Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

@code.man

Great suggestion.

1st, I've been using the monitor for about a week and it is indeed quite nice.

The setup that I mentioned in the previous post works well and, yes, I have to use the DisplayPort cable to get the 2560x1440 resolution. Obviously the M4400 has no issues with the increased real estate.

Using the Flat Panel Monitor stand works great, except for tilting the monitor in the positive angles, the monitor comes back to a vertical position if tilted beyond +5 degrees.

The height adjustment works perfectly when set for a 24" LCD, since the U2711 is not that heavy to begin with.

Holding the 1 and 4 buttons down on the lower right side of the display activates the test patterns (with or without a video cable connected). Use button 4 to switch test screens and eventually exit out of that.

All the cables (1 power, 1 DisplayPort, and 2 USB) are bundled in a tidy harness using 3/4" flexible tubing.

I've included some color calibrations (see attachment) for the M4400 WUXGA RGB LED display and for the M4400+U2711 combo as well, in case someone might get inspired.

There is a spreadsheet that describes the settings and on its 2nd page, I've listed the M4400 screen brightness settings (Fn+Cursor Keys), based on my measurements.

Note: For proper usage of the profiles, change the monitor settings using the spreadsheet information.

So, to use the M4400 profiles, set the proper screen settings to the mentioned brightness.

For the U2711, the settings are more elaborate. You have to change Brightness, Contrast, RGB color values (custom mode), or set Standard, sRGB, or aRGB modes.

There are 2 U2711 custom modes. One is for a brighter setting (140 cd/m2), that gives a better contrast ratio.

I don't like to work with such a high luminance value and prefer the 120 cd/m2 range, unless I do photo editing.

The profiles were created using the i1 Display 2 colorimeter.

Regards.

 

I don't think Dell will replace your screen for one stuck pixel.

Remember, a dead pixel is one that is always black (no signal). Anything that shows a particular color is considered a stuck pixel.

 

Bought a M4400 a few weeks ago.
Techinically, not exactly one M4400.
Because it only comes with a CPU (T9400) with WXGA+ LCD and DVD/RW, no memory, no HD, no BT, no wirelesss LAN.

Then I put together Intel 6300 Ultimate N, Dell Bluetooth 370, Hitachi 320G 7200rpm, Dell 5530 3G WWAN card, 4Gx2 DDR2-800, and replace the T9400 with a T9800 ES.

Must say that I am a happy camper now. Powerful machine for a very reasonable price. Plan to install XP x64 to try a few old games.

 

That's more or less what I did, at least for the RAM and HDD.

I would not recommend XP x64. Go for Win7 x64 instead. It is a much more mature platform.

 

Has anyone found a solution to the issue where when connected to an external display, Powermizer does not allow the video card to clock down?

 

It seems the GPU does clock down after all when docked on the E-Port Plus + DisplayPort.

I'm running NVIDIA 258.96 drivers (installed over the weekend).

The driver seems very stable in 3D applications and at idle (docked), runs at GPU Core Clock: 275MHz, GPU Mem Clock: 300MHz, GPU Shader Clock: 550MHz.

This is definitely a good drop from the full speed values, but are not as low as when running off of the M4400 display panel directly.

 

Hi Guys, I just bought a refurbished M4400, the specs are T9600 2.8 Ghz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, Display 1400x900.

It came with pre-installed win 7 pro 32bit, I would like to fresh-install win 7 ultimate 64bit.

My questions are:
1. Do I need to get new drivers or I can use the ones came from the 32bit system?
2. Is there anything that i need to be aware of?

Sorry for such questions, I'm a newbie. do help, please : )

 

The computer should have several (3-4) drivers disks. The 64-bit drivers should also be included in there.

I'd recommend going to the Dell M4400 64-bit Win7 driver page and downloading the latest drivers, however.

Start with this PDF document, which will tell you what the best sequence for driver installation is:

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...dateid=-1&formatid=-1&source=-1&fileid=407224

Good Luck!

 

Hi.

I got my M4400 for school last June, so it's a little over a year old.

I've been playing Starcraft 2 for the last couple of months because I was in the beta. I've noticed that it heats up quite a lot during matches and I've started to become concerned that it might be getting too hot. Even though it recommends Medium settings, I use Low because I'm worried it is overheating. Months ago, I bought a Microsoft Cooling Pad, because I knew I would be gaming frequently on it and I knew it might have some heating issues. The pad sits on a wooden table and is elevated above it and allows airflow to reach the fan on the bottom of the laptop quite well, at least I think. But it still gets quite hot and the vent on the left side of the laptop blows very hot air onto my right hand as my controls the mouse because I have an external monitor and the laptop sits off to my right, closed while I use the external monitor.

So, since I got concerned with it's temperature I downloaded HWMonitor which is a system temperature monitoring program. It reported max temperatures of just over 80C for the internal temperature (it said ACPI which I think is just internal temperature) and it had max temperatures of close 74C and 80C for each of my dual cores respectively. The GPU core reached about 76C. Are these temperatures on a dangerous level for this laptop? Should I stop playing Starcraft 2?

P.S. The steady-state temperatures that the cores hit when I'm doing simple tasks such as surfing the net have hit as low as 38C with the GPU temp hitting slightly higher at 51.

Specs I know off the top of my head:
Quadro FX 770
It's outputting at 1920x1080 res to my external monitor, though the laptops screen supports 1920x1200
4 GB
Core 2 Duo T9800 @ 2.93 GHz
Windows 7 64-bit

It chews through almost everything I throw at it with ease, I'm just worried it's getting to hot.

Thanks for reading, I look forward to your responses.

 

I strongly you have a go at the undervolting guide...

My M4400 was topping out at nearly 100 celcius and lagging like crazy when watching streamed video (flash player 10 bug) so I investigated and realized my T9600 cpu was being fed 1.35v vcore at max clocks

After replacing the thermal with paste MX-3 I followed the guide and am now running the CPU at .965v vcore at max load 100% stable and it idles at 0.825v

Max temps are now 61 celcius after 1 hour of Orthos *thumbs up*

The only downside of the software fix (for me) is that the program used to control the cpu voltages does not support .5 multipliers but that is not an issue for you as you have an 11 max multi...


Useful programs to check your voltages and cpu VID:

CPU-z v1.55 for loads of info, but most importantly current Vcore

Coretemp 99.7 to check your chip's VID and to monitor it changing with multiplier