Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

It actually goes up to 6.9 starting with 4GB. Increasing from 4 (or 24) to 32 won't increase the ranking any further, but it's already overkill anyway.

This is weird. I would try swapping two memory sticks and check with the other one to see if it's coming from the stick or the slot. The stick requires a little pressure to get in, try pushing a bit harder and make sure the angle is right. Stop if you feel you're applying too much stress on the slot. If no stick will get inside and you're on your own to do this, you may want to call Dell and ask for support.

As for the BD burner (I assume you meant BR btw), I can only say Dell's BR burner is a total rip off... I would try newegg and see what comes along.

 

Hello. I am interested in purchasing a M4600 with an i5 2520m processor. All the specs are perfect such as the fullHD screen but I would like to know if I can swap the CPU my self and use all the four dimm slots.

Thanks.

 

swap cpu yes. the online m4600 user's manual got instructions on how to take ur laptop apart.

4 dim slot if quad core cpu
2 dim slot if dual core cpu

 

I read here on the forum of somebody that tried it but he never got back with a feedback. Does the notebook come with 4 dimm slots even on the 2 core cpu and will installing the quad cpu enable all 4 dimm slots?

 

if i remember right, only 2 primary dimm will be recognized. its the ram controller inside the cpu that matters.

 

I was asking if after the CPU swap will I be able to run all 4 dims because a quad core cpu supports 4 ram channels.

 

yes will do

 

For those who would like to milk extra battery life out of the FirePro equipped M4600. If you have read the user review by this thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...-precision-m4600-15-6-mobile-workstation.html

the guy mentioned that the lowest power state of FirePro only uses 0.9V and would translate into quite a bit of battery life. The problem is then how to lock the clocks and voltage of the GPU. As it turns out, ATI Tray Tool allows just that. Instead of creating OC profile, you creaet a underclock and undervoltage profile. The lowest state powerplay sets to is gpu 100hz mem ~151.56hz and 0.9v

I run this little utility and then enable the profile when I am on battery and then exit the app when I am done. To be able to restore the powerplay behavior upon exit, you will need to go to: Tools & Options > General Options > Advanced tab, and check the reset clock on exit check box.

The 3D performance will suck but should be enough for light tasks. I haven't done timing on the actuall battery life. But I am thinking four to five hours sounds like a possibility under light load on a 97wh battery.

 

I get 4+ wihtout any tweaking. 5? might be a stretch doing actual work.

 

mm i see. thanks for the input.

I haven't gotten myself the chance to actually time the duration in real life usage, since I don't really run into the situation where I need to be away from the power plug for more than a couple of hours. The calculation from Batterycare or win7 built in battery utility at full charge shows from between 5+ during light surfing, emailing and word processing to near 6~6ish when idle (well, this should be no different than typical idling estimate without the tweak). I AM on core i5 and I throttle the clock speed when on battery.

Anyway, locking down the GPU clock to the lowest state will only benefit battery life overall, since it prevents the occasional switch to higher power state and makes sure the gpu uses no more than 0.9V of voltage.