Dell Precision M6500 with 4+ GB RAM and e-GPU - Possible?

From what I know, the M6500 has 3.5 GB TOLM/TOLUD, so it can't take an external video card while having more than 4 GB of RAM (error 12).
Is there a new/hacked version of BIOS, or some DSDT override hack, to lower its TOLM to 3 or 3.25 GB?
It has been done on various Latitude models like the E4300, but I couldn't find anything on the Precision models.
Thanks.

 

no i think they gotten past the tolud issue you can have on more then 4gb ram cause i was looking for that on my m6500 but the m7820 could be flashed into the 5870m and get some performance close around the desktop HD 5770/6770 and maybe with a i7 to almost HD 7770 ghz performance (so if you have a m7820 you can flash it to a HD 5870m) if not they going for cheap on ebay around 108.00$ but you need a special screen for the amd gpu's i got the samsung 1200p rgb model

 

Thanks for the response.
The M6500 I have is basically an "upgraded" M6400 - I just changed the base unit (chassis, mobo, palm rest) and CPU, and kept everything else from my old M6400, including the crappy Quadro FX 2700M or something...
I tried an old HD 5870 desktop card with the EC adapter. Windows detects it, and the drivers install fine, but device manager gives error 12 (not enough free resources), unless I only use 3 GB of RAM - which is annoying as it seriously impedes the performance.

Anyway, are you saying that the error 12 can be avoided by swapping the Nvidia card for an AMD one?
If so, then what's the cheapest AMD card that fits it? But if not, then I'd rather sell it and buy a cheap 2nd-gen Core laptop instead, which won't have the high TOLUD problem.
(Maybe I should just build a desktop, but I go out a lot for study/work, and really don't have the space at home for 2 computers...)

 

well the getting a amd card wont fix the problem but get gpu performance and heres the link for the tolud problem at the bottom of the page by nando4 DIY eGPU experiences [version 2.0] i havent tried it yet or know anyone that tried it and tell me how it go cause im looking into that for my m6500 cause it be a waste to have 1200p screen and cant max games on it

 

Too much to read, but I guess the gist of it is that I shouldn't really bother with my outdated system...
I did find a few cheap M7820/5870M cards on eBay, but none can ship to my country (for a reasonable price), so that's a no-go as well. Using a shipping agent would end up costing nearly as much - if not more - than buying a bare-bones Sandy Bridge laptop from our local recycler auctions.

So yeah, if you are also trying it with your M6400/M6500, I suggest you not to bother, unless you think it's worth it to suffer a major system performance hit from RAM bottleneck for a minor gain in graphics performance...

 

you was stuck with 1gb or 3gb and yea it is alot to read and alot of instructions but i love this 1200p rgb screen and it makes games look really good and i was thinking like i7-920xm overclocked to 3.8ghz like another person did with their m6500 and add gtx 670 or HD 7950 using the express card and mpci-e slot 2x-1.0 setup and that should be some pretty good performance and I also travel alot and i had matx desktop but with being always needed to be plug up and the monitor not mention (keyboard,vga cord,speakers,mouse even though i use it with m6500 cause i hate the on board mouse cause its always inaccurate (move it little bit it will go back to the same spot) but i definitely wont add it now and what gaming performance you using HD 5870 and your cpu also what parts did you buy and from where cause you the first person i heard with m6500 and egpu. can you also upload a pic of how you set it up

 

Don't bother - it doesn't even work properly. The 1st-gen EC slot (PCI-E x1) can't provide enough bandwidth to support a video card.

The crappy FX 2700M from my M6400 gets about 4500 points in 3D Mark Vantage when tested with 6 GB RAM, the external HD 5870 only gets 6000 odd with 3 GB, and glitches out at certain scenes (drops right down to single-digits). I remember that same HD 5870 used to get around 20000 in my old desktop with AMD Phenom X4 and 4 GB RAM, so something's definitely wrong there, other than the 3 GB RAM bottleneck, since 1 GB isn't going to make that much of a difference.
The CPU is Intel Core i7 L 660, 3.1 GHz turbo. It's perfectly good, and should be faster than the old AMD chip. Also tried with an i7 Q 840, made negligible difference in the 3DMV score.

 

Well i know that the 2nd gen EC slot has 20% loss from a desktop pci-e slot x16-2.0 and one gen 1 Ec is 50 percent loss

yea that 3Dmark score is low for the HD 5870 my m7820 even beats that And looking at the table in the link i see weak cpu & slower gpu's doing better then yours( http://web.archive.org/web/20120613...cussion/418851-diy-egpu-experiences-1047.html). But if you used two (one connected to the EC and the other connected to one of the mpci-e slots at the bottom or even 4) (they all are mpci-e/non usb even wlan) you'll see a 50% performance increase and try dx11 benchmark like 3Dmark11 or 13. And what cpu you have a i7-L 660 you mean i5-560m with cause i never heard that cpu and even looked it up nothing came back. And that is surprising no big performance increase when putting in a 840qm the only thing i can think of is using x2/x4 and just go head and do the dts override fix for more ram. Also what parts did you use the (PE4H ver 2.4-----PCIEMM-060A----EC2C

 

I doubt it's "only" a 50% loss - it's more like 75%, or more in certain busy scenes that require high bandwidth to send the data across, hence the single-digit FPS.

I brought the HD 5870 to test on my mom's old Lat. E4300 with C2D SP9400, and it scored over 8000 (which I believe is normal), so I think this whole external GPU thing is just an experimental proof-of-concept, and a typical case of YMMV. An educated guess is that the external card performed better on the E4300 because it doesn't have a discrete card inside to take up resources, and there is no driver/IRQ conflicts, whereas my M6500 already has a discrete PCI-E card installed.
Now I'm just using the EC adapter for an external SATA RAID controller card - which is what I think it's made for anyway - and it's working perfectly fine. So it wasn't a total waste of time/money.

About the CPU, that's exactly what the BIOS and Windows report as (Intel Core i7 CPU L 660). The "retail" name of it is i7-660LM.
This thing here: Intel Core i7-660LM Mobile processor - CN80617004857AA
It is a BGA chip soldered onto a PGA base, so it works in normal laptops. It's much cheaper than the equivalent PGA i5 or i7, and uses less power.