Latitude E6500 Questions

I would double check your drivers.

You mentioned you are using throttlestop. How are your CPU temps when you are attempting to watch 720p content?

My E6500 can handle 720p just fine with no problem and I have a P8600 CPU which is slower than yours.

 

Yes, it's all good. I'm using ThrottleStop right now and it's all good now. But now I have another problem. It seems that my GPU, the Quadro NVS 160M is being throttled? Well, I'm not sure but I tried playing League of Legends at it stays at 500Mhz when the max is 580Mhz (I also tried overclocking up to 820Mhz, but then it goes down to 500Mhz again until I quit the game). It goes max at first, and then it stays at 500Mhz. Even when watching a 720p/1080p video, it becomes like that.

Is this really a throttling issue or is it just me that don't know how it actually works? Because it's barely under load. 4% while watching a 1080p video.

 

Do you have the performance drivers and powermizer installed? You can tweak some settings in there. It also may be throttling it's speed due to heat. Is the GPU within temp specs?

 

The GPU is always under 55C, highest I got was 63C. The driver I installed in the standard ODE drivers because I thought both of the ODE and performance drivers have no differences at all since it redirected to the same download page.

I'll with a heavier game like Warframe later today.

 

Warframe is barely playable at ~20fps but it's alright, because at least I can watch 720p in peace, browse faster and do my work more efficiently now. I think I'll find an SSD and get another HDD since 160GB is too small and the 5400RPM feels very slow.

 

5,400RPM Drives are great for energy efficiency, not so great for performance. This is of course when comparing them to their 7,200RPM counterparts.

You can get a 256GB SSD for a good price these days. This would give you not only a good increase in available space, but speed, heat reduction (minor, but every bit helps), and faster program loading times. It might gives you a few additional FPS, I am not sure.

 

Are all the SSDs I can buy at the stores compatible with this laptop? I do not know much about SSDs and from what I've seen, no one sells SSDs separately for laptops and desktops.

If I am correct, I really am considering the Samsung EVO 840 256GB, sounds like it have the best performance to price ratio. I thought of increasing the RAM to 8GB, but seeing as I hardly go above 2GB, it might not worth it.

The Quadro is surprisingly powerfpowerful, even for DirectX games. I'm hoping that with the more powerful OpenGL drivers, I could run OpenGL games better, especially those free, open source games. Too bad that Euro Truck Simulator 2 does not run well on this laptop, but I'll see how the OpenGL renderer performs on the game later. Haven't tried that yet.

Processing power looks good enough. I hope I'll be able to do my work on this laptop as good as I hope for as I'll be taking this laptop for the CS course in college. But I really need to get a Dell's genuine battery and a 90W adapter. Charging takes a very long time and the battery won't even last for two hours. I'm disappointed that the company who refurbished this laptop did not provide me with a bigger battery, I was hoping for the 12 cells battery but I guess I'll try to find them somewhere else.

Other than that, I really love this laptop. It's valued more than it's worth nowadays. One of the best purchases I've ever made. Solid build quality, great heat management and great hardware. It runs almost as fast as my 2010 PC build. I guess what they say about AMD is true when I've used both of them. The only thing that's weaker than my PC is the GPU, but no worries, as I rarely do heavy gaming like I used to. I never would've thought that I'd be praising a product of Dell as my past experiences with their products were always horrible.

 

The Samsung EVO drive will make your machine fly. Just do a clean install of windows so it is properly aligned. Samsung also has some software (I forget it's name atm) that helps to improve your SSD performance.

RE: RAM

If you already have 4GB you have plenty. 8GB is easily taken care, just pricey for 2x4GB DDR2 800MHz modules.

You could also upgrade the CPU, but IMO it's not worth it on that machine. I will upgrade the one in my D630 to a T8300 but not for performance. It's to go to 45mn vs the 65mn CPU it has now. Should reduce my temps a bit more, but the machine already runs rather cool.

I am glad you are enjoying your E6500. They are very good machine and I love mine a lot. I just love my D630 more.

* This post brought to by said D630.

 

Mine have the T9600 CPU, which as far as I know, is the highest compatible CPU for this laptop. I just did a clean install of Windows 8.1 to see how it goes but I noticed that on Windows 7, the CPU temp is a lot lower (~42C most of the time unless under heavy load). But perhaps that's because Windows Update is still running and I still haven't installed all of the drivers yet.

 

T9600 isn't the fastest compatible CPU... you can go to at least T9800 or T9900 (I'm not sure about Extremes). Either way I don't think the faster CPUs are worthwhile either.