Jump to content

Issues with K4100M Upgrade in Precision m6700


Recommended Posts

Hi together :-)

 

As the title says I'm having a little Issue after upgrading my m6700's graphics card from the K3000M to the newer K4100M:

 

Everything seems to work properly, but under load (i.e. 3D applications) it produces crashes / system instability after ~5-20 seconds.

When I reduce the chip- and memory-clocks in MSI Afterburner as far as possible, it takes a bit longer until it crashes, but eventually it always does after a minute or so.

When running on battery power (and thus even further reduced clocks) everything runs stable for arbitrarily long times.

 

This sounds like a thermal problem to me. However, the reported GPU temperature never exceeded 65°C, which I think is OK.

I guess the memory chips are not temperature monitored seperately, are they? So maybe I should replace the memory thermal pads by new ones?

 

What I've already tried/checked/looked at:

- Uninstalled previous drivers with "Display Driver Uninstaller"

- Latest Nvidia Drivers can be installed properly (and also tried a few older versions)

- Notebook BIOS is up to date

- Tried three different Video-BIOS versions

- Graphics card is not recognized by Notebook BIOS properly ("Unknown video card")

- Graphics card is recognized under Windows, though (Device-manager / Nvidia control-panel / GPU-Z and so on)

- Sometimes after a crash the system recovers and a pop-up says that the nvidia graphics driver crashed and was restarted

- Of course, I'm using the large 240 Watt Power supply

 

Ok, that's about everything I remember to be relevant at the moment.

I'd appreciate any kind of help :-) ... If you need further Information, just let me know, and I'll try to deliver it.

 

Thank you, Florian :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Hi @flodotz!

How did you manage to install the proper drivers from Nvidia under your OS despite you get an "unknown video card" message in BIOS? Is switching between Intel HD and ext GPU working for you? I am having problems with driver installation, not to mention card detection. In my case it's M6700 with GTX880m inside.

 

From what I know you should be good with the 240 Watt PSU, but if you get a chance, you might want to try out a 300 Watt one. Maybe there's someone you could lend it from?

 

Is the cooling mounted properly? Have you checked whether the heatsink fits your card properly (although it should as it was a NV --> NV swap)? Did you make sure there are thermopads mounted in every important point of the heatsink and your cooling paste is spread in the right way? Finally, are you sure the GPU you bought is fine? It does sound like a throttling problem - some time ago I had a similar situation with a desktop Radeon 9500 PRO that was too overclocked and I damaged it's memory.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey,

 

to be honest - I don't know!

Drivers from the Nvidia website installed without any problems under Win7 Pro N x64 in my case. However, Drivers from the Dell website claimed that no compatible hardware was found.

 

think Optimus switching was working when I had the K41000M installed, but I'm not sure anymore.

 

It turned out, that I only got all these Issues, when my m6700 was attached to a docking station (I even tried both I have - the large "advanced" one, and the tiny legacy port expander). It worked perfectly fine when the notebook was standalone ... Even overclocking by 250MHz and hours of full load gaming/benchmarking produced no crashed.

As the docking capability is quite essential to me, I was not willing to accept this issues. I tried a few more things, like a clean Win10 Edu x64 installation ... but the error was persistent.

 

So I ended up removing the K4100M from my notebook. The seller offered me to trade it for a K4000M which should be compatible with the m6700, which I did.

I have not installed the K4000M yet, though, because I am waiting for the Dell service to fix a CPU heatsink screw I assume they damaged during the i5-->i7 upgrade my m6700 got last year (but that's a different story...).

 

I've read through your thread, but unfortunately, it seems I am not much of a help in your case :-(

Have you tried turning Optimus off in the bios and booting windows? Is the 880M recognized under Windows then?

Who needs optimus anyway :P ... I'm getting ~4 hours of battery life with the current K3000M, should be enough I think :D.

 

Cya,

Flo

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi again :)

 

 I've heard the K4100M should be compatible with M6700, as the K5100M is - they even have drivers for it on the official Dell website. Is it possible that the GPU you had is malfunctioning? When you place the K4000M inside there should be no problem - this workstation was sold with that card so my guess is BIOS will recognize it.

 

In my case the card is only recognized by Windows, yet I can't really install any drivers. Playing around with Optimus gives nothing. This weekend I'm going to try out a K5100M in it and see if it works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey there,

 

Yep, that's what I've "heard", too ;-) ... maybe it is compatible in some hardware configurations, but not in others ..  (only god may know how this extremely weird incompatibility with the docking stations emerged)

Hmm I don't think I had a bad copy of the K4100M, as it worked perfectly fine when not being in a docking station.

 

I'm looking forward to your reports with the K5100M! ... Do you have a dockingstation at hand? Would be interesting to find out if it gives you the same strange results as my K4100M.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am going to swap my GTX880m for K5100M tomorrow and post the results here. Unfortunately I only have a small docking station for this laptop, but if you want I might give it a shot.

 

How did you find Quadro cards for gaming? Is it any good?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm curious :)

As I've said, I also have a large Docking station (PR02X) and a small Port-extender that can be left attached to the notebook permanently (N054C), and I had the same Issues with both of them, regardless whether Win7 or Win10 (I think it never ran for more than 10 Minutes before crashing).

However! When running on battery power, it never crashed, even when attached to a docking station. Extremely weird.

 

I was quite satisfied with the performance of the K4100M. Of course it's not as fast as a GTX880M, but with a modded vbios you can push the clocks quite drastically (I think it ran at 950MHz core clock or so), improving performance substantially.

It could run Crysis 3 in 1920x1080, all Very High settings, and low AA at smooth framerates then :-) good enough for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Allright then - I'll give you some feedback when I manage to do the testing. Actually I'm about to fiddle with it tomorrow (I always hesitate whenever it gets to opening the M6700 - already did some damage to the touchpad connector) so I'll keep you updated.

 

If everything else fails, I'll keep the Quadro inside and OC that baby to play The Witcher 3, which is my goal for this Dell setup. The K5100M will be better then the GPU in a Sony laptop I also own (low profile 740m with 64bit memory bus).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, I'm a bit nervous, too, when opening it. While it is built up relatively logically, there are many little things that could theoretically be damaged.

 

Don't worry, I think the K5100M should give equal performance as the GTX880M, at least when overclocked a bit.

Even my K4100M made 4500 Points in the Passmark 3D Rating ... which is more than the average GTX970M achieves. (there are systems with GTX970M exceeding 7000 points, however).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 27.09.2016 at 2:36 PM, flodotz said:

(there are systems with GTX970M exceeding 7000 points, however).

 

I guess that's up to the cooling and vBIOS settings.

 

I got the M6700 very recently and am happy to live with it, despite it's rather big size and heavy weight - it's definitely a desktop replacement for me. For the last two years I've been using a Vaio laptop for pesonal use and it's nowhere near the build quality and performance as the Precision series. Give me the better GPU though! :)

 

edit

Hi again @flodotz!

I have just installed the K5100M into my M6700 and guess what - I've got the same problems that I faced with the 880m. Os refuses to install drivers, even though I get them modified. What CPU do you have? I've heard there are problems with Intel's XM CPUs when you try different GPUs.

 

edit 2

The K5100M works now - I managed to mod the drivers even more and somehow got it done (wondering now ehether I should give the GTX880m another go). I have a Dell PR04X docking station which is only a small legacy extender (http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/accessories/apd/430-3115?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=430-3115). When I plugged it in, it was installed as a generic USB HUB. Just ran Furmark and Bioshock Infinite on ultra settings and I got no problems at all. The temperature while running Furmark reached no more then 70 Celsius.

Edited by szumial
changed hardware
  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.