M6600 Owners Thread

Cheers for the reply pal - appriciated

I'm still a little unsure about the battery life regarding not having Optimus and the tempertures of the case during normal use as a result. Do you have the FirePro? can you give me an opinion on that?

In terms of battery life I guess as long as I can get 3hours out of it while working at medium screen brightness, with WIFI/WWAN enabled while using documents/browsing I should be fine. Can you/anyone confirm this is possible?

 

Nope. Sorry. I am pure Nvidia. Try google it. It's an ORACLE.

EDT: Good choice on the 4000m or FirePro 8900 (either one is ok). 3 Hours is fine. Some trains have power outlet (even in Malaysia). The 5010m is way over priced. But you get ECC.

 

Quick update - I've called Dell Pre-sales tech support and they have confirmed that the M6600 ATI offering was updated and now supports switchable graphics via the AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics. So given the fact I don't need certified graphics and only want gaming, its going to be the best bet for me.

I also confirmed with them that the screens are all Anti-glare and they say all including the multitouch screen are anti-glare and *not* glossy.

some links to the ATI switchable graphics:

AnandTech - Mobile GPU Faceoff: AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics vs. NVIDIA Optimus Technology

AMD Dynamic Switchable Graphics Technology

Cheers

 

I dont believe this if I wont see with my own eyes.
I have a M6600 with ATI FirePro M8900 and there is no chance of using switchable graphics speaking of Intel HD graphics.

 

Wow. Do some research on this first. As ATI from my experience and being part of AMD now, they tend to be glitchy.

 

yeah I've been Nvidia for past 4-5 years as well so I'm the first to admit I'm not up to speed with how ATI are doing atm, but from what I can see of the reviews of ATI's switchable graphics the general concensus is that it is fairly pants and that Optimus is miles better. Which is what I thought originally so no suprise.

the reason I'm not against it is because tbh I'm not really that fond of Optimus either. I had manually switchable graphics on my previous laptop (Sony VPC Z11 series) and it just worked, so the idea that ATI let you just forget about the application checking and automatic GPU selection and just force one or the other for everything is something I would prefer anyway. As long as I can manually change it and don't have to reboot or change anything in the BIOS then I can't justify the extra £600 for the Nvidia 4000M.

Also the reviews seem to conclude that ATI's switchable graphics work just fine when manually selected, it seems to only be the automagic switching that has the isssue. So.... it should be fine for what I want.

(also these reviews were September 2011, so entirely possible things have got better.... heh blind optimism ftw)

 

out of interest when did you get yours? they said they updated it around September to allow it. If you are not able to get it working then either the salesman is wrong (he spoke to the technical team...), or you havn't got the updated version or not installed the switchable graphics driver?

Could you give some more info please?

cheers pal

 

Agreed. I have a new Precision (like only a few weeks old) and I do not see anything like that. I did do a fresh install as soon as I got it, so maybe I forgot to install a driver or program for this, but I HIGHLY doubt it. I don't think switchable graphics are possible with the ATI cards.

 

m6600
11 Jan 2012 (order confirmed)
20 Jan 2012 (received) - received in less than 2 weeks - Made in China and better quality than the ones from Dell Malaysia or could be the Gen2 design flaws.

m6500 covet - Feb 2011 (Made in Malaysia) - waited 1 full month

m6500 - Aug 2010 (Made in Malaysia) - waited 1 full month

Mine are Quadro 4000m and FX3800m. The ATI option is not available on website even the dual SSD not on website. Have to request from Dell Sales to custom.

My optimus runs fine on my m6600. The only glitch with Dell are the tools and apps Dell provides. E.g. Dell Feature Enhancement App, mostly nice to have items. Not as bad as Toshiba with the excessive and obscene amount of bloatware just for power saving.

It's the BIOS. Dell needs to catch up. They are weak or slow on their software.

Or you can try Alienware M18x. But wil be very odd to bring a spaceship to a meeting. Also not justifiable for procurement budget.

 

I'm a consultant so going to a machine that weighs 6.5kg inc power supply is just a non-starter Thats why I'm considering the Precision, because it is bad add enough but only weighs 3.5kg (ish)