M4700 Owners Thread

If you have Optimus disabled, the internal display will always use the NVIDIA GPU. The the Intel graphics should be out of the loop completely.

If Optimus is enabled, then the internal display will always use the Intel GPU. Any rendering from the NVIDIA card with Optimus happens further up with driver support, but involves taking the output from the NVIDIA card and placing it directly in the Intel GPU's frame buffer.

VGA works the same way. Other display outputs will always use the NVIDIA GPU.

(Side note --- if you were to connect your external monitor by VGA, you could enable Optimus and use the Intel GPU for both the laptop display and external monitor, and then just not use the NVIDIA card at all. I think this would work fine on Linux, just don't install any NVIDIA drivers. Might help with keeping your GPU fan turned off.)

 

I had some minor heat related screen flickering issues pre-vBIOS mod (thus the 1920 X 1080 UltraCrap reference in my signature ;-)), so don't think the undervolting is at play here.

 

That is a goot tip, but I need an HDMI to VGA adapter first -- given the situation with summer heat, probably a good idea....

 

That is the case, Optimus is disabled, Nvidia should be running the show.

re: Optimus on Linux with external connected via VGA, that works in Windows, but not in Linux: best you can do at this point is mirrored displays with latest open source graphics driver, not terribly useful. It's Nvidia or nothing.

Nvidia did step up to the plate with their latest Optimus-enabled driver for Linux, so hopefully power management is not too far off.

At any rate next hot day will be the litmus test -- if the laptop screen flickers to black, it's a "sign" to stop working and...go for a surf, just like the locals, no work when there are waves to be had (which is often ;-))

Thanks for the tips guys, hoping I can limp along 'till I get back stateside (might have to get a box fan and endure 10X more noise than what I've meticulously been trying to avoid with all my tweaking, sigh)

 

I have a M4700 with K2000M GPU, can I upgrade my card to something with GDDR5 or that can simply game better? I use my workstation primarily for design work, but love to play games and of course would love for a solid fps on demanding games. I cant seem to find any info on what kind of cards are compatible with this laptop or if I can change the card at all. I hope this question hasn't been asked too many times here... I couldn't really find the answer (but I DID search before posting!) Thanks!

 

You can change the card but you'll find that the K2000M is probably the best you can do for now. The M4700 uses a MXM 3.0a graphics card. High-end cards use the MXM 3.0b form factor (same interface but larger physical size) and will not fit in the M4700, but rather only appear in 17" systems like the M6700.

This does give you the possibility of future upgrades, though. When the next generation of graphics cards are released, assuming they still use MXM 3.0a and the heatsinks are compatible, you should be able to grab one and plop it in.

 

M4000 is faster than K2000M with games and less expensive too. It lacks optimus though.

 

I have a few questions, I ordered mine with 2gb ram and 320gb hdd, I will be putting 8gb ram and a Samsung 840 Pro 256gb
When replacing the ram the primary slots are the ones underneath the keyboard correct? Would just adding the two 4gb sticks in the bottom cause any performance issues?
Also would the Windows recovery disc work to put windows onto the new ssd? how does activation work?

 

No, it's the secondary, but my 2gb stock was in there anyway. I replaced it with 4 sticks of 4gb. You should probably removed the 2gb instead of leave it in; I think someone said their ram was underclocked until it was removed. Better to remove it. If you don't have a quad core you only have 2 slots available anyway.

 

Sure, why not? Same Dell machine, just set cd/dvd as boot option in BIOS and pop in recovery disk; install onto the new SSD. As far as I know the recovery CD is tied to the manufacturer in general, and not a particular machine type -- e.g. assume it will work on a Dell desktop (correct if wrong here ;-))

One catch is you should first remove the battery and either take a photo of, or write down, the Windows product/activation key (i.e. it's not on laptop bottom).

I had no issue installing Windows to my 2ndary SSD and acitivating.