*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Benchmark Thread

That's pretty good. You could push it more a bit if you wanted if you can. What temps you running?

 

How you guys check your GPU temps? I don't trust GPU-Z (lower temps then reality), I usually use HWiNFO64 but Optimus switch seems to make GTX temps unreadable.

 

hwinfo64 - load the game then load hwinfo64 and you should see the 980M gpu temp.
msi afterburner
evga precision x etc

 

Read this article. This applies to a desktop processor and gtx980m in a laptop, but it can be said that something similar might happen with a BGA processor in a laptop.
http://anandtech.com/show/9087/clevo-p750zm-gtx-980m-overclocking-investigated/5

 

That article is actually what prompted me to ask the question I did

 

Recommend to shift to a better thermal grease and run the fans manually to maximum speed if you want to avoid throttling of the processor (if it can not manage its job)..

 

What temps are you running when you have the GPU overclocked?

 

I played the evil within for a little over an hour and went right into watch dogs afterwards. Been in watch dogs for hour and a half now and gpu hasn't even hit 70c

Jumping In Far Cry 4 for a bit to see if it cranks up heat any.

 

Afterburner shows you temps in game.. I have hwinfo64 running same time and they seem to be reporting the same GPU temps. Rarely even hit 70c in any game with +135 core and +200 memory.

 

my firestrike score with my brand new system today, 240watt psu and A01

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6351688?

 

Did you OC the GPU? That's the highest fire strike I recall seeing on the AW 17 R2! Congrats and great job!!!

Now tell us what you've done! ; )

 

Ahh I spoke too soon. Fireboat was a hair higher...but he is OC'd. Still curious if you're OC'd as well.

Which nvidia driver are you guys running?

 

im using 347.88 drivers with a +135/+200 overclock

 

Nice!

What are the temps like?

 

Max GPU temp according to the logs during crysis 3 is 72C

 

its still sad to see that the cpu during intense games wont boost and sticks to 2.5ghz. Every HQ chip in every laptop ive tried has done this so far. Throttlestop shows there is TDP throttling active during gaming...guess I cant do anything to fix this!!

 

Someone who has run Wprime 1024 and Cinebench 11.5 tests with a i7-4980hq?

 

Download Intel XTU and turn up Turbo Boost power max. I have mine set to 70watts and it never throttles under any circumstance. It doesn't say you need to restart, but you will need to restart for the changes to take place. Note that your temps will go up a decent amount. With fans on max using prime95 torture test and locked at 3.5ghz my cpu hits 82-86*C.

 

I thought those settings didn't stick or work for the new alienware 17? I will definitely give that a try because undervolting to try and keep the power below the TDP is also not working out for me. What are your other settings? Such as the boost time in seconds?

 

I ran this time with the tdp max boost set to 70watts in XTU and my physics score jumped up 200-300 points...really think i need a 330watt PSU to let this thing shine...will test in games now

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6364866?

 

update: set the tdp to 70 watts, reboot, played crysis, temps were good, still throttled back down to 2.5ghz after a while.....i give up!

 

That's odd. Mine doesn't throttle down at all. Here are my settings:

Dynamic CPU Voltage Offset= -87mv (stability will vary between chips)
Turbo Boost Power Max= 70W
Processor Current Limit= 90A
Turbo Boost Short Power Max= 80W
Turbo Boost Power Time Window= 1 second
Processor Graphics Voltage Offset= -25mv

If you have HWinfo 64, set fans to max and try running prime95 torture test with XTU running. At the bottom where you monitor in XTU pay attention to CPU total TDP, Thermal Throttling, Power limit Throttling, and Current Limit Throttling. If any of the throttling hit 100% then your settings may not have took. Restart and try again. It's finicky sometimes.

 

My only concern is not about CPU throttling but CPU max temps, HWiNFO 64 monitored a maximum of 97°C while playing DayZ. It's almost water boiling point.

Btw 1: temps are high also because I'm using BIOS A02 at the moment, 2: this motherbord will be replaced again in some day because the BIOS think that my AW17R2 is an AW15 and Dell told me that they're gonna replacing it.

 

Trying this now

 

Sounds like either faulty hardware or a bad paste job. My CPU never went above 72C even in XTU stress test.

 

That does not sound normal. We know from a few people that BIOS A02 has temperature problems for some reason. Is it possible to downgrade your BIOS? That might help you if you feel ok with doing so.

 

tried again, played crysis 3, after about 10 minutes, throttled to 2.5ghz. thermal, power, and current throttle stayed at 0% in the XTU monitor. No clue why, every single notebook (about 4 now) that I have had with an HQ cpu does this. Happens in dragon age and crysis 3...doesnt happen in Grid autosport....it might be the total system power being drawn from the PSU, maybe its not enough? I dont get why boost wont stay on!

EDIT: just tried prime95 stress testing and as soon as i hit it the "current limit throttling" in xtu monitor went to 100% and the cpu clock went down to 3.1ghz....what does this mean?

 

Try to contact @Dufus either through pm or write in Trottlestop guide. He is one of those that have clue on Hq processors/throttling problem. Maybe he can help... http://forum.notebookreview.com/members/dufus.331701/

 

during the prime95 run, i changed the cpu multis and boom the throttle stopped and stayed around 6%, the temps went up, and the clocks stayed at 3.4ghz....i think in order for the seetings to change in the bios i need to adjust the mutlipliers back and forth to trigger the settings

 

If you are getting current limit throttling, just up the slider until you no longer get it. (Proc Current Limit) It won't harm your CPU. All it would do is raise temps. It's odd yours keeps dropping down to 2.5ghz in games. Mine basically stays perma clocked at 3.5ghz on all four.

 

yeah its still dropping to 2.5 in these games....prime 95 is fine, the clocks stay at 3.5. This is my third alienware 17 and they all have had the exact same thing happen. Razer blade did this also with the HQ cpu. Do you have crysis 3? or dragon age inquisition? I would like someone else to test and play for about 20 minutes while checking cpu clocks

 

Yeah I have both. I'll test them.

 

Thanks ! After using these new Intel xtu settings my fire strike scrore jumped , especially the physics , and the scores are always consistant now. Might just be these games. Make sure in crysis you hit some intense fights and drill the hardware , after 20 minutes you should have a history of throttle if you logging it every second

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6368642?

 

Has anyone actually contacted intel on this yet? I'd like to see a statement from them to see what they have to say. I'd love to write to them but I don't have first hand experience or logs to give them.

We should get some people collecting logs of their gaming experiences and we can get somewhat of a response from Intel based on that hopefully.

 

I haven't contacted Intel , getting dell or Intel to recognize this as a problem will be near impossible . According to the spec sheet they won't guarantee boost clocks all the time and really will only go off the base clock . Dell could always release a bios that fixes this and unlocks the tdp but I highly doubt they will or care to. If you called dell right now they would troubleshoot the laptop with their diagnostic tool and say everything is within spec and the temps are fine .....I don't think I would even bother

 

Ok these are my tests with Intel XTU:

Both performed with BIOS A02 and Windows High Performance power plan plus 240w PSU:

The first test gave me a maximum of 93°C and the rest of the time it was around 83-84°C

So I cutted down 2 corks from a wine bottle to raise the bottom of the laptop,

The second XTU stress test gave me a maximum of 93°C BUT the rest of the time it was around 78-80°C.


What is my opinion? First of all repasting is not my issue because when technician replaced my motherboard I asked him to repaste with my Arctic MX-4 thermal compound.
I think that raising the bottom of this laptop will help the cooling system to take more air and lowering temps by 3-4 degrees at least. So a laptop cooling stand is definitely needed (or just raise it from the ground), not for the GPU that is well cooled but for the CPU, also because AWs CPU fan starts to spin louder after 90°C AND THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

@Alienware-L_Porras and AW Tech team in general: everywhere we can read that you are preparing another BIOS update, we absolutely need a BIOS fix that increase the CPU fan reactivity like Asus did with the G73 series or you're gonna replace tons of motherboard with burnt CPUs in the long term. We don't care about some more dB of noise while gaming.

Example: actually CPU fan starts to spin louder when >90°C? Then make it start around >80°C.

 

They also need to fix the damn boost issues on the CPU's, im sick of running 2.5ghz during gaming!

 

They also need to fix the damn boost issues on the CPU's, im sick of running 2.5ghz during gaming! This chokes my 980m and kills frames in cpu intensive scenes
@Eldaren513 , im looking forward to your crysis 3/dragon age testing.

 

While I'm sure the fan profiles definitely need to be changed (alienware has always had iffy fan profiles), Artic MX-4 isn't really that great of a thermal paste anymore.

There are other pastes that perform better.

That said, there are also manual ways to control the fan so you can make your own profiles if you so choose.

I doubt any manufacturer is going to to mess with the TDP limits.

You have to remember that these chips have their own thermal / tdp throttling built into the chip. Dell has some control over it but eventually the chip can and will override anything that Dell sets.

The problem affects all Haswell CPUs. Your only option is not to get a Haswell CPU if it bothers you this much haha because it doesn't matter which one you get they all have this problem to varying degrees.

 

I know that but I think it's still a win compared to the stock chinese one.

Now I'm curious about the fan controller you mentioned.

 

I didn't record any logs, but I kept intel XTU open on my second screen while I played Crysis 3 and DragonAge. CPU total TDP never went above 38W and it stayed locked at 3.5ghz during my 20 min of testing on both games. CPU Utilization hit a peak of 75% for a spit second but mostly stayed around 40-53% during intense scenes.

I think you may have a lemon of a CPU there HaloGod2012....

Here is my firestrike score:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6291228?

 

I wonder if this is because you have the 970m.

 

I believe (haven't really had the need to try it in a lonnng time) that hwinfo64 can control fan speeds.

Also try playing games with the windows setting set to balanced. Some people have mentioned they can attain higher clock speeds because the processor runs cooler than with high performance.

Basically balanced enables intel speedstep so when your processor isn't being taxed very much it'll declock and run cooler, when the load increases it'll clock up and so on. High performance just runs it at max clocks all the time so it gets hotter faster.

The other option you have is to undervolt the CPU but keep the clock speeds as stock. There are plenty of guides out there on how to undervolt and it won't reduce your performance however your CPU will run a lot cooler (on average people have said like 8-10C cooler).

Could be. The 980M is a more powerful card (I think its like 28% faster? don't quote me on that) and so it'll run into CPU bottlenecks a little bit quicker than the 970M.

 

I've heard of in the area of 20-30% faster, so 28% sounds within that range.
Has anyone tried undervolting their CPU when they're running a 980m to see if that does anything? I noticed in my past scores that the CPU was throttling too, hope to fix this when I get my new one.

 

I doubt it. I also have an R9 290x overclocked at 1154/1450 in uber mode and the CPU still doesn't get bottlenecked. I'm using the 240w power brick and with the 970m and CPU overclocked I haven't hit more than 170W from the wall. (with external monitors and laptop display turned off) I don't think the 980m would pull that much more power with stock voltage. Maybe 25-30w. So I wouldn't think it's a power throttle if you have a 240w brick.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6301349?

 

Edit: I'm an idiot I thought you meant on your desktop and not the GA. As to why it throttles it's probably down to power. When you plug the GA in, the 970M gets disabled and draws 0 power. It also means significantly better heat dissipation because now the CPU has access to both fans just for itself.

Also the GA only connects at PCI-E 3.0 4x, whereas the onboard GPU is connected at PCI-E 3.0 16x. Granted the difference isn't much (I believe its something like 10-15% less data transferred) but when you're dealing with bottlenecks every little bit counts.

But when you use the 970M your computer has to manage between the CPU and the GPU and we all know that the BIOS is currently not as good as it could be. Add in power and heat and the BIOS struggles, Haswells thermal throttling kicks in and makes things worse.

 

How you get such a high score with the 970m? I only get about 6500....maybe is because I only have 8gb of ram?

 

6500 total score? I upped my physics score by over 1.2k with the cpu overclock and 2133mhz RAM.

 

I'm new to the forum and I just wanted to give my input on the new alienware 17, I have the basic model 970m 8gb of ram I score around 6500 on firestrike, the laptop does get warm under the screen and middle of the keyboard I wouldn't say is hot like some people mentioned, my temps are 30-35 c idle and max I've seen are about 80-86 c when gaming or running benchmarks. Gpu stays at 65-67 at full load, I've noticed the cpu runs way hotter than the gpu but nothing to be concerned about since it never goes past 87c. So far I'm happy with the purchase although I got bsod at the beginning a couple times due to power something...but installing the latest drivers and windows updates fixed it; no other issues found so far.

 

Yes 6500 total score, will faster ram make a big difference in performance compared to the stock ram?