Why Alienware, just why?

Purchased this joke of a computer today, lucky I didn't pay more than $400 because I couldn't imagine somebody paying $1200+ for such a crap computer.

7300HQ (undervolted -140mv) + GTX 1060 STOCK CLOCKS!!!

AND POWER THROTTLE? SERIOUSLY?!?!? No matter what PSU I use 180W or 240W, power throttle remains. Power scheme set to high performance. No excuses for this ********. What a mockery of your former self you are.



I'm glad I didn't pay more than a typical consumer notebook price because that's all you've become now. On top of the throttle-joy-ride performance this notebook gives, the battery life, cannot even muster 4 hours on lowest brightness, alienFX off, power saver mode on? Wow. M18x laughs at this joke of a computer with 6 hours in same condition.

If anybody has the answer as to why I'm having such a ****ty experience with Echo 15 R3 please somebody chime in with the answer.

 

Work as intended. Maybe test with different bios versions. Could be you can get a better experience with use of Max Performance in bios (not sure if you meant this). Should increase power limits + increase fan speed. Good luck with this piece of junk!!

 

BIOS is on latest version. Windows 10 X64 updated. Not sure how to increase power limits, all voltage/power settings are locked out in afterburner, prema did no mods on this system to my knowledge. I cannot believe this computer's 1060 throttles on stock settings. Temperatures are fine on both CPU and GPU. No CPU throttle.That's really sad 1060 throttles on stock setting out of the factory. Shame on you Frank Azor

 

I would test with different bios versions. Remember all the mess after they started with first AW Echo models + Hybrid boost early 2015. Firmware can make a small difference. But no guarantee.

 

Afraid to brick, i tried two different PSUs, so I'm assuming this is something hardcoded into the 1060 vBIOS and not the sBIOS
@Prema any thoughts?

 

As you can see. Dellienware jingle with firmware. Not that I say this is the problem.

 

LoL first time having a pascal card? All pascal cards throttle, this is Nvidias fault not Alienware.

"overclocking" a pascal card is simply undervolting so the powerthrottle occurs at a higher clockspeed.

 

I think you bought a dud. I get 8 hours on a 7700hq with 1070 w optimus.

And danishblunt is right. Current nvidia cards are bit tricky to oc. Often lowering the voltage will increase boost speeds.

 

1060 is 75w if mobile and is a standard card (ie: no mxm, not specially advertised as higher wattage or extreme OC card)

75w is just choking the card, not much performance you can get out of it at that point

 

I don't think it's that. Probably some background app eating away the battery. Idle battery expenditure shouldn't be more than 12W. My 7700HQ model idles at around 7~9W

 

I know it comes with a smaller battery 56mwh compared to 99. But it should be lower power usage as well. 5 horus shoudl be doable.

How is the battery wear?

 

Reading his other thread about the screen issue it sounds like his system actually shipped with a GSYNC enabled motherboard, so it does not support optimus. If it has a 56whr battery he is getting about the right battery life with the nvidia card always enabled. Either way for $400 it actually sounds like a great deal to me if he can get it fixed up.

 

Crap, I didn't know gsync disabled optimus! No wonder battery life is so garbage. If optimus is not needed then why does intel hd 630 still show up under device manager? I'm not a fan of how things have become overly complicated with display routing.

 

probably due to thunderbolt video output

either that or someone forgot to cut electrical connection to the igpu when designing the g-sync mb

 

The HD630 is hard-wired to the thunderbolt 3 port on the back of the laptop on all configurations. If you plug a display into that port it will turn on the HD630.

 

So if I hook in a dongle into display port will that disable the 1060/optimus and fix my battery life?

 

I think not. It will run both at the same time. At least when I use the MUX switch the 630 is still there in the device manager but not used.

Even when I use the graphics amp it is still there.

 

@Raidriar , I cannot believe that you bought this BGA abortion and abomination.

This machine isn't even fit to be called Alienware. After the Ranger the Alienware brand doesn't exist to me, It's dead and castrated. Brother @Cass-Olé knows how extremely filthy this brand has become and how the flood spread to desktops & you mention about battery, read this and it still happens sipping out the battery LOL ask @Falkentyne .

Even if someone gifts this to me and if I accept it, My old beloved Lunar Silver M15x will cry on me, ashamed. That would break my heart and soul. Oh, I forgot you might have missed these..

Spoiler: BIOS is basically made to castrate itself..

TS wont work properly due to the BIOS and the trash OC game they are playing since Haswell but now with the XTU dependency.

 

bought with intent of reselling (400 is cheap...worth probably 900...) I just though tto test while I had it. Very disappointed.

 

I just couldn't resist....so you bought used system for half of its market value that shows up with power issues and wrong screen (from your other thread...) and at no point it raised any flags that maybe, just maybe you bought a lemon? And yet instead of doing some legwork first you go "OMG, Alienware fail, go die in a corner Dell..". True, AW has issues and new systems are built for different target audience than old ones, but maybe do some research next time before jumping to a conclusion.

 

It's still under warranty. The screen thing I can forgive because it's relatively cheap to replace, but the throttling? That is unforgivable. Dell will have to correct that one themselves. It's not my power adapters either, it's this stupid computer.

Bought for half market value means nothing. I buy things cheap all the time, sometimes they're fine, sometimes they're not. Usually it's little things, nothing that is bad to the core of the system.

 

How can I lower the voltage for the 1060 in this notebook?

 

Use CTRL+F in afterburner. After that you can set a voltage curve.
https://mn.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/6ejqja/psa_undervolting_your_gpu_can_give_you_a_free/

 

Excellent I’ll give it a try. Silly we have to use third party utilities to regain full performance

 

Yeah, i hate the current state how they advertise base clocks only so they can ditch worse batches onto the consumers.

 

Ok so the GPU curve....lowering voltage also lowers clocks, the two cannot be changed independently of each other? That's not a fix, that's lunacy.

 

To undervolt properly you need to apply an OC offset first (or drag the curve up while holding Shift) and then flatten out the curve after your desired voltage point. Undervolting on Pascal is the same as overclocking at a lower voltage point.

 

Like @yrekabakery said.

Example; say your trying to get +150 core but don't want to run it at 1.093v (using 1080ti curve, not sure what the 1060 voltage looks like), you would rather try it at 1.075 to run the same core speed but keep the temps under control. So you find the 1.075 voltage point and raise it to the +150, then flatten out all the voltage points to the right to keep Nvidia Boost from boosting above your set voltage. Make a quick bench run and hope that your voltage set point is stable or you could open GPUZ and do a render to see if your getting any yellow (Vop, low voltage) or blue (VRel) on Perf cap under sensors tab.

I did this over the weekend and was able to hold 2100mhz on superposition all the way up until the last scene then Nvidia thermal monster (45c) throttled me to 2088 core. Scored 6433 on Extreme. I'm on a 120mm CLC of course. I'd have to check the exact voltage I had set, so don't hold me to the above voltages

Pascal is a strong running architecture but....Half retarded when it comes to trying to OC. You have to undervolt to OC, rather than the other way around because the vbios is 100% set up to keep thermals under control.

And I'm still learning so if something here doesn't look right....then it probably isn't, but this is the best of my knowledge when it comes to MSI AB and Pascal

 

Play a bit with it, beause i lowered it by 100mv but it kept boosting to the same levels but at a lower value.

 

You want to shift the entire curve up and then flatten out, not drag a specific voltage point up causing a large jump in the curve. A large jump reduces performance because if the GPU drops to a lower voltage point due to hitting power/temp limit, it's at a much lower frequency.

Also the curve adjustment should be done while running a GPU stress test in the background, because Pascal's automatic temperature compensation effect automatically shifts the curve down a few times as the GPU heats up, which throws things off if you adjust the curve when the GPU is cold.

 

Yes this is correct. I should've said that I was tweaking in a manual overclock of +140 to +150 so my entire curve was already raised, I only needed to adjust the small 1.075 voltage point then flatten the rest out to the right.

I actually would run the render page on GPUZ and watch my set points. I wouldn't get any Vrel but when I run an extensive bench like firestrike, the Vrel would return. I guess there's really no way to get away from that.

 

That's pretty much it.
If it tries to boost past what you set it as Bullet said, it will show POWER, VOLTAGE for limit reasons, even though it's not at the power or voltage limit at all. But the curve is functioning as one now.

 

I've played with the VF curve and the settings don't seem to take effect when running 3dmark11,but they do when running the GPUZ render test. WTF?

 

Probably because GPUZ render test isn't putting 100% load causing high heat and 3DMark does?Kind of like it doesn't show Vrel when I run the render test but shows it when I run a stressful benchmark maybe? Just guessing here

 

I sure it could never truly be disabled. It’s built into the 7700hq so I can technically see why it WOULD show up. It’s more like the 1070 is hardwired to override it completely.
And that must be the case as they are some Gwynn with Optimus enabled now.
I’d be happy if my panel was more than 1080p losing battery that quick. Need to spec my future 15 r5 with at least qhd option or 4K. I’ll take the performance hit on battery and native gaming.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

GPU-Z, Furmark and OCCT "furball" tests are all throttled. The power consumption is off the charts in OCCT and furmark, for example, but the actual GPU downclocks CONSIDERABLY lower than what a normal application would show, and the temps are also considerably lower than what you would expect (Do the OCCT GPU 3D test and see for self, especially if you have TDP unlocked modded video cards). You will see something like (for example, on a 200W TDP GTX 1070 with +160 mhz clocks (should be 2000-2050 mhz boost), in OCCT, the power consumption will be 200W, BUT the GPU core clock will be somewhere around 1750-1850 mhz only, with the GPU temps much lower than you would expect.

There is a way to remove this throttling but I'm not going to tell you guys how because YOU WILL DESTROY YOUR VRMS BY DOING THIS.

 

Just took a quick screenshot of my curve running 2100mhz at 1.081v for about 5 minutes.

 

By default throttling on OCCT and Furmark are disabled and left to users in nvidia inspector.

 

That's not the throttling I'm talking about.
You need to rename furmark.exe to Quake3.exe to remove the throttling.

 

My clocks were never throttled at all. I stopped using Furmark and switched to Heaven,Valley and GPU caps viewer.

 

Just try it? Well you don't have to. Just be careful ok?

 

Don't suggest Furmark in any form or shape. Some is stupid enough to jump on it. Or they don't know the possible consequences with use of it.