New M6500 Discussion Thread

Thanks Adam,
I tried to activate the led light on the Intel Matrix Storage Console but it don't look to be working.
I will wait the replacement of the Motherboard and see...

 

Forgive me if the answers are already in this thread; I did have a quick look, but the thead is HUGE...

Anyway, I am thinking about gettting one of these bad- machines for software development, media encoding, and game playing, but I'm concerned about the graphics card options:

1) Is it possible to install standard drivers (as opposed to the certified professional ones) for these cards in order to play games..? Or do games play fine so it not necessary..?

2) Is the ATI card good enough do you think..? Or is it worth spending an extra £840 or so on the Quadro 3800M..?

Cheers.

ponx

 

mannyA,
The RGB panel in the M6500 is a 300nit panel.

 

1) Games play fine on standard drivers and it seems that normal driver releases patched for mobility support work fine too.

2) If your not going for the Covet with the 3800 standard its probably not worth the extra cash. The ATI doesn't benchmark much behind the 3800 and its DDR5.

 

Same here, delayed another week! Originally ordered 17 December, then had to cancel and reorder to get the slim power supply. Next ship date was 21 January, then 28 January, now who knows when? I NEED this system next week. I have a work group that was counting on using this machine for some heavy duty video editing. None of our other machines will handle the load. I don't know what I will do if Dell doesn't come through!

 

Mine has measured between 325.2 and 329.5 at full brightness with a color temp from 6800K to 7000K. All measured with no color profile applied. Measurements spaced out over a couple of weeks.

 

Moving ahead on panel work.

My biggest sticking point is the measured Gamma of 1.8. Dell reps say that the panel should measure 2.2 at "full grayscale saturation". I was taking notes during the call so I may have written it down wrong. Any help on understanding monitor measurements at full grayscale saturation would be helpful.

Why is the Gamma the sticking point? Because adjusting the Gamma from 1.8 to 2.2 will introduce banding into gradients - especially with grays. This means working with B&W photos could be complicated by banding and false hues when using a calibration scheme. Working in the 1.8 gamma space would mean incorrect brightness curves when you go to print or having to adjust your print workflow to one similar to what Mac users use.

The next step will be trying to understand why we are getting the color casts from the included sRGB and AdobeRGB modes. It may very well be a Windows 7 issue where 2 profiles are overlapping each other. In theory it could also be a Control Point issue with Windows 7. I hate to do it, but I have a couple of spare hard drives and a Microsoft Technet account so I have access to all versions of Windows that I could install and test on the m6500. Any people out there running Vista or XP with the RGBLED screen could also let me know what they are seeing.

Also, found out that NTSC mode strips out the most colors from the palette. AdobeRGB is 100%, sRGB is 72%, and NTSC is 45% of what the panel is capable of displaying. This is unfortunate as it is the only mode that allows the panel to operate in its native 6500K range on my machine in Windows 7. People that will be calibrating their displays should be using AdobeRGB in Control Point or not using Control Point at all. I am not using Control Point at all.

 

That’s not the point I was trying to make.

The computer repair shop may have other panels, in the shop but they could be
200nit. Know If I am so worried about my M6500’s color display that I take it in to a
Repair shop don’t you think I would first take some Pictures of the display panels
Part number, for verification of said display panel. The next question that would come
To mind would be to ask the technician do you have a display panel to use as a test, something
Other then the dell display panel, to see if the colors come thru better

 

I did not take a picture, but I was there and wrote down all of the numbers on the back of the panel. Your stuck having to take my word for it until someone else gets a picture of their panel

As far as swapping them out, this is a repair shop located where I work. It is not open to the public. I am sure that if my machine was a Latitude then we could have tried other panels, but the M6500 and M6400 are both rare here.

The other issue would be the unknowns. We already know that the LTN170CT08-D01 is a custom version from Samsung that does not share the same specs of the generic LTN170CT panel. We also know that the LG panel that was included with some M6400s is not being shipped with the M6500. It is unknown as to whether the LTN170CT08-D01 was ever shipped with the M6400. This means that it is unknown as to whether the LG would be interchangeable with the Samsung in the M6500.

 

I think their point might be that you can't just measure a portion of the range and declare that my gamma is X. You must measure the entire range, from deepest blacks to whitest whites. I suspect that altering your brightness setting will alter the measured gamma. (You should be able to perceive this by noting the reduced contrast of your display when the brightness is turned down.)