Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

Just had A18. When I played a game with high graphics settings, Speedfan showed a max temperature of 75 deg C. I had 84 before. But the fan goes on high! It went to a point where I thought there was something wrong with my system, which is why I ran Speedfan! It's a trade-off between a 10 deg reduction and a loud fan.

 

that sounds promising. what have you observed at idle? with A15 the fan went completely off at lower temps

 

Switched off fan at 38 to 39 degrees for the CPU and 53 degrees for the GPU. How is that?

 

what was the ACPI temp, that is the one that triggers the fan IIRC

 

Does anybody remember which processors were offered with the M4400 when it was released? I'm just curious because I'll be deciding between an outlet M4400 or a config-to-order M4500 early next year. I want to get an idea of how far CPU's go in a year as a point of consideration.

For example, I'd try to get a M4400 with QX9300 through the outlet (which is the max CPU). The M4500 should offer the i7 720QM (just guessing here...maybe they'll go i5/i7 dual cores) but I assume they will have faster CPU's available for it next December when it reaches the end of it's cycle. I would then have a meaningful upgrade available to me jumping from the 720QM to the best CPU offered 12 months from now in the M4500.

So with that in mind, I want to see what the base CPU option for the M4400 was when it was released as compared to its highest CPU now (QX9300).

 

I think the lowest CPU offered was the Montevina Core 2 Duo, with 800MHz bus.

I don't think you can tell based on what Dell offered in the M4400. It really depends on what Intel put out on the market. I bet if the i720 was available earlier, Dell probably would've put that into the M4400 (if the specs match of course).

 

The M440 has the wrong chipset, it cannot ever be upgraded to an i7. I'm interested in the specific CPU's offered (either the model numbers or at least their clock speeds). Thanks.

 

Of course the i7 uses different chipset, but so what? Dell could've just replace the mobo. My point is if Dell wants to, and if the new CPU that Intel produces is just so strong, Dell can do either of two things:
(1) Upgrade the mobo on the model and subsequently the CPU (won't change the chasis, good for your case, you can just upgrade the mobo and CPU)
(2) Create a new line of the model, i.e. go from M4400 to M4500 (most likely will change the chasis, not good for your case)

They surely don't want to lose to the competition.

For your purposes, looking at what Intel has to offer (their roadmap) is probably the best thing you can do. From wikipedia, the i7 current platform is Calpella, and Westmere is the 32nm die shrink of what should be the same architecture. Ideally, you should be able to just upgrade the CPU (same socket), but nothing has been released by Intel. So the best in the line right now is the Clarksfield, i.e. 4-core + 4-logical core, without changing the chipset. It's been rumored that Westmere might produce a 6-core, but again, nothing has been leaked by Intel (it might be just dekstop, and not mobile version, so Dell will not incorporate that into their Precision Mobile line).

 

P8400 2.2ghz was the lowest it was sold with originally,P8600 2.4, T9400,T9600,X9100 were also available at the time of release, the QX9300 was an option about 3 month's later.
other higher clocked P series were available later as were T9900 which seem's to have shunted the X9100 out and T9550,T9800

 

What frequency do you use on your LCD? I can't set 60 but only 59Hz. In nVidia control panel I have 40 (works), 59(works), and 60Hz(doesn't work -> 59Hz). But if I set 60 it automatically jump back to 59Hz.

I have installed latest driver 186.21 from Dell driver page (Win7 x64 Pro). (with original nVidia driver doesn't work audio via DisplayPort->HDMI->LCD TV)



Pls help.