Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

It's Vista 1.0. While Vista is not too bad, Windows 7 is just how Vista should have been from the beginning. They haven't polished it enough, they didn't have the time...
When developing Vista, they put focus on doing things right instead of simply implementing one function after the other and just making them easy to use. Seems like they had no clue how much time that would really take.


And Vipadawg, thank you for your post.

 

The outlet is also worth a look...and if you decide to buy new always give them a call to get a better deal. The bonus for orderin upgrades from Dell is that those components will also be covered by the 3yr warranty

 

So I got the new M4400 and it came with the A12 bios. I am having no problems what so ever so I don't think I will update to the A14. I did have a chance to do a ati tool max out and prime 95 test at the same time pegging both processor cores and the graphics core. My temps never went over 70c on the processors and the graphics hovered around 72c. I would say that is pretty good considering both graphics and systems were at max.

I also installed GTA4 and is very playable at 1280 x 800. At native 1920x1200 is pretty dang choppy. I have to come back and run it when I get my full 4gb of ram in.

Overall I am absolutely loving this laptop!

 

Hi magudaman. Welcome to the club

Those temps sound good! And yeah, for games like GTA4 you'd probably need a bit heavier GPU config.

Enjoy your new lappie and let us know the new test results

 

Any experience with a14?

 

Yeah, but only shortly. Running A02 again now because A12 onwards somehow caused higher max temps.

 

I am running A14 and I dont have that many problems. Though the first day I got my laptop, i decided to place that on there. I'm also running windows 7. I noticed that the laptop runs significantly cooler when using the "power saver" setting as opposed to the balanced setting within windows, so I dont know how much that affeects it. If someone wants to compile a list of the different firmwares and test it, that would be an excellent post imo.

 

Anyone notice dithering with the 1440x900 display? In gradients and a lot of solid colors, I can see a fine dither pattern. It's not in the UI - I've zoomed in on screen shots so it's in the display or panel somewhere. The nVidia drivers say that this is a Seiko display. Never actually heard of them used in laptops before.

Running Win 7 with latest Nvidia beta drivers, but I doubt is in the drivers?

 

Temperatures are quite higer then with A12 in load, but it is quieter. Generaly behaviour is very similar to A13. I am using it for a week but I going to swith back to A12.

 

So is that the general consensus? higher temps mainly caused by the fan delaying itself turning on? so then that's also why it's quieter?

if that is the case, is it possible to find BIOS A12 from somewhere? As far as performance, any major differences?


also, is it possible to put DDR3-1066 ram into the machine? or is it just gonna downclock and run at ddr2-800?