hope it helps.

 

I've finally got my M6700 back it has been in storage for a couple of years and I'm looking at GPU upgrades (970m) has anyone seen these 1060/1070 cards the seller informs me they should work in the M6700 but I thought there was an issue with LVDS?

Anyway great to be back

 

1060/1070 will not work with the M6700 unless you are planning on running Linux. There is a BIOS/vBIOS conflict with NVIDIA Pascal that will cause Windows to BSOD at boot every time. (Older engineering sample vBIOSes will work but we only have those for Quadro P3000/P4000/P5000.) Additionally... LVDS is not supported so you can use them with Optimus enabled only.

 

Thanks for getting back to me any thoughts on an upgrade, I don't mind switching over to AMD I have the heatsink already?.

Also that seller has the m6700 listed on their 1060 sale I honestly thought they're some kind of Chinese manufacturers that were just putting the newer 1060 silicon on 9xx series pcbs.

 

The best that you're going to do (economically) is probably GeForce 970M or 980M. Quadro M5000M has the same performance as the 980M (and is looking to be cheaper on eBay right now for some reason, I see a couple for $200). That's what I'm using in my M6700 right now. Works with every game that I've thrown at it (though granted you will be running at lower settings or resolution for newer games).

I think that it is a little bit easier to figure out the INF mod with the Quadro card.

Tesla M6 also works, it has the same performance as 980M and M5000M, and it is cheaper, but it does not support any display outputs so you have to use it with Optimus enabled and HDMI/DP will not work.

 

There's a seller on ebay that has a Quadro P4000 for $200. You'll need a X-bracket, which you could buy separately or do some investment in an old card that costs less than $20 and take it off.

You'll need to run linux to flash EC vbios, but after that, it will work fine. I was using this Quadro on M6700 before buying the 7710 and it was running without any issues. You just need to modify drivers, but you'll also need to do that with 9X0M/MX000M anyway. The only problem is that you need to activate Optimus, because it won't run properly with that deactivated, even if you have an eDP screen. Some people had issues like being unable to change brightness, I couldn't test that on M6700 because mine has a LVDs screen.

There's also another seller that has a Quadro M4000M for $99, also without bracket, but costing half than M5000M is kinda worth it.

Edit: forgot to say, but P4000 has the same performance as 1060 6 GB (desktop) and it never used more than 65W here. So it'll perform great and run cool.

 

I was unable to get Linux to boot on my M6700 with Quadro P5000 and stock vBIOS. It was stuck at the Dell logo and would never proceed to OS boot. You might have to flash with a different system or a hardware flasher. (M6800 does not have any issue booting Linux with a Pascal card.)

 

Oh, yeah. In my case, I have a different system (Clevo P150EM), so I didn't have any issues.

Bios chip is easily accessible, tho'. So you could use a CH341A programmer to flash bios.

Well, if it's too much complicated, M4000M is still a good option for the price.

 

I am trying to install the 465.89 drivers and i have the same hardware ID, nothing has changed i have been following the same steps to install modified drivers but i can't keeps saying that is not compatible with this version of Windows and can't find harware ID compatible... What i am missing now or Nvidida have changed something?

Doing the steps mentioned by Aaron by just changing:

The correct INF mod is just two find-and-replace operations:
VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_06DA1028 => VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_153F1028
VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_16DA1028 => VEN_10DE&DEV_13F8&SUBSYS_053F1028

These are my ID
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D8&SUBSYS_153F1028&REV_A1
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D8&SUBSYS_153F1028
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D8&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D8&CC_0300

Optimus in On on BIOS, because i want to try it, i have been installing previous drivers without any issue, but now it's impossible?

 

It's not replacing because 06DA and 16DA are not in the file. On the tutorial I did, there are only 5 different values and none of them are 06DA and 16DA. These are Precision 7710 SUBSYS (06DA is with Optimus off and 16DA is on), so you need to change one of DEV_13D8 values for 153F1028 / 153F.1028. Which one? Like I said, you have to see the behavior and wait for BSODs and/or performance issues. If none of these happen, you are good.

If I'm not mistaken, I modified the first value and had absolutely no issues.

Edit: I did the modification myself. Extract this attached zip in Display.Driver folder and replace the old file. Restart Windows with driver enforcement signature deactivated and you should be able to install.