Gaming on the Dell M6600

I'm looking for a laptop to game on. I will probably only play Skyrim and the new Star Wars:The Old Republic. I would like to play on High Quality. I have had a few people recommend the Dell M6600 with the ATI graphics card (I believe the M8900, not for sure though) and I was wondering what you all think. I will edit some video and use Photoshop on the computer also.

 

I would personally avoid the Quadro 3000M for gaming. Quadro 4000m and ATI 8900 are very close. The 5010M is much faster than both.

I play WOW, Civilization V, Shogun 2, various flight and driving sims, and few first person shooters on the 4000M. All details maxed at 1920x1080. Have never noticed any issues as far as frame rates go.

Only issue at all is that benchmarks on DirectX 11 games sometimes glitch with Optimus enabled since the test starts out on the Integrated video which only supports DirectX10. When the benchmark checks the system and only sees the Internal GPU, it will flag the system as not supporting DirectX11. Actually running the game makes the system auto switch to the Nvidia GPU and all works well.

 

I second that. And just as a very loose comparison, I also have an alienware with a 460 (in sig) and with both the 460 over clocked and the quadro 4000 over clocked, batman arkham asylum benchmark reported about 53 fps on the 460 and 66 fps on the quadro. Both laptops have roughly the same CPU. (2720 and 2820)

 

Get the M8900.

I have a Clevo with an 580M and a Precision with an M8900 and there is no real world difference between the two.

Save your money, get the M8900 and invest in an SSD that's where you will not the real difference.

 

Yeah, get the M8900.

I have it since august, and I do game on it quite often. Not with the games you mention, but my steam folder has 60+ games and I found no problems so far. Everything is smooth on highest settings (mostly strategy games and some rpg)

Starcraft II is smooth on ultra (60-100 fps when I last checked).

 

To the OP stick with the M8900 if you are purely gaming. Catalyst drivers will work with it without any modifications and you can overclock it to the same range as a Radeon 6970M. It is a great card.

Quadros 4000M is also good for gaming, but the 4000M might not be as good as it should vs. its GeForce cousins because you CAN'T use Verde drivers on them without serious modifications and the drivers for Quadros aren't optimized for gaming that well, so you will see some performance degradation.

The 3000M is not good for gaming and for its price not worth it.

Kind of not true with the 5010M. The 5010M would be faster than any of the M6600 offerings if it wasn't stuck on Quadros drivers but that is the main issue. The main issue is that the 5010M uses ECC Buffered GDDR 5, which is actually SLOWER for gaming uses than the regular GDDR 5 everyone is accustomed to. The fact it is ECC actually makes it crippled and the M8900 can surpass it easily. Irony, but kind of true. Stick to the 4000M or my personal preference, the M8900.

 

Are you using FSX on the M6600?
If so,how is the performance?.

Thanks

 

Flight Simulator X works very well. So does the more modern DCS A-10C Warthog.

 

How is the screen on the M6600. Let's say compared to a 17" MacBook Pro screen or the Alienware m17x RGB and non-RGB screens. One of the biggest factors for me is the screen. That is what I'm going to be staring at a lot.

Other than the i7 and FirePro 8900M, what options do I need to look for when buying from Ebay?

 

On this Polish site Dell M6600 - Forum Notebookcheck.pl, one person made a photo of M6600 with regular TN 1920x1080 screen ( on the left ) and Alienware with RGB screen ( on the right ). One photo, two notebooks, so there are the same settings on camera. Those pictures are at the end of the page ( at the bottom of 13 page ).