M4700 Owners Thread

Dell confirmed it, they locked it out of bios and are using the excuse is that overclockable means it has Turbo boost. Returning it

 

The chip has an unlocked multiplier(which makes it better for overclocking), but the board has to give you the options in the bios to do so. Dell has not included these features in the bios... like changing multipliers/clockspeeds... and perhaps voltage(I could be wrong on voltage, I haven't seen it) through hardware/bios.

Hope that clears it up.

 

Sweet, is the philips 1080P? And did they use the V4 AUO panel in the M4600 too? If they did use the V4, which would you say is better(or are they both comparable)?

So is it just the chi mei's that everyone's complaining about then? I've floated around boards and seen so many, "this screen is so grainy, horrible, hurts my eyes, can't stand it, etc. etc." That it made me think twice.

 

ssnova, thanks for the reply but I understand that. My issue is that Dell says the extreme is enabled for overclocking when you look at the specs during system configuration

 

You mean the description screenshot of "which processor is best for me" for the precision that you attached? Is that what you mean by "enabled" for "specs" by Dell? If that's what you meant then my clarification is valid for your question, as well as the others have said, yes we know it's an xtreme, yes we know that Dell says that xtreme's can "overclock", but no, even when you get that option for the Precision, those settings are not to be found in the bios once you receive your laptop, if that makes sense. The chip is "enabled", but the board/bios has to "allow" it.

EDIT: I didn't see your post earlier:

 

What's your use case for overclocking the CPU?

The vast majority of laptop manufacturers don't support this functionality for the simple reason that if you melt your mobo OC'ing your CPU they don't want to send a free replacement for something that is easily avoided by taking it out the user's hands.

Not sure how much extra juice you'd be able to squeeze out of the CPU anyway, thermal issues would likely cause throttling in such a small chassis (Alienwares are built like tanks with loads of ventilation and are designed with OC'ers in mind).

Saying that, 32GB RAM with an extreme series i7 is not too shabby; if it's not, sounds like Alienware is your only portable alternative.

Good luck.

 

Sorry if discussed earlier I can't find it. We have 2 new M4700's at work that were bought same time, both refurbished, from Dell. When I hooked up the first one to 2 external monitors, I was unable to get it to use both displays and the M4700LCD. No matter what I would always end up with one blank screen so the user just uses the 2 monitors. With the 2nd one I discovered if you disable Optimus in the BIOS, you can now use the LCD as a 3rd monitor, works great.

Today the user of the first one was trying to use his laptop in a meeting, with no monitors connected, and the LCD won't display at all, in fact you could only get display by hooking up an external monitor. I tried everything I could think of and can't get it to work. Dell had me do a reboot holding the D and Power button and the display diagnostics worked so the LCD DOES work. They had me do Windows P to force it to use the LCD, that didn't work, nothing happened. The user was going into a meeting so I couldn't run diagnostics but clearly something is wrong if the LCD doesn't automatically work when disconnected from external monitors?

What confused me more is I went into BIOS to turn off Optimus, and there's no Optimus setting. They were bought from Dell the same time allegedly with the same setup. All we did was upgrade this one to 16GB of RAM, otherwise they're supposed to be identical. Dell wants me to run the full diagnostics and then if that doesn't work they're talking about replacing the graphics card and or the display itself.

Any suggestions? Please note, the LCD did work when we got it, when I set up the machine I just used the LCD, no external monitor. This issue only came up after having the machine connected to 2 external monitors and being unable to get it to work as 3. My guess is somehow Nvidia disabled the LCD screen but I have no idea how to undo it.

 

You sure the machine in question has an NVIDIA card? I only ask because if there is no NVIDIA card (i.e. you have the AMD card) then you won't see the Optimus option in the BIOS. You also won't see it if the machine has the RGBLED / IPS display (rare on M4700).

If neither of those is the case then you have something odd going on for sure.

 

Yep Aaron you are right I doubled checked the specs and it has AMD Firepro M4000 not Nvidia. So weird we bought 2 machines at the same time that were supposed to be identical, one is Nvidia, one is AMD.

So that solves that issue but now how do I force it to use the Laptop LCD when not connected to external monitors? What was really odd is I already did an online support session with Dell and even with the correct machine information they didn't know it was AMD either, one of the things he told me to do was check if Optimus was enabled or not. It actually makes me wonder if Dell installed an incorrect driver thinking it was Nvidia not AMD and that's why we have this issue?

there has to be some way to force it to turn on the LCD when not plugged into monitors otherwise it's not much use as a laptop.

thanks for the tip though you were right it's not Nvidia.

 

Just to update. Dell is replacing the motherboard and the LCD cable, it passed all diagnostics but it doesn't even know the LCD is there. I'm now of the opinion it's either the graphics board or the driver
because it literally doesn't think there is an LCD