M6700 graphics card(MXM) white list?

All systems have to be coded at the BIOS level to recognize specific graphics adapters.  This system shipped with

AMD FirePro M6000 Mobility Pro with 2GB GDDR5 dedicated memory

NVIDIA Quadro K3000M with 2GB GDDR5 dedicated memory NVIDIA Quadro

K4000M with 4GB GDDR5 dedicated memory

NVIDIA Quadro K5000M with 4GB GDDR5 dedicated memory

Anything else, the system won't recognize.

Thanks for answering, but what you say is just wrong.   MXM is a graphics card standard intended to allow the use of different cards in a machine.  Much the same as how you can in a desktop PC.  The graphics card itself has it's own firmware that provides the systems BIOS a consistent way to access basic graphics functionality needed during the boot process, as is the case when a FX 2000m or Quadro 1000m is installed in the M6700.    I strongly suggest you don't try and answer questions you clearly don't know how to answer.   It only confuses people who know less than you.

No, it's not wrong at all.  Notebooks will ONLY work with those video cards/chips they're coded for in BIOS.  Yes, desktop boards generally work with most video cards (and even there, there ARE systems, and system BIOSes that will preclude using certain video cards).

While MXM is a standard card format, MXM does NOT guarantee any given card will work with any given notebook.  Notebook mainboards are designed around a very specific set of parameters - unlike desktop boards.  Don't call an answer wrong, when it's not - it's not the answer you wanted to see, clearly, but that doesn't make it wrong.

If Dell didn't ship a specific card with the system, odds are overwhelming that even if it fits the socket, it WILL NOT work.  If you want any more evidence, just look at the Alienware M17x systems, which have now gone through at least four major design revisions - and within which, the cards for one revision DO NOT work with the others.

The fact that the card you're trying to install isn't supported by your system, and that it doesn't work - is all the evidence you need.

Sorry. I was too quick to judge you.  That is different from what you initial said. All systems don't have to be coded at the BOIS level.  The M6700 will work with more cards than you listed.

From the MXM 3 spec. The idea is to provide a basic level of compliance that should allow compliant cards to operate in compliant laptops.  The ATI 6770m I'm trying to install is a standard AMD part although looking at it now it doesn't have an MXM logo.  I guess I should have asked if the M6700 is MXM III compliant but my first thought was that Dell had simply added a whitelist.  What is annoying is that older NVidia card work fine in the M6700 and an ATI 6970m will working in a M6600.  Unfortunately I can't find a way to extract the BIOS hdr file from the Dell update to check for a whitelist.

All said, I accept you are right in that the ATI card may just not work in this machine even without there being a whitelist.

MXM has been a work in progress for well over ten years - about the only thing that ended up standard is the form factor for the card itself.

Notebook are not - and likely never will be - completely standard products.  About as close as you'll come are the Clevo-built whitebooks that are still sold as gaming systems under various names (Sager/Midern, Falcon Northwest, and, before Dell took over, Alienware).  These stand the best chance of working with the widest variety of cards.

Just about everything else out there, including your Precision, is a one-off custom design -- ODMs design the systems, either to their own or the "name brand" vendor's specifications.  And the primary specification from the "name brand" is -- you guessed it, price.

The older Precisions (through the M6500) were built to Dell's specs by Quanta -- but Dell routinely juggles suppliers, so the M6700 may or may not be built by the same company -- they've been using Compal and Wistron for a lot of systems recently.  Translation:  closely related models may have been designed and built by completely different contractors.