Latitude E6400 Owner's Lounge

If you can do it with an application, you can do it with something else.
DCP allows you to easily change the keyboard brightness (without going into the BIOS), and allows you to change when the backlit keyboard light duration (ie: closes after x amount of time when idle), an it gives you the option to enable it when you use the mouse (trackpad and trackpoint).

It give you easy access to shut down devices of your laptop, and do other things to save power (Dell calls it Dell Extended battery). 1 press of a button it cuts power to the card reader, optical drive, firewire, reduces the screen refresh rate form 60Hz down to 40Hz, disables Aero, set your display at 16-bit instead of 32-bit, and more.

It allows you to easily set your wireless to use less power.

And the final thing is that it shows you the on screen notification, so you get a better sense of the volume level, brightness level, know if the ambient light sensor is on or off, and know if your keyboard backlit is set as ON/OFF or Auto, and not battle yourself with it.

Additional features includes:
- custom hot-keys with the Fn key.
- Close the srceen (Fn+D)
- Disable battery recharge
- Change display modes

DCP is made of 2 applications.
1- The main software that allows you change settings. Yes, its big, but you don't have to make it start when windows starts, and can launch it anytime with Fn+F7 if you need it.
2- On screen notification, which is ultra light (contains virtually no graphics, all is code generated), fast startup, and does it's purpose correctly (well not the new version, but the 2 versions given above, does). Also, this is the one that makes every hot key work. I know it's hard to believe that an OEM can actually do something well made... but this is the case.

 

I'm using Windows 7 build 7201 - 64bit. When I downloaded the linked drivers, it said it could not find drivers compatible with my current hardware. I triple checked the drivers to make sure they were correct. The only driver I was able to install was the ones straight from the Dell download site, for Vista 64.

 

I'm slow, and didn't realize I had to use the modified file to install the drivers. It brought my aero score up to a 3.4. My gaming score is still a 4.9. Maybe I have to do some more tweaking.

 

AH!
Usually for laptop, the OEM company manages (which is not to be confused with making, only Apple makes drivers for devices that are not their own) the drivers. The reason for this decision, is to ensure for all the OEM computer users that the drivers won't screw up the system and cause driver conflict.
So basically what Dell do in this case, is that on every official stable release of a driver version, which offer significant advantage over the previous version, Dell start testing the new driver on their affected system, and will only release it for the system is if passes their criteria.

The thing is, if you are you not a computer enthusiasts, or don't know you way around computer and just wants a computer that work, then just stay with Dell drivers. If you are willing to accept risk, then use Nvidia drivers.

Now you said that the Nvidia driver can't detect it's own video card, that is made on purpose (a deal with Dell and Nvidia.. well almost every other OEM's does that with almost all the hardware used in the system).
So, all you have to do is edit a file and add the laptop GPU name to make the driver support it.

If you don't want to complicate your life, this is what you do.
You download Nvidia drivers here (these are official Nvidia drivers, just extracted form their respected setup for user editing).
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers

Then you download this file (pre-edited file which includes all laptop GPU's)
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/185series/18585_vista64/nvac.inf

Once done, execute the driver file which will extract all the file at a desired place, then copy and replace the second file downloaded to where the driver where just extracted.
Then simply run the setup from the extract file.

So to recap, basically all you do is just replace a file which contain "Quadro NVS 160M" in the list for the Nvdiia driver to support.

 

That's perfect score.
Wow 4.9 for gaming! Now that is something BIG! I only get that (well 5.0) when I seriously overclock my GPU, it was 4.0 if I recall correctly before the overclock.

Which drivers did you use?

 

Using the 185.85 drivers you linked to me, for Win7 64bit, from Laptopvideo2go.

 

Oh right right right, Win7 benchmark differently from Vista. I never overclock my GPU under Win7 and did the benchmark.

 

I do not think GB is correct on this. The problem is that your GPU is downclocking. You should be able to force it to clock back up by hitting alt-tab and allowing aero to render (if you are using win7). In the alternative, you can install GB's powermizer tool, or powermizer switch 1.1 from laptopvideo2go.com. Since flash 10, the gpu is (or more accurately can be) used to render.

 

I've integrated graphics on my E6400. But BIOS shows as only 32MB video memory. I was under the impression that upto 768 MB of RAM can be used for video memory. I am confused about this now.

 

Run a program such as 3DMark06. It tells me that my E6400 (also Intel graphics) has 1022MB of local video memory. How much system RAM do you have? I have 4GB.

John