E6420 Owner's Thread

Not sure what you mean? How can I check that?

I have the 6cell one right now, but less than 2 hours seems a bit off...

Right.
CPU never goes below 56 with a low fan (and no idea with fan off, never occured) and when at 60 it's even louder until temp goes back to 55.
edit : CPU freq is always 2.2Mhz (max) even on battery on normal mode for W7... strange.

 

Something's definitely wrong as I get 7 hours easily on my 9 cell.

You can open nvidia settings in control panel to see what mode the switchable graphics is in.

Did you purchase this yourself or did someone in your company's IT department deploy this to you?

If its the former, make sure you installed all the drivers and in the correct order: not doing so on these causes strange issues to happen. If its the latter, i'd ask them to take a look at it and see if your coworkers have the same issues...perhaps they built their custom image wrong.

 

Switchable Graphics... I see no such options there, a google search gives me a name "Optimus" for nVidia, but I see no reference to that in the nvidia panel. Also in Graphic Cards in Device Manager there is only NVS 4200M.

It was deployed by my IT dept, I guess I'll take it to them on monday and hope it's not an hardware problem (they told me they had a problem during install (a bsod during the first deployment occured, and they installed over again and it seemed to work, but I'm not really satisfied...) !

Thanks

 

No biggie. Im not at my machine at the moment but I can post a screen shot when I return if you want.

Optimus is nvidia's name for their switchable graphics. When everythings working properly, you'll run on integrated graphics most of the time. When you open an app that's in nvidia's list of apps that perform better with the dedicated card, the dedicated card turns on. When you exit that app, it turns off.

 

Where it says "preferred graphics processor" is where you can see what sort of graphics your using. You should normally just leave it on "Auto-Select"

 

I only have "Predefined settings" on this page where you have "Preferred grahics processor", with "Basic profile" set up and a list of games to choose if I want to change. (Translation from French but I certainly don't see anything close to another graphics processor)

Maybe I don't have Optimus ?

 

That is strange. Maybe the it dept disabled it...*shrug*

 

You can disable optimus from the BIOS. When disabled it only shows the nvidia card, as if the intel one was totally absent. Check your BIOS settings (under video->optimus).

 

I'm trying to find the latest drivers for my E6420, and it appears that the Drivers & Downloads section on the Dell Support site is returning the wrong files. Using either my Service Tag number, or going in manually to find the E6420, same incorrect results.

It looks like the files are for the E4200. Check out the BIOS - it's right in the filename. Plus, all the Instant-ON files under Applications don't apply to the E6420. The Network options are wrong/old, the video driver for nVidia isn't there.

EDIT: Looks like they finally fixed it - so never mind!

 

just bought an e6420, should be here next week

has anyone tried experimenting with eGPU via the express card slot? what set up do you use, and any problems?

oh, and in the possible future, is it possible for me to rip out this laptop's 128gb SSD and put it in a desktop?