New M6500 Discussion Thread

Thank you for testing that. That sounds right. I think one of the reviews on the Dell site said the same thing about a limit of two monitors running under windows. I'm also guessing that if you use one of the 30inch dual dvi monitors, that that would count as two monitors, so you can't run a second monitor if you run one of those.

Was the performance and image quality comparable to running the internal display, or at least compable to the quality of your monitors? I hope the external ports don't go over the USB bus or anything like that.

I have heard of people running more monitors using various USB solutions, but then your talking much lower graphics performance, and I suspect that these may be OS dependant solutions.

I'm interested in being able to run another OS/desktop under vmware, or possibly kvm on one of the displays and have usable performance where it doesn't take seconds to refresh the screen. I've seen other posts that claimed this was possible with decent nvidia graphics and their proprietary drivers under linux. I've never seen reports that this was possible with any other vendors cards or with any of the open source drivers, but hopefully some day that will be the case.

Nataraj

 

I don't think so. These are workstation graphics cards, so I guess they can handle virtual screens of at least 8192x8192 px (I'd have to look it up to be sure), which would mean that two 30" monitors with 2560x1600 shouldn't be a problem besides each other. I'm absolutely sure that the cards can handle 4096x4096 px (even older integrated Intel chips can do that), so in any case it should be possible to run one 30" monitor virtually above the other one.

Yes they were absolutely normal. I connected my LCD TV (1920x1080) via DP-HDMI and my very old CRT monitor (1600x1200) via VGA. Of course the CRT was a bit blurry compared to the other screens, but not due to the output of the M6500.

No, they use the native DP and VGA interfaces.

These adapters are very limited due to the USB2.0 transfer rate. They can give you approximately the same graphics power like 12 years old desktop cards. This is still enough to display 2D content like a traditional desktop, but don't expect 3D features like Compiz or Aero.
Nowadays USB3.0 would be a better solution for those external graphics cards, but I doubt whether we'll see this in the near future, since we have a better interface with ExpressCard for years now which would allow at least limited 3D support (still not enough for modern games), but I've never seen solutions based on this.

I'm running multiple VMs in Virtualbox and there are no issues with the screen refresh. By now it even has limited 3D support, so I can run simple OpenGL games like Supertux or Hedgewars in a VM. Of course this doesn't make any sense.
In principle this even works with Intel chips, but the GMA 950 of my old notebook is a bit too weak for Supertux in a VM. So this is no general question of Free or proprietary drivers.

To me it sounds like you'd plan to make your M6500 a real multiuser system with one user in front of the laptop itself and one in front of extra peripherals. Basically all you have to do is run a 2nd X-Server and assign the correct I/O devices to the correct X-Server. But I can't give you details since I never actually did that on my own.

 

I don't know. I though that a dual DVI or a display port that supports those big monitors, actually used two channels of the graphics card, so if what your saying is correct, that would mean the card has 4 channels. Even so, I think looking at the specs of the card is more straightfoward for a PCI based card. On the Nvidia site, if you look at this card and click on specifications NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 5800 it says that it supports two dual link DVI's. But the specs for the mobile FX 3800 simply doesn't say. I suspect this is somewhat related to how the notebook vendor brings the video interfaces out to the user.

Another concern is whether linux will properly boot and GDM will automatically start the xserver with the external displays working. Also, is it possible to suspend and resume with proper video? I have had these problems myself with Macbooks and I know that others have had similar problems with other notebooks including Dell.

I called ORIGIN PCs - Custom Built Gaming Desktops and Laptops to see if they would build me a notebook for linux so I wouldn't have to deal with Dell Sales and support, but they said they only build desktops for linux because they didn't have working linux drivers for their audio, wireless and possibly other things.

We'll I've done this before, just not with a high end graphics card. I don't think there's a real need to run two X servers unless one wants two keyboards and mice. I've done it using a seperate window manager for each screen. The main thing is to configure the X server so there are two seperate screens. At least for vmware, it knows how to go into full screen mode on one display of a multi-display configuration.

I'm not planning to run graphics intensive applications simultaneously on both screens.

Nataraj

 

NVIDIA 258.96 graphics drivers are now out of beta and are WHQL certified

Notebook - Windows Vista / 7 x86
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/258.96/258.96_notebook_winvista_win7_32bit_international_whql.exe

Notebook - Windows Vista / 7 x64
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windo...ok_winvista_win7_64bit_international_whql.exe

Notebook - Windows XP x86
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/258.96/258.96_notebook_winxp_32bit_international_whql.exe

Notebook - Windows XP x64
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/258.96/258.96_notebook_winxp_64bit_international_whql.exe

 

You're correct. Up to now I didn't take the Single/Dual-Link issue into account. To get 2560x1600px via a Single-Link connection one would have to reduce the refresh rate to 37Hz.
Honestly, I don't know how many links are in those cards. So I guess we'll need to find someone with at least one (better two) 30" monitors.

In my tests GDM always came up on the internal display and I activated the external ones afterwards via nvidia-settings. I didn't try to get GDM show up on another display.

No idea. I don't care for resume and suspend. My computers are either running and working or switched off completely. Boot times don't matter to me either.

I guess this was just an excuse to stick to their contracts with MS. As I see they use Intel HDA chipsets which is no problem with current Linux kernels. And if they can't manage to get WLAN, BT etc. modules that stick to well documented standards, they obviously aren't as competent as they want to be seen. Before stumbling upon the M6500 I had similar experiences with Clevo.
And even my experience with Dell was somehow disappointing. I called them to order a M6500, we configured the hardware, everything was fine and then I said, I want it with RHEL 64bit like they advertise it, instead of Windows. But the guy on the other side didn't even know of that option and he couldn't find it in his software. So I gave up for the first time. After some rants in a Linux forum I decided to give it another try. The same story happened almost the same way, but with another guy. But in the end when I was about to give up again, he said, that he'll ask his boss if he can do something for me. Some days later I received an e-mail from the boss who still didn't offer me RHEL, but at least he offered me to buy the M6500 with FreeDOS. I accepted. Unfortunately there were some minor missconfigurations in the latest offer: wrong CPU, wrong DVD drive, nothing serious. But it took another two weeks to solve this because only the boss had the right software to configure it without Windows. Until today nobody could tell me why the M6500 is advertised with RHEL but not actually available with it. I guess this will always stay one of the big mysteries of computer support.

 

Yes, you CAN connect a pair of 30" Monitors to the M6500 as long as they use displayport for the connection. Make sure your dock has 2 displayport outputs.

There were some issues with connecting a pair of the 1st generation Dell 30" monitors. Can't remember exactly what the deal was.

 

I have had similar experiences with Dell both at the sales and support level, as well as with their field technicians. I buy the poweredge servers for my clients and we run CentOS or vmware on them. For a short time the configurator on the web page would let us order them with no OS. Now that option is gone. I can't find any systems on their web page that don't insist on a Microsoft license.

I have found that if I call them back enough time, eventually I can find a sales or tech support person who can answer some of my questions, but it wastes alot of time. There are some more experienced engineers on some of the Dell mailing lists. I do see them post on the Dell-linux-poweredge list. Also, if you have any kind of support requests at all, even just hardware, it helps to update your support profile first to say that your running linux. They have different support techs for Linux, at least for the poweredge servers.

That's good to know. There are display port to dual dvi and display port to VGA adapters, but many people complain about them not working well. I've seen these complaints about all of them, apple, dell etc. Also the dual dvi adapters have a USB connector as well. It is my understanding now that the USB connector is just for power, but they waste a USB port.

Nataraj

 

And you can run both of them with full resolution?
Also, does that mean that the DP jack of the M6500 doesn't work anymore if you connect a docking station and that therefore you'll need two DPs in the docking station?

The M6500 is my only Dell system. I don't run any servers. I'm just a little programmer, not a Sys-Admin. But almost being forced to buy Windows, just because MS has the power to press everyone else with their politics is very annoying. I surely wouldn't have gone through this odyssey if it wasn't the same with all the other manufacturers.

 

Yes you can run both 30" display at full resolution. Both 30" displays must be connected to a E Port Plus Dock that has 2 DP connectors on the back.

The only way to get three displays is with the new ATI FirePro M7820 GFX card. This will give you three displays via the dock, 2 x DP & 1 x VGA OR 2 x DP and 1 laptop display.

 

Any news? I bought M6500 before USB 3.0 was available so I would be very happy if that could be done. If the answer is no, it is ok, I just want to read it.