M6600 Owner's Review - Warning - Large pics - Personal Opinions

That's not so bad then. It's a little warm, but it's pretty consistent.

For what it's worth on the RAM thing, I believe the dual core chips only support two RAM slots, while the quads will run four. If the dual core system has four RAM slots, they'll all probably work with the quad core... I can't see Dell spending the money to put extra slots on the board that it couldn't use.

A slight aside: Am I the only one that's annoyed by the CPU temps that modern DTR laptops run? The ASUS G73 and G74 that I had sitting on my desk a couple weeks back were the coolest that I've seen recently and they maxed out at about 75*C, iirc. My W700 gets into the 75-80*C range with its C2QXE, and it looks like the M6600 is in the same ballpark.

Just by way of comparison, I had/have several desktop Pentium 4 powered DTRs. One of them was a 15" Clevo with a 2.4GHz Northwood. It was only slightly thicker than the M6600-1.7" according to an old review I dug up, versus 1.3" for the M6600-and stock it idled at about 38*C and hit about 53*C under full load. Lapping the IHS and the heatsink got it down to the low 30s/high 20s at idle and it maxed out comfortably under 50*C. Even the 17" Clevo with a LGA775 3.4GHz Prescott chip with a real-world TDP of about 120w stayed well under 60*C from the factory. Heck, even the 1st gen Inspiron XPS (which was a flaming hunk of beeeeeeep that that went through 5 motherboards in 3 years), which had a 3.4 Prescott as well, kept it under 65*C.

Of course, the P4 machines were slightly (or in the case of the 17" Clevo, a LOT) heavier and thicker, and the P4s were only rated to a TJMAX in the low 60s so they had little choice. But it still reeks of engineering compromise dictated by bean counting when a machine with a 45w TDP (or 55, in the case of the 2920XM) CPU runs 20*C+ hotter than a machine with a ~65w TDP CPU.

...And that's my "they don't build 'em like they used to" rant for the day. I'm way too young to sound like an old man.

 

Getting close to catching up

3DMark Score
P3671
Graphics Score
3351
Physics Score
7527
Combined Score
3496
GraphicsTest1
15 FPS
GraphicsTest2
15 FPS
GraphicsTest3
20 FPS
GraphicsTest4
10 FPS
PhysicsTest
23 FPS
CombinedTest
16 FPS

 

750/1500/1750 i suppose?
8 points more for me on i7 2720QM

3DMark Score
P3679
Graphics Score
3379
Physics Score
6937
Combined Score
3551

I think these settings are close to the maximum the 4000M can achieve, 800MHz core will fail in my experience (may be the shaders failing eventually).
Since there's no way to override the 2:1 shaders:core ratio within Fermi architecture (in my knowledge), i assume there's not much room for further improvements over 750Mhz (except with overvolting).

So M8900 is definetely the (gaming) winner, unless new drivers will give Nvidia some boost.

I am curious about the 5010M performance, but i think it would theoretically just be slightly faster than 4000M.
It will have more memory (and error checking) plus 384 vs 336 pipelines, but that's it.
Though it would be interesting to know whether it's still GF104 based (or GF114).

About "slower" new drivers: you mean Forceware v280.19 ?

 

Correct - the 280.19 Beta Drivers released on July 28th. They don't measure as well, but they are the best drivers that I have found.

I think my slowdown came from installing Adobe Master Collection 5.5.

 

Thanks for your review! That's a lot of work and want to let you know I appreciate it.

What are your thoughts on the keyboard and track pad? Do the keys feel solid and is the mouse responsive?

Also, if you get the 8900 GPU do you still get switchable graphics? I know its not the auto-switching of Optimus but can you manually switch over to IGP graphics with a function key or from a utility program?

 

It is based on the GeForce 580M so it is going to shred the FirePro technically on paper by a little bit. However it's downfall could be its ECC VRAM and that could make it slow on the DirectX side of things. However the GPU itself is pretty godsend though. You will need a 6990M Radeon equivalent FirePro to rival it.

 

If it's confirmed (please post source) then the Quadro 5010M is the GF114 based Quadro. GF114 is technically identical to GF104, only power optimized, so nothing really new there.
It just means 5010M would probably run on higher clock or have more overclocking margin.

Other than that the differences with 4000M are only in number of pipelines, amount of onboard memory, ECC error checking.
Originallly the 5010M was supposed to be the business counterpart to GTX 485M, with 4000M somewhere in between GTX 480M and GTX 485M.

Judging from benchmarks the (GF114) GTX 580M is only marginally faster (8-10% in 3DMark Vantage) than a (GF104) GTX 485M, and that's mainly due to the higher core clock (620MHz vs 575MHz).
Since the Quadro 4000M shares the same basic architecure as these 2 cards, its performance is pretty similar: when overclocked to 620 o 575 it reliably matches the performance of GTX 580M / GTX 485M with no heat issues.

So all in all i'm not expecting anything groundbreaking, but let's see.

EDIT:
just stumbled on this:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-5010M.47195.0.html
Looks like the 5010M scores 3100 points in 3DMark11, which is almost the same as a stock GTX 580M (or a ATI 6970M). It's probably clocked at 620MHz.
All in all as you can see nothing exceptional, gaming wise.
Obviously the card will be a serious performer in pro apps.

 

Very nice review, well detailed and i got a few chuckles out of it. I've always liked this design, and kinda wished a thinner version was made for latitudes..dunno why.

 

Bokeh
This is a fantastic review.... I'm a gun nut, a photography buff and a precision groupie so it appealed to me on many levels. thanks for the outstanding job.

BTW several of your close-ups have great bokeh what lens/body did you use?

 

Yeah the ECC VRAM and the Quadros-enhanced Driver and vBIOS makes it a good professional application powerhouse, but a mediocre DirectX gaming performer when compared to its 580M counterpart. Also the proof of me knowing it is a 580M counterpart is compare the specifications to the 580M on Notebookcheck and you will see they got the same shader processor count and all that.