M6600 Owners Thread

Ticked of course.

 

big brother wins....

 

I made the hard decision and I will order my M6600 monday (I already have an agreement on the machine, so that will be only the formal part).

I read this forum preatty often, and I did find the forum about 17 plus inch notebook bags.

My problem is I dont want a backpack. I will be carrying the only the notebook and a few personal items (wallet etc.) in it as I will order 2 power bricks.

The one I found and will order if nothing better found:

Claire Chase Executive Briefcase X-wide 154E-Black - Luggage Pros

Now has anyone had a claire chase bag (are they as good as their price)? Or can someone link me a smiliar style notebook bag (it must not be leather, only good solid looking and strong).

Thx for the help.

 

Anyone noticed a similar screen corruption on their 1920x1080 LCDs? I've had the same problem on both my previous XPS and now the M6600, so it seems impossible it is a coincidence; perhaps my non-US locale is to blame, after all?

It's frustrating enough having to limit oneself to the 1080 vertical resolution, any resulting corruption is just too much for me :--(

Piotr

 

I have one more question to the gurus here: with my disk configuration, where would you put your swap file?

The large file transfers seems similar between my Samsung 128GB SSD minicard and the 2x750GB RAID0. However, the other operations are quite a lot faster with the SSD, and swap file is about frequent writes/reads of chunks with different sizes... Thus, the miniSSD seams a better choice - but:

- at a long run, won't frequent writing to an SSD drive degrade its performance?

- also, I'm quite limited with my OS and all apps squeezed onto the smallish 128GB drive, so moving the 24GB swap file from it would create a lot of room...

Hmm...What do you advise, guys?

 

With GeForce cards, there is an official utility for monitoring the card's usage (both by 3D graphics and CUDA cores). Is there anything similar for the Quadro M line?

 

Ok, Friday I just received the new system.... again and I have a few quirks. Such as the keyboard is much more audible then the last system (m6600 returned) and there seem to be some marks on the bezel around the monitor and on the bar under the monitor that make it seem as if this is a returned system... yet what is really irritating is that the memory clock speeds in furmark and hwinfo show 800mhz on both sticks when they are 1600mhz... anyone else having this issue?

 

OK, please disregard - I have just installed the complete NVIDIA System Tools with ESA Support, and it works like a charm with my Quadro 4000M (even though it's not officially supported)...

I can now monitor how my CAE number-crunching software is using the CUDA cores, and the clocks speeding up! Even when they do, the temp is pretty stable. Nice!

Piotr

 

Mate, 1600 MHz RAM will run at DRAM frequency of 800 MHz - this is perfectly normal (mine show 798MHz, with FSB : DRAM=1:6).

Piotr

 

Saw earlier that people were talking about upgrading the MXM graphics cards in the M6600 and M4600 later in the life of the machine.

Have been looking at how MXM graphics cards are specced and implemented in laptops. Even though the 3.0 spec is much more clear and uniform, it is not really a strict spec - its more like guidance. You get the width and length of the card, but not the height. You also get no real guidance for how the heat sink or bracket underneath is going to be handled.

The MXM 3.0 spec says:
Type A targets mid-range and performance systems
Board size: 82x70mm
GPU: 64/128-bit (optimized for 29x29mm)
TGP: Cost optimized for 35W

Type B targets high-performance and enthusiast systems
Board size: 82x105mm
GPU: 256-bit (optimized for 35x35mm)
TGP: Cost optimized for 75W

(Source - http://www.mxm-sig.org/file.cfm?doc=36A88883-DFFA-E3E6-16C301BCF5633572)

This means both the M4600 that uses the Type A board and M6600 that uses the Type B board are exceeding the generic thermal spec by 20 and 25 watts respectively.

But this also covered in the MXM 3.0 spec:

"OEM Module Concept
The MXM version 3.0 specification allows system designers the flexibility to customize the module in a OEM shipping configuration. The MXM version 3.0 specification achieves this goal by allowing the freedom to use OEM-specific, non-compliant, modules in an MXM version 3.0 compliant system.

Common scenarios are:
Form Factor
OEM modules are allowed to use non-standard form factors as long as the system can accommodate MXM version 3.0 standard modules.

VBIOS ROM
OEM modules are not required to have a ROM chip as long as the system can correctlyoperate using a standard MXM version 3.0 module with on-board VBIOS ROM.

Power
OEM modules can rely on additional voltages supplied by the motherboard. OEM reserved pins are provided by the specification. All MXM version 3.0 compliant modules will not connect these pins. Extra Signals OEM modules are allowed to use extra signals provided by the motherboard. OEM
reserved pins are provided by the specification. All MXM version 3.0 compliant modules will not connect these pins."

What I am reading in all of this is that OEMs can make custom cards that will only work in their machines as long as the machine will also take a completely standard card. This means that the 100 watt Nvidia card and accompanying thermal solution may not work in other MXM compatible machines since it is a custom OEM card. Taking it a step further, there could be height and thermal solution differences between the ATI and Nvidia cards in the M6600 itself since the ATI card seems to fall within the "standard" 75 watt thermal output. The Quadro 3000M also falls into the 75 watt standard.

I am starting to think that effortless interchangeability of these cards may not be as simple as it seems. Considering that the price of older MXM cards seems to stay pretty high, the idea of swapping cards out later might not make sense at all.