First week with my 6805

Last week, Best Buy were offering the 6805 for $1225 after rebates. There are three rebates: 1 - $100 back from eMachines, 2 - $125 gift card from BB, 3 - $50 gift card from BB. I checked with BB and the gift cards are redeemable for CASH!! In addition, if you have a BB Rewards card you will get back another $6 for every $125 spent. So that's another $70.

This is my third laptop and to say that I am impressed with it (albeit after only a week) would be an understatement. This is a very fine piece of equipment. Mine had no dead pixels out of the box, runs very quiet and is fast.

Other reviewers have talked about the features so I will skip that bit. I'm a tweaker so I immediately started to mess with it. I downloaded the latest Omega drivers and have been messing with the GPU. I've had it up to 400MHz on the core and 220MHz on the Mem with no probs. I should be able to post some results later on this week but I still need to run ATITest and that takes an hour or so - I'd rather be playing with the 6805 I will say that I can play Medal of Honor in 1024x800-32bit color and it runs great.

I also installed ClockGen and tweaked the FSB by 10% to 220. My SiSoft Sandra results are around 8550 MIPS Dhrystone - more than a 2.8GHz P4 according to SiSoft ( and about the same as a Pentium M running at 1.8GHz). Out of the box I was getting about 7770MIPS. At the tweaked setting, the 'slow' speed is 880MHz topping out at 1980MHz. I have had no problems with the machine running at this speed and will probably edge it up a few more % until it starts to freeze, then back it down a bit. ClockGen allows one to create preconfigured shortcuts on the desktop so I have two - one to overclock 10% and one to return it back to 'stock'.

I have the latest AMD PowerNow drivers and do not have any problems. When plugged in the unit operates at various speeds depending on the load. PC Wizard can be tweaked to show the CPU speed in the top right of the screen. Plugged in it will be running at 800 but open a browser window or other app and the speed will increase and then drop back.

The only strange problem that I am having is that the eMachine's power supply is not liked by DC to AC inverters, the type used to get 120V out of the cigar lighter in cars. I cannot get my inverter to power this notebook without the inverter tripping out. I have tried three inverters in three different cars. If someone can tell me how to fix that so that I may use my 6805 in the car on 120V, please let me know. I guess it has something to do with the quasi-square wave that inverters kick out but I have never had this problem before (with my previous notebooks). eMachine's tech support had no clue. In fact the tech asked me how I was getting 120V out of my car!! I told him to go to WalMart (for real).

Anyway, I will try and update this as we go - especially the GPU benchmarks. If you have any questions, I will try and answer them.

Thanks

Steve

 

I just got my first notebook a couple weeks ago and I really like this thing. I just used it recently in my truck with my Tripp-Lite 150w power inverter and all was flawless for 2 hours. Maybe it's your specicic inverter the eMachine doesn't like. Hope you can resolve the problem so your machine is fully "mobile".

Emachine M6805
No Cracked Hinges(yet)

 

Welcome to the scary world of eMachines Tech Support![ ]

This has always been the biggest knock on the manufacturer, unfortunately.

 

Hello:

You cannot use the laptop's AC in the car cause your inverter is probably not powerful enough. You'll probably need a 300W or above inverter.

My causin has a HP nx9005 (athlon 2400+) and it works on his 250W inverter. My M6805 does not. We also tried pentium 4 2.8 and 3ghz laptops and they did not work.

good luck!!

____________
------------
CXD
------------
____________
____________