Gaming on Dell M4800

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone here has done any gaming on the Dell Precision M4800? My specific specs are listed in my signature. What I am wondering is, how well does it do with somewhat recent games like Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 2, Starcraft II, etc?

Does it have playable frame rates in these games, and does the system seem to get overly hot? Im interested in maybe taking this system to LAN parties and such things that my friends sometimes have. Starcraft is a big one.

 

I can sort of relate... I have an M6700 that I have done a fair amount of gaming on. It has played lots of StarCraft II.

M6700 is of course sort of a big brother to the M4800, it is slightly larger (17" vs 15") and one generation older, but shares the same design and cooling solution. I find that it does not get anywhere near too hot to use, but the fans can kick up a lot when it is busy playing games. I normally use headphones so I do not really notice, except when I am finished playing, while everything cools back down. The fan noise would not interfere with a regular conversation and in a LAN party environment there will probably be enough other noises such that they wouldn't seem like much.

The biggest difference for you will be a lower-powered GPU... But those are all older games, I think you will find that those games will work fine and be totally playable, but you should not expect to be able to play them at the highest possible graphics settings.

If you already have the system, just load up some games and see how it does. Also ... there is plenty of headroom to overclock the K2100M if you'd like to try that. I am running my K5000M at a bit over 20% above the standard clock speed and I consider that very safe still (the cooling system in these laptops is about as good as it gets), but it's a nice free performance boost.

 

I have very similar specs to yours - I've done some gaming on my machine but not a ton. I expect it to do very well with StarCraft II due to the title's age (I think I played that on my old Studio 1558 just fine). With stock clocks, I've had no problems playing games like Civ V and Civ AE even on the QHD+ screen.

 

Thank you for your response. How do you go about overclocking these cards?

 

If you can't find a custom vBIOS image to flash that changes the default clocks, you can use NVIDIA Inspector to adjust the clocks.
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-inspector-download.html
Actually, I think you will need a custom vBIOS or you will be rather limited on how far you can adjust the clock speed.

NVIDIA Inspector does have a feature that allows you to create a shortcut with your desired clocks and then stick that in your Windows startup folder, so that you do not have to manually reset the clocks every time you reboot.

I think you should search for a tutorial on how to use it, I'm sure there are some out there. I figured it out but I think it would be better to have it explained by someone who knows a little better than me.

[Edit]
A quick Google search reveals this post with an overclock vBIOS.
https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...voltage-tweaks/&do=findComment&comment=138611

 

Is installing a vBIOS like that risky? How likely is it for a overclock like you have to damage the hardware? Sorry, I just want to get all the info I can before I do anything like that.

 

I am currently playing, sniper 4,fallout4, Divinity original Sin 2,Witcher wild hunt all on medium settings in 1080p. With no problems

 

So far with NVIDIA inspector I was able to apply a 100Mhz boost to the clock and 500Mhz to the memory. This is as far as I feel I can safely go for the moment, at least without more testing. So far its showing a max temp of 63C,

 

The cooling fans on these workstations are top of the line so although you will notice the fans busy during heavy play it shouldn't be to noticable