M6600 Owners Thread

Nice.
I really hope that we could do the same with 7970m in the nearest future...

 

Why do you guys want to turn a stable business class system into an potentially unstable OC'd gaming rig? Isn't that what the AlienWarz are for?

Scott

 

Personally I bought my precision for the "professional" look (imagine taking a M17x to a client site?!), the capability of having 3 internal disks, the multi-touch screen, the ability to have internal 3G card... and of course the stability. There is no evidence that the 580GTX is lowering stability, or that it is - only that it isn't a factory option as they only support the Quadro cards.

Personally I don't need the expensive Quadro cards as I don't do any rendering type work, but I do play lots of games so the performance is important to me - I would much rather stick a 675m GTX in there than pay twice as much for the Quadro4000m that has half the gaming performance. I only bought the 4000m so I could play games... which was a VERY expensive option.

Given my time again I would almost certainly have saved over £600 and gone with the default FirePro card, then dropped a few hundred on the GTX580 or GTX675 or whatever...

IMO Dell are really missing a trick here, if they offered standard gaming cards on these laptops they would get a stack more business gamers. There are plenty of us that simply can't buy an Alienware because we would get laughed out of the office.

just my 5pence

 

@moogleassasin :
Yes that's exactly what i tho'
@scott : About stability if you know what u doing alienware can be as stable as any business class laptop.
Beside you know u can turn off OC anytime you want.

If you working on 3ds max and tried the new feature : nitrous viewport ! you know quadro is not that good anymore and gaming card with their raw power and higher CUDA core can beat quadro to dead.
In autocad your quadro needed to be certificated to use it (and it's f**king annoying as hell using older version, if you know what i mean).
well just my personal opinion don't take it too serious!

 

These business laptops are designed to be certified for the specs and business applications they are primarily built for. The same applies even more in regards to the graphics drivers.

We all like gaming on some level, but comparing a GeForce card to a Quadro is like comparing apples to oranges and demonstrates a level of naivety. You cannot get reliable benchmarks from a utility that does not properly test or make use of the Quadro's true features since it does not know the card's true capabilities. Additionally, in regards to using the GeForce cards inside the M6600, been there/done that and simply seeing a utility or Windows reporting the correct GPU model number does not mean it is working 100% properly or if the BIOS even knows how to address it.

I take nothing personally and suggest others do the same. However, I would also suggest not putting all of your trust in software that most likely is not reflective of the real world when it comes to these professional machines.

Scott

 

Two M6600s landed on my desk yesterday, so I took them for a spin. Both have i7-2760qm cpus and both have amd 8900m gpus.

Test procedure:
Ran all windows updates, installed dx9, .net4, made sure no remaining windows updates were needed.
Made sure latest FirePro drivers were installed,
Rebooted.
Installed benchmarking software -- nothing else installed.
Rebooted.
Benchmarked both m6600s twice, averaged the four results
Rebooted,
Installed Catalyst 6900m drivers.
Rebooted.
Checked that the system recognized the gpu as 6970m.
Ran benchmarks on both m6600s twice, averaged the four results.
I then compared the differences to the variations within each set of four tests to determine whether they were significant or within margin of error for the benchmark.

Results are that the Catalyst drivers made no significant difference to performance. However, the base gaming performance of the system was already quite good.

Here are the numbers with a baselin/comparison to my desktop rig (i5-750 w/ gtx 460):

HAWX2 1600 x 900 8x AA:
8900m drivers: 59 fps
6900m drivers: 59 fps
Difference = 0
Reference desktop: 49 fps

HAWX2 1920 x 1080 8x AA:
8900m drivers: 59 fps
6900m drivers: 59 fps
Difference = 0
Reference desktop: 49 fps
(yes, identical to 16 x 9)

Unigene Heaven Dx11, Tess off, 4x antistrophic, 4x AA, 1920 x 1080
8900m drivers: 33.5 fps, 845 score
6900m drivers: 34.0 fps fps, 858 score
Difference = +1.5% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 37.4 fps, 942 score

Unigene Heaven Dx11, Tess Normal, 4x antistrophic, 4x AA, 1920 x 1080
8900m drivers: 24.0 fps, 604 score
6900m drivers: 24.4 fps fps, 616 score
Difference = +1.7% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 28.6 fps, 720 score

Unigene Heaven Dx9, (no tess), 4x antistrophic, 4x AA, 1920 x 1080
8900m drivers: 35.0 fps, 893 score
6900m drivers: 35.0 fps fps, 886 score
Difference = 0
Reference desktop: 38.2 fps, 962 score

3dMark 11 Basic 1280x 720
8900m drivers: 3054 score
6900m drivers: 3077 score
Difference = +0.8% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 3436 score

3dMark 06 Basic 1280 x 1024
8900m drivers: 20567 score
6900m drivers: 20249 score
Difference = -1.5% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 17233 score

PCMark 07 Basic PCMarks score
8900m drivers: 3073 score
6900m drivers: 3064 score
Difference = -0.3% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 2426 score (crappy hard drive?)

PCMark 07 Dx9 score
8900m drivers: 75.00 fps
6900m drivers: 75.06 fps
Difference = +0.1% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 61.60 fps

PCMark 07 Image Manipulation score
8900m drivers: 10.85 mpx/s
6900m drivers: 10.81 mpx/s
Difference = -0.4% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 8.42 mpx/s

Final Fantasy XIV Benchmark - High
8900m drivers: 3046
6900m drivers: 3031
Difference = -0.5% (within margin of error for benchmark)
Reference desktop: 3187

Other notes:
1. Change in drivers did make all benchmarks and games that return card model information to recognizes the 8900m as a 6970m, so in terms of compatability checks, the 6900m driver has some advantages.
2. An SSD drive would likely boost some of these score results overall, as some drive stutter affected minimum frame rates and hence the scores. However, it would not affect the difference between the drivers' performance.
3. These scores came back as on-par with the Alienware M17x with the 6970m gpu. That means out of the box an m6600 with 8900m is on par for gaming with an Alienware m17x with 6970m, if otherwise similarly specc'd.
4. The visuals with the 6970m drivers looked better than with the 8900m drivers, but this is purely subjective. I have no way to quantify this or prove it is not confirmation bias, but I noticed more detail with the 6970m drivers (though this could be because it was the sixth, seventh, etc. times watching them.

Conclusion: Just installing the 6970m drivers produces no performance benefit to the m6600 / 8900m, but it also causes no detriment. It may be worth doing just so the games recognize the card as valid.

 

Thanks for this interesting information.
Some reputation added.

 

One other note: One of the two machines was running 90-93 degrees c. on the gpu during some benchmarks. The other stayed a good deal below that. I have no idea why. They are both sitting on identical active cooling pads.

 

Sounds like the heat sink for the GPU doesn't have enough paste on it or not making good contact period. Before turning it loose to the owner, I would either re-paste it myself or call Dell and have a tech come out and do it.

 

Good idea. The keyboard has way too much give on that one anyway, so I should have them out to fix that and the gpu at the same time. It's almost bowed up in the middle and it's clearly not set down into the case as it should be. Since it's on 3yr NBD warranty, I should have them do it.

Knowing Dell they will send out a whole new mobo assembly and keyboard... They came out for an XT2 XFR a few times last fall -- replaced every part except the hard drive over three or four visits... Every time introducing a new problem... Ah, the joy of warranties.