New M6500 Discussion Thread

I replaced FX3800M card with M7820 about two weeks back and until now I had no lockups yet, before replacment I had about 1-2 lockups per week... anyway 2 weeks are little bit to soon to tell for sure so I will wait few weeks more and report back here ...

 

I'm liking my current card so I definitely want to fix the problem if possible. Has nvidia(or dell) released any firmware update for the 3800M?

 

I have found M7820 to be a bit better than FX3800, because is about 10% faster, much cooler, has DDR5 and even supports DX11 ... But FX3800 is way more expensive of course, because of Cuda cores and possible better Linux drivers ... if you don't need/use this, then IMHO M7820 is way better choice, and if we can prove that installing M7820 iliminates annoying freezes, then we have absolute winner =)

 

Many thanks DebGuy. Please keep updating if things changes.

 

I just want to know what exactly is the cause of this freeze(where in the FX3800M is the problem lying at?) and if there's a way to fix this now that we know it has something to do with the nvidia card. If it is a flaw in the hardware design, then I'm ready to say good bye to my 3800M.

 

There is a quite long discussion here: Re: M6500 freezes - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community
There are many possible fixes described here (replacing memory, installing MS hofixes, disabling USB ports, etc.), but AFAIK no one works really for sure, some fixes are reported to significantly decrase number of lockups, but lockups are still there ... even Dell seems to have no clue yet, why these freezes occur at all ... I'm not saying that FX3800 is "the freeze causer" here, but maybe it has to do somthing with freezes and even if freezes are caused by some other component than GPU, maybe with M7820 this "we don't exactly know which component" is not causing troubles anymore ... Anyway, is pretty damn hard to diagnoze thes freezes, becasue they occuring so randomly and don't leave any diagnostic data behind ... I'm really hoping I'm freezeless now with M7820

 

I have had only Nvidia cards and have not noticed the rainbow effect you mention, even though I have tried to replicate it.

 

Way out in left field suggestion, but if the problem is only with nVidia cards, I wonder if it's the old PowerMizer acting up again.

 

Now that's weird! I tried to ignore this as I thought it was some kind of inherent consequence of using RGB LED back-lighting in a screen (external LCDs with wide gamut CCFLs connected to the M7820's Display Port show no such effect whatsoever).

It's like short trail of rainbow or rather blurred red green blue lines visible for a fraction of a second if I swiftly move my eyes on a dark background with some bright objects. This is especially annoying in AutoCAD (CAD traditionally uses white lines on black background), but a black desktop background with a few bright icons on it is enough to reproduce the effect.

The only explanation I have is that the red, green and blue LEDs are pulsed sequentially at a high rate (like 100Hz or more). Could the graphics card affect this or is there something wrong with my screen?

 

Just FYI, dell rep told me to check the main site next week about the Quadro 5000M as a part #/upgrade