Need help please.

Well i bought the alienware m14x because it has always been my dream laptop when growing up. To my dismay it seems to do everything except what it was intended to do, which is "gaming". . It makes me extremely sad knowing that i spent all this money on a laptop that doesn't perform. I've done tons of google searches and it seems to be a heat issue and throttling. My problem is, the gpu isn't overheating but my graphics card still downclocks thus giving me terrible fps. I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to the subject so i'm looking for some help, any help would be appreciated.










My Intel gpu sometimes goes up to 65/66/68 maybe this affects my performance.
Sorry for flooding this forum with yet another post on the throttling issue but I would really appreciate it if someone could shed some light. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this drawn out post.

 

Have you tried running different graphics drivers? Or maybe a fresh install of graphics drivers? What have you tried to do so far? What games are you playing? Are you sure those games are utilizing the Nvidia card?

 

I have tried factory restoring my laptop but it didn't fix the problem it still persisted. I've even configured my nvidia control panel to run those games with the nvidia card and not the intel card. i've even forced all my programs to run with the nvidia chip.

Games that I have played so far are apb reloaded, soldier front 2, left4dead2, king of kings 3 and microvolts. Soldierfront 2 was the first game which i downloaded when i first got my laptop and it ran pretty smoothly on low settings. I then tried microvolts which ended up getting fps drops even on low settings. I am now playing king of kings 3 which is a relatively old game so my laptop should have no problems running it but my gameplay is lagged. I was checking my temperatures while minimized then it suddenly started running smoothly for about 20 seconds then stopped.

Is it normal for my intel hd graphics to have a temp which is higher than my nvidia?

Note: i took those screenshots while my cpu was idle.

 

the PC is not overheating, I believe that the issue remains on the Optimus, have you tried switching to discrete only mode?

 

No sir. I have not. How do i go about switching to discrete mode?

 

On the newest models, Fn+F5

 

do i press it during start up? all it does is lower my brightness >.>

 

At any time.

 

then i guess my model doesn't seem to work with discrete mode

 

Does it do any change in the Device Manager? :S

 

Its an M14x R2, not a 14. I thought there was a bios setting on those ones for descrete card only or optimus. I may be mistaken.

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no it does nothing in the device manager and yes its a m14x r2. ive tried checking my boot options and i havent seen anything about discrete mode.

 

Maybe it was on the R1 at a lower bios revision.... I know my R1 doesn't have a shortcut key :/

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I updated the driver on 20th and played league of legend and got freaked out, I had only 10-15fps on all max setting and lag like crazy. use dell or your previous driver should solve the problem.

Right click Nvidia control panel for m14x r2's optimus, you already mention it on 1st post. well I have same Issue, it seem like 327.23 driver problem, I used dell driver it fixed the problem somehow, good luck.

 

Thanks for atleast replying to my thread guys. I've tried everything even uninstalling and reinstallingl my nvidia driver to factory driver which basically screwed my alienware. It wouldnt start so i had to boot in safe mode and factory reset to fix it. This is really depressing at the moment. I feel cheated.

After factory resetting back to the old driver i now have an astonishing current clock of 34 mhz

 

Thats it lowest power setting to work for optimus. Optimus doesnt actually turn the card off, just puts it in a super low power state. It should work now with proper whitelisting

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How do you suppose i get it to work properly?

 

Try whitelisting a game and launching it. It should jump up to normal clocks in game.

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well i downloaded a game and it went straight back to 135 mhz current clock and i also white listed it.

do you guys think the problem could be a defective graphics card?

 

well its now running at 745 mhz with king of kings 3

http://img.techpowerup.org/131001/nvidia_20131001_082559.png

but the game seems choppy still. do you think that i'm expecting too much from my laptop? I was expecting not to lag at all

do you think my intel card could me to throttle? its hitting 65

edit: according to gpu z the memory clock is at 1000.4 mhz, don't know if this affects anything
edit: it's back to running choppy and my settings are set to low

 

Sounds like it is functioning properly now. Look for a thread about the m14x r2 throttling issues, you may be hitting the gpu's throttle that is set by the bios/vbios. I think the title was something about m14x r2 users...

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you may try another utility to monitor the clock/temp/load/... of your gpu
something like msi afterburner/evga precision....they are professional overclocking tools and they can show those numbers in logging graphs
so it's easier to see how your gpu is performing.....as the moment you switch to desktop to check gpu-z...the clock can go right down because it's not loaded

make sure the laptop is plugged in and running on performance power profile...even if it was, check the detailed options

 

My NVIDIA GPU isn't hitting any throttling temps. I don't see why the game would have fps drops like that.

 

would it be possible for me to overclock to 1000 mhz? will this make my gpu extremely hot?

what does the memory clock and core clock do? would be nice if someone could explain please

It seems that i can only increase my core clock by +135 and my memory clock by +1000