New M6500 Discussion Thread

Ok, if we're talking about graphics now, let me ask this question:
I have the 2800M and it seems that the default BIOS fan behavior (on-off-on-off) isn't sufficient to cool it under heavy OpenGL-load.
From time to time I'm playing Warzone2100 and if there's really a lot going on in the game, it seems like the card respectively the driver (nvidia-glx 190.53 from Debian unstable) temporarily disables OpenGL to cool down - resulting in a breakdown of the game and putting me back to the desktop.
But if I disable the BIOS fan control (big thanks for this tip!) and manually set both fans permanently to level one (not sure about the actual RPM), it works just fine. I didn't check the temperatures during these heavy scenarios yet.

Did someone with an NVIDIA card experience similar things? The OS or the 3D technology shouldn't matter. So any Windows application with heavy 3D stuff should cause the same behavior.

 

There are lots of posts out there concerning driver issues causing extra heat and crashes in Warzone 2100.

Issues specific to our generation of cards started to be identified in 190.38 - so you might try another driver. There are some Windows specific fixes like running as an admin or trying the compatibility modes. This reminds me of when World of Warcraft started to badly overheat nividia cards a couple of years ago.

Looks like nvidia issues with this specific game go back for years. Sorry man...

 

oh very cool, I use CS4, there wouldn't happen to be a GPU processing patch for it would there?? Seems highly unlikely but I figured I'd ask.

 

You already have some acceleration built into CS4. They added more in CS5. In fact, Adobe released a patch yesterday or today for Premier Pro with further expansion to the gpu acceleration. Will be encoding video in CS5 for the first time today.

 

hmm...last time I encoded a 1080p video at 30 fps in premiere it used all 8 threads at 100% and used up all my RAM too. I suspect no GPU processing was done in this instance. Granted I havent tinkered with any CS4 settings I just load in my files do my editing and compile.

 

Thanks for the info! I use the GPL version which is known to be more ressource hungry. Maybe this applies for the graphics too and therefore causes higher temperatures.

This might be complicated at this point because I need the proprietary driver in version 190.42 or later to support the 2800M if I want 3D support. Unfortunately the free nouveau driver isn't ready yet. It has no OpenGL support and specifically on this card it produces funny colours and crazy edges which create a nice artwork but no usable desktop.

No reason to be sorry. I'm only a casual gamer and have a workaround. I really hope this is an issue of NVIDIAs Linux driver, because then it's only a matter of time until I can switch to nouveau. Otherwise Dell would have to face lots of frustrated Windows users who bought the M6500 with an NVIDIA card due to its vast computing power.
Anyone out there who already uses heavy CUDA applications (e.g. HD-encoding with tmpeg)?

 

Well guys looks like I might be getting another exchange M6500. It seems the new exchange I recieved won't identify the USB 3.0 Host controler because every time I install the Host controler it fails to installl correctly. thats aside from some reallly bad crackle in the speakers.

The Pro Support made me do a complete reinstall of Win 7 64 and still didn't fix the 3.0 problem. I'm thinking that I should just get my money back since I'm still within the time frame. I just really like this system and love the color and screen.

Any suggestions? Is the 3.0 trully a software issue like the Dell rep is telling me?

 

Also after the reinstall of the OS the monitor goes completely blank right after login to Windows and then comes right back on. Anyone know why it does this?


Also after all the reading of the forum I finally have the money to purchase a screen calibrator but not sure if the x-rite or colormonki would be best for me. I'm not that familiar with color setting so the simplest one would be nice!

Thanks again everyone for the help!

 

This issue is caused by control point system manager, and I agree, it's really annoying.

 

Been away for awhile, but finally stopped back in for a visit.

I finally took the time to install the "urgent" System Software update on the Dell 6500 drivers page and I'm not happy.

I didn't see any complaints or issues about the update, so I figured it was safe. Still, I manually set a Windows restore point prior to installing the update.

Now my HD in my second bay (Hitatchi 500GB) has an annoying "click" as is constantly unloads the heads. I can see that the System Software update changed the driver for this HD, yet I can't roll back, and the system says that is the only driver available, and when I try to roll back to my Windows restore point, the restore fails every time. No matter what restore point I try to implement, the restore fails!

What's up with that Dell?? Can the Dell reps that read this site please take back to the team responsible for posting the driver updates that when you post an "urgent" update on the site we need to know more information about what it does. Please don't post an "urgent" update, that can't be rolled back, and will make significant changes that can't be "repaired" without giving us more insight into what the update actually does.

OK, rant over. I suspect that lower-level power management features have been implemented on my Hitatchi HD, probably adjusting the settings from "performance" to "power saving." I swear there used to be a setting in the BIOS that would enable a user to adjust these settings but I can't find them now. Anybody know how I can access the lower-level power management settings on my HD to reset them back to their original settings? (Without installing 3rd party software.)

Anybody else notice this "feature" being implemented as a result of the Dell System Software update?

Keith