E6520 Owner's Thread

I am thinking there is something more going on. Have you noticed whether you have an audio glitch when it happens to? I almost always have my machine in mute, but I just noticed today (am on my 3rd e6520) that it is still happening (that crazy graphics followed by a hard shut down ~10 seconds later -- and no BSOD/crash dump). This machine has only done it 2x over the past 3 days, whereas the other machine did it far more.

Have you figured out any method to its madness? The one thing I noticed is that it didn't SEEM to happen if I disabled the Nvidia card (and only used the intel integrated). (to do this, disable nvidia in the device manager with Optimus enabled). I never was 100% sure whether it prevented it from happening, or whether I just got lucky.

I am very disappointed in this behavior -- I originally assumed it was hardware related, and made them replace my mobo. That didn't solve the problem, so they replaced the entire laptop. I thought for perhaps 2 weeks that THAT had solved it, except that it's happened to me twice in the past 3 days now.

ANY thoughts on this would be good -- I'm glad you caught a picture of it happening -- next time, see if the sound also goes crazy.

 

I don't have NVS drivers installed, nor do I want to. Hopefully someone else with an i7-2720qm can post their UNIGINE HEAVEN 2.5 BENCMARK. At 1080p I can get just under 20 FPS with most settings on low. Not too shabby.

Ready for the mini tutorial? Here we go:

First, you will need the 520 drivers. I recommend getting them from nvidia direct.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/692/driverf.jpg

Just run the driver and install everything you want/need, but you need to install the driver and the control panel client. I didn't bother with 3D drivers.

Now run the nVidia control panel client.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/97/controlcenter.jpg

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/52/performancek.jpg

You should see the following nodes on the control panel. In case you don't have "device settings" under the "performance" node like I do, you will need to install Nvidia system tools...I suggest the version I have, the latest, NVIDIA SYSTEM TOOLS 6.06 (google it)

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/835/ntune.jpg

NOW, moving on, set your profile to custom, and feel free to start with these settings, 1000/900/2000 MHz. This is the safest round number I could find...if you go too far you will crash the system and have to try again...so it will take a while to find the VERY max, but keep in mind I play FABLE 3 at 1080p with these settings and have no crashes...

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/171/customclocks.jpg

Likewise, I always underclock fully when I'm not using the GPU to save heat.
The only issue now is how to cool everything. I have tried both Speedfan and I8kfan GUI and neither work for me. Speedfan gives me a bunch of errors, and while it monitors temps properly, it does not recognize a fan for me to speed up. I8kfan GUI crashes to BSOD, even after I properly installed the drivers for it.

Hope it was helpful, I'm excited to see the difference in UNIGINE scores between me and someone with NVS4200 drivers at stock settings.

 

^it still looks like the driver installed is for a 4200M...your computer still displays your graphics card as a 4200M.

The biggest advantage I see here is overclockability....correct?

 

I am not sure, I don't think I remember an audio glitch, but I didn't spend that much time with my E6520. I had it for only 3 days, before sending it back. As soon as this problem happened, I contacted Dell and told them about the problem. Since I had just bought the system and honestly I was worried that it could be a serious issue and I didn't want to waste time by sending it back and forth to the repair center, (I didn't have NBD warranty) so I asked for a full refund and returned it last week.

I didn't tried that one. I did disable Optimus in BIOS and the problem persisted. For me the restart happened every time no matter what. Sometimes after 5 mins of use other time it took as long as 40 mins but eventually it always happened.

Since I bought mine form Dell outlet, I am thinking maybe they sold me your original laptop, that you returned, without fixing the problem!

If you have bought your laptop less than 3 weeks ago, I suggest you return it ASAP and get a refund. I am glad I did.
Other than that, I can only wish you good luck in finding the problem.

 

did you get a sense for whether you thought it was a hardware problem or a software/firmware problem? Did you have the dell drivers for the nvidia card, or did you use nvidia drivers? I have another e6520 sitting around that i could keep instead of this one...

 

Sadly both are 275.33 so I can't tell which I installed, but I only downloaded (and installed) GT 520m drivers, and I really doubt they came with NVS install when I downloaded them...

 

If I have to guess, I would say hardware but it also could be a driver issue. If you have the time, you can format you hard drive and install Windows from the scratch and then all the needed drivers one by one following the order on Dell Re-Image Guide. Then after installing each driver, you can test to see if the problem occurs or not. I know it will take some time and I didn't do this myself, because I decided to return the laptop instead, but that is the only way to make sure it is not a software/driver problem.
I did use both Dell driver and the latest driver from nvidia website and it didn't make a difference.

 

OK, so I now have the new Seagate Momentus XT drive cloned across from the supplied WDScorpio 500 GB drive. After 3 reboots, it's noticably faster and even the apps like this web browser seem snappier I used the nifty esata/USB cable that arrived today. Took maybe 10 mins to complete.

Thanks for all the help and advice guys.

 

Has anyone figured out how to use Speedfan or similar on this machine? The temps are pretty brutal when gaming...

 

Errr... how? SpeedFan works fine on E6420. HWMonitor works fine too. GPU-Z tends to lock, though.

Haven't done any gaming yet on this machine...