M6600 Owners Thread

I understand your grief, if the reboots are still so frequent on your machine. But even though the same did happen with mine twice at the very beginning (back in July), I've never witnessed them ever since.

So, to paraphrase the quote above:

"The M6600 is the *only* Windows machine I've ever owned that I can honestly call stable and reliable"

For almost 2 months now, my unit never ever hung, froze, or rebooted. Yes - some of the applications do hang sometimes, but they are notorious of doing that. None of those hang-ups ever prevented Windows and/or my M6600 sub-systems from continuing to work properly, though...

Piotr

 

Yeah, I went back and forth between the Quadro 4000m and the M8900 for about a month. I don't do CAD or games either, but I like to have the power to run them should the need arise, so the Q3000m wasn't even on the table for me.

Ultimately-despite my better judgement-I went with the Quadro because I figured it was worth gambling on for 8hrs of battery life since I could just disable Optimus and basically be back to the same kind of battery life I was used to with my W700Ds if need be. And that's basically where I'm at now.

Given that the Dell doesn't have any serious competition (the HP 8760W is significantly more expensive and not built to the same standard, high-end Clevos are nice machines in their own right but I've owned several and they are not as rugged as the Dell), it's neither here nor there really. If you need a 17" notebook with a matte screen and a decent amount of horsepower that will stand up to being carried around a great deal and perhaps dropped occasionally, this is the only game in town right now and-with or without Optimus-it's a solid machine.

Interesting. Out of curiosity, are you using the machine just as it came from Dell? Or have you reinstalled Windows or done any hardware upgrades or anything?

The first thing I did with mine was to pull the stock HDD, install a SSD, and do a clean Windows install using reference drivers instead of Dell's drivers whenever possible. I suppose it's possible that Dell did something with the machine that would cause, say, the Intel reference chipset driver to play up but I can't imagine it disabling Optimus in the BIOS of its own accord if that were the case. I'd love to blame a hardware failure-and I'll admit that I haven't actually run Memtest on it as it's my primary machine-but it runs Furmark + Prime95 for hours on end without a hiccup, and the instability isn't manifesting itself in a manner that would lead me to suspect a bad motherboard or RAM or anything like that.

What I may do is get one of the spare ASUS G7x machines at work up and running again and throw the stock Dell HDD back in this thing and see what it does with the Dell-supplied Windows install and drivers.

On the up side, though, if I leave Optimus disabled I can go ahead and dual boot it with Ubuntu 10.04LTS. And if you think these machines are fast in Windows you should see what a 2920XM and 16 gigs of RAM will do in Linux on Gnome 2 with all of the stupid Compiz eye candy disabled. It flies.



In other news, I've been playing with the cooling system on this thing a bit, more to satisfy my own curiosity than anything else. I ducted a ~45cfm Sunon squirrel cage blower to push air through the CPU heatsink the other night:


It looks hokey but it was sufficient for what I was trying to accomplish. It netted me a drop in CPU temps of about 15-17*C under full load, IIRC (I forgot to save the screencap)-down to about 65*C, which was cool enough to allow it to sit at a slightly higher turbo frequency (~2.9-3GHz vs. 2.6-2.8 normally) with Prime95 running. Interestingly, though, the air coming out of the heatsink was only lukewarm. I didn't bother actually measuring it but my Highly Calibrated hand (that's only partially tongue-in-cheek; play with heatsinks and fans and fish tanks and stuff long enough and you get a feel for this kind of thing ) says it was about 43*C, +/- about 2*. A disparity of about 20*C between the hot and cold sides of the heatsink isn't very good.

Based on that, I suspect that this thing might benefit from having the CPU contact plate lapped. Bokeh found that re-pasting it helped some, but I think that I might be able to find another 5-10*C in it on the conditions that the heatpipe itself isn't a limiting factor, and the mounting system is applying a decent amount of pressure to the CPU. When I have time I'll order a spare heatsink and bottom cover from Dell to play with.


And for those of you interested in montor data, my machine has the LG LP173WF1 display (hwid LGD02DA). I just calibrated it using a Spyder 3 Elite; it looks like it *almost* covers sRGB:

 

FWIW, I never had to re-configure HW or re-install SW, as I simply configured my machine the way I wanted it from day one - a bit more costly I know, but all the components are covered by the original 3-year Warranty...

I'm after a good ics/icc file for my display, BTW

 

Oh, and to be completely honest - even though my machine is absolutely stable and really fast, I do have a few problems with it:

- the VGA output from my dock is transiently unstable
- the audio system clicks from time to time
- the laptop is never absolutely silent, with the two 7200rpm HDDs spinning pretty loudly
- *some* eSATA enclosures are not recognized

But that's about it!

Piotr

 

Yeah, that's one way to do it, but it costs you. And not just in $$. It costs in speed, too. The Dell SSDs are slow relative to aftermarket options, ddr3-1866 offers measurably better performance than the 1333/1600 options that Dell offers, and I'd just as soon buy my own HDDs to ensure that I get the specific brand and model I want. And while the factory Windows install is one of the cleanest I've seen, Dell tends to lag behind its OEMs in driver updates by several revisions. Which also, as a general rule, costs you in performance.

Just depends on what you want; if a hassle-free experience is most important, ordering as close to what you want as you can get from Dell is definitely the way to go. Personally, I can do better than Dell can, simply because I don't have to operate within the confines of a balance sheet, and I'll happily trade convenience for power and performance.

//edit: I'll see if I can grab the calibration file tomorrow

 

Interesting - could you please post your WEI, and how the 1800MHz RAM is rated?

A balance of hassle-free and performance has been my way - with all compromises involved

I'd be very grateful indeed, mate!

Piotr

 

Siorus did your display get much better after calibrating? I have the same screen (replacement for Chi Mei) and I still find it kind of blueish. I would have to pay for calibration, I would like to know if it is worth it.

 

Hey, nice work on the cooling. Looks to "provisional" to me. I would never dare to stick so much ducktape to my little (well, maybe not so little) precious.

I also have LG LP173WF1 panel. I'd like to join the list of people hoping to get your profile. Can you export it and attach it to the post in here? Would be nice to have it, as no chance for me to get access to fancy devices like Spyder ...

Edit: skipped the part when you said you've NV.
I have R8900m. Anyone having a decent color profile for AMD card here?

 

Same here - but Tom, did you try to adjust your colors using the Intel's graphics options? The internal LCD doesn't use Quadro - it's the Intel graphics driver that's responsible for how it looks. I have managed to get rid of the blueish cast, and increase the saturation... Still far from perfect, though.

Piotr

 

Well does it work like that with my firepro m8900?