Precision M4500 Owner's Lounge

Well, things aren't quite as simple as that... First of all, yes, Dell-provided drivers are usually quite a bit behind, no doubt about it. However, at least in the past, with a number of laptops, I have found that none of the drivers that were newer than the ones Dell provides were fully functional on Dell laptops. I always ended up with a system that did not properly handle monitors attached to a dock, or sleep, or had no 2D acceleration, etc., etc.

Having said that, your mileage may vary, and some of the newest nVidia drivers do seem to work alright. You can now often get the drivers directly from nVidia (just go to their website). If you can find a driver for your card there, I would very strongly recommend going that route, rather than using one of those supposedly "optimized" fancy .inf files from outfits like laptopvideo2go.

 

I cannot confirm that at all. Of course you should only install NVidia driver versions that are designed for mobile GPUs. Not all releases are, desktop releases will generally work - but may cause effects like the ones you mentioned.

I don't believe that you know what these guys actually do - and just spreading FUD is helping no one. The driver packages are completely stock and actually, the downloads link to Nvidia's site. What they offer is just a modified "inf" file - there is even a tool to further modify them according to preferences (eg: "Performance" over "Quality") or to allow for bugs and limitations of specific notebooks.

Using NVidia drivers with a stock inf-file may not even be possible, as Dell does not want some of the GPUs they use to be listed (try to find drivers at NVidias site for Quadro NVS120 or NVS140) - for whatever reasons.

And now back to the original topic: using a recent NVidia driver is of course important for gaming. Arguably, one of the few differences between "Gaming" and "Open GPL" versions of the same GPU chip may be the default setting the NVidia driver uses ("Quality" for "Open GL" and "Speed" for "Gaming"). Modifying the inf-file to "Optimize speed" may help to improve gaming performance of workstation GPUs further and even beyond their gaming rig counterparts.

 

I'ved used drivers from Laptop2go since 2003 in my first laptop I owned with a dedicated gpu. Never had an issue.

 

I am not sure what you think it is you cannot confirm. I was commenting on my experiences with certain Dell laptops I own. Quite obviously you are in no position to confirm or deny my specific experiences. And, yes, I do understand the difference between laptop and mobile driver releases.

I was not and did not intend to spread FUD. All I am saying is that, for example, for the M90 I am now typing on, I never managed to find a driver, from any place, that worked at least as well or better than the age-old one that Dell is offering.

Which is why I added the qualification "if you can find a driver [at nVidia's site]".

Again, YMMV. For my machines, I never found any meaningful differences in gaming performance even between driver relases that were more than a year apart. But then, I am not much of a gamer anyway, so my opinions on this topic should be taken with a grain of salt, or two...

 

I got my M4500 today. It's beautiful, and I'm loving it! I'm in the process of setting up the software, and I have a small issue: the pointing stick appears to stutter when I use it. (moving the cursor constantly) This does not occur when I use the trackpad or another mouse. Is there anyway that I can remedy this?

 

No one else has had this issue?

 

I havnt experienced it, I rarely use the stick though.

 

I had a weird stuttering issue to. I noticed it on day 1 when I was doing something like watching a movie. People recommended removing the Dell Control Point manager. Works like a charm. It's a useless program anyways. It wasn't specific to the stick though. It was system wide so I'm not sure how helpful it might be. Worth a try though.

 

Cool, I'll try that... The entire Control Point suite, or just the manager? I can't stand that program, so I might as well get rid of it. The funny thing is that the whole stuttering issue is absent when in another OS, or in the BIOS or in Precision ON. Maybe I really should do a clean install.

 

Ok, I just uninstalled DCP manager, but there was no change. Using the pointing stick, the cursor is still laggy and stuttering, but fluid while using the trackpad. As same as always, when booting into a linux live CD, or into Precision ON, both are fluid and fine. I've tried to uninstall DCP manager, the Security manager, and changed tons of settings to no avail. I'm hoping someone reading this has been through this, and can tell me that there's a fix for this. I'd hate to have to deal with sending this notebook back if it is defective.