Aaron44126

Pascal GPUs won't boot on the M6700 unless they have a specific "engineering sample" vBIOS. We only have appropriate vBIOS for Quadro P3000, P4000, and P5000. (None for GeForce cards.) The behavior otherwise is that the laptop will just hang at the Dell logo boot screen and will not proceed to OS boot. (It's even worse than in the M6800 — in that system you'll just get an ACPI BSOD if you try to boot Windows, but booting Linux is possible.) Because you can't even boot to Linux to flash the vBIOS in the M6700, you'd have to flash the vBIOS in another system or use a hardware flasher to get one of the Quadro Pascal GPUs to work in the M6700.

This reminds me of an old Dell Latitude that I had which would require multiple attempts to boot up to the point of running Windows. I would fire it up, it would show the Dell boot screen and then just power off. It took multiple tries to get it to boot Windows, but it was fine once it finally did that. It was noticeably worse when it was cold in the room (more attempts required), so I chalked this up to some kind of weird hardware issue. In any case, I'd say that this similarly sounds more like hardware than software. I wonder if you just booted to BIOS setup (F2 key at startup) and let it sit there for a few minutes, and then rebooted, if it would boot into the OS normally.

My take. Intel Graphics Control Panel — Should have been automatically installed with the driver, nothing else is needed. Maxx Audio — You might need that tool installed if you want to be able to change any of the audio settings. I have found it needed to disable some of the audio processing "features" that the audio driver has (makes things sound weird in teleconference meetings, to my ears). But if you are happy with the audio as is then you don't need to worry about this. Touchpad — Yeah, you probably want to install that package, the touchpad is too old to have controls for it presented in Windows settings so you have to use its dedicated app. I like to have the setting that automatically outright disables the touchpad if a separate mouse is connected clicked on. You can also change the scroll direction, set what certain gestures do, etc. If you have the Bluetooth driver happy in Device Manager, you don't need to install anything else related to Bluetooth. You can use the Windows UI to manage Bluetooth devices. You don't need Intel RST if you're not going to use the RAID functions. (I don't think you even need it if you are going to use the RAID functions. You can define arrays in a pre-boot BIOS screen.) Dell Command | Update and Dell Digital Delivery, I do not think that you need. Dell Command | Power Manager is useful, just for being able to set the system's "thermal mode" (Balanced / Cool / Quiet / Performance) which can impact the behavior of fans, and some modes will also put a cap on the CPU/GPU speed. This system doesn't have a setting for that exposed in BIOS setup, the only way to set it is to use the app.

OK, I had forgotten that in order for your dGPU information to show on that BIOS information page, you need to have graphics switching turned off so that it is the "default" GPU driving the display. ...That would be a little "dangerous" to do on your P5000 if it is "not working" (...the BIOS might actually take the option to disable graphics switching away if it does not detect a compatible dGPU anyway). If you do end up in a situation where graphics switching is disabled and you can't "see" anything due to a non-functional dGPU, you can reset the BIOS settings by unplugging the coin cell battery for a few moments. The default config has graphics switching enabled. Anyway. Tangentially related but I spotted this note this morning. NVIDIA is dropping support for both Maxwell and Pascal at the same time. (A surprise to me since they normally just drop one generation at a time, but... on the flip side, Maxwell has already been supported for an abnormally long time.) The 580 driver series will be the last to support either. So even if you get the P5000 to work, you'll end up in a similar situation with regard to driver support before too long. https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/unix-graphics-feature-deprecation-schedule/60588/13 (Sorry, I don't have any additional ideas on how to kick the GPU into working.)

Hmm. When I got my P5000, the vBIOS was 86.04.3A.00.25. The engineering sample vBIOS is 86.04.2E.00.0D. The M6800 was able to see the P5000 card with both of these installed. I'm attaching both of these here... but if nvflash can't see the GPU, the only way to flash them will be with a hardware flasher. Not that I really think this is a vBIOS issue, it is really weird for the GPU to not be showing up at all. I'm wondering if it is just a bad card. P5000-86.04.2E.00.0D.zip P5000-86.04.3A.00.25.zip

Hmm, unfortunately no... After user DynamiteZerg got P5000 working in a Precision M6800, I bought a P5000 myself for my Precision M6700. I wanted to use it with Windows which meant that it needed a vBIOS flash with the "engineering sample" vBIOS. The Precision M6700 would not boot into Linux in order for me to do that, so I bought a used Precision M6800, put the card in there, performed the flash under Linux with no problem, and then moved the card to my M6700 and sold the M6800. From what I recall, the card was recognized by nvflash with no issue. That's the only thing that I tried to use it with under Linux. I guess the first thing that I'd ask is if nvflash can see the card. If so, you could flash a different vBIOS on it and maybe that will have some better success. Actually, the card should have a sticker on it somewhere which includes the vBIOS version. Can you see that? What does it say? If you go to BIOS setup, there is a screen with system information. It should report what GPU is installed. It will say something like "unknown GPU", but it shouldn't say that there is no discrete GPU at all. I don't think the "engineering sample" vBIOS is required to use the GPU under Linux. It's just required to get around an ACPI BSOD that occurs if you try to boot Windows. User @jeamn was able to use a GeForce 1070 under Linux which had the same ACPI BSOD issue with Windows on the Precision M6800.

I don't own this game. ProtonDB has a lot of end user compatibility reports, with suggestions for tweaks or configuration changes to get a game running better. It looks like some minor tinker steps are needed to get this game working, but it can be done. https://www.protondb.com/app/314650

You can already enable a toggle in Steam settings on Linux, which is off by default, to enable Proton support for any game. It will allow you to download the Windows version of a game and run it in the Proton wrapper (which uses Wine, DXVK, and custom patches). Every single game that I have tried works fine. I consider gaming on Linux to be a solved problem. I'm a single-player gamer though. The gotcha would be multiplayer games with kernel-level anticheat built in. Those will never run on Linux unless the game dev/publisher adds explicit support for it. There's not a lot of movement on that front, and I would say that it is unlikely to change much between now and the end of the year. Valve can't fix that one, but they can continue to add pressure to game devs to support Linux by making SteamOS available and easy to install on more devices. That is something that they are working on. We're already seeing situations where if you opt for SteamOS instead of Windows on a "handheld gaming PC", it is both cheaper and better performing. That will lead more people to consider and select SteamOS when buying these things, which will create a larger Linux userbase and give more incentive for game devs to support it.

You can use the NVIDIA driver team PPA and possibly get "old" NVIDIA drivers installed on your "new" Ubuntu distro. They have NVIDIA 390 and 470 drivers available for Ubuntu 24.04 to support "old" GPUs. https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa (This repo is maintained by the folks that actually package the NVIDIA drivers in the Ubuntu production repositories. They package older versions for newer versions of Ubuntu, and they also release NVIDIA driver updates to this repo usually within a few days after NVIDIA kicks them out.) For a GPU upgrade... Really, you can look at the Maxwell cards, GeForce 980M and Quadro M5000M. They have nearly identical performance and both work as a more-or-less drop-in replacement on this system. Maxwell is the oldest currently supported generation from NVIDIA though, so chances are you will run into the same problem again soon when they drop support. Next up would be Quadro P5000, one generation newer. It works as a drop-in replacement under Linux only. For Windows, you have to flash a different vBIOS on it to get it to be bootable. Both of these require a minor mod to (most) GPU heatsinks in the M6800. They have the VRMs at the "top" of the board in a slightly different position. There is a bit "jutting out" of the heatsink that bumps into these such that you cannot install it flush. You have to use a Dremel or something to cut that bit off. If you are largely relying on the cards for hardware video encoding, you can look at "cheaper" versions of these cards (GeForce 970M, Quadro M3000M, Quadro P3000, etc.). 3D performance will be less but video encoding performance is the same among all cards in the same generation. There are later generation cards from NVIDIA (i.e. Quadro RTX 5000, which is Turing) that can be made to work, but the MXM board format is changed so they require more substantial physical modifications. (If you are running Windows, you need to do an INF mod for any "unsupported" NVIDIA GPU to get the driver to load, but this shouldn't be an issue under Linux.)

There's a BIOS setting which controls the "DP MUX PS8331" in the middle of the picture there and flips it between dGPU output and iGPU output. It is next to the toggle for graphics switching, and it is called something like "Enable discrete dock display output". You should be able to use "most" of the display outputs if the dGPU is removed. But if you want two external displays connected, one of them will have to be VGA.

To note. WWAN cards/slots are B key and NVMe drives are M key. You need an adapter to fit a NVMe drive in the WWAN slot.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 You must have used a 23H2 image to do the install. If the system meets the Windows 11 requirements (CPU, TPM, Secure Boot), you can upgrade to 24H2 using the installation assistant (see link). Or, just wait and don't worry about it, it will eventually be forced down via Windows Update unless you have taken steps to disable automatic updates. If the system does not meet the Windows 11 requirements, you'll need to get an ISO image (at the same page linked above), flash it to USB with Rufus to remove the requirements check, and then install using that. Don't boot from the resulting USB drive, just run the setup file on it from inside of Windows to do an in-place upgrade.

OK, that's better, several more pages and an actual specs list now. [Edit] Interesting bits I noticed: Windows 10 no longer offered as an option, you have to downgrade it yourself. (Makes sense as Windows 10 is leaving support in a few months ... though you can still use the LTSC version for longer.) 256 GB RAM seems to be accomplished by using two 128 GB CAMM cards. So it has two CAMM slots now? I wonder if you can do other combinations not listed on the spec sheet. (Buy a second 64 GB CAMM card to go along with your first later on, or mix and match something like 64 GB + 128 GB...) "NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell" GPU gets 24 GB of VRAM, first VRAM bump for the high-end GPU in quite a while. (Quadro P5000 was first with 16GB, way back in like 2017?) 18" system only has one display option listed, the QHD+ panel.

Spotted this. Some "leaked" scores from the "NVIDIA N1X" APU. (It has been rumored that NVIDIA will hop into the ARM laptop space with their own SOCs later this year, or maybe early next year.) https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/nvidias-20-core-n1x-leaks-with-3000-single-core-geekbench-score-arm-chip-could-rival-intel-and-amds-laptop-offerings Single-core scores are in line with the top laptop CPU offerings from Intel and AMD. Multi-core scores aren't quite up there, but better than the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. More competition, please!

Yes, you can do this. The only (reasonable) way to upgrade the CPU is by doing a motherboard swap. Note that there may be other considerations — replacing the motherboard will effectively change the system's service tag, and the replacement motherboard might have been configured with a different vPro featureset enabled. But largely there's not much to worry about other than just going through the process of doing the physical replacement.