[Conference Call] Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M 78C° Throttling [SEE POST #191 and later]

@Phoenix. Nice post with some good points however I disagree with the comment about thermal material. There is no way in heaven or hell that premium thermal pastes not as good as the stuff Dell ships with their cards. Every time I repaste it is much better. The problem isn't that the paste itself is bad, but the fact that they apply it like thermal pad. It is a thin sheet of really hard stuff. that just sits between the GPU and contact area. So even if the paste is good stuff, the application stops it from being effective.

 

Widezu69, I have to agree with you there. I posted the info as was discussed in the call, but we can all have our own, behind the scenes, views of that information. Personally, I have to say, as you did, that its more about the application than the paste itself.

 

It's a shame I had to miss this call. I really wanted to listen in. I was busy all day cleaning the house we are moving out of.

I was wondering if I would be able to get the full replacement parts after I moved to England? I don't think I'll need them as I haven't hit the 78C throttle, but I also haven't been gaming much yet. Once I get to England, I'll be doing a repaste and/or repadding of my GPU. If I run into something, would I be able to speak with a US rep here, or do I need to call up Dell UK?

 

Everyone did a great job on this call. A number of contributors from this forum added a lot of value to the dialogue... I'm proud to be associated with all of you through the forum. Special thanks to Yoda and widezu69 for the extra work you guys did to pull things together for the call.

Bill, Chris, Louis... thanks again. I never cease to be amazed by you gentlemen. Dell is very fortunate to have you, and so are we.

 

Mr. Fox, Yoda, and widezu were great! I really appreciate the effort you put into getting this thing together. I thought it went really well and I learned a lot about my R3.

I hope I didn't interrupt too much. I was trying to add to the conversation a little and I was hesitant to do so because I knew I wasn't one of the designees for us.

 

With the exception of myself, haha just kidding, I dont think anyone should have held back being as involved as they were. All the contributions were awesome, and much more informative then I originally planned on the conversation being. Especially about the adjacent issues.

My kudos to everyone setting this up, and those leading the discussion. You guys were great and it was very much appreciated.

 

I think everyone that spoke up had something valuable to add. It was also very cool getting to hear what an intelligent bunch of professionals, from a variety of career backgrounds, that we have in good company here at NBR.

 

Hi anyone asked question about Sata3 issues ?

 

That was a blast. You guys are indeed an impressive group of people. I think I can speak for all of us on the Dell side when I say thanks for your patience as we try to work through this the best we can, given aforementioned parameters. We're very grateful for your enthusiasm for a brand we're all pretty proud of.

I think you can. I have not worked directly with the service contract policies in a long time, so it could be different now. I found the ownership transfer page, and I think the ownership transfer works as an international support contract transfer as well. You can fill in the information here, and see if it takes you to an option to transfer ownership from one country to another. I didn't have a service tag handy to test with. Let us know if you need some assistance.

 

Thanks Bill. I will definitely look into this once I get to the UK. I checked to see if I could transfer now, but I only have a PO Box for England, and it wants a physical address. I'll let you know if I run into any issues.

A bit off topic, but I was playing some NFSWorld and my temps only got up to about 60C. Don't think the game is too taxing, but nice to know I can play it for over an hour without any issues. I'm really loving this system and the 580M is amazing.

 

This did come up as a side note. I brought it up because we asked about the hdmi input problem. They are aware of the hdmi input issue and they are working on it. The fix might come in the form of a bios update. There is no fix right now but the potential fix could be a bios update. I said I really don't want to go past A08 because I don't want my ssd throttled. The answer indicated that the SATAIII problem was a chipset thing and not a BIOS thing. I never actually tried A09 myself so I could not speak intelligently on the problem. It made me think that maybe the Sata III thing is a problem intermittently all the time no matter the BIOS revision you're running. I decided to do more testing on this myself. Honestly I never benched my ssd with A09. I decided to flash and test before pressing the issue. Besides, there wasn't an engineer who deals with that on the call. We had Louis and he's a GPU guy. I can tell you he REALLY knows his business too. I could have asked him questions for two more hours.

 

I'm using my M17x with the stock vBIOS & clocks, and since the ambient temperatures in India hover around 30C, the 580m reaches 78C in every gaming session. The tragedy is that Dell only sells the 580m version in India. Also, I've had a full set of parts replaced by technicians already.

I can't see any solution emerge here that resolves the issue for people from regions with high ambient temperatures. Are we supposed to stop gaming with our M17x's? Will Dell stop selling the M17x here, considering that almost all users will experience this issue?

 

I can confirm this is the correct process (about a year ago). You transfer the warranty to your country of destination. The warranty can change though depending on the destination in my experience. I had to transfer some laptops to mexico and brazil to be told that 'we don't offer accidental damage coverage in latin American countries', I'll not post the highly controversial reason the guy gave when I called to complain...

Well, firstly a big thank you to the dell guys that spoke on the call. I'll now wait for a replacement (as advised with my particular issue) and see how it goes.

What I did take away from the call is that the R3 with a 580 is right on the ragged edge of it's design specs so we are stuck as far as any OC'ing goes (without using our own fixes) and have to accept that it can't cope with some games without a 20% drop in performance.

I still think there was a certain amount of 'smoke and mirrors', especially when it all went quiet when the engineer was questioned about the power draw but they tried hard to show that it was not a bad design choice to offer this card.

I do wonder if any R2 owners that have upgraded have the same issue? Does it have the same 240W power supply since the MB is a different design and can run 2 cards?

I know that there is a serious lead time in new model design but an intake on the front (design guys, it would look awesome as a 'mouth' between the lights) instead of right next to the output where hot air ends up circulated would be a good start, as well as fold-out legs as found on some models would be nice. But a better power design is really what is needed for this card.

Maybe part of the 580 re-badging is a 'hidden' fix for it's OTT power draw since the published specs are exactly the same. Or it could be just an attempt to distance themselves (Nvidia) from it. Anyone researching a 580, as i wish I had, would (should) probably go for the AMD right now, ignoring the fact that if you want 120hz 3D you have no choice...

 

Bill, I find this whole issue a bit unsettling. I get the sense that due to this trottling issue an original system with the 580m card (without any of the solutions offered by the community) is actually substantially less powerfull than a similar system but with the 6990m. Is this correct?

 

Have you had your heat sink replaced and run benchmarks to compare with the 6990 systems yet? Not a rhetorical question.

 

The GTX 580M is noticeably more powerful than 6990M. Unless tessellation is disabled on the 6990M, the GTX 580M consistently gets higher benchmark scores in my experience. Enabling PPU to offset the tessellation cheat, the GTX 580M stomps the 6990M. The GTX 580M also produces a superior visual experience, with more vibrant and detailed graphics than what I have ever experienced with an AMD GPU.

 

Bill, I hope to receive my new system next week (after a 5 week periode wait!), so no. Under Dutch law, I have the right to return the system within a 7-day period, so it is quite important for me to get clearity on this subject quickly, since I was under the impression that I ordered the most powerfull system (GPU wise).

Mr Fox, many thanks for your answer. But what I would like to know is whether the R3 with a 580M + its power- and 78 degrees trottles is as powerfull (or even more so) as an R3 with a 6990M?

 

Unless the policy is different in BeNeLux, you should have 21 days to return under Dell policy. If your system throttles (hits 78C) more often than you feel it should, we need to replace your heat sink. If that does not resolve your issues, we need to process a return for customer satisfaction. If you have any trouble dealing with BeNeLux support, let me know, and I'll get assistance from internal contacts.

 

I actually have done this, I had a 6990m to replace my first 580m (since the 580 was out of stock) and then I ended up getting a brand new replacement system with 580m. Thus, I have had both cards on identical spec machines and have tested them both.

If allowed to run stock, with the 63C power throttle intact, the 580m will average 15% slower than the 6990m in hardcore gaming sessions. The 6990m and 580m are very close, but when the 580m cuts it to P1 and takes a 20%+ hit it will always be slower than a 6990m that is always running full speed.

Again, going by the call it sounds like it doesn't matter, since you guys don't have any room to adjust, but you should be able to recreate this in your lab. A 6990m side by side with a 580m in any game that triggers P1, you will see that the average FPS is at least 15% lower on the 580m because of the time it spends in P1.

This is almost certainly true on the M18x with no throttling, but on a stock M17x R3 that is actually designed to throttle by 20% a lot of the time it is not true. A 580m at stock is better than a 6990m. A 580m at a 20% underclock is not. This gets worse if you consider OCing, an OC'ed 6990m at full speed is absolutely gonna slaughter a 580m that is constantly going to P1.

According to the engineer they test at 28C in the lab, so if you get a perfect cooling system you should be able to avoid 78C. Have you tried my HWINFO fan mod?

 

Thanks for your support Bill! But the most important thing for me now is to get an answer to the question which system is the most powerfull (or at least: equally powerfull) the R3 with 580M in its original state (so including throttles) or the R3 with 6990M?

Hope you can help me out here because if the answer is 6990M I may have chosen the wrong config and have to place a new order (I'm in love with the R3 , so no R3 is not an option for me).

 

You can see my last post, I have actually benchmarked this stuff.

However, you should get your laptop, try the vBios fix, and see if you get throttling. It is a pretty sad situation at stock, but with a good cooling system you can fix it with modifications. I run the modified vBios, a 20% OC, and on the very few games that hit 78C I use my modified fan profile. My laptop works great with no throttling, and is easily much faster than a 6990m system. Granted, I did a lot to "fix" it from stock, but it is an awesome machine when running at top speed.

 

With the fan fix and vBIOS fix, you should be fine like Yoda says. what sad though, is that you have to do all this to make the "best mobile graphics card" actually be the best. I feel sorry for the average consumer that doesn't tinker like we do. I would be furious if I wasn't tech-savvy.

 

Thanks Yoda (I feel like Luke in his early days now )! I was just typing my reply when you were typing yours I guess. + rep to you!

Your solution is probably my way out, since I choose my config especially for the 3D option it gave.

Also + rep to Bill for being so helpfull! With respect to Dell as a whole, I agree fully with Blink C's post above!

From an average consumer who at this point has spent a lot of time in order to understand how to get the R3 580M system running the way it is intended to run: Dell, please get an official fix asap! This will save Dell (I guess) thousands of dollars on parts, time wasted on this by technicians and helpdesk associates and (future) customers lost because of this issue. It's a good thing I'm not a shareholder or I would have raised h*ll over such waste of resources.

 

A good way for Dell to supposedly fix a few things is one: implement my modified vbios as an urgent update for all users solving the power throttle for those who do encounter it and two: better quality control in terms of pasting and padding at the factory.

This way no card will throttle at 65C. And less cards will throttle at 78C.

 

So basically, for those of us with 45C room temps, there is no solution.

Dell should retract this product from places with warm climates, like India.

Currently waiting for 3rd replacement.

I have had multiple replacements of heatsinks and graphics card too.

As for the dell paste being better than MX 4 and all.. what a sham..

The tech that came over didnt apply a 'paste' but instead a thermal pad. And without any cleaning of the surfaces.

I can't even get a full refund here. This is frustrating.

 

If your ambient temps are that high you may want to watch the sweat drops on the computer so as to avoid liquid damage. lol.

As far as the tech goes. If you are not satisfied with the method o repair and it has not resolved your issue, then absolutely call in and request another repair. As was discussed in the call, it is your machine and if you have to stand over the techs shoulder breathing down his neck telling him what you want him to do, then so be it. A tech half assing a job is just going to result in another call out, and more frustration. Be sure to voice your opinions on what they are doing while they are doing it.

 

Let me get this straight, issue aside. You operate your system in a room that's 113F, and your opinion is basically the onus is on Dell to develop a cooling system for the box that keeps the component temperatures at less than 172F? If you have no choice but to operate the system at that ambient temperature, you need a lot more than the thermal solution ANY manufacturer I'm aware of is capable of providing. If you want to have a refund processed, I can't guarantee what we can get done in another region, but we will be happy to try. Please send a PM to DellChrisM so we can get you over to our contacts in India support with our recommendation to process a return.

Edit:
From the system manual, chapter 7, page 116:

Temperature range
Operating 0° to 35°C (32° to 95°F)

 

Shame i could be on the call, sounds like a lot of good info has been passed around. As for the comments about the thermal paste I for one would be inclined to agree that the Dell spec would be of a higher quality, but not applied with the same level of care that you would do yourself (I know intel use dow-corning on there high end stuff). So i hope this is supplied with the kit.

I think as widezu69 has pointed out the only way for a viable fix for the system is going to have to be a software implementation of the user fixes all-ready out there i.e better fan profiling, was the question asked if upgraded fans could be supplied or have they been tried.

One thing i didn't/haven't picked up is: Did we get a fix out of the call?

Again thanks for all the hard work by both parties lets see if we can finally but this to bed

 

As Dell explained on the call they are not looking for a fix. To stay within their specs and rules they HAD to implement these 2 throttles, and they have no leeway to change those throttles at all.

If we as users want to do it we can, but there will never be an official "fix" since Dell does not consider it an issue. It is just the only way they could put the 580m in the M17x and stay within their limits.

 

Oh
may aswell call it thread closed then.

 

Not a bad idea, actually, since the topic is the call. I'd suggest Yoda and wide start a guide on overcoming the system throttling. Not that Dell endorses or supports those methods, but it's your system, and you can do whatever you want with it.

Just remember that customer induced damage thing. (<- The disclaimer)

 

@ F-117 Nighthawk -- I am well pleased with the 580M, but it requires substantial effort and some knowledge to capture the performance potential and other benefits. For users willing and able to do that, the 580M is clearly the most powerful mobile card, as reflected by benchmark results, but it can be a hassle to get there. For users who just want a powerful gaming notebook with minimum hassle and/or those with limited technical experience or lacking the willingness to learn and experiment, the 6990M is the best choice. Unfortunately, if you want 3D, you need the 580M and have to learn to work through or around the R3's design limitations. Using the various techniques developed and discussed in the forum, I rarely encounter throttling (excluding Furmark, which I rarely use) and then mostly during extreme benchmarking. But it is what it is and these cards can be pushed only so far in the R3.

 

If it is not possible to keep it within the 78C then increase the limit.. The 6990m goes up to 99C and seems more suitable for this climate yet it is not offered here.

As far as other manufacturers go, no other laptop throttles the 580m at 787C, not even 15" ones.

I am waiting for a replacement. If I am still facing issues I will contact DellChrisM and request a FULL refund.

Oh, and btw, this configuration costs $4000 here and I cant play for more than 20 mins on it. Yay!

Despite all this , I still love my AW. But i am quite skeptical by nature. So since you guys have refused to remove the limit (or your tech team doesnt know what is causing the limit and hence cant remove it) I dont see any solution on the horizon.

I have no faith in talks of redesigning the heatsink. A m17x r4 is on the horizon and I will place my bet that there is no new heatsink for the r3.

I was quite excited at first but after reading this thread I am resigned to the fact that I made a poor purchase.

My views are not quite in line wit the optimism on this thread, but I still have a right to express them.

Yes, please look for a fix for the 78C throttle.

 

@Chaos92
Of course you do, but at the risk of offending you, there's no cost-effective way on earth with current technology to cool the 580 to even 99C with an ambient temp of 113F. We've published our operating temperatures, and you are admitting you are using the system outside that range. Still, we're doing all we can for you.

If by 'tech team,' you mean tech support, yes, that's a miss on our part. If you mean any of us providing support on this forum or our own forum, or our engineering team, we are well aware of root cause and the fact that we CAN but will not remove it, based on safety specs.

 

Yep, shame dell could of done a bios with the limits still intact but with the fan profiling included.

 

I think this idea is actually still on the table. I'll double check. I was surprised to see this wasn't pushed for on the call. I brought it up, but was missing the chorus of "Yes! This! Do eeeet!!"

 

At 113°F, I would have trouble functioning properly, not to mention a computer... any computer for that matter. That's just way too hot to expect a good outcome for man or beast.

Is air conditioning not available in India? I lived in Phoenix for a while and thought I was going to die, LOL. And, I think I might have without air conditioning.

 

I think you have seen it, but this http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...x-r3-580m-thermal-throttling.html#post8345887 generally fixes it in most cases. However, as Bill has said you gotta get lower ambient temps. No laptop on earth can game at ambient temps as high as you are reporting.

If that is the coolest you can get than you need to look at desktop solutions, and probably desktop solutions that are liquid or even submersion cooled.

This was mentioned in the call, basically, there is marketing from one side saying "make a quiet computer" while engineering is saying "we want a cool computer". The profile we got is the middle ground. I admit that my modified profile is louder and more disturbing, and can see why they might not want to adopt it for everyone. Lots of Alienware customers are very casual, and would rather have quiet than cool.

I got the impression this was kind of a no go on the call, but it is certainly a solution. Really, the entire fan table is fine except for the high-end. What needs to be added is a max cooling mode that activates at like 70-73C and runs full out until the machine cools to like 65C. This would leave most of the fans untouched, so marketing gets a "quiet" machine during normal use. But it would really help during gaming, since if we spike into the 70's it is likely gonna hit 78C without max cooling. By cooling to something like 65C before lowering the speed you reset your thermal system, which is important to counteract slow build-up.

The real issue here, that was brought up in the call, is even if you change the fan table and release bios A10, but keep the A09 SATA3 changes, then most of us will not upgrade. In A08 the middle SATA port ALWAYS runs at SATA3, and that is what most of us are using for SSDs, in A09 it NEVER runs at SATA3.

 

Lol sounds like we didn't have the killer "but polite" drive to our goal there.
This with the re-paste kit to me sounds like the best option for all parties it will help the non-techie and techie users and still keep the design spec intact with no end user damage involved .

 

Sorry yoda missed your post, Lost of food for though and your right a large group to cater for but who is the largest, I would say the gamer, those of us who choose not to upgrade for the reason you stated would fall into the techie category also so could apply the "other fixes".

I know i'd side the engineering, but i'm a engineer so support function over form

If dell supply a fix they have covered their end, what we do with that is our choice

 

I can't officially endorse their work-arounds, but if I owned one of these, I'd be asking wide and Yoda what they want for Christmas. (<-by no means an affirmation from Dell that those work-arounds are endorsed or supported. /disclaimer)

 

enough said.

 

Revelator, you are right. But it would be good as a customer to be aware of the distinction you make between the 580m and the 6990m before you buy a specific config so you know what you're getting into.

Thnx to reps suchs as Bill and Yoda and Widezu and you guys I am still glad I chose the 580m And I also think that Dell should release an updated vbios with a more aggresive fan profile and remove the 63-throttle.

 

Oops! yes please do this!
Testing today and I never see max fan (4500) right up to 76 (at which point I stop testing) but using hwinfo and setting max at 70 I stabilize there...

 

It may not change anything with the throttling, but there is a new modded driver for the GTX 580M that has built-in ability to disable PowerMizer... http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/653218-nvidia-301-10-whql.html

 

Confirmed. Louis is going to take this to the thermal team to see if we can work out a little something with the fan profiles. It's not the Holy Grail we're all looking for, but it would be the best compromise we can get if we can make it happen.

 

Great quote that will be in the email Louis requested, along with about 5 paragraphs of Yoda's posts.

 

That would be awesome! The biggest problem with Yoda's solution is that both fans blow the same speed, and can't be regulated by both CPU and GPU. The speeds are solely based off the GPU. If we could get an official fan profile fix, I'm sure they would fix that.

 

rock and roll.

 

As far as it being solid, it's in the "solid" state because it's a phase change material. It will change between "grease-like" and solid depending on temperature. The material thermal transferance is higher than grease because of this change. Which is also why it is supposed to be thin. We want the heat transference to take place as quickly as possible. If you use our thermal solution, applied correctly to properly cleaned and prepared surfaces, your ambient temperature is not crazy high, and you ensure good air flow, you should not see 78C nearly as often as you do.

I have to say, it's a miss on our end that the solution is not correctly installed, and we'll stand by the warranty to correct that in the field.

And I don't believe I've said this yet, but I want to apologize on behalf of the company for all the hassle and poor experience. We really, really want to make this the best possible situation for you all as best we can.