Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

Thanks for the info!
Would flashing the BIOS fall under the "accidental damage"?

 

It would fall under "accidental damage" only if you flash the bios with a sledgehammer! .

Seriously tho, flashing the bios is pretty safe as long as you have both your battery and AC power plugged into the computer.
What is great about Bios flashing is that you can go back to an earlier version of the bios if you think it will run your computer better. Sometimes older is better. You will find several people on here that have done extensive testing and have found the earlier Bios versions do a better job of keeping the gpu cool. Others say there is no difference.

So far vA03 seems to be the one that best handles downclocking in 3d games... Hope this info helps.

 

Quadro FX770M is a mid range card and not capable of running Crysis on High Settings at Native Resolution at fast frame rates. My laptop does not overheat when pushed...but it shouldn't, it should 'downclock'. Most cards are good up to the high 90'sC. Don't kid yourself...If I wanted to run Crysis on High settings I would have bought the Sager with the 9800GT or maybe even 2 9800's in SLI. It's delusional to expect anything different from the mid range Precision.

However, I'm going to pick up Crysis Warhead and start and new thread on settings/temps/time/FPS to compare to others.

 

That just shouldn't happen, let let us know what they say. I think someone around here said DELL officially is unaware of a 'downclocking' problem.

 

Exactly.

I have had a lot worse notebook's of this type with GPU temp's and a couple a little bit better,so to me it's middle of the road for temp's.

The XPS M1730 I had,ran at 82 degC gpu temp's,with it's three fan's and multi heatpipe [for each GPU !] design.....it's not realistic to expect the M4400 with it's slim profile and shared fan design to run at lower temp's while stressing it with a game....even if it is a lot less powerful.

How anybody can tell something is downclocking playing Crysis at max setting's on something like this is beyond me....or is it like......downclocking from 5fps to 3fps..lol.

And once again,let's stop comparing a gaming desktop to a 15" mobile workstation....it's a ridiculous comparison tool.

If your notebook is downclocking at anything under high 90's get it replaced/fixed/refunded.....and if it is getting up to those temp's,do the same.

 

When I first got my m4400 I ran the GPU under load to see if the GPU downclocking was going to be an issue for me. Initially, I ran ntune (to watch the GPU temp), furmark and Windows Media Player (to ensure audio didn't break up). With just furmark running, the GPU would stay below 84 degrees, the latency was good and audio worked perfectly.

I then realized to get the temp higher I would need to max the CPU since they share the same airflow/fan. So I added Prime95 to the mix. I was able to get the GPU up to 94 degrees a few times. In a 2 hour test, the GPU downclocked once to its lowest speed shortly after running at 94 degress for 30 seconds or so. Once the GPU downclocked, the temp quickly dropped down below 70 degrees (maybe 15 seconds). Shortly after that the GPU clock went back to 500/800 and continued at that speed for the rest of the test.

So in 2 hours, the GPU downclocked once and was back at full speed in under 30 seconds. I can't imagine a scenario where the GPU & CPU are running at 100 % for such long periods, so I am perfectly happy with the cooling of this laptop.

On a side note, while doing the test, if I was to hang the edge of the laptop off of the edge of my desk so that the cooling vent was exposed, the GPU temp would drop down to 84 degrees, even with the CPU at 100%.

In my case I have an Intel P8600 which runs cooler than the T9600 so I may have better results than someone running a Txx00 series CPU.

 

Exactly....I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you being here is kinda like me putting my Volkswagen Jetta on eBay and then hanging around the Jetta forum complaining that it won't do 0 to 60 in 4.2 seconds. Give those of us that know better a break on this, ok?

 

I think people shouldn't forget that the M4400 has what is probably the second best graphics card that you can get in a 15.4" laptop (after the 9800M GT in the Alienware m15x) at a significantly lower price and, frankly, a form factor that isn't going to produce ss from anyone over the age of 5.

 

Besides having a good video card in the 15.4" form factor, it is also one of the few, it not the only, 15.4" form factor notebook that supports the QX9300.

 

Yep....right up my alley ...I really really wanted that processor...I do mainly strat games that tend to be cpu intensive plus, well, it's a quad...