M6500 with 920xm vs i7-Q720, noticeable difference? no gaming

OK, thanks, in my initial research on the m6500 I read of heat issues with the nvidia cards, that's why I went with the ati. Sounds like they resolved it for the m6600 then. Plus I was sick to death of nvidia after years with the m6300 which had one of the nvidia cards that was part of the class action law suit, I had several die on me. Alright I am looking this over, I do know I tried really hard to buy 2 m6500's that had the 920xm specs with ati, both fell through... maybe it was a sign I recall in an earlier m6500 thread I started that someone mentioned beginning with the m6600 it had the gpu socket that is conducive to more variety in what it will accept.

Another thing I see is the m6600 might be a little more difficult to access inside compared to the m6500, but hopefully that's not something I'd be doing often.
thanks again for the info

 

As far as getting to the CPU and GPU yes you need to take the entire thing apart, but that's not that much of an issue since dell makes the service manuals available to the public for download. The MSATA, WIFI, WWAN, RAM, DVD and HDDs are all very easy to access for maintenance and upgrades.

BTW, I remember that sad era for GPUs everywhere. It was when the industry was moving away from lead based solder. The initial lead free formulas had issues where the solder would start cracking after enough heating and cooling cycles.

As far as GPU upgrades, the M6600 is pretty picky about upgrades. You can do any Dell Quadro *000M and some people have reported success upgrading to a Geforce GTX 680M. If you where to go the Precision M6700 route I personally upgraded mine to an Alienware GTX 980M 8GB card.

On a side note, Going with the M6600 or newer with a Nvidia GPU gives you the choice of using the Nvidia card all the time, or enabling Optimus. (Optimus allows the computer to use the Intel integrated video on the processor for standard use and turn the Nvidia card on as needed.)

 

I have revisited this topic many times and have searched for a video or picture that would display the answer to a simple question. I either can't get my head around this or am misunderstanding something. I clone the laptop image to a single external monitor, the monitor I use is 1920x1200. With these newer laptops that are 1920x1080, will the entire image be on both screens? For instance I had to physically upgrade/replace the m6500 1440x900 screen that came with it to a 1920x1200 or the laptop would only have a portion of what was displayed on the external screen. With a 1920x1080 laptop there will be no 1920x1200 hardware replacements available. I should mention I am using Linux.

 

I have no idea how linux would handle screen mirroring with different resolutions and aspect ratios.

But if you ask me, the more powerful CPU and GPU is worth making the switch to 1920x1080.

 

thanks, "worth making the switch to 1920x1080", you're inferring that if Linux can't make it display properly then just change monitors?

edit: ah yes, I forgot there is also the 16:10/16:9 thing going on

 

Honestly what will most likely happen is that linux will run both monitors at 1920x1080, Then it will be up to the monitor to decide if it will stretch the image or give you narrow black bars at the top and bottom. (Hopefully your monitor has a setting in its options to keep it from stretching the image.)

 

Ok, thanks for all your help, much appreciated! I should post some questions on my distro's forum regarding the displays, in the meantime I'll be researching the m6600, and m6700 as well. thanks again!

 

Unless you're getting it for under $50, go for atleast a M6600. What's your overall budget?

 

Got two 920xm and yes they run hot but in the short term they are still ok for day to day stuff, as for the M6600 it is a solid machine with one weakness that is shared with two other models and that is limited mxm compatibility when it comes to some of the newer cards that said the firepro m6100 often ends up being the default budget upgrade. My main gripe with the machine is when it came down to maintenance where the whole thing has to be disassembled to clean the gpu fan and heatsink. The Fermi quadros are ok for low spec and old titles provided you are mindful to not let it roast as it is the death of them but the worst card by far in these machines is the firepro m8900 as they suicide with ease.

 

thanks! I'll be wary of that firepro m8900. re: m6600 and having to tear everything down for heatsink cleaning, were there later models in this series that resolved that with access panels? I know when I was researching m6400/m6500 people were bemoaning the absense of the access panel that the m6400 had that apparently made deep cleaning much easier.