M6600 Owners Thread

Upgrading the CPU would not be worth the price, I think, that is only an incremental upgrade, at max turbo on all cores the difference is 3.4 GHz vs 3.0 GHz (barely over 10%). You would get a lot more bang upgrading the GPU, if it is well utilized in your workflow, and you could quite possibly upgrade to a Quadro or GeForce from a later generation than what the M6600 officially supports.

That said, I don't think the M6600 actually supports any 4K outputs (have you tried it?), DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 were not introduced until the M6700. If you are really thinking about working with 4K you may be better served getting a newer model.

 

Dp on dock can do 4k30. The right hand side dp port may do 4k60 but I can't really remember.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks, Aaron44126.

I have not yet tried 4K but is only a matter of time. To be honest I was not thinking of the display, the M6600 can still render 4K can't it (even if I can only see it as HD on my laptop screen)?

One reason I had considered going from Nvidia 4000m to 5010m was that means I do not need to change heat sinks etc. Do you mean I could actually buy an even more powerful Nvidia Quadro GPU and install that? Doesn't that start to get messy and a bit more complicated?

Looking at the bigger picture, maybe getting a refurbished M7710 is the better idea.

Thanks.

 

The m6600 will take the 6xxm / kx000m gen cards, so 680m or k5000m. Another good value option is the AMD m6100, which will use the same heatsink but require some thermal pad moving around.
Imo, mobile gpus are total rip off~ unless you really need those extra power on the go, just leave it as is.

M7710 is a nice spec upgrade, especially the IPS screen. Personally hate the design though, it just look so blend~.

 

Thanks, Aaron, for the suggestion about using windows 10 ControlVault drivers for the m6800. I did download the windows 10 ControlVault drivers and installed them on the m6600, but the card reader still did not work. I noticed in "properties tab" that the drivers for the card reader did not change.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you!

Kallias

 

Eh, was hoping that would work. No other ideas. I've been using M6800 and 7710 ControlVault drivers on my M6700 without any trouble, so cross-generation works (sometimes), figured M6600 wouldn't be very different...

 

Would appreciate the notebook deities thoughts on this...
I recently purchased a refurbished Dell M6600 to add to my stable. This unit came from the refurbisher with a reimage disk (Win 7 Pro) and the OS preinstalled on a 128 GB SSD HD with a 250 GB HDD also installed. The computer is set to RAID mode. I have never used RAID, always used AHCI.
What I want to do is install a new 240 GB SSD. I would like to install it in AHCI mode. Again, I have no experience using RAID, so please consider me a newbie...
I went into the BIOS, which of course is set to RAID. When I clicked to reset to AHCI, BIOS warned that I might not be able to boot properly, implying a reimage would be required.
My questions, and please be gentle, this is my first RAID:
1) By being in RAID, are the 128 GB SSD and 250 GB HDD somehow "married" such that I can't remove the empty 250 GB SSD without upsetting the system? If that's the case, what's the advantage with RAID?
2) Depending on the answer to the first question, can I leave the 250 GB HDD in the computer when removing the 128 GB SSD and installing the 240 GB SSD...and I would also like to install the 240 GB SSD under AHCI and not RAID?
3) Any perceived issues with the original drive(s) being under RAID and the new drive being under AHCI? The only issue I could see is that I'd have to label the original drive(s) as being RAID so that I remember to change the BIOS if I need to use the original drive(s) as backup.
Thanks!

 

1) The system can be running in "RAID" mode without any RAID arrays defined. Disks are individual as you would expect, if you do not define any RAID arrays. You must use the Intel Rapid Storage drivers for the disk controller if running in this mode. There is no real advantage to running this way (other than that you can add RAID arrays if you like) but it is the default mode for M6600. I personally always switch to AHCI.
2-3) You can add or remove drives as you like. If you switch from RAID to AHCI but your old drives were not part of a RAID array, nothing changes with them, and the data will still be there.

If you switch from RAID to AHCI (or vice versa) *after* Windows has been installed, it will BSOD when you try to boot, because it will load the wrong disk controller driver. If you are doing a fresh Windows install after switching to AHCI, it is no problem.

 

Thanks so much. I think I will just go into BIOS prior to imaging the new drive and switch to AHCI. I'll keep the original drive as a spare, and notate that the BIOS needs to be reset to RAID prior to reinstalling. I didn't know RAID was the default mode for the M6600. All the units I've ever bought were from the Dell Outlet (this one was from an Ebay refurbisher/reseller) and evidently they must set the units to AHCI in the BIOS before shipping. I agree with you, I don't see the purpose in running in RAID mode. I like to keep my OS on a separate drive and store data on the non-OS HDD(s) as a data backup.

 

Thanks, baii. I agree with you re the looks of the M7710,but what can you do....

I do not have a desktop as most of my work is done on the road, which is why I am thinking of upgrading as my biggest bottleneck at the moment is rendering HD video.

One other quick question for anyone is about the DVD slot on the M6600. I was going to buy a newmodeus' caddy so I can insert a third HD into my laptop but just discovered it is not screwed in. While it may not fall out the simple fact that it can be removed (from a hotel room, for example) without too much hassle by someone puts me off. Does anyone know of such a caddy which can be screwed in?

An alternative option would be to buy a mSata HD but they are still quite pricey, when you think the drive would only be used as additional storage back up space. That's why I am tempted to stick 1TB HD (not SSD) into the DVD slot, I just do not want someone to be able to remove it too easily.

Thanks.