New M6500 Discussion Thread

Hi,

that's right. I'm using a Spyder3. The software calculates a color profile and uploads it to the graphics card (at every system start). After that everything is color calibrated (including desktop and browser).

Cheers,
Alex

 

I spend at least an hour going through Bokeh's previous posts this weekend, and I think I found the one where he talked about turning off some of the NVidia stuff to get it to work, but I'm not sure.

However - I currently own a ColorMunki, and...I'm just not sure what to think. People have said this before "oh yeah, you color calibrate and it totally fixes the colors on the desktop and everywhere else". So I bought the ColorMunki, and - it doesn't work. With certain pics on the m6500 it's not obvious at all, in other pics it's really obvious. I have pics which have a red light in them, giving the pic a slightly red cast (normally). In windows, the thumbnail is horribly oversaturated red. Open it in the default windows picture viewer (color managed, I believe), and it looks normal like it's supposed to again. Press the "slideshow" button (which for some reason no longer does color management) and it's garishly red again. I can also see the same effect in Canon's DPP by turning color management on and off and switching between them.

I've read a ton of other people say they have the same issues. Some things have no viable color managed options available - video players, flash in the browser, video games, the desktop...

Now if Spyder 3 really figures this out somehow in a way that ColorMunki does not - I would be absolutely ecstatic. Seriously! But...people told me ColorMunki would work and it didn't. I previously had an m6500 with an RBG display (unfortunately in addition to color calibration issues, it also had dust under the screen, and more importantly made a whining noise that when it was quite was driving me absolutely crazy). I followed Bokeh's instructions (previously) on disabling some of NVidia stuff, and it seemed like it toned down the colors but they still weren't color managed and still rather over the top...

I would *love* for someone to tell me that they knew what I was talking about and I was wrong, that Spyder 3 somehow works differently than ColorMunki and manages to color profile everything (on an RGB+LED display, I actually have no problem getting everything color profiled on a regular UXGA display for some reason)...

 

Does anyone familiar w/ SSD speeds think that the Writes here are kind of slow? Not sure what to do, AHCI is enabled in BIOS, drivers seem up to date.

 

What happens after that? I posted very much earlier about this problem but nobody thought it was a big deal. Now, I noticed that it is happening more frequently with the fans running high when I try to force shut down whenever it shows me a blank screen when I try to boot to the desktop. Also, my M6500 seems to slow down after awhile with fans running high again and I need to shutdown for awhile before starting up. My M6500 is just over 2 years old now.

 

Kinda new here but I have been reading back some. Anyway I have a M6500 with a 840QM and a ATI 7820. It was running pretty bad lately so I put in an Intel SSD and redid the OS and it works alot faster now. However when trying to run games like Skyrim even on the lowest settings everything works fine for about 5-10 min then the frame rates drop so low its unplayable. Same thing with Swtor beta this weekend. I updated everything I could think of but didnt know if there was anything else I could do.

 

Hey sherman. Yeah that's basically the same way it happened to me. First, not coming out of standby for a few weeks, then not even booting to desktop, requiring several hard shutdowns... eventually it'll just blackscreen/freeze on you at random moments. Could be immediate, could take 2hrs. The screen simply goes black, sometimes sound will continue to play, but the keyboard is locked up so no CtrlAltDel option. You'll waste a lot of time thinking it's some application you opened, browser window trigger, or RAM issue, but after all diagnostics pass, the neverending parts replacement process will begin.

They replaced my motherboard twice, RAM twice, and power supply. Then they gave up on the Covet & sent a refurbed silver replacement, which was specced way differently than the Covet, so then began making visits to replace the parts to match it. It's on its 2nd screen and I'm about to contact them for a 3rd as this one has a weird dark side/light side issue going on, natch. It hasn't blackscreened/frozen yet, so it's nice to be able to actually get something done on it for once. Just finished getting everything set up again.

The fans running high & performance slowing down, that sounds like heat to me, but could be anything. They do run up to high speed when you're holding that power button down for a forced shutdown.. at least my Covet did.

Keep your warranty current!!

BTW if anyone knows how to enable the keyboard pointing stick/mouse nub thing, please let me know.

 

Elderan those are cutting edge games, I bet your GFX card is getting worked over & it takes a few mins to start cooking & then throttling down the performance. Have you checked the temps w/ HWMonitor or something? Also I'd keep fiddling w/ the drivers, getting good drivers on this laptop can be tricky. I had whack colors on the 2nd external monitor but not the big primary, could not figure it out, then I found yet another driver & all is well...

 

Honestly I never thought about the heat. I am going to run the monitor and run the games and see if thats it. What temp range should I be in?

 

Thanks for your reply, evilhead! I can't believe Dell is making laptops of this lousy quality. My M6500 had no problems until a few months down the road when this overheating became an issue after some Windows update. There is a thread on it in the Dell support forum with no apparent solution: Precision m6500 Overheating issues, when fun starts cpu multiplier go down from 23 to 3, and does not retunr normal to 23 evan without anything loaded - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

If anybody else is facing this problem, please let me know how to fix it besides giving it more clearance space underneath because I already tried it and it just saves it from overheating for minor programs but if I do anything more complex, it will start to overheat. What a waste of productivity time! And I can't call Dell support because they would probably swap out irrelevant parts and just waste more of my time.

 

Elderan: I'm not sure what temp range for your spec, but you could just see what temps its at on idle for a while, then start up the game and see if it jumps after 10 mins, just to get an idea if it's heat or not. BTW you could click that SpeedStep thing in BIOS & see if that does anything.

sherman: Yeah, it's really frustrating, b/c when the system is stable, it's fkn awesome. I still love my broken Covet; before this problem happened she was the hottest woman in the room. There's nothing else comparable. I guess it is some foundational chipset flaw that just can't be fixed by swapping parts, at least not permanently. It's xtra frustrating b/c some folks obviously are unscathed; they have zero issues, their systems are stable as ever. I hate these people.

I've kind of lost confidence in any M6500 replacement; even though all I want is for my Covet to work again, they no longer have any left to swap, so I might push for the M6600 despite the resolution downgrade, just to be able to get some fggn work done.

I do appreciate that Dell at least bothers engineering a workstation like this, and I can understand that strange random bugs can be missed in a schedule to get cutting edge tech to market. I don't regret paying over $5500 for it at the time, and I took excellent care of it. I AM annoyed that I am sending back a new-looking maxxed-out Covet and getting a dinged-up & scratched silver Referb w/ different specs that need multiple visits to correct & repair as the replacement. Why wouldn't they keep enough Covets around for warranty stuff? Dumb.

BTW here's my thread over there, no resolution there either:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19336090/19743938.aspx