Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

Thanks, Roland T - I appreciate your input and I know that I've come off pretty harsh (everyone)...not my intent.
I'd like to rey a bit of quick debugging before simply sending the M6400 back. Question 1 for all: DOES YOUR POWER SUPPLY'S BLUE LIGHT STAY ON WHEN PLUGGED INTO THE WALL?
Question 2 for all: DOES THE M6400'S BATTERY CHARGE INDICATOR LIGHT HAVE A DUAL-STATE (ON/OFF) BASED ON CHARGE/DISCHARGE ACTIVITY
...Much appreciated everyone. Wish me luck, and thanks in advance for your input.

 

The CPU can be overclocked, yes, but you need BIOS support for that as well, and Dell's policy has always been to not provide that support for their Precision line of laptops, at least so far.

 

So it can't be overclocked within windows? Has to be via the BIOS?

That's a shame.

Regards,
Simon

 

nope...just reinstalled everything with a fresh commercial version of vista 64. installed all drivers in correct order. the problem with this computer lies solely in the graphics card. i have had bluescreens caused by the graphics driver just as frequent as the OEM installation. i am really fed up with this machine. this is the second computer they sent me and same problems. its time for my money back.

 

Yes

Here are the states I've observed and what I think they represent:

Off: Battery Not Charging (either because it is fully charged or the charger has been manually turned off).

Solid Blue: Charging 0 - 90%(?)

Flashing Blue: Charging 90%-100% (?)

Flashing Blue and Orange: Problem Charging Battery. Charging and Battery usage disabled.

 

You couldn't pay me to overclock the CPU in this thing. You guys don't understand how most engineers create the chaises that make up a laptop to work within a specific thermal thresh hold. They can somewhat compensate for this through heat piping and high speed fans. But at the end of the day a laptop is a laptop when it comes to size. This isn't a desktop where you have some pretty big tolerance when it comes to the ambient temp in a case. Desktops can handle the heat FAR better then a laptop. When you start overclocking on a laptop. Well go ahead and get yourself a temp monitor. And watch how fast the overall temp of the system goes up. By overclocking your system you stand a better then average chance of a component failure going forward, and if you can live without your PC for only slightly better performance....be my guest, just don't say that someone didn't warn you.

 

I'm seeing this with my machine. I just hope it is the battery and not the motherboard.

 

After reviewing the literature, and thank you, btw, DieCast61 for finding that, it seems that the QX9300 (not sure about the X9100) should have the ability to use the Intel XTU and Intel XMP utilities, but so far there doesn't seem to be support for it. Right now, those two apps are bundled in a package called Intel Desktop Control Center which you can download, but which only seems to work for certain Desktop Extreme boards (as listed in the compatibility section of the site), most of which are the likes of the X58, X48, X38 chipsets, and it looks like they have plans to release it for the P45. So, who knows. There might be compatibility there for the laptops sometime in the future, might be a BIOS thing they have to figure out.

Thanks as well for the other answers, I appreciate it

 

Phyneas,
Yes, the X9100 is over clockable.

Ludicrous Speed,
I have read many or all of your comments.
I noted that most of these problems were developing on T9xxx series chips.
You might consider an up-grade to the X9100 or the Quad cores. Good Luck.

 

look what i found!!!

http://download.desktopboards.net/idcc/index.php

tried to install but didn't work

the flash demo looks very interesting...
http://download.desktopboards.net/idcc/IDCC_Demo.htm