Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

hello i have an old and decrebit m6600 with the following internals

2960xm, 750GB & 256 SSD , 32 GIG DDR
NVIDIA Quadro 4000M with 2GB GDDR5 dedicated memory

i was thinking of purchasing a cheap m4600 and putting the internals of the 6600 into it. should be a strajghtforward exercise,right?

 

Memory - fine
CPU - fine
Drives - M4600 only has room for one 2.5" drive and one mSATA drive
GPU - no way, M4600 uses MXM 3.0a and M6600 uses MXM 3.0b, you cannot put a 3.0b card into a 3.0a slot

 

thanks for your help

 

Hello,

Would anyone be aware of whether the NVIDIA Quadro M2000M is compatible with the DELL Precision M4600?

According to this post from a DELL moderator, "The video card would work in the M4600 system."

 

No.

The best card that might work is the WX4150/70 but you wont have the internal display work.

Best card with internal display is the m5100/w5170m

 

Thank you for your reply. I wonder why the moderator stated that it would work.

Would you be aware of the best NVIDIA card for the M4600?

 

Nothing other than the stock options ever worked on the m4600

 

That is quite unfortunate to me.

I have a question for you. Would you know why the M2000M is incompatible with the Precision M4600? Thank you for your time.

 

The BIOS on the m4600 (and the m6600) were just not very good. We had one individual tear down bit by bit to try and reconstruct it into something better but it just wasnt possible, too janky. Even enabling better memory speed was a huge undertaking and in the end didnt seem to work either. However for some reason with AMD GPU's they dont have any issues so we were able to get significantly better performance with AMD.

The m4700/m4800 had significantly better compatibility due to a better built BIOS. They werent just enhancements but a new BIOS to the best of my understanding.

The issue comes from Windows particularly and also the BIOS. The m2000m was only ever able to slightly work under Windows XP. You can check out the m4600 GPU upgrade thread to see the journey but ultimately (and sadly) the project couldnt yield results.

 

There are a lot of nuances when it comes to upgrading to non-stock GPUs in these systems. I suspect the moderator was simply guessing (GPU upgrades "usually" work with systems after the M4600/M6600). The only way to be sure if something will work is to find someone who has tried it. We have people who have tried this upgrade and it is a no-go.