My new Precision M4300 thinks it's a Latitude D830?!

Hello,
I just got a new Dell Precision M4300 here in Israel (refurbished, not directly from Dell) with the following configuration:

CPU: Core 2 Extreme X9000
LCD: 15.4" WUXGA
Graphics: Quadro NVS 140M (apparently)
HDD: 160GB SATA 7200RPM

My question is as follows:

It in fact says Precision M4300 on the front of the laptop near the keyboard,
But when I turn it on it identifies itself as a Latitude D830.

I bought the laptop thinking I was getting a Quadro FX360M (it is CAD certified which is important to me as I work with their program).

What is going on? was I fooled in some way?

If I apply the latest M4300 BIOS update will it change the names of the laptop model and the graphics card?

Thanks!

 

I think the D830 and M4300 are closely related, you probably have an M4300 with a D830 motherboard inside. Someone probably replaced the M4300 with the D830 board, and then sold it to you.

 

Seeing this thread I thought I would tell about an old dell optiplex gx400 had.
There was an area where I could switch around the jumper and when it was on 2 specific pins, the bios would say it was a dell precision **** I don't know what model it said but I think it had a 3 something. Maybe precision 3000
I just thought that was odd...

 

Does it have the bare metal looking lid?

What does the service tag info say,when you poke it into the dell driver and support site?

 

Did you buy it from a store? If yes, go there, and say it's the wrong graphics card. Take a print from an official Dell spec sheet to prove it.

If you bought it second hand, well, good luck...

 

Hi, it looks like this:



When I enter the service tag it recognizes it as a Precision M4300.

 

Yes it was bought from a store and has the full 3 year warranty etc.
Before I go to them and ask them to replace anything I just want to make sure I don't come out as an idiot asking them to replace something that doesn't need replacing, so here I am...

 

well, you have a Precision M4300 case and the guts of a Latitude. If it were mine, I would go back to the store and ask them to replace the motherboard with the correct one.

 

Maybe you just have the wrong BIOS? I don't even know if you can flash a D830 BIOS onto an M4300, though. Honestly, if the actual specs match up with the advertised specs, I don't think it's a big deal. As long as it works, that is.

 

The gut's between the M4300 and D830 should be the same,was with the M65/D820 and D610/M20,the only difference is the bios,which you need to get dell or the shop to give you the dos command line instruction to change the bios from one to the other using floppy drive.
You won't be able to just flash the M4300 bios normally because as far as the laptop is concerned,it's a D830,and flashing the M4300 bios is the wrong one and will just come up with the warning that you are trying to flash the wrong bios.

I knew a guy that had his motherboard replaced in a D610,when it came back,it was an M20,dell supplied the cmnd line to change it to the correct bios and ID.

Or....you could just get the shop to sort it out [probably the best,since they sold you a M4300],I know for a fact the quadro NVS120m didn't have the same openGL extension's as the quadro FX350m because I tried solidwork's on a D820 and the realtime material rendering wouldn't work and was greyed out just like it does with any consumer GPU's.....so I would be wanting what I paid for if I were you.