M14x - BIOS A03 Released 05/24 - Discussion Here...

The only two gaming laptops I am aware of that don't cramp up like this on the battery are the m11xr1 and r2 (some indications the R3 does this); every gaming laptop I am know of simply draws too much power at full load to stay on the battery . I mean, the only difference is dell didn't patch up every crack in the downclock procedures before shipping.

 

I can accept that it is lower performance when on battery. What I really cant digest yet (I feel that I am forced to accept it in the end.) is that the performance on battery is lower than my 3(4?) year old laptop (battery or adapter). I did not buy a m14x to end up being beaten performance wise by that laptop when I play on battery.

Shurely Dell should be able to fix this by not taking "all" gaming power away from the computer. (I am confident that they will.)

 

My old Dell XPS Gen2 would run full speed on battery. It sucked a ton of power too, with a GeForce Go 7800 GTX in there. Granted, my battery life while under load was an hour at best, but it ran full speed. I believe it had a 9 cell ~90 Watt Hour battery which gave it about 2.5 hours of non-gaming use.

 

What's the most accurate tool that I can use to check the current GPU clock on battery?

 

Hi all,

Is the performance slow only for gaming when using battery? Do anyone know if we can still stream video, watch movies, and do other works (words, excel, etc) with balanced performance on battery?

Thanks!

 

Yeah. Works fine on battery for everything but gaming.

 

Well I do think that's a bit extreme.
You can still game on it but you just have to lower your expectations.
It's seems That Dell/Alienware were a bit ambitious putting that kind of graphics card in a small machine, housing a less than average battery.

 

I agree m11x may have been a better choice for my needs... I need something to be able to game decently on battery. I've never seen a laptop with this kind of behavior.... The only laptop I've ever really stuck with is my MacBook Pro.... I had a mid 2008 model with the geforce 8600.... The one with the a Sony Battery.... I could game for a good hour or more on it and get decent performance on games like Starcraft 2 and WoW on medium settings.. I suppose I was expecting something better from the m14x... But the battery performance is appalling.

I had an m11x R2 before the m14x came out... But was mostly disappointed with the screen quality... It made it tough to play Starcraft 2 with the small size too.

The plugged in performance doesn't do much for me either.. Because the only time I would be able to plug in is when I'm at home... At which point, I might as well use my desktop... Which is WAY more powerful and a much better setup for gaming than the m14x...

But the main problem with the m14x is the advertising.... Right on the page on their website, they advertise it as being a great mobile experience. I quote, "Own your opponents anywhere you please — bedroom, dorm room, coffee shop or friend’s house. The Alienware M14x helps you stay in the game everywhere you go." There is no disclaimer about the performance dropping while on battery....

 

I think they should have gotten rid of the disc drive ... It takes up 1/4th of the inside of the laptop.... A ton of wasted space that could have been used for a much bigger battery..... Laptop would have been killer, then...

Much better battery life... And gaming with the full power of the GPU...

 

Thanks! I'm thinking more of getting the m17x now, better to spend $300 more with knowing this about the m14..

 

I understand where you're coming from, but all of the places Dell mentioned there have outlets, so if you bring the adapter you can game. I note that they don't mention places like the park or an airplane where there wouldn't be an outlet.

 

Is that what dell would say if you take them to court? lol

I honestly am mad because the advertisement is wrong. They lied about a gaming "portable" experience and it should be made aware to them and everyone else.

The BIOS did not solve anything. It just does for us what we can already do on our own if we wanted. I can limit the GPU myself if I wanted to while on battery through AlienFX.

I wouldn't mind the other BIOS fixes but what if I don't want to have that block of the GPU.

They also did not fix the SATA III Issue. I don't think it's been made aware to them, even when I asked them on twitter they said it was not going to be enabled.



This is out of control. They even advertised SATA III on the laptop.

It's like they lied just to get sales and did a mediocre job on the M14x.

 

i feel smi the same titan..... but in reality i still love this laptop and the battery issue is not detrimental to me atm, but the sata 3 issue is.... i find myself looking at sata 3 drive and wanting to get them and am weary because they cant give us a 100% yes its sata 3 and will achive the godly speeds it can get!

All in all i still love this laptop and will continue to use it.

 

It would seem that we should at least be able to get M11x r3 performance on battery without crashing. I'd hope there will be tweaking of BIOS from Dell to give us that.

FWIW I am running 3D design programs that make heavy use of OpenGL and am able to run at full performance on battery without crashing. I know that games stress chips more and are not as compliant with Open GL as 3D programs, so not really a comparison, just FWIW.

I'll be testing some games soon, I fully expect to get the same crashes as everyone else

 

I managed to find a partial work around using the older a01 bios... The a03 bios caused my machine to stop working btw, after about two minutes it would slow to a crawl, flashing back fixed it.

I set the power profile to high performance and allowed the cpu minimum speed to drop to 5% (I think it's forced to 100% all the time by default) and allowed the gpu to hit max speed. I then ran MSI's afterburner and underclocked the card to 400/700Mhz (GPU/memory). This was a mostly random setting just to test but it worked, I played singularity for about half an hour, before it would shut off within seconds. The framerate dropped from 100 to about 70 but it was FAR more playable than the standard 200Mhz on battery (stuttering at 30fps)... I would guess each game will require a different setting depending on how demanding it is (singularity is pretty mild). The power draw never exceeded 65W (using battery bar) and hovered around 63W most of the time, that seems to be within the tolerance level of the battery.

If anyone tries this let me know if it works, I'm going to test with more games and to see how far I can push the power draw before shutdown.

 

right... but that's a pretty sad counter point in anycase....
They could have said park... knowing that SOME parks do in fact have power outlets on poles... etc...

Not every coffee shop has power outlets available... and most of the time you have to be the first one at the power outlet... before someone else takes it.

Point is... the advertising is misleading.... Very misleading....

In-fact, I got called by Dell cooperate office today, due to my return, regarding the issues and my complaints about the computers design and advertising altogether....

If what they tell me is true.... we will hopefully see some type of change in the advertising soon.... (whether it be the addition of a disclaimer... or something) and the possibility of a re-design down the line.

 

Well, all larger gaming laptops do this, lol... M15x did this (forced "stealth mode" on battery), m17x does this, m18x - I am sure - does this; ASUS ROG laptops do this, MSI gaming laptops do this... simply put, GPUs draw too much power for consumer batteries. I am sure Clevo (Sager) does this as well. Large gaming laptops all have this symptom. The m11x barely scrapes by since it has a rather oversized battery, and a slew of low power parts (how on earth Acer and Sony managed the fully clocked versions in somewhat similar form factors, I am not sure).

 

You just reminded me of the M15x I had...

The GPU was downclocked so much on battery that it couldn't even handle a 720P movie.

Forced "Stealth Mode" is a PITA.

You just made me appreciate my M14x 10X more... wow

 

really Titan a 720p movie? my 6 year old acer 5112wlmi can do that and it was only 799..... insane

im still going to stay away form this bios update i can live with the whole shutdown on battery eery 30 minutes or so

 

well, the m15x couldn't use any form on IGP (mush rely on main GPU at all times), so, specifically, on older nVidia cards, severe downclocking affected their video decoder (which was barely capable of handling one 1080p 40mbits stream) rather poorly AMD cards could be underclocked to the point where any shader assisted video filters would also fail.

 

LOL Titan, but still, the advertising is misleading, and the keyboard is squeaky.

 

Anyways, it's now "Annihilate From Your Home" lol.

 

So the consensus is basically hold off on A03? I just got mine today so I guess I'll stay at A01

 

anyone know how to change the bios logo?

 

So the performance on battery this morning was horrific to say the least.
Every game I opened up slowed to a crawl..... it almost renders it useless.
Extremely disappointed really.
It there no support for this issue.... seems crazy

 

So the best option is staying on A01 and creating your own gaming on battery profile.

I haven't been able to fully go through that link that was put up here a while ago regarding a "fix" to the shut down problem, but is there a config in there for downclocking properly so that we'd be able to game with decent settings w/out the shut down?

 

Unless there is a way to manually change the clock on the GPU balanced profile it is the same 'fix' as Dell have provided, bar the profile made for the CPU. Sum, same thing no difference.

 

Hard to justify this as a 'fix' really. Just a way to tell you not to game on the battery which doesn't make this much of a mobile gaming device.
The first time your computer shuts down with no warning on any setting.
THe second time with the so-called 'fix', you'd be lucky to get 15 FPS on Galaxians with the battery.

That's pretty rubbish Alienware ...... are you listening??? DO THEY actually stand behind their product or just like taking our hard earned cash, EFF U kinda thing?

 

i just updated my BIOS today and was able to get 30-40 fps on Fallout New Vegas on Ultra High settings, is that just not a good game to test this out on?

 

on just the battery or plugged in?

 

Even on battery. not THAT amazing. considering he does have a 1366x768 screen. And I remembered Fallout is more a CPU heavy game than a GPU. Don't know if I remember right.

 

It is on battery, and slacker84 is right, even though I'm playing at native res, you lucky guys with 900p will have lower framerates. But I just thought it was strange I had no issue with it on battery

 

my original point was really more to do with compromise, which I didn't expect to do after spending $1500. yes i know, if I'm that pissed what don't i send it back right?
Well I love it when it's plugged in! (apart from the jet fighter fan noise)

 

Who DOESN'T want to own a jet fighter?

 

Only if it transforms into a giant robot

 

IM getting a Replacement laptop , lets see if that has the same issue or not !

 

So I've read, my question is If I avoid go on battery, the framerate stay the same with this new BIOS?

Because for me most of the time I will not or will be very rare to gaming on battery, If I just stick to the AC, then it will be fine?

BTW, Hi I'm new here , I'm asking this question is because I just order this laptop few hours ago, and found this thread afterward, and do you guy think that they will automatically update the BIOS to the latest?

 

There is not difference in performance when you use the power adapter.

With A01 version of the BIOS you could set the GPU performance profile to highest settings. Wich gave you the result of a crashing laptop.

With A03 version they removed this option, while you still can see it changing it does not do anything.

The highest working performance profile for both A01 and A03 is using balanced mode. You could theoratically get better performance with A01, but using that would also give you a crashing laptop (mere seconds or a few mninutes).

In essence there is no difference in performance with the two bios version.

 

i know it doesnt say its fixed it but has the fan noise problem been fixed or has this bios update fixed it?

 

It's a fan, it's going to make noise.....I'm not sure how Dell would fix that?

As far as I know, this bios update does nothing to change the functionality of the fan. This was mentioned a few times in this thread.

 

anyone experiencing random shutdowns on low load? reason im posting it here is cause i didnt have it with Bios A01.

see here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ter-shutting-down-randomly-while-plugged.html

 

delete this post

 

I guess you already have been given advice for that. What is the need to post this again and again?
Contact dell, simple as that.

 

nope sry, didnt get any advice or reaction on my post before.

but thanks for the hint, will do.

 

No probs, try and get some free goodies from them for all the hassles you have undertaken.

 

So has dell been advised that their fix doesn't work?

 

I think I found a "fix", didn't read through the thread so I don't know if someone else already posted this or not.

Anyways, an overclocking software (such as MSI Afterburner) can override the downclocking. I have the core clock set at 450Mhz and I have yet to experience a shutdown on battery.

 

Still sucks that Dell won't do anything about it, and all our contacts in this forums which acts as liaison won't comment on it.

 

Core clock should be 590Mhz stock, looks like it's still downclocked

 

It is still 250Mhz(?), 200Mhz to 450Mhz, above the normal balanced setting in any other 'fixes' to this problem. Which gives a better performance on battery and in my opinion a good enough performance on battery.

Hopefully Dell will also find this a working fix (well at least, unless they find a better one) and change the now to low clock when running on battery.