Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

Has anyone installed the A08 bios yet? I was about to, but I cancelled the installation when I noticed that it was adding some intel management functions that aren't in A07. I don't want the intel management functions enabled because I found on my previous laptop (HP 8540W EliteBook) that it caused the boot process to take longer.

 

Yeah, that too!! Why not???



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Well, I am all for it too, you know. But I believe there are some constraints there; maybe it would add too much to the cost of it, or the mainboard only has USB 2.0 controller and the 3.0 is realised with external chip. I don't know, though they must have had their reasons to do so.

 

Hi,
nice forum and thread, I only have time to read the first 35 pages, need to get time to read the rest but have some questions about my incomming m4600.

1 - I'll gonna have 2x4Gb 1600, is it possible to add more 2x8Gb ram in future or will be more performant with all slots equals, eg. 4x4gb?

2 - The msata drive is standard size? can it be used as main boot drive?

3 - In a rendering and video editing, where the SO and the programs are on a msata ssd drive and the data in the normal disk will get any improvement in performance? or will be the same since the data is not in the ssd drive?

 

Hi, Zontor,

regarding your first question I am not sure...someone else needs to answer that.
The mSata slot is according to the mSata specs. So any mSata SSD will go in there. You can then put your boot partition on the mSata SSD to have the OS starting from your SSD.
Regarding your Video editing: If you have the program installed on the mSata it will generally load faster. Just like any other software the video editing software will most probably try to load as much as it is allowed to in the RAM. So opening and saving a project/file will take longer on the HDD but when editing these within the software you will not realize any difference. But all that is pretty software-specific. Try to figure it out by using the resmon tool:

Run resmon.exe and look up the process of your software under the HDD tab. (I just realized that resmon is only available in Vista and Windows 7, so I can't give you detailed instructions as I am currently working on a XP-machine)

 

Intel said (unless I am mistaking) 4 sticks are faster than 2 for the same amount of memory.
I'd say is bs though - it would be hard to measure. I ordered a m4600 a few days ago and changed the default 4x2G to 2x4 so I can buy another 2x4Gb whenever I need and have 16 Gb.

 

I think that may be a bandwidth limitation of CPU having more than 16gb at 1600 ddr3 that may disable the dual channel setup.

Or if when availlable/accessive 8gb ddr3 1600 so dimm I could upgrade the other 2 slots and put 2x8gb with the 2x4 I'm gonna have and bee with 24gb 1600 dual channel.

If it is limit I would perfer 16gb 1600 dual channel, in dell site I saw 32gb max with 1333 and 16gb max with 1600. dunno if is because 8gb 1600 dimm are not available yet or because of speed limit.

 

......

 

Hi, I have a dual HDD configuration: msata SSD + internal HDD. I ordered mine without any OS, and the system came with bios A08. I installed Windows 7 64 bit on the SSD. And indeed, there is one or two more screens, especially one which shows all disks on your system, that will last like 2.5 seconds. So yes, the boot sequence is longer, but as I tested it you can deactivate it if you have only one drive on your system. I need this screen because of my boot config. Actually it is kind of weird: the first boot drive needs to be some generic "internal HDD (IRRT)" drive, that is neither the SSD (it is called "SSD-mini-card") nor the HDD (it is called by its serial number). So what is this generic drive, I really don't know, but although all the system was installed on the SSD, putting the SSD as primary drive won't start windows. I don't know why, but it works, so...

I also tested a little bit the Optimus feature, and it doesn't give that much extended battery life (5:30 hours to 6:30 stable in Bios-deactivated optimus case, vs 6 or 7 hours with optimus, both cases with computer idle on win7 desktop, no specific backgound programs - 9-cell battery, 40% screen brightness - I will do more thorough tests when I install the wattage monitoring-program later). But what is weird about that, is that although I managed to get the optimus icon on the bottom-right notification area, and it should show which programs are currently specifically using the GPU, I still get some unexpected results. I specifed some programs: video editing software and video players mostly, to use the GPU when they are started. When I start the first one (video editing software), the GPU activates, but it does not with video players, even if I tell specifically to the video player program to run on the GPU by specifying it as default behaviour AND right-clicking it and lauching it with the GPU specified. It just doesn't show as using the GPU. Maybe the IGP of the 2720 QM is definitly enough for any HD video, and the Optimus feature is so smart it would override all my choices, but I doubt it...

So, any feedback on that optimus feature?

Thanks!

EDIT: for Zontor: I don't know what software you are using, but with Premiere pro CS 5.5, what should really increase your editing speed is the GPU rendering, compatible with the quadro 2000M GPU (go to the Adobe CS5.5 official page for more details). I installed it, it recognizes my GPU, but I did not do extended rendering tests yet. About the SSD, the heavy software will only load faster I guess (I have installed it on my SSD, but wether the speed is only caused by the SSD or also by the Ram+CPU beeing faster than the ones of my previous 2008 laptop...I can't tell, but still, it loads quite fast)

 

Thanks for the reply. My system has only one hard drive and I have a FirePro so optimus isn't a consideration. I'm more concerned about the system taking longer to boot because of the intel functionality. On my previous laptop, an HP elitebook 8540w, when I updated the bios, it tried to do a network boot before going to the hard drive. I had to change to a different bios to get around that. I don't want to deal with that again, so I'm wondering if any who has installed A08 has experienced that.