M6600 Owners Thread

Hello,

I purchased quadro 4000m of fleabay (85£ with shipping) the other day to change my m8900 as i got the need for much more battery life but did not want to spend much. Everything during installation procedure went fine. System booted right of the bat. Installed drivers from nvidia.com for it, then dell's drivers for integrated gpu, went to bios and enabled optimus. Did some bf3 gaming to check temperatures gpu went as far as 75 which is actually lower than m8900 previously inside, cpu was in the 83-4ish, the usual.

But Hwinfo and aida report temperatures of 100-120c for VRM. And i got scared

So i disassembled notebook again and did some testing with various thermal pads and reports for VRM-s remained within 100-120 depending on load. Meaning 0 thermal pads reported 100+, 2x1mm layers of thermal pads reported 99ish and 1 layer of it reported 100ish in idle. In all 3 scenarios temperatures during load, well at least reported ones, went to 120ish - which was ridiculous. By this time I concluded that there is no way they could be that hot with cooling and without it.

So i decided to try it out with "finger" method.



Everything circled red was warm-ish, not even warm to the touch, but software still reported 100 c.


So now i have option to return the card to seller. Which i would not like to do as i had dealings with retarded sensor readings in the past. Or to flash some other version of vBios but not sure if it can do any good. Card is reported Dell by gpu-z and with detailed inspection it does not look tampered with (like it was soldered or repaired in any way). For now i think I'll just leave it be like it is . Optimus is working properly and i'm enjoying 5+ hour battery life atm

I've found someone on page 630ish also reported crazy vrm temperatures with his quadro 3000m but did not see if his card was replaced or whatever happened. The card is working normally, frame-rates are pretty much the same as with m8900 as much as i can notice so i dont have reason to complain (other than retarded vrm readings) when you add price into the mix. Either it is faulty sensor, or retardedly calibrated in factory, or stupid sensor reading...

 

I got the Finger Print Reader back working in Windows 8.1 by using this M6800 FPR driver.

http://ftp.dell.com/FOLDER01601187M/7/CV_Drv_Setup_DFNDR_A12_64bit_ZPE.exe

Cheers!

 

Updated yesterday, seems ok - no problems.
Don't know if it is considered a minor or major update; Scott RC-tek knows about those things.
At any rate, disabled anti-virus, windows pre-login before staring. Went smooth. Running smooth.
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Edit:
That'd be BIOS A15 update.
With IE10, seems I have to run NBR in compatibility mode.

 

Thanks for the update! I wonder if I should disable MSSE before I install the update?

 

MSSE? Microsoft Security Essentials?

Settings, Real Time Protection - uncheck it, save.

Probably don't need to do anything - but I take the extra precautions to remove any roadblocks.
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Edit:
Hey Kallias, btw, just wondering how the new power supply is working out?

 

So far so good with the new power supply. This one is a Flextronics rather than the Delta.

I commend Dell on the speed that they replaced it...sent FEDX overnight.

 

Dell is pretty good at overnighting parts.

No need to disable, run the bios updater and let it reboot the computer, the actual update takes place outside of your OS environment which is the safest way to do it. Boot to something simple like DOS, basic, but quite stable and update. Not sure what the Dell BIOS updater boots to, could be DOS or something else.

I updates the BIOS on my M6700 with MSE or Defender running for each update I did (at least 5 by now) and everything went well. Just make sure that you're plugged in and that the battery had a decent amount of juice left in it (in case of a power failure).

 

I'm on A15 too. No issues either.

 

Yes, lots of people just run it because the actual work takes place outside of windows.

But they do throw that disclaimer warning you to close all running programs.

I'll spend the thirty seconds it takes to turn them off and backup, just in case, so that there will be no question if it breaks. Not to mention how long it would take to get an appt. and then time to replace the MB of which will be refurbished.

 

Thanks the advice. With the three thumbs up on A15, I will go ahead and install the update.