M6600 gpu problems

Hi guys, long time lurker, first time poster here. I usually search for the info i need, hence never needing to post. I bought my M6600 used off CL, worked great, the M8900 is a great gpu, for both work ( doing 3d modeling. Maya, zbrush, mari, UDK )and games. and was 100% happy with it.


Well my issue is firstly my m8900 will not boot once I install drivers, it blue screens, and i get a ati.mpq or something to that effect. I figured my gpu was dead cause everything i tried, nothing worked, re-format, took out and made sure it was secure, nothing...


I Bought a 660m gpu off ebay thinking it would work, being a mxm 3.0b, sadly, that was not the case. When I tried to boot it up, it just turns on the screen, but get nothing, just a black screen. Any help would be greatly appreciated, currently working on my portfolio and running out of savings to put me through my studies ( the reason i did not buy another m8900 / 6970m / quadro, to costly for me atm ).


Sorry for long post


Oh yeah, the card is a Dell 2gb.

 

You have the right drivers for the M8900 pro?

The GTX 660M card will not work without some bois or driver modifications, because it is a Kepler base GPU. The M6600 bios only likes Fermi GPU cards.

You may want to try installing the HD 3000 intel onboard video drivers just too see if those will work without removing the video card. IT is possible to take out the video card and run the intel onboard video. I'm not sure how the fan and heatsink combo will work, if you need to leave it in there, or take it, out or what. heh

 

Hey Tmast, thank you for the response, was really hoping for some feed back, unfortunately I ran the dell diagnostics and it showed the gpu being bad, not really sure how accurate they are, but didnt waste to much time ( really limited on it atm ), if you can sent me a link to drivers that you know work 100%, i will take it apart and toss the gpu in and try it. Worst thing is Dell won't honor their warranty, the guy who sold me the laptop stop paying, which I was never told was a possibility when I called them before i bought the laptop. waste of 3 years of warranty... I already took out the gpu, and been using the hd3000, however for UDK / Mari, even zbrush runs like : \ it just wont do. As far as the issue with the heatsink / fan, I run mine without it, it gets warm, but nothing terrible. Do you believe there could possibly be a work around for the 660m? Deep down I knew the new kepler chip set could be an issue, but I just could'nt find another video card in my price range for the time being ( taking time off work atm ).


Wonder if i can sell the gpu. If anyone is in need of one, let me know, its practically brand new, Dell 2gb 660m. or if anyone has a 8900m that they can let go for a good price, let me know please.


Thanks again Tmast.

 

Unfortunatly, the only Nvidia cards that work plug in play are the quadro 3000m, 4000m, 5010m. People have gotten the GTX 670m and 675m to work because they are Fermi. I am not sure what ATI cards work besides the 6970m and the m8900. The 660M should work with some modding, I know people have gotten the 680m to work, but I think some of them are having issues. Best to search the forum here for more information.

The M6600 Dell drivers off dells site should be fine. I am running the ATI drivers for the M6600 M8900pro card off ATI's site without any problems, Its around 400MB file size I think.

You may want to wait for someone else to post before you go and do all the work of installing the could be bad M8900 card back in there.

 

Yeah, maybe someone else will chime in. On a side note, ill DL the original drivers from Dell, but i was using those large drivers also, 400+ mb, but nothing, weird thing is, it'll only crash once i install the drivers, the screen and even the HDMI work fine before hand, as soon as i install drivers, it blue screens. I've even tried the 6970m drivers, no good though, that just black screens.


Oh yeah, its stupid that it has issues running kepler gpu's when if im not mistaken the 7970m is using a different architecture then the 6970m also... and low and behold look at this guy, lol TekAdvice: M6600 Progress Report - CPU and GPU swap, so i really don't understand. Luck's a B*** i guess, even though i tried to do my research to find something that would work, I ended up regretting it still, oh well. : \

 

You may want to check the M8900 card vbios if you do put it back in. Maybe the previous owner corrupted it, and thats why you are having problems. A quick check would be to use HWiNFO64 in windows. My M8900 says 013.011.000.014.039889 for the bios version. Hopefully you can check this without installing the drivers.

 

yeah, I to thought that might be a good idea to check, the bios are in order, same bios. I went to bed 3 hours ago trying to make it work... lol, but still nothing. you happen to have any idea how accurate the dell diagnostics is on this thing?

I get a video memory discrepancy error I think its a goner.

 

Not sure, It's too bad you dont have warranty. Have you tried to transfer the warranty online? I thought all the precision laptops had at least the standard 3 year warranty? If not, i'm affrade you will just have to find another M8900 or quadro card. Unless you can get the 660m card to work. I would search the forum here and see what to do. I know dell has drivers for the 660m. I would try that first, since you have it already. I know personally I would like to put a nvidia card in mine to get the battery life up.

 

Didn't some one throw a 680m into m6600. Kepler shouldn't be the problem here.

 

Baii is correct, http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/685461-dell-m6600-4000m-gtx-680m-upgrade.html I am a bit lost now. Ive searched everywhere for info, but am coming up short, and now that i think about it, isnt the new K5000M on kepler also?


Can any of you guys think of a simple but acurate way to check to see if a GPU is dead? might just be that the 660m is a dud... cause I do find it strange that I get no video what so ever. Even my dead / dieing m8900 works, untill i try to install drivers.

thanks again for the help guys