Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge *Part 2*

Use google to find the service manual provided by dell. It should have everything you need.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Youtube has a couple good M6400/M6500 disassembly videos. It's not to hard lot's of screws that's it. Best card I could get for gaming was the firepro 7820m. You can install the legacy crimson drivers on it to get decent gaming performance. It has the same power envelope as the FX2700m but uses the second fan and heatpipe like the hotter cards do, so when gaming i rarely see the gpu go over 65C, even during summer.

 

Yea! glad that I found this place, hope someone still keep eyes on this thread.
Ok this is my case. I used dell m6400 (BIOS Dell A13 - T9800 - 8Gb Ram) with Nvidia fx3700m and I really want to be mad with black screen crash.
When I was using Windows, I have to use nvidiaInspector to underclock, this make gaming well and it's not crash when run similar graphics processing (video editing,render), but sometime it still crash. I switched to Ubuntu for work, and I still have to underclock for more stable (not crash). However the frequency of black screen crash seems higher. And I should probably replace this card.
I plan to replace card fx3700 to FirePro m7740 or m7820. However, I use Ubuntu so M7820 is only for linux drivers, M7740 driver is not support from 2012.
So, M7820 will work well on M6400, right? I need a comfirmation because I'm in Vietnam and it's hard to buy a card via ebay.

 

@lilngu Yes the M7820 will work in the M6400. I have it in both my M6400 and M6500.

 

bump

 

Hi folks,

I just recently acquired the Precision M6400 for cheap. I love her quality build and her cooling is better than most of the conventional laptops. When gaming with T9900 CPU, the cpu never cracks 60c under 90+ load.

I plan to upgrade my lappy in two directions:

1. Put in a qx9300 CPU for multi-threading and overclocking,

2. A GPU better off for gaming. I'm having a FX 3700M gpu but the poor thing doesn't support DX11. I'm considering M7820 (a little bit small vRAM), quadro 5000m (very hard to find).
I did observe quadro 4000m selling for a tad cheaper than 5000m and it's using the similar gpu (GF104 vs GF100 on 5000M). I've seen a lot of successful stories of people using 5000M on precision m6400 but I haven't seen people using quadro 4000m. Could anyone confirm that this card will work on precision m6400? I know this card is intended for M6600 but quadro 5000M is for M6500 and it works on m6400 lappy

Thanks for input!

 

It is not the type of GPU but rather you need the Dell made non-standard type of gfx card made for the M6400 and M6500. Dell never produced a gfx card for the M6500 based on the 4000M.

The only route for you to upgrade your gfx card in your M6400, is to get the gfx cards made for the M6500. The gfx cards for the M6400 and M6500 share the same form factor as you know by now.

You are limited to only four gfx cards made by Dell specifically for the M6500 (which will also work on the M6400). They are FX 2800M, FX 3800M, M7820 (best choice in my opinion in terms of not only price but also in terms of performance and heat generated) and 5000M. The performance of the M7820 and 5000M are pretty close but the M7820 runs a lot cooler and sucks less juice.

My old M6400 had a QX9300 and a M7820 in it, runs pretty well IMHO.

 

Thanks DynamiteZerg,

Are you using your lappy mainly for gaming or for professional design. I've kept an eye on m7820 but the 1GB vram holds me back. quadro 3700m is quite decent it just isn't a dx11 card. I am not looking for high or crazy settings in games just a good amount of video memory to keep the texture at a decent level

Also if you play video games, how is firepro drivers doing in gaming or do you modify the driver to mask the firepro card as a radeon 5870m in Windows.

 

Mainly gaming. The M7820 does quite well for it's age. I need to have a look again about what shows up for the card in Windows. IIRC it showed up as a 5000 series card for some reason.

The M6400 is now my spare laptop and it's been sitting in a corner for a while. I'll start it up to have a look later.

 

I have this laptop and was wondering if it'spossible to install 1600Mhz ram freq (12800S)?, doesn't matter if it runs at lower speed.