Optimus ENABLE: M6600 with FireProM8900

I installed software from Dell called: Dell Client Configuration Toolkit. It allows to create .exe file with new BIOS settings. After double-clicking "Configuration.exe" file and restarting system...all our new settings will be applied to BIOS.

I have FirePro M8900 and I was really supprised after "validating" my current system bios settings... I found that I can change value for optimus: from disable to enable and export new config exe file.

I didn't test it because I'm afraid of bricking my mainboard.
What do you think? Maybe that's a way to switching on Optimus on M6600 with FirePro?

 

*waiting patiently

 

Setting the Optimus enable mode should set the HD3000 iGPU as the active primary video card with the M8900 as the secondary. This is a very good thing. It would mean plenty of battery life savings.

Once in Win7 try to disable the HD3000 and see if the M8900 then runs the LCD. It may or may not depending on the internal mux setup Dell have implemented. If it does, then a script can be written using devcon to enable/disable the iGPU when switch from AC to battery. If it doesn't, then try connecting an external LCD to the HDMI port.. it will probably use the M8900. Then could set the external LCD to be the primary in the Display Properties and run games that way.

In all.. an excellent find but need someone courageous to test it. Doesn't removing the CMOS battery reset the bios back to defaults? A failsafe just in case...

 

This is very very interesting, though I am not courageous enough to be the first to try it. At least not now while I need my laptop to study for exams.

I really hope someone does try it though and it works out.

 

Optimus requires both the proper hardware (from nvidia) and proper driver (from nvidia). I doubt it will work as u imagined it might be. It would be a complete different story, if you can get AMD's dynamic switchable graphics setting in bios.

 

I'm just hopeful the bios isn't going to check that it's a NVidia dGPU (10de:xxxx) rather than AMD (1002:xxxx). If not, then you will have the iGPU as the primary active adapter with the associated power savings gains. On a HP DV4-20000 also with a muxed HD4350 which booted with the iGPU as the primary display, disabling the iGPU set the dGPU to be the active display in Win7.

Which courageous volunteer will be the first to try it?

 

Optimus works also very well with ATI hardware. Check this: M17x R3 with HD 6970m (6970m is exactly FirePro8900m).

Driver is also not a big problem, we could use this from leshcat blog: Catalyst 12.2 UnifL UP5 for Switchable Graphics.

But first we must unlock Optimus feature in M6600 BIOS.

 

Intresting.
But the driver also should have a control for switching the two cards so that you could choose what apps would use ATi gpu or Intel's.
Farthermore I played with this tool some month ago and its really just for changing Bios settings through windows. You have there some options that seem to be opened but when you change them nothing happens. You have a key in this toolkit which filters the options that you can not use. So if you see there Optimus , you can't really change it.
The only option to do so is to fully unlock Bios and we should ask the Bios-Mod community to help with the unlock. As I understood the Bios is UEFI and the unlocking method for this type of Bios is been worked on.
I will contact the community and see how can they help us to unlock the Bios.

 

Yeah Im curious as to how optimus will work for an ATI card. While my m4600 gets enough battery life with the 97Wh batter for my current needs, I miss the switchable ATI card I have in my t400.

 

It will not work. Their implementations are different. Not to mention the required drivers.

That being said, those looking for extra battery life from their AMD equipped precision could go to catalyst and turn off the PowePlay feature (and make sure you close the catalyst window). I found out that it would have the GPU locked at the lowest power state (and so is the performance) for quite a while not much how much load u put onto your GPU. After a while the drive would let gpu switch up a gear or two again according to the graphics demand. I would just enable the powerplay and then disable again. probably a drive bug of some sort...