M6600 and M4600 are coming in Feb.

Wish it was that easy... are there RME ExpressCards? ... wait, you mean the RME Firewire ExpressCard???... I didn't know it existed. I'll have to find someone to borrow one from to see if it'll work.

HUGE discovery. My DAW has light meters on every channel. It would show a little feedback on every channel before the drivers would even launch. I would tie on an ADAT interface and all the channels would be redlined (attached the same systems to other computers without that effect)

soooo...I disconnected the AC Power adapter to the laptop and EVERYTHING started working 40% better. no more ADAT redline, no more mystery feedback in the lines.

But what did I disable going down to only 90watts? Does that mean my graphics card has been messing this up the entire time? I plugged in a Dell 90watt power supply to keep going... working still

I don't mean to bombard this post with these issues, but this Notebook review site is great; one day someone will do a Google, find these posts... kind of thinking outloud.

Will get the RME though, GREAT suggestion.

 

Disabled Nvidia Quadro in the device manager and running just Intel HD. I can now use the 240watt power supply and music equipment

so... it's the graphics card messing things up.
Onboard firewire still drops out, I have to use my ExpressCard still
Digitizer pen pressure still inconsistent in Photoshop CS6 x64

The amount of distortion that comes through all the usb ports, firewire and ExpressCard ports caused by the operation of the accelerated video... is that normal? Is this bad hardware or just bad design?
Is that safe for my data?

Unacceptable. I feel this is the final post for these matters. I'll go through warranty service, and hope that this workstation doesn't get messed up any further.

 

Just go with the warranty service, change the graphic card as well as the mobo. Dell service is second to none. Did that before on my m6400 & just jumped to m6600 coz got it at a good price.



Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

It sounds like your machine has a myriad of issues, could be software or hardware, probably a bit of both. I purchased two m6600's and am currently on replacement 4 & 5. It is quite disappointing that Dell QC isn't better for this level of machine. However, once you get a good one they work very well.

I noticed that in another one of your posts you indicated that you were using a 90 watt power supply. While the machine will run the cpu & gpu will be throttled way down which is not something that is going to help.

I run Cubase & 20 channels of Presonus ADDA without issue at very low latency (sub 20ms). I can also playback 60+ tracks with effects & eq, provide 6 different headphone mixes & record 16 new tracks and it works without issue. It is my understanding that firewire audio devices are very particular about the specific chipset of the firewire port. The Presonus devices I had did not like the on board firewire but work very well with an expresscard firewire with the chipset recommended by Presonus. I can't blame the Dell for that. You can always see if your audio hardware manufacture has any recommendations for express card firewire adapters.

 

I don't know if I included this little tidbit (might have been on another post... or a PM to someone...?) after a day of using the 240watt power supply, I booted the machine and it didn't recognize the power supply.

Same 240w power supply attached to my equally HUGE inspiron showed as "Unknown" in the bios

the 90watt was working, I wanted to see if the power from the 240 was so dirty that it was messing with the system (which is still a possibility)

Also, I wanted to continue to test it without fully depleting battery's power (only other dell adapter I have). And as you mention it throttles it way down (managed by hardware I suppose) Perhaps the throttle down would disable the culprit.

A day trying the 240w without it being recognized, I shook the brick really hard, plugged it in, and it was recognized. I then installed dell's feature enhancement Pack and got this message; (hope the picture shows)



are there any Dell friendly programs that measure the power input so I can see the exact wattage? I would like to monitor this over time... My Desktops always had that function

I am now back on the possibly defective power supply.

While writing this, I have 'SpeedStep, C-States, TurboBoost, and Hyperthreading disabled while running high resolution audio files and it's working flawlessly. No dropouts or disconnects... and from the onboard firewire!

It has to be the power supply. I just don't know anyone with more than a 90watt power supply for me to test. I'm going to start there before switching out any of the internal hardware... I have a feeling it's this one thing creating the domino effect on the hardware/software issues...

Wish I had the resources (another 240watt power supply) at hand to test my theory.

You may be wondering, why am I putting myself through all this troubleshooting without calling Dell to do it for me? - I like to know EVERYTHING about the equipment I run and any possible temperaments it may have. PLUS I know most replacement parts are refurbished themselves; I would hate to get a whole new set of symptoms from a defective part that didn't need changing.

In the end, it will probably not only be the power supply, but motherboard too... We'll see... I'm going to turn the processor services on one-by-one to see if there is one with such draw that causes the firewire disconnect.

 

SOLVED!!!

Disable C-states (in Bios>Performance..) if you are an M6600 owner

I've seen a HUGE performance jump, and now I don't get disconnects with my FireWire or USB devices.
Also, the Accelerated Graphics can run without creating additional interference.
I ran 3D applications and they run more smooth.
It is expected the pen will stop being spotty and other utilities work as expected.

With my sound card, I can now daisy-chain on the onboard FireWire port and achieve 192khz ASIO recordings...
still configuring it all. from now it's just a driver battle; now that the connection is no longer (randomly) dropped.

C-States is a default setting in the Bios
I've read what C-States is supposed to do, but it seemed to cause more disruption.

Thanks all for your suggestions. Maybe someone will find these posts when they have similar issues and solve it quicker than I could.

 

anyone else doing this?

 

Yes - I have noticed an immense performance boost by disabling this c-state rubbish...

I nearly returned the laptop because it kept defaulting to 800mhz for no reason...

I am now using ThrottleStop 5.00 with:

- Clock Modulation ticked and set to 100
- Chipset Clock Mod ticked and set to 100
- Set Multiplier ticked and set to 30 (You can set this to whatever speed you want up to turbo boost limit of your processor)
- EIST ticked
- BD PROCHOT ticked

Now my laptop runs consistently and fast and no weird behavior.

I have also gone back to bios a04

 

What are the advantages of a04?

Mine was shipped with A06, I just upgraded to A10.

---------------
In addition to the C-states, I finally got around to contacting Dell - They sent me a new power adapter (after I explained how a lot of symptoms went away once I switched from or unplugged the original). Got it the next day and it fixed most of the quirky issues.

No more ghost touching on my display.
I can now daisy chain my audio cards using the on-board firewire
There is no longer any feedback through the channels on the firewire sound cards
Firewire/USB devices no longer randomly disconnect (along with c-states off).

Dirty power...