M6800 Owners' Thread

THANK YOU, I'll buy it today!!!

And since you good people have answered my questions so well you get another one!

Has anyone changed the "BIOS SATA operation" from RAID ON to AHCI?

 

Ive been running an ANSYS fluent sim with GPU acceleration for the solver, CPU has been at 100% and GPU at about 60% for over 50 mins, not heating issues. GPU is at a constant 54 C THis unit has good cooling.

 

Brand new owner of a M6800 here, for some weird reason it was supposed to come with an AMD FirePro M6100 but its reporting as an M5100, anybody else seen this?

Otherwise, I love this damned thing, its far superior to my old M4400.

 

Where is it identified as such? AMD Catalyst Control Center at least should show it as M6100 if it is one.

I have an M6100 and it is misidentified or not recognized at all in many places, probably because it's so new and also because Dell has apparently changed the hardware id:

AMD Support and Game Forums - Graphics card showing as "standard vga graphics adapter"

That is probably the reason why AMD Linux drivers do not recognize it either.... Thanks Dell!

But I have never seen any software claiming it to be an M5100 so I would rather guess you have M5100 that belongs to an M4800.

 

That is what I suspected, but both the Catalyst Control Center, GPU-z, and the Device Manager report it as a M5100, however it has the correct GPU clock for the M6100.

Its so odd, but I'm not too picky, I love this damned thing.

Swapped my 128GB SSD and 750GB Hybrid over directly from my M4400, and it booted right up and reinstalled the correct drivers from the Dell driver disk.

 

Did this on M6700. (Not using RAID and would just as well not have to install the Intel driver.)

If you are doing it before you install the OS, no trouble. If your OS is already installed, you will get a BSOD if you try to boot after changing the disk controller mode. To fix this on Windows 8, all you have to do is boot safe mode immediately after changing the disk controller mode and it will work out the driver stuff, then you can boot normal mode. (You probably want to set up a separate boot menu option for safe mode ahead of time because its tricky to access on demand.) On Windows 7 you have to make a registry change... Google can explain more.

 

How do you check the GPU clock? At least HWINFO shows varying clocks as the GPU throttles, and most of the time my M6100 is completely inactive due to GPU switching.

Personally I would definitely want to make sure I had the GPU I ordered, as even though there aren't that many differences in specifications, the compute throughput of M6100 is almost double of M5100:

AMD FirePro

And the significance of that parallel computing capacity is likely to increase in the future as OpenCL etc. are utilized more.

 

GPU Z reports the max clock, and I have the Intel Video disabled in BIOS because my games were not seeing the AMD

 

I'm not an owner yet, so I'm not sure if this is really the appropriate place to post this or not, but I was considering getting one of these as a college graduation present. I don't really do "professional" work, aside from trying to get in to app development, but from what I gather the firepro GPU performs about like a 770m as far as gaming and general performance, and I really like the build quality, warranty, material choice, docking port and expansion options of this computer. I have a gaming desktop, so it would just need to be good enough to run stuff when I'm not at home, which is fairly often.

Am I sound in my logic, or am I making a mistake?

 

Here's my 2 cents, as I have spent some time to think if these machines are the best option, especially if you are not a graphics professional:

- Price: Varies a lot depending on where you live. In the US you can get it relatively cheap, in the Europe you might have to pay quite a lot extra relative to that, especially for some options. The multitouch screen for example has an insane price in Europe. And you definitely should not buy directly from the web as you will get a better deal by asking from the sales.
- Build quality: It's the same as everybody else: put together in China, likely by Foxconn, from more or less the same components as everybody else. Expect some quality fluctuations. My M6600 was definitely a lemon, failed twice completely and had some signs of bad build quality. Generally speaking, Dell isn't really known for good quality these days, to the point that it's for example used as an example of decreasing quality like in this study here: Study: Online retail contributes to decline in product quality | News Bureau | University of Illinois
- Chassis: Materials are fine and what you will find inside is a solid frame and a whole lot more screws that keep everything in place compared to your typical laptop. It's sturdy enough to handle it's size, whereas some cheaper 17" laptops tend to flex in all sort of ways.
- Upgradability: It's definitely among the better ones. You can actually change the components, they are not welded together like annoyingly most of the stuff nowadays is. Still there are limits on how much that helps, especially considering that CPU sockets for example change completely in every generation.
- Portability: It's big, especially if you consider you have to carry the humongous power adapter as well. But as compared to other 17" laptops it's quite ok.
- Display: Dell sources these from multiple manufacturers so depending on your luck you can get one of the better ones or not. I got a not so good Chi Mei that's commonly used in much cheaper machines. Notice that oddly enough, for a machine that seems to have designed for the graphics professionals (see GPU choices), it doesn't even have an option for an IPS screen anymore.
- GPU: If you are not a graphics professional, you are basically forced to pay for ISV certifications and worse compatibility as compared to more powerful and cheaper gaming cards. These cards are basically used in only a couple of models from a couple of manufacturers and Dell has apparently even changed the hardware id of the card to something custom, so that they seem to have managed to doom the Linux driver support. That might be because they want you to pay for a bit customized Red Hat version or something, I don't know. I would definitely get one with a gaming card instead if I had the choice, even though I don't use it for games.
- Motherboard: I have read quite a few issues with Dell motherboards, especially so that they have been exchanged multiple times. I don't know the statistics or how that compares to others but I'm not too confident on that part to say the least. My M6600 had its fifth motherboard inside when it was retired for good.
- Other components: Pretty much the same as everybody else.
- Connectivity: Docking connector, ability to use quite a few external displays (with AMD GPU at least) and all the typical ports. What I'm missing is a digital audio output (though apparently you could get that from the HDMI port with a proper adapter).
- Noise: This has quite aggressive cooling so most of the time the fans spin in lower speed at least put a bit of load on it and it will ramp up the fans pretty much immediately. Mine at least also makes a bit weird clicking sound when the CPU fan ramps up and the fan speed also seems to fluctuate a bit pretty much constantly, which makes the otherwise not so loud humming sound more annoying. I have used some higher end Lenovos and they have stayed dead quiet for most of the time. On the plus side this tends to stay quite cool in normal use (but so did the quiet Lenovos).
- Support and customer service: Google Dell Hell and you will find what many have experienced, me included. Also knowing what sort of used parts they use as warranty replacements, I'm just hoping I don't have any need to deal with Dell customer service ever again.