Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

nice to see im not the only one who was sick of M4400 vs Core i7 desktop arguments....

 

In all fairness, guys, I-Ram went through 3 different M4400's and tested them all extensively. By tweaking his OS installation and overclocking the gpu he wanted to eek out the maximum performance out of the system while making sure it was stable and the temperatures stayed within safe limits.

His trials are well documented on these forums and are a valuable source of information for those wanting to do the same.

His disappointment lies in the fact that the poorly designed cooling system in this computer cripples it. On paper this computer should be able to do more than it actually does and all of this is due to the overheating problem.

Now, as for the heat tolerances of laptop chips, it's true that laptop chips are designed to run hotter than desktop chips but one thing does not change, they are made of the same materials and, like all electronic devices, heat is the ultimate enemy.

I compare it to smoking. It's true that smoking a cigarette won't kill you but smoking will eventually shorten your life. Therefore, running these computers at high heat levels will shorten their lives.

So, lets enjoy our m4400's. Enjoy your gaming sessions, video editing, 3d work, whatever. Just keep them well ventilated. Remember that no matter what others say, it's still one of the best laptops out there. Lets just not put on a pair of rose-colored glasses. The machine is great but it is not perfect.

Peace!

 

i dont see how why it can be claimed that it has a poor cooling system. my inspiron 8600 had a seperate fan for its radeon 9600 and it still went up to 85+ under load.

it served me well for 5 years, and i doubt anyone wants to keep a notebook longer than 5 years would be interested in performance, and thus would go with an integrated solution that would be cooler anyway

notebooks have always had their graphics at this temperature.

its got a "proven" track record if you will. the fact the m4400 has only one fan and stays cooler than my inspiron 8600 was is a good thing if you ask me.

not to mention my inspiron 8200 with radeon 9000 that reaches such temperatures (it has a pentium 4 m!!) and is going strong since 2003!

 

yeesh. I'm getting some crazy artifacts all over 3dmark06. Highest GPU temps registered while running 3dmark06 are 81c. Score was 5914 with stock drivers.

anyone run into this? maybe I reinstalled something in the wrong order ....

I'll run L4D and see what happens.

 

Minibob....I believe Ram when he reports what he does, but some of us disagree with Mr Rams observations on our own laptops, such as the poor cooling system as you said. I've got four gaming capable laptops here, and this precision is the coolest running of the bunch..and that goes for CPU and HD as well. I compare three of them running the same game, which is Supreme Commander Forged Alliance which Mr Ram claims to be a 'weak' game. Some of us know from experience that 85C is NOT hot (not COOL, but NOT hot either) for a laptop GPU and don't expect to keep our laptops over 3 years or so, and warranty it as such. On Paper this FX770 shouldn't do anymore than it does. It's simply a midrange card, plain and simple...a 128bit card..and a single one at that.
So I can officially be left out of the group that claims there is an inherent design defect and therefore the M4400 doesn't perform as it should. It performs for me exactly as I expected it to. If Ram went through 3 machines, it sounds to me like they were sending him the same one back
However, given the nice but mediocre vid card in the m4400, I was attracted to the Precision for it's compatibilty for a quad processor, because I'm primarily a strategy gamer, take supreme commander for instance (pasted):

Supreme Commander makes extensive use of two technologies relatively unused in video games prior to its release, namely multi core processing and multi monitor displays. When detecting a multi-core processor, the game assigns a specific task, such as AI calculations, to each core, splitting the load between them. Supreme Commander is one of the first games to specifically support dual and quad core processors in the game.

Supreme Commander is heavily reliant on raw processing power from the CPU and is less dependent on rendering power from the graphics card. When using a high-end graphics card the CPU is likely to become the main bottleneck.

So, given it's cool running and CPU upgradeability, the m4400 hit the sweet spot for me given that I make my living on the machine and need onsite support. Crysis? Man, this card ain't gonna cut it for high settings. I'm getting the game this weekend though, because I'm burned out on HL2 and CSS and I'll post temps, etc on this machine.

That's my take on the machine for newbies...there is NO design defect...just don't set your sights too high or you will be disappointed. But if you have needs such as me, you'll be very pleased with the machine as I am.

Now _I'll_ shut up about it

 

ElPenguino and Afhstingray, You both made valid points and, you know what? I agree with all of them!

Thank you for sharing those thoughts on this forum. I think others will be enlightened by them.

Keep it up

 

comparison of delta vs flextronics power adaptor

the delta has a smaller in line filter (thats what its called right?)

also UK keyboard VS US Keyboard

and two different 9 cell batteries

one made in japan, assembled in malaysia, one made in korea, assembled in china

 

this couldnt fit....only allowed 6 attachements

 

I am about to start on my review of the M4400 w/ quad, but I have a "dumb" question. Is there anyway to verify that the screen I received is indeed the RGBLED (via a part number or device info)? The display is absolutely fantastic, but I'd like hard proof that Dell got it right...

Anyway, this is without a doubt the best laptop I have ever owned or used.

Pics will be coming soon if anyone is interested.

 

Do they both glow blue? Or is there any way to turn off the glow? It's driving my wife crazy