M6600 Owners Thread

Not the same model of drive, there are multiple Momentus 7200 RPM like the 7200.4, 7200.5, etc; and mine had a lot more free space and probably wasn't fragmented.

Your mSATA is behaving like a SSD so that's fine.

 

I'd like to point out that max sequential read and writes are not the most important thing for main OS drive. Random access and random read writes for smal files are. So dont worry about seeing "only" 250ish mb in that department.

i suck at tapatalk typin...

 

I have a question that I hope someone can answer for me. I currently have a ATI FirePro m8900 in my m6600 Precision. I was considering swapping the card out for an Nvidia Quadro 4000m simply for the Optimus switching to save battery life. I am getting into messing around with some 3D applications, but I am not really making a decision on the video card based off of that. My decision is pretty much battery life based. My question is is the extra battery life that I gain from the Optimus switching going to be worth buying a new video card and going through the trouble of swapping them out? Basically I am looking for a ballpark of how much battery life I could look to gain from the swap. If it is only like an hour to an hour-and-a-half, then it's not worth it to me, but if it is going to be 3+ hours, then it may be beneficial for me to make the change.

Thanks in advance for any help given!

 

@Illustrator76,

For what it's worth I'll throw in what I can, however, I'm not unplugged often and haven't actually kept really close track of the variations (power settings and running programs) when doing so.

With the second system in my signature, 5 hours conservatively. If really careful and conscientious around 6 hours. All SSD would be better. Much depends on how it's used when in that state.
Sorry I can't give more info than this. I bought them for mobility, not power independence.

Hopefully others can help describe in detail some of the more acute realities.

 

Hey man, thanks for the help. Beggers can't be choosers, so there is no reason for you to apologize for not being able to give more. I appreciate your input and I am sure others can/will fill in where they can.

Thanks again!

 

As far as i know amd in its low power state uses around 10w. And if you buy nvida you will be able to use intel gpu that uses around 2-3w (or at least that is the figure i remember while i was reading about it). Now knowing that you can calculate it. Just instal hwinfo and when you open senzors tab you have batery discarge rate somwhere in there. Just unplug your system and use it as you would on battery - make sure hw info is running in background. After your battery is near shutdown level check the avarage column of battery discharge. Remember that figure. Now divide your battery maximum charge by avarage battery diacharge reduced by 8 and number you get should be your aprox time when you use intel gpu. Tis will only work if you dont use heavy 3d aplications as my assumption is you will only use integrated gpu while on battery.

i suck at tapatalk typin...

 

There's a couple recently released Dell drivers for us.

I've tried this one. Seems alright. Does have a late feature I'm not familiar with - Hotspot assistant, kind of annoying until it's turned off.
Intel WiFi Driver {A04} (4RH68), Network_Driver_4RH68_WN_15.6.1_A04.EXE

For this one, Dell seems to have some new versioning strategy. Essentially it's defined as A06 instead of A13. You'll see it in the fixes and enhancements section. I haven't installed it and not planning to. Should be ok though as it is just a Alps Driver - no surprises.
Touchpad {A06} (GGY5W), ALPS_MULTI-TOUCH-TOUCHPAD_A06_GGY5W_SETUP_ZPE.exe

---------------------------------------------

BTW, how much battery run time are you getting with those M8900's?

 

If you don't need the pro graphic performance, I think there are several cheaper geforce cards you can put in for optimus.

 

Well I have been terrible about taking care of my battery properly (like unplugging the system and running the CPU on just the battery fairly often), so I get about 1-1/2 to 2 hours of battery life when I am unplugged with the screen brightness on 50%.

I have been messing with some 3D apps lately, but I am not sure how far I will end up going with it. I am just not sure that I want to severely downgrade in graphic card performance right now. I kind of want to stay where I am at performance-wise, but maybe add in the optimus switching if it is truly beneficial to battery life.

 

My battery runtime is anywhere between 2 and 3 hours. Regular office tasks with few chrome tabs out and some c++ cmpailing. I've wrotee between 2 and 3 because of this: if i dont run flash heavy pages, do no wake second hard drive from sleep and work with under 70% brightness i get close to 3 hours.

My " testing" says that you can translate mechanical drive into 20-30 minutes of battery time.

i suck at tapatalk typin...