New M6500 Discussion Thread

Bokeh-

That's what I like to hear!!!

SteveG

 

Debguy-

I was only concerned with the temperature/power management item.

There seem to be a whole lot of laptops made recently that do not manage the temps properly or have undersized power components.

Dell has had this happen with a few of thier lower level ones... Studio 17 and XPS 16 and others.

Luckily, it sounds like the M6500 doesn't have this problem!

SteveG

 

Yes...exactly It's my understanding that Intel Speed Step is controlled at the hardware level and can't be overridden. TurboBoost, with my processor, fluctuates the CPU between 1.73ghz and 3.06ghz....I'm wondering if this is what some are calling throttling. ....then there's the temperature/power management functions that will 'throttle' down the CPU to keep it from melting down.

In any case, mine does what it is supposed to, no complaints here.

re Linux: I'm going to boot up some LiveCD's (Salix for Slackware) and check out the driver situation. Thanks for the info.

 

The 1.73 is the stock speed of all 4 processors running. It consumes x amount of power and produces x amount of heat. The turbo boost is there for applications that are not optimized for all 4 processor cores. If an app would run faster with 1 or 2 faster clocked cores, the processor shuts down 1-3 cores and speeds the others up. Your 1 or 2 cores running at 3ghz pull the smae amount of power and produce the same heat as all 4 cores running at 1.73ghz. Its all about optimizing processor behavior for the application.

Throttling is when the cpu is operating at a lower frequency or lower effective frequency due to a lack of heat dissipation or power supply capacity. That is why the m6500 has two large fans and a 210/240 watt power supply - to just run no matter what you throw at it.

 

Is the 1440x900 XGA+ screen a glossy or matte screen? Thanks!

 

For those interested in tuning the cpu frequency / voltage, take a look at RMCLOCK. Its a little utility that gives you real-time info on your cpu's cores voltage, clock, temp etc, and you can tune settings for different usage profiles, undervolt, underclock et. you can save some volts or some clock cycles when your machine is just idling. much more sophisticated than windows power management.

I use it all the time on my aging hp 9420, and I will use it on my 2-weeks-away M6500

cheers
Ian

 

Let us know if you manage to extend runtime by any meaningful amount with this.

 

The cooling system of the M6500 seems very well done. Even in tests I've never seen CPU temperatures above 70°C. My 3 years old Core2Duo notebook often had nearly 80°C under load for hours and it still works fine. I really wish Dell would release a BIOS update that actually allows to set the fan operation parameters manually. I'd like to run mine 10-15°C warmer, but quietly.

Has anyone managed to pull nearly that high amount of power out of the power supply?
I made a test some time ago with full display brightness, WLAN constantly firing, all 4 cores on 100% load (+hyper threading), speakers at full volume with a test sound, camera on. But I was not able to pull more than 80W. Surely I would have gotten even more with some additional heavy CUDA app, but given the fact that my FX 2800M has 10W idle consumption and TDPs are very conservative I doubt whether anyone will ever pull more than 130W in real life.

All screens are matte.

 

Yes, you can get close. The FX 3800M will draw 100 watts by itself under full load. The i7-920XM will do 55 watts by itself. RGBLED is around 8-10 watts. Hard drive is 5 watts for non-ssd, and double that for raid. We are already at 170-175 watts and still have usb devices, system board, wireless nic, dvd/bluray, express card, and pcmcia cards to contend with.

 

I have the 820QM (45W TDP), FX 2800M (75W), 2 HDDs (10W) and WLED (guess it shouldn't make any difference).
Up to here it's all covered by my 80W-tests including system board but except the graphics card on load.

A single USB 2.0 circuit will never be higher than 2.5W. Let's assume the M6500 has three circuits (left, right, express card). That makes 7.5W, + 10W from PC-card. The BD burner needs 2.5W for burning. So we have 20W for peripherals and since some of them will be external, they will not heat the notebook itself.

Sure one can pull 200W+ somehow. But how realistic is this in real life? Did you actually ever need more than 130W in every day use (not in benchmarks)? In real life I'm on 32W idle and hardly above 55W when on load. The reason why I'm raising this question is simple thermodynamics. If you input 200W+ electricity, you need to output 200W+ heat. This is what the cooling system of the M6500 is designed for. And since I didn't even come close to this mark, I guess nobody needs to worry about cooling issues in every day use as long as the circumstances are nominal (no blocked fans, good connection between dies and heat pipes etc.).