Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Hi everybody,

I've became a happy owner of Dell M4500 laptop and I'm quite impressed about its performance. However after using PassMark's Performance Test I discovered that my CPU has a score of only 2800 compared to average score of 3573 which can be found in this page PassMark CPU Lookup (used the "Ultra Performance" profile from Dell Control Point software). Are there any additional tweaks I would have to set in my m4500 in order to achieve desired performance of the processor (which btw is marked in my system as "i7 740Q" not "i7 740QM" - are there any other models of i7 740 processor that I'm not aware of?)?

One more question: does a 2nd hard drive installed using the caddy/bay in place of DVD-ROM has the same performance as it would have been installed as the primary disk?

Thank you,
Julian

 

Are you running on battery? That can cause the system to throttle the CPU down. There is only 1 740-QM AFAIK.

 

All the performance options checked in the BIOS, turbo boost etc?

I don't have a quad so can't really be much help there.

Yes the opt bay module has the same performance as the primary slot, great way to have a secondary OS, looks like it won't be there on the next model, it will have useful things like touch screen options instead

 

I finally got the 64GB mini-SSD. I came with a crucial screw for mounting! This what you might consider to speed up the machine. I'll report back on the install... after heading to the hardware store.

Got the screw at the hardware store! Going well, but see question below.

 

I have followed these instructions religiously and now and up and running except for the last part with the linkages.

When I installed the new OS I used the same user name, say jerryyyyy, as on the old HDD. I can see the HDD and have renamed it D:

The problem is with the instruction:

1. Prepare the D:\ to receive a complete copy of the User\[UserName] folder you want to relocate.

a. [UserName] is the exact same name of the User’s directory on C:\Users.
b. On D:\, Create the directories “Users\[UserName]
c. Example: where [UserName] = Steve

i. C:\Users\Steve\
ii. D:\Users\Steve\​

Because D:\ already has the original copy of the Jerryyyyy user directory.

I wonder if this is hopeless, and I should just install the software I need to the new C: SSD. I do not see how software installed on D: would work with a new booting disk C:

Anyway, clarification might help others too. Reinstalling the software if not a big deal and I can also use the file and settings transfer wizard to get my other settings. My files I could just leave on the old disk.

Cheers

 

Can someone please help out with tuning my 22" IIyama Prolite E2208HDD LCD monitor setup?

My brand new Precision M4500 has a NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M display adapter.
Even though resolution is set to the optimal (1920x1080) fonts look awful on the external monitor. I've already tried turning off cleartype, but that didn't help.
Driver is up to date according to device manager (version 8.16.11.8974).

My old Toshiba A300-1IA notebook with ATI adapter has excellent image quality on this same monitor, straight out of the box.

 

O.k., this is not hopeless, but accomplishing what your instructions are trying to do is not easy, and requires a fair bit of expertise. In particular, the instructions you found are ultimately flawed, and have the potential to subtly break various features of the OS.

Rather than trying to teach you how to do this right, I am going to make a different suggestion, namely to use a supported approach to moving just your relevant user shell folders, and not the entire C:\User hierarchy: When you right-click on any of your user shell folders (such as My Documents, My Pictures, etc.), click on Properties, and you'll see a tab labeled "Location". If you go there, there's a "Move" button, which will allow you to move this folder to a different location, such as anywhere you like on your old hard drive. You could choose something like "D:\UserData\jerryyyyyy ", for example. Once you have done that, you can also copy your old user data files from their location on the old hard drive to the new location where you moved your shell folder. Delete everything else on the hard drive, and you should be all set.

 

Thanks. What I decided to do in the meantime is to install the key applications on the new drive (Office, Photoshop etc.). This leaves me about 30GB free. I'll leave the documents/music etc on the old drive and do what you said to do. I thought i might just change the "Libraries" but your solution sounds cleaner.

 

As a follow-up to this answer: can I set up RAID using two different hard drives (Seagate and Western Digital, both 7200 rpm and 250 GB capacity) using bay module for the second one?

 

RAID 0 nope, you have to buy an HP to get that functionality.Dell doesn't think anyone wants it.

It does have IRRT [I haven't tried it], which AFAIK is sort of RAID 1, but the second drive doesn't have to be permanently connected, meaning the secondary drive will mirror on connection [I'm guessing the notebook would be as good as useless performance wise to use while it's doing so], it doesn't have any read speed advantages of RAID 1.
Brand of drives won't make any difference.