E6520 Owner's Thread

My E6520 is the best laptop I have used in a long time. I have the 2720QM with the NVS 4200M as well and I have had no issues. In fact, last Thursday/Friday when Southern California lost power for 14+ hours, my E6520 served me well.

Battery - 9-cell with 98% charge
HDD - SSD
DVDRW - enabled
Optimus - enabled
WiFi - OFF (no Internet available)
LCD - 75% Brightness
Keyboard - backlit OFF
Audio volume level - 70%

I was able to watch a 1 hour DVD and then another 2 hour DVD within Windows 7 media player with no jittering, skips, or other issues. When finished, my battery still showed 58% with an estimated 4+ hours left. This was futher proof to me that Optimus and the Intel HD3000 can play nice together and do truly optimize battery life without any performace losses; at least with less taxing tasks. The SSD also helps reduce power draw.

The key to many peoples' issues could be that the Intel HD3000 driver needs to be installed AFTER the chipset driver and BEFORE the NVidia driver. Likewise, the audio driver needs to be last in line. As long as the HD3000 has priority over the 4200M, the switching will work nicely.

Current BIOS A06 along with the latest chipset drivers, video drivers, and audrio drivers are ALL working fine here.
Scott-

 

Sorry if my questions have been answer before.

1. If my E6520 comes with HD 3000 does that means that I can use GT 520 / NVS 4200 drivers? I am curious because I thought the graphics hardware is made by intel not nvidia.
   
2. Is there any way to find out what was the drivers installation order?
   
3. Once installed what would be the proper procedure to change the drivers installation order or priority?

 

Wow Scott,

Thank you for the VERY thorough response. That is impressive indeed. What's most interesting is that it sound like the install order of things actually matters. It sure sounds like you've really done some research on this. (Now if I could only make up my mind between the Latitude E6520, Precision M6600, or the MacBook Pro 17"!)

--
Tony

 

Have not had any issues with Optimus as of yet on my E6420.

Anyway, it's a tag team of sorts.

- When on batteries with the internal display, the system will use Intel.
- When docked with multiple monitors, it will use nVidia.
- For other configurations in between, I think it will only use nVidia when it has to.

The built-in Intel GPU is in the CPU and *saves* power since it doesn't have to (fully) power another piece of hardware. Also, if you right-click an application in Explorer, it has a submenu that lets you choose which GPU to run that application with.

The Intel GPU is built into the CPU. However, the nVidia hardware is optional. Moreover, the only way to get the nVidia hardware is when you order the laptop. Since the nVidia chip is integrated into the motherboard, it is NOT possible to buy a drop-in upgrade to an nVidia setup later.

Also, if you get a quad core, they force you to get the nVidia add-on.

Well, the "recommended" order is:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xlob/Re-image/Efamily-Reimage.pdf

Uninstall the device from Device Manager and reinstall it in the proper order?

 

Well, that's great that your laptop stays so cool, but after a little while playing LOTRo, my E6520 hit's 80oC according to Speedfan. I despise the lack of thermal control and want it.... because that high a temp is unacceptable. I want something like i86fangui for my old i8600.....Simple to configure and it worked. Speedfan is a nice program, but it doesn't help me at all if it can't actually control fan speeds.

BTW, do *you* know the key sequence to enter the thermal management pane? Nothing that worked previously for the latitudes works with this newest E6520 model

 

No, the FN+SHIFT+1,5,3,2,4 works, kinda. The caps lock button blinks. But the FN+R does nothing

Also, speedfan 4.45 Beta 2 is on the right track....

 

I don't see much changed over the 4.44 - it has similar behaviour in that clicking the fan button manually will make the fan start to spin, but as soon as you stop clicking the fan stops.

.....but I think Alfredo @ Speedfan is really our only hope for getting something useable....

 

Overall, I have to agree- this has been a great laptop so far. I've got the i5-2520/NVS4200M with a classic HD. I am HOPING that Dell will issue a BIOS that allows the use of an mSATA SSD drive in that internal "Flash SATA" slot as a boot drive so I'm holding off on getting an SSD for this laptop.

As you can see in the attached image, I make a folder with the drivers listed in order of install - makes it very easy to do a reinstall as I number them. You an just make a 7zip of all these too if you want.

 

For anybody keeping score, the latest BIOS (A06) continues to be incompatible with both mSATA and Super Talent CoreStore MV drives.

 

Sigh..I am....disappointed. it seems like such a majour selling point to be able to boot from mSATA.

Does anyone know anyone at Dell that would consider adding support for this???

R