Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

Thanks for your response, Maiklas3000. Your experiences just supported my decision not to go with QX9300. I still have Q9100 which i´m trying to sell now. If I succeed, I will probably buy T9900 to make an appearance of my dell machine a little bit younger. Finally I will sell T9600 as well.
Benefits of smoothly and quickly responsive system in ordinary use wins over ability to deal with that specific heavy load in my case. The only unclear issue for me now is the capability of processor to deal with multitasking, but I believe, that even just two 3,06GHz cores are enough to treat reasonable multitasking better, than 4 cores with 2,53 GHz.

 

One year later...

First, I am in China, this point is important.

My first M4400 died (motherboard) but I think this computer was not 100% when my friend gave it to me. Six month ago a friend of mine give me an E6400, the unit was not working but I bought the LCD driver for 3$ and now it is ok.

I also tried to install the QX9300 inside without success (no boot) but in the same time, I've seen plenty of Dell M4400 for 85$ in the second hand market and bought one sample, because it is a good base for an hackintosh and because of the excellent screen.

I also bought a V56 card and grab the excellent screen from the first M4400. Now this screen is used with Raspberry and other Orange Pi Single computer boards (SBC).

The second Dell M4400 has not the same cooler system as the first one. I run it under windows 10 without any specific drivers, only the ones installed by Windows.

The screen is excellent for me, the quad core with an SSD and 8Go RAM is largely enough for my every day usage and I like the illuminated keyboard. I've installed win10 for a friend in a new Dell Inspirion and this one is only plastic, plastic and plastic : I do not like plastic and I prefer my old Dell M4400!

No trouble using the Dell M4400 with the QX9300 inside, I am very happy with this unit and try to find another sample to make another hackintosh...

 

I was given an M4400 a few years ago, P9700, 4GB, SSD, fresh install of Win 7 64 bit and it
overheated during the install, several times.
Redid the thermal paste and it is a bit better.
It gets VERY hot when charging from a dead battery while watching HD videos.
It also crashes on video intensive tasks probably once a day.
It has trouble coming out of sleep mode and often crashes then.
I was running a 2015 video driver for a long time, just updated to the 2016 version - all
from the Nvidia site.
I'm on page 25 of this thread and have read the last few pages.
Do I probably need the copper shim on the GPU?

I've been working on Dells for probably 20 years and never had so much trouble.

Is there a how to fix crashing thread for the M4400?

 

Hi Pete,

What are the temperatures of your GPU during non-3D work (e.g. web browsing or watching youtube)? (you can measure them with this app http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/hwmonitor_1.31.exe).

First you can try to install this nvidia graphic driver http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverresults.aspx/75991/en-us

Lot was written about troubles with fx770m on precision m4400 because of its problematic nvidia driver. For example in this thread http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/t/19448813.


Let us to know if it helped.

 

OK, it has been charging for about half an hour so the fan is running on low.
Cores are 35-36 deg C
GPU is 51 deg C
Utilizations are all very low, CPU < 20%, GPU = 0%
Core utilization is with the cores at 800 MHz in Balanced power mode.
I have about 15 tabs open in Chrome.

I think that it has been a bit better since I installed the new 2016 driver but it did crash right
after I installed it. Not much since then.

Motherboards are cheap on ebay and I wouldn't mind spending $20-$30 to fix this but I don't
want another one with problems.

 

Unplugged the charger which seems to heat things up.
Closed all tabs except for this forum.
Now playing, in Chrome, an HD youtube video Playing For Change - Tyrone 720p
GPU utilization is 2-3% LOL, temp 52-53 deg C not much change
That was too easy.
Also in Chrome Corrine Bailey Rae "Closer" Live in Williamsburg 1080p
Cores 20 to 50% temps are 40 - 46 deg C.
GPU is 10 to 27% temp 55 deg C

Interesting that the cores hardly went above 800 MHz with the 720p but spent a lot
of time at 2.8 GHz for the 1080p.

We should probably use a GPU intensive benchmark to really push it.

When I opened all my usual tabs Core utilization went to 100% for both cores at 2.8GHz for
quite some time while they loaded, Core temps hit 60 deg C.

 

Those are standard temperatures (with fan on low) for m4400, mine has similar results. In accord my opinion, overheating is not the problem.
Try the driver I have recommended you above - many precisions m4400 with GPU fx770m were working only under that 337.88 driver and not under any different/newer. Nvidia released fixation of BS caused by fx770m by mistake under different (Geforce) GPU driver, that is the reason why it is labeled as for "Geforce". You can read about that issue in the thread I linked you in my previous contribution. 337.88 driver fixed my troubles.

And of course, get the latest BIOS (A27 or higher).

 

Yes, I have A29 BIOS. The system has at times run nearly with the bottom too hot to touch,
so perhaps this different driver helped.
I will try the one you suggest ASAP since I really want to be rid of these issues.
Thanks very much.

One other thought, there are times when I see the CPU utilization pinned at 100%, often
when Win updates are going on, so that is when it produces a lot of heat.

 

This is normal during win actualization - when highend Core 2 duos CPU go on 100 %, cores temperatures rapidly grow up.
Because of enhanced sleeping step technology, core 2 duo CPUs can quickly underclock itself and "cool down" to 30-35°C, when task is finished, while GPU keeps its temperature still high (50-55 °C).
Let us please know if 337.88 driver fixed the problem.

 

Can that driver be installed over the old one?
I've had to run Guru3D DDU to remove all traces of old drivers before to get
the new one to work correctly.