M4700 Owners Thread

Unless you have a model with the IPS panel (very uncommon), you have an LVDS display and LVDS port on the motherboard, and it will not be possible to go any higher than 1080p.

Not sure if it would be possible even with the IPS/eDP version. Haven't seen anyone here who has tried it. Your best bet is honestly upgrading to a used M4800 with eDP port, those systems were offered with 4K displays so it should be pretty straight-forward to get the parts together.

 

Hi Not sure how to start a new thread....I have a m4700 i7 3840QM 256 gb ssd and 500gb 7200 32 GB memory 1600 K2000M great workhorse for my video projects. I'm trying to transfer finished files to my dmr hs2 (I know old but it for playing with) via ieee 1394 but can't get the Panasonic hs2 to see it. I'm assuming it's drivers or windows 10 Pro issues. Any direction would be appreciated

 

Well I think we're going to need a little more information. My trusty m4700 is sitting on my desk, great workhorse, but I have the Radeon card, and I swore never again. Anyway, I just took a look at the dmr hs2 specs, and I don't even see a firewire port. But the last firmware update for the unit was in 2005, so it's not surprising Windows 10 doesn't know what it is. Since you have the horsepower, I would go grab a free copy of VMWare Player and create a Windows Xp VM. I'll bet Xp could talk to it.

If it works, come back and let people know.

 

I remember seeing some users complain about getting the 1394 port to work with certain devices. An option is to get a 1394/Firewire Expresscard and try using that. (I've only used the Firewire port in my M6700 twice that I can recall, once to connect a DVD burner and once to connect an external hard drive, and I didn't have any trouble with those.)

Do realize that the M4700 has a 4-pin 1394 connection which means it cannot power the external device. If the external device relies on bus power then it will not work. An Expresscard adapter with 6-pin or 8-pin 1394 should work in this case.

VMware can pass USB devices through to a guest VM but it cannot pass through 1394/Firewire devices.

 

Greetings!
Decided to post here rather than create a new thread.

I’d like to know if there’s any updated info on GPU upgradability for Dell Precision M4700 machines.

From earlier posts on this forum I was able to figure out (please correct me if I’m wrong) that GTX 965m, K2200M & M2000M GPUs (at least those sourced from newer Dell laptops like M4800, 7510, 7520) should be fully compatible and usually don’t require any additional steps like BIOS update or modifications to .INF files.

But what about M2200M? Has anyone here been able to check compatibility with M2200M firsthand?

I’m also interested if anyone has had luck with newer AMD GPUs (W5170M, RX460M, WX4150).

Equipped with 3840QM or 3940XM these machines still perform pretty well even in Windows 10.
It’s just the graphics that lags significantly, especially when using several monitors.

I personally use from 4 to 6 monitors doing multitasking/excel/report compilation (I don’t game) and would really benefit from a faster GPU.

Any insights or comments/updates on this will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

Any NVIDIA card other than the ones that shipped in the system will require an INF modification for the driver to load. You are right about the GPU choices, on the NVIDIA side you can use any Kepler or Maxwell GPU that is available in MXM 3.0a form factor. Pascal and newer cards will not work. There aren't many stories on the M2200; it "should" work but for a while it was difficult to find and now it is available on eBay but still on the expensive side...

 

Thanks a lot for replying on such short notice and especially for your clarification regarding the need to modify INF files.

But what about AMD cards?
They look really compelling to me mostly because, in theory, they should natively support up to 6 monitors which is really great.
I currently use 2 USB3.0 DisplayLink adapters and while the setup I've got is pretty usable, it's still far from a pleasant experience.

I'd really like to procure one of those newer AMD cards, combine it with a decent MST hub (preferably from Startech) and enjoy the closest thing I can get to a native 6 monitor setup.

 

Actually, when I installed an M2200 that came from a Dell laptop into my M4700 I didn't need any .inf mod whatsoever. It was plug & play. That said, I attempted to use one from an HP machine and ran into all sorts of issues. Couldn't ever get it to work and ended up having to send that one back! Strangely enough, the vbios on that chip was for a completely different card (a desktop series iirc). Good luck!

 

So, this may be a bit late to the party. I have a question for everyone who has gotten a maxwell card fully working on their M4700.
(Quadro K2200M, M1000M, M2000M, M2200, and Geforce GTX 965M)

What card did you install and what is the part number of your motherboard?
It can be found under the keyboard, on the housing for memory module C
XX-XXXXXX-XXXXX-XXX-XXXX
35JKV, 2PR7R, or RM0C3

The RM0C3 board has a different video connector for a RGB display

 

Both board are fine for maxwell I think