New M6500 Discussion Thread

I figured that might be the case. After reading about some of the issues online, it seems the majority are related to the 3800m card. Given the decent deal I got at the outlet, 3 yr onsite warranty, and 1920x1200 rgb screen (i will hold out against the 1080 screens as long as possible!), I feel fairly comfortable with the m6500 purchase despite some of the problems with it.

 

[I've edited this post to delete the description of problem so nobody wastes time trying to help solve a solved problem. Solution follows]

My system drive is a Crucial M4 512GB SSD. After some very frustrating diagnosis, I've learned that when these Crucial drives hit 5,184 hrs time-in-service (you can check it with CrystalDisk), the drive basically has a midlife crisis and blue-screens your system about once every two hours. The solution is to go to Crucial's support site and download the latest firmware version. Problem solved.

xPat

 

All,

I have a Dell M6500 which I purchased new and arrived on 6/28/10. The system came already installed with Win 7 Ultimate 64-Bit and (3) hard drives – (1) 64GB SSD Minicard where the OS is installed and (2) 256GB SSD drives configured in RAID 0 mode. I haven’t performed any updates from Dell other than standard Win 7 updates from Microsoft. The BIOS is currently A02 using the Intel Matrox Storage Manager ROM v8.9.5.1001 PCH-M raid controller (I guess that is the RAID controller). The video card is nVidia Quadro FX 3800 1.0GB DDR3 and the CPU is Intel Core i7-920XM Quad Core 2.00GHz 8MB Extreme Label. The SSD drives are Samsung I believe but can verify.

I recently received a virus along with other Trojans and plan on rebuilding the OS for a clean installation. I’ve already imaged the OS drive as well as the data on the (2) drives in RAID 0.

Questions:

1.) Should I update the BIOS as I’m way back in BIOS vesion? I ask because I usually don’t update the BIOS unless there are serious issues I’m experiencing as I’ve read where sometimes a BIOS update for the sake of updating can cause more issues. The only issue I’ve had is that on occasion (not too frequently) the system would just freeze up completely where I would need to manually power off the system. I didn’t like this as the system is pretty beefy with 16GB of RAM running only Internet Explorer and/or Microsoft Outlook when this would occur but I lived with it. Any advice if a BIOS update would fix freezing or heard of such a case?

2.) If I reinstall the same OS on the 64GB mini SSD drive do you recommend any software to bring the drive back to factory defaults as far as performance goes? This is the first rebuild of an OS with a SSD drive and I want to ensure I maximize performance as I’m going to wipe out the data on the drive anyway. I see on Dell’s site there are several .exe files pertaining to the Samsung SSD drives which I’m using but didn’t know if anyone has used these and/or what benefit.

I spoke to a Dell representative who was very helpful and shared with me that he has seen challenges where Win 7 won’t see the mini SSD when other SSDs are installed and customers have had to pull out the two additional SSDs and then install Win 7 on the mini. If I do this, will I lose the RAID information/data or can I unplug these two SSDs on this system, install the OS on the mini SSD, plug in the two additional and all data for RAID remain? I’m not familiar with this BIOS as with a home system I purchased I was able to disable drives individually which were members of RAID and had more functionality in this area.

The Dell representative was pretty adamant I needed to update the BIOS to the latest as well as update the SATA controller to the latest followed by the Chipset.

Any additional comments or suggestions on how much I should update the system or proceed with the OS reinstallation will be greatly appreciated. If need be, I can provide additional specifications.

Thanks in advance.

 

The only discussion I could find of running the m6500's Core i7 CPU (mine is an -840QM) in TURBO mode was way back on page 428. That discussion mentioned ThrottleStop, a freeware utility for adjusting turbo clocking multiples, but there was no discussion I could find about whether this is a good idea, whether there is serious risk of heat-related damage resulting, etc.

Is anyone running their m6500 in Turbo mode? Any problems? Is this advisable?

Thanks,
xPat

 

I finally got around to posting in the the Notebook Review Forum Marketplace Computer Components section my offer to sell or trade my nVIDIA Quadro 5000M graphics card with heatsink in the proprietary format only for the Dell Precision M6500.

Edit: My Marketplace post got automatically cancelled because I had not read the new posting rules and thus had not posted using the new posting thingamawidget. It may take a while before I get my proper post together.

 

I just found this on the web: http://www.nextcomputing.com/images/datasheets/viewport.pdf

Looks really cool - the thing is about the size of a laptop in carry-mode, then you unlatch it and it splits into TWO external 17" 1920x1200 monitors to create a 3 monitor display overall.

Has anyone used this product with m6500? Looks like it probably requires TWO displayport outputs, but I would think a USB to DVI thingamagig would suffice to drive the 2nd one.

Looks like a hell of a portable computing setup if these monitors are as nice as the RGBLED of the m6500...

Thanks for any feedback,
xPat

 

hello, can anyone who have m6500 with fx3800m, vbios version other than 62.92.A2.00.0A
dump the vbios(gpuz/nvflash) and upload it?
need to check if my card's problem is vbios incompatible...........much appreciated!!!

 

Hello, I added a Crucial M4 256GB mSata (which seems to work great as OS boot drive, at least configured with 2 500gig drives in RAID0) and attempted a fresh install of win7 pro x64. Everything went smoothly until I started to install the Touchpad drivers and Control Point packages.

I am not sure exactly when it started but I discovered that the M6500 suddenly doesn't want to enable any USB mice at all any anymore (while all other USB devices including a USB keyboard just work fine)! Reverting the installation to en earlier stage didn't help at all.

The really strange thing is that exactly the same happens in the old untouched pre-mSata installation now that I had left on the two 500GB Raid0 drives even though I had not had any problems with external USB mice ever!!??! So I thought that the Bios maybe had been corrupted and reflashed the current A09 Bios and set everything to default. But this didn't make any difference either.

Did the touchpad driver or control point software somehow damage the touchpad firmware??? How can this be possible? The Touchpad shows up in the device manager as Dell Touchpad connected to the PS/2 port.

Moreover I saw that the control point packages (that showed up for my Service-Tag) were lacking a lot of options that the old factory install had, like changing the color space to aRGB or sRGB.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

I just upgraded both speed and capacity - Crucial is now offering DDR3-1600 for $87 per 16gb kit, or $175 total for 32GB of -1600 memory (the m6500 ships with slower DDR3-1333 memory).

Here's the link if anyone else wants to upgrade: 16GB kit (8GBx2), 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800 upgrades for Dell Precision M6500 (Quad Core) Laptop/Notebook, CT2392269 from Crucial.com

Disclosure: I have no commercial affiliation - I just remember a couple other people in this thread wanting to upgrade and thought I'd post the link.

xPat

 

xPat - Thanks for your posts as they have been extremely helpful especially at this point in my decision to upgrade the M6500 in support of VMware Workstation and multiple virtual machines.

The plan is to upgrade the factory installed 16GB RAM to 32GB and mini SSD drive - mSata 64GB SSD [Samsung SSD PM800] (Operating System) to Crucial 256GB m4 SSD.

I was on the phone with Dell technical support last night and received verification I can upgrade the system to 32GB of RAM due to having the i7 x920 Quad Core.

I purchased the system with 16GB from Dell and all 4 slots are occupied. The Dell tech provided me a price quote of $399.96 plus tax for (4) 8GB modules of 1333MHz RAM which he informed me is the same speed I have now so no speed issues - not that I would probably notice using VMware as I believe overall is having more memory.

QUESTION: The speed of the currently installed memory is 1333 but the Crucial you reference is DDR3 PCS-1280. Did you upgrade to this type of memory for a total of 32GB? Did you have any issues when you upgraded? Did you perform the upgrade yourself?

I was planning on going with the Dell memory although a higher price in order to avoid any compatibility issues.

A few months ago, Dell sent a technician out to replace the original modules which had a known issue which would cause the system to randomly freeze up. Now, no issues at all! Not one freeze.

Thanks - René