New M6500 Discussion Thread

Edit: Just found this. Anyone know any thing else on the issue

M6500 freezes - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

Cheers

 

Can some Windows user please tell me what this DPC latency checker actually measures?

Latencytop, the Linux tool I used, measures the time between an interrupt call from a program (e.g. an interface driver) and the start of the actual execution of the task that was requested by the application to be executed.
Additionally latencytop gives me no fancy summarized graph but a number for each program, which of course is not the same for all of them.

So I guess DPC latency checker either only cares for one program (the audio driver?) or gives you a mean value for all the programs.

The strange thing is, that even though I have huge latency values (1ms average, 4ms peaks) compared to Windows users I never noticed audio dropouts in my recordings. So I guess the values are not comparable, which brings me back to the first question in this post.

 

No freezing m6500 here with ATI m7740 and no fingerprint reader.
bios a04, clean Win7 x64 install.

 

Excellent,
ThanksSvenC

 

No M6500 freezing here too with the ATI m7740 and no fingerprint reader.
bios a02, Win7 x64 install. Occasional black screen start-ups with hard reboot required though (not a big problem but still wondering why this occurs).

 

Check out the power modes in the newer Dell System Manager software. In addition to previously mentioned low latency mode, they have an "Extended Battery Life (Max run-time)" option. It shuts down devices and software as well as slowing the refresh rate on the screen to give you the absolute max run time.

All of the individual options can be changed under a new section of advanced power settings called "Dell Enhanced Settings", but if you allow it to save as much power as possible, you will get the following:

Software shut down-
Sidebar
Aero Glass Desktop
Search and Indexing

Hardware shut down-
Optical Drive
Media cards
Firewire ports

Display-
Refresh rate to 40hz (still flicker free)

I will have to test this at my next long meeting to see if I get more than the usual 3 hours.

 

Is there anyone try to update the Broadcom 5xxx Gigabit Controller firmware? I tried so many time and it doesnt work.

 

I was able to get it to run successfully on mine. I am running with user account control off though. I am not sure if this makes a difference. That and A04 BIOS.

On another note, can anyone tell me which ControlPoint module to download on the website that manages the RGBLED color profiles? I did a fresh install and I am not sure which one of those packages does the color. They all seem to be related to the fingerprint reader and security, etc. Thanks!

 

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU...

...to everyone that posted about the M6500 random freezes!!!!!!!!!!!! I have had this issue for about 10 months and you BET on Monday i will be on the phone with support to get new memory chips. I did not check yet to see which chips I have but i don't really need to - I have the EXACT issue discussed in the threads and it has been driving me crazy.

 

If you purchase the i5-520M, can you upgrade to the i7-940xm later on?