Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

Hi guys,
I took the back off mine for a look yesterday and i noticed 2 things i hope you can clear up for me.

1) If you look at this picture (from another post):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v313/M477_void/bottom_sm.png

Can you see that blue sticker on the right (just below the battery) with the yellow sticker on it? Well mine has a big 'R' written on it. Does that mean i have a refurbished one?

Also if you look at the picture, the bottom centre, you can see a white wire with a golden connection. It looks like an aerial connection of some sort, but on mine it's not connected to anything! It's loose...I have bluetooth and wifi so what could this be? Maybe for the 3G connectivity if i were to install the module?

Cheers guys

Mark

 

I'm not sure about the stickers but I did notice your video card heat sync. Do you have a 1700m or a 770m?

Here is a photo of my old M4400 770m heat sync and fan and my new one.

Original:
http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=originall.jpg

New:
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/2904/newa.jpg

Dell looks to have update the cooling to the 1700m version.. First thing I noticed is its a lot quieter then my old one. I will be running some bench marks later if anyone is interested.

 

I have the 1700m, and it's the same as your new one I really want to underclock it though, it runs noisy a lot! I've heard the 1700m is just the 770m overclocked anyway!

I would be interested in your benchmarks

 

Cool I will post my results a little later... Mine is a 770m its interesting that they changed the cooling. I haven't heard of anyone else that has noticed this change.

Update: The benchmarks will be a wash for a couple days until I have time to reinstall Vista. Currently 3DMarks keeps crashing. (CPU min 41 max 75 - GPU 51 min 75 max running Real Time HDR) However my temps seem to be a couple degrees cooler under normal use and the fan seems a very little quieter.

 

I didn't see anyone else post anything about it, so I thought I would post here:
BIOS Rev A13 is out. So far no negative effects; my system POSTed significantly faster and loaded Windows much faster as well.
I didn't see any release notes on it to see what issues / performance fixes it addresses, but it seems to be working great for me!

 

Wow thanks for the news Gonna update mine now

 

By the way, graphics options available for the NVidia... I've seen quite a few questions about these so I did a little research and here's what I've found.
laptopvideo2go.com has the most recent drivers
The most recent for the 770M are:
185.20 (Any version XP/Vista)
179.44 (Any version XP/Vista)

The 179.44 driver is newer, but does not support PhysX processing, which the 185.20 does. However, at stock clocks, the 179.44 driver version pushes about 10% higher framerate, even with PhysX enabled in most circumstances. Even in PhysX processing intensive scenes, the 185.20 driver doesn't have a framerate advantage... The advantage shifts to the 185.20 drivers as the clocks are increased, however, and above 570MHz core, the 185.20 drivers are the ones that will provide the better performance (using NTune).

 

I'm on it...

 

On it these past 48 hours as well...I posted the improved thermal tables in another thread...the fan doesn't start until the GPU is ~10 degrees higher than before...and the same behaviour applies when docked to an E-Port...very nice indeed.

 

Sounds good. Somebody here has problem with fun speed/noise with FX 1700M on A12. This could help.