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Driving a 4K monitor with Dell Precision M6800
Hello all,
I use a brand new Dell precision M6800 for work, and recently decided to buy myself a Seiki SE39UY04 UHD 4K tv to use as a monitor. This particular monitor runs great, and can do true 4K... two of my friends already use this model for gaming, and at around $350 it's a steal.
However, I can't get any decent sort of resolution out of my laptop. The very best I can drive it at is 2048 x 1536, when the display is running at 3840x2160 @30hz.
It's "just ok" at the resolution, but there' is about 4 inches of unused space on either side of the screen.
I've tried everything I can think of to get the driver to go along, but now I fear that this laptop just has an underpowered video card that can't drive a 4K monitor.
Does anyone know if this model laptop has a replaceable video card? At this point, if this was a desktop system, I'd just throw in a new video card, but I can't tell if this model has it integrated or not.
Any help would be appreciated.
GUI_guy_Jason
2 Posts
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December 17th, 2014 14:00
I forgot to mention, the video card is reported to be AMD FirePro M6100 FireGL V.
briannfines
1 Message
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September 22nd, 2015 08:00
I have the same question now. Did you ever get this figured out? Thanks!
KevinNJ
14 Posts
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February 25th, 2016 09:00
I see this is an older thread, but I will reply to it for the benefit of the original posters and anyone else browsing this content in the future.
I connect my M6800 (with the FirePro M6100) to my Samsung UNHU8550 4K TV (2014 model) every day to use it as a monitor and to watch video. My TV has HDMI 2.0, I believe that type of HDMI port is required for full frame rate 4K video (and I believe native 4K content from UHD Blu Ray players when they become available will require HDMI 2.0 due to new copy-protection security protocols that will only play thru UHD 2.0 (the data signal is locked between the player and the TV thru the HDMI 2.0 cable to prevent an intermediate device from copying the video data on its way to the TV), therefore an HDMI 1.x based TV cannot play native 4K video content when it becomes available (unless software on the TV streams 4K video from online providers).
I was going to buy the TV you have, but I believe its HDMI port is not capable of HDMI video unless it is at a very low frame rate (which should be fine for computer non-video use). The Seiki TV's I looked at were basically using the 4K panel to display the upscaled 1080p content that is sent to the TV. Since there is so little native 4K content available, upscaled 1080p HD content is what most people watch anyway.
That being said, I do watch native 4K content, and it is considerably better than 1080p upscaled content (imo). Clean 1080p upscaled content on my Samsung TV (thru the m6800 or otherwise) looks much better than the 1080p content I send to the TV, but the upscaler in your TV may not be as good (I have no input on that, but I suspect Samsung would be better since the TV's software is run by a powerful quad-core processor).