Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

With AMD you can only use two displays unless you use DisplayPort. Any non-DisplayPort monitors will be limited to just two displays. (This includes DVI, VGA, HDMI, internal display, and DisplayPort hook ups to non-active adapters of other sorts.) You can use an active DisplayPort->DVI adapter to get an extra display.

 

So what you are saying is I need two ACTIVE DisplayPort to DVI adapters and an ACTIVE DisplayPort to VGA adapter... or could I just use the regular VGA on the dock?

Thanks!

 

You can still use two displays without a DisplayPort connection. You just need ONE DisplayPort to DVI adapter to add an additional display. (Or two if you want to also use the internal display.) So you can use one DVI, one VGA, and one DP->DVI.

 

That is awesome, thank you very much for the information. Now off to find an active adapter.

 

I idle around 50-55 C but one of the first things I did was put arctic silver on both the CPU and GPU, I actually found that dell did a poor job of putting thermal paste on the CPU and GPU with a spot in the middle that had no thermal paste. I don't know what my idle temps were like stock.

 

I'm getting tired with this constant fan issue, once the fan goes on it never stops even after cooling the CPU to 50-55 in IDLE.

 

Hi everyone,
I have very little use for my FirePro card, and yet it sucks power like crazy. I have disabled PowerPlay and installed Dell's driver, so its clock remains at a low frequency, but it's still a burden on the battery.

What I would love to achieve would be to disable the card and fall back to the Intel GMA, which is all the power I need.

I'm not talking about an Optimus-like technology, which doesn't seem to be possible with the FirePro (I tried changing the firmware, using a modded driver... no luck, it appears to be locked in the BIOS), I'm talking about simply disabling the FirePro so the system doesn't see or use it.

Has anyone tried that yet? Is there any way to disable the card? Maybe by physically removing it from the laptop?

Once it runs on the Intel GMA only, this would give quite a boost to my battery life, and wouldn't spin the fans as much.

Thanks in advance!

 

I feel you, coming from a m6600 with 1hour battery life, or 1.75ish with powerplay off.

Unplug it should definitely work (unless you have a IPS)
Software wise, try disable it in device manager and see if it works.

 

If you remove the graphics card, the laptop will boot up with the Intel GPU.

I suspect this will kill your HDMI and DisplayPort but I haven't had any confirmation on this either way.

 

Thanks, that's awesome. Do you know if there's any way to disable the FirePro from the BIOS or with a software trick? This would remove quite a hassle...

I tried disabling it from the device manager, but it just falls back to the generic VGA driver, it doesn't see the Intel HD graphic. Thanks in advance for your advises.