Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

I was thinking about buying this laptop off of someone on craiglist for $400
These are the specs:

Dell Precision M6400
Core 2 Extreme processor 3.06Ghz X 9100
8GB Ram
320 Hard Drive
Dvd-Rw
17.3 screen size
Nivida Quadro 3700 1GB Video Card

Is that a good price? Is this Laptop good? Is it likely I'm going to run into some major problems? Anything I should be using to test it before I purchase?

 

I have the following.

M6400
Q9100 CPU
16GB 1066 DDR3
Single NVIDIA Quatro FX 2700M

I have been unhappy with the performance of my M6400 for some time. I ran CPU-Z and found my system was indeed running slow due to the power supply I was using part of the time. (At one of the locations I work from)

So that was an easy fix but I am still wondering if my memory is running at the right speed. Under the memory tab of CPU-Z I see:

DRAM Frequency is 532 Mhz
FSB : DRAM 1:2

On the CPU tab:
Bus Speed 266 Mhz
Rated FSB 1063 Mhz

So why is the Bus Speed running slower than the Rated FSB speed? With an input of 266 Mhz and a 1:2 ratio of FSB : DRAM this explains why I am running a memory clock of 532 Mhz.

The question is why is the Bus Speed 266 Mhz instead of 533 Mhz to give me a DRAM clock of 1066?

Seems like the Bus Speed should be 1066 so my FSB : DRAM can be 1:1 giving me better memory performance.

I would be very interested to see what other people are seeing with CPU-Z.

 

Yes. Everything is ok. FSB to DRAM is in 1:2 ratio.

Your bus speed is 266, but your FSB is quad-pumped bus speed, which gives you 1066.




And here's my question: where can I get best driver for M7740 ? Latest on Dell support was 8.632 ( which is old ). Any1 help ?

 

Hi ils,

Thanks for the reply, I posted response to it couple of days ago but can not see it here, strange...
Anyway, what I was saying was that the first thing I did when I experienced this issue for the first time was to test the entire laptop (including RAM) with build-in BIOS diagnostics as well as with the DellPC Diagnostics on line tool. Both tests passed without reporting any errors.

I did not try Memtest86+ though, so that was going to be may next step. I ran Memtest and it indeed identified one of the 1GB sticks as faulty, with quite a few errors.
So I removed those two sticks ( I had 4GB + 4GB +1GB +1GB) and so far everything is running fine (knock-knock on the wood).

Thanks
Roman

 

Glad it's working out for you. I went through the same thing (memory problem but on a different notebook) a few years ago.

 

Update on M7820 upgrade issues:

Reboot and S3/resume work fine as of Catalyst 12.11 beta. For anyone else who's interested in taking the plunge, look for Dell part VYGKK.

 

I am looking at buying a used M6400 with a Q9000 and a Matte version WUXGA 1920x1200 RGBLED screen (according to seller). I checked the service tag on Dell support, and the original config showed it came with a T9550 and WUXGA RGBLED E2E display.

I'm okay with the screen change ( as long as the current screen is the matte 1920x1200 LED version), but I'm not sure about the cpu upgrade. My question is....would the heat sink that originally came with the T9550, still be sufficient for the upgraded
Q9000 cpu? Would it still be okay if I dropped a QX9300 in it? Or would I have to buy and upgrade the heatsink too?

Any help would be great here.

Thanks and regards.

 

Don't know if they had two types of coolers (doubt it as 35W and 45W does not make so much of a difference), but can you see from the original configuration what was the CPU heatsink code?

EDIT: Sorry, bad idea, I checked mine which came with QX9300 originally, but the heatsink assembly is not specified directly; must be a part of the base assembly part.

The ebay search shows only J754F which comes with two heatpipes, so I'll presume there was only one type of CPU heatsinks and that you'll be OK if you have such a heatsink..

 

Mine originally had the T9550 and I upgraded to the QX9300 - no problems almost 4 years later. ThrottleStop allows for a decent overclock too

 

Hey everyone
My M6400 is still going strong after all these years.
For people looking at buying them used - go for it! Mine has survived many bangs and a few drops. They seem to be built like tanks with excellent cooling.
Mine is only a T9550 with a FX2800. I've added a SSD and day to day it flies, can still handle the odd bit of gaming and still good with Photoshop / 3DSmax.

So.. Do it!

I also think it looks very nice still after all this time. Guessing that's why the design hasn't changed much.