285M GTX - M17xR1 - Confirmed

there's no reason why it shouldn't be as fast or faster than SLI 260s, it's hardware superior or equivalent in every respect. Infact the only area it's not better is in buffer amount, both solutions have 2GB of frame buffer.

 

The reason existed from 8800 to 285.
I still hope we can get some nice and cool performance from 480Mx2 without latency and overheating issues. It's nice to see a single 480M being pushed to the level of the desktop GTX 465 on stock cooling. If the same can be done for 2 plus some decent OC'ing for 980x - I'll be very interested.

 

you mean dpc latency? It's been discussed it was because of the MCP79 nvidia chipset and the audio controller, nothing to do with the 280s. Since Nvidia lost their quickpath license and they can't make Intel chipsets anymore, we're stuck with the PM55 chipsets in Alienware computers for a good long time.

 

It had very little to do with the MCP79, I had both 280s and 4870s in R1 and there was no high latency with the later
Scook can confirm this as many others.
So I don't move to Nvidia SLI configs, regardless how good the benches are, before we have some confirmation that SLI no longer spikes.

 

Actually, it had nothing to do with the MCP79. It was the display driver. Straight from NV:

 

BURN(on me).. thanks.

 

Was it fixed, btw?
I still c people complaining about latency even with the latest drivers both on AW and Clevo boards.

 

No, it has not been fixed for many. Although it seems some of the latest drivers are reducing it quite a bit. Honestly if Clevo has buried it and are ignoring the issue, I don't expect Alienware will be doing any better.

/me thinks its a hardware defect being antagonized by the drivers.

 

If you want to discuss DPC, take it to the DPC thread since it can quickly turn into a long discussion. Stick to the topic which is the OPs process of installing 285M into his R1. other than that, its OT and belongs in another thread.

To answer your Q Aikimox, yes, it was fixed. I have no DPC issues on my 17xR1.

Thanks.

 

what massive cost are you talking about? the 285Ms are cheaper than the 280Ms. when I asked for an upgrade at Dell's they offered me two 280Ms for $850 SLI cable included. I only paid $578 for both of these cards. a saving of $272 and a slight 5-7% increase in performance over the 280Ms on stock clocks. if I would have known there would have been a mod necessary, I would have taken them anyway, since I have been modding PC components for over 10 years now. this mod is really simple if you have good dexterity with your hands. though, for me it was actually harder cause I didn't know what the result would lead me to. it was like doing it blindfolded. I had to take the risk and I am glad I took it but it worked and the pictures are even posted.

are you sure the stock freq. are 675? never seen that around. can you please shom me where you got the info? maybe you are thinking of the desktop 285 GTX. this is what I found: Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285M SLI

my cards came with 600/1500/1000 and I found a BIOS on the internet for the 285m that had the same clocks. I'm confused with what you say though. thanks,

 

That was a manufacturing defect in the solder and not related to software. That was also VERY isolated to G84/G86 chips. Although it hurt their reputation, it is not at all a factor in any of their current offerings

and OneJ, looks like you are right. That is a my bad, for some reason I thought I remembered seeing their stock clocks were 675 core when they came out....

 

scook9:

thank God, I was terrified to have to set the default clocks to 675.

thanks

 

I guess I was just blown away that they raised the clocks 15 MHz and called it a new model number....lol (NO added features over the GTX 280m)

I could have swore they were advertised at 675 at pre-release though...guess I am going senile at 22 haha

675 core aint the end of the world, that is how you break 12k vantage GPU score

 

thanks

here's the screenshot. I am running latest nvidia drivers on nvidia site: 258.96 WHQL

 

That looks pretty dam good to me lol. I have had worse with my atis in haha

 

yes, I was just thinking that if 675 had to be the starting point, anything beyond looked like a steep uphill

 

Hi, ONE _J
when do you going to do the benchmark, or do you have any you tube video.
i want to see how those card performs, thanks

 

You can just look up benchmarks for the GTX 280m, they are virtually the same card and have the same overclocking headroom

Here are some numbers for Vantage and 06
Vantage
06

 

I ran some benchmarks, just keep in mind that my scores aren't anything extraordinary because of the CPU. I have a T9900 and not a QX9300. though I understand that in games that only support dualcore, the story should be different.

anyway, I overclocked the CPU to 3394MHZ.

first screenshot is with 285Ms at 600/1500/1000

second is at 700/1750/1000

third one is resident evil 5 bench at 700/1750/1000

are the results for RE5 appropriate with this CPU?


scook9:

I believe the headroom for overclock for the 285m is much higher than with the 280m.

I reached 700/1750/1000 with only 1.03V in the BIOS. and it was pretty stable, so becasue I didn't push it further, it could be either on it's limit at that volt setting or there could be some more overclock left.

I read that some people achieved this freq with 280m with a 1.05V in BIOS whereas I only used 1.03V and still don't even know if it was it's real limit for the volt setting.

I believe that the fact that I didn't overclock the memory affected the real performance. though I read that overclocking memory is more dangerous than GPU. so I was a bit afraid. maybe having it at 1050 would have had a better overral result.

thanks,

 

BTW, at 700/1750/1000 1.03V in BIOS it was very stable.

assassin's creed 2 looked even smoother than usual. still, I believe that memory would make a bigger impact if overclocked higher.

is there a way to change the timings for the memory? I heard they are already relaxed in the 285m, I was looking to relax them even further.

thanks,

 

Vantage will give a much better picture of gpu performance, 06 is a cpu test pretty much

and I would overclock ram before messing with timings....that is how you brick a gpu

 

Coming on this thread late, +rep to ONE J for taking the initiative on this and trying it out, glad to hear it was successful.

I have looked at a few benchmarks, but would love to know if it is worth going from a GTX 260M single card to a GTX 285M SIngle Card. I'm on a 3.0b MXM in an M17x R1, I think based on ONE J's experiment, it will work no prob, but is it worth dropping $300 for the max single card solution? Would a 4870 be better? The R1 can only handle 4870 in the ATI lineup or the 285M...

Thanks in advance.

 

Between the 4870 and GTX 285m is really whether you prefer one or the other for the games you play. The nvidia does better in many games by a small margin but the ATI does better in benches. The difference over a GTX 260m though going single card to single card will be pretty slim (like 10%)

 

ok, thanks. I'll try that when I get back home tonight.

I bricked several desktop cards and mobile one as well (including these 285Ms)

but I've always known how to bring them back to life.

the only one case where I had a major brick situation was when I messed up a desktop 9800 GTX hooked up to a laptop via the expansion slot with a special card they produce in thailand.

nvflash did not recognize the card at all. so I had to use what they call the tweezers mode (documented by nvidia) and literally had to short circuit two pins in the PCB. and it worked! part of it is even documented in a thread I started in the gateway forums here in NBR.

 

agreed.

it's all goes down to your own brand preference.

ATI are slightly more powerful and consume less power, nvidia has much better driver support and applications compatibility.

personally I prefer nvidia, but again, this is justa personal preference.

Walshman:

thank you! you should consider though, that if you end up getting a single 285m you would lose Hybrid options in the BIOS although you would end up losing it anyway with the 4870, but maybe that's something to think about.

unfortunately I tried the 285m as a singlr card only for a short moment when I first installed it.

I played assassin's creed 2 but it's hard to tell if it would do good over a 260m.

though, with the little I've been able to use them, I can see that they have very good oveclocking headroom, so you might favor that over the 4870 if you regularly overclock your cards.

 

THESE GREAT

 

now that I think of it, I never did 1.17V on my GTX 280m....lol

they were stock at 1.00, in the bios you could go up to 1.05 and I edited the voltage table to achieve 1.07

just thought I would correct that haha

 

is it possible to ask DELL/Alienware to implement support for Hybrid SLI option in the M17x BIOS for the 285m GTX?

I find it very useful when I brick my cards after a bad flash or wrong settings.

I just boot up with the 9400MG and then use nvflash to correct any mistakes. but this way I can only try flashing on card number one and then if something goes wrong the pc won't boot, so I just swap cards places and flash back to original/safe settings. but it's a real pain this way, it limits a lot any modding purposes.

other people considering the upgrade (I believe 260m users mostly) might actually find it useful in their everyday tasks.

would this be possible? to submit a requiest to DELL's technichians?

I would do it no problem.

thanks,

 

Hi one_j,
How long it takedyou to get the card, or did you get a traking number, or how they shipped to you.

 

Wow! Was it during some browsing, scrolling, gaming, or just an idle shot?

 

I got them pretty soon because id didn't choose the free shipping option, rather I went with UPS. though, I'm sure you'll be getting it either by the end of the week or definitely next week. hang on!
I know it's hard

yes, while browsing internet and hotmail's IM. I left it on for quite some time. after watching it for a bit I started doing else and forgot I had it on. though I still get red spikes if I press the DVD eject touch sensor.

 

That's not a problem at all. Good to know they fixed the issue eventually. Maybe there's some hope for 480Mx2

 

here are the results for vantage with clock settings of 700/1750/1000.

they aren't anything special cause remember that I have a dual core, so keep in mind.

if you can't see the picture this is the score:

P9933

GPU score: 11755

CPU score: 6779

GPU test1: 35.77
GPU test2: 33.05

considering the dual core, are these good scores for my videocards? I hope they are all setup correctly with drivers working at 100%

thanks,

 

assuming you did not spend all night tweaking and playing with different driver versions, that GPU score is right where it should be

awesome!

(if you DO want to spend all night tweaking, 12500 is the GPU score to beat - is what I did with my GTX 280m SLI)

 

how did you tweak the drivers? coul you share?

no, I just ran the application with the latest nvidia drivers.

which CPU did you have?

thanks,

 

that was with a qx9300 @ 3.33 GHz

you just go into the 3d settings and change stuff to optimize perofrmance

you should also (if you care about benching and scores) try a variety of different video and PhysX drivers to see what gives you the best scores. Going through all this is what allowed me to score so high with lower clocks than you have

 

that's impressive.

then I might try this again once I get a qx9300.

I run all benchmarks with physx OFF. in the latest nvidia drivers the way you can disable physx completely is if you select the physx to be run by the CPU.
this is what I have now.

for the rest I keep trilinear optimization, anisotropic optimization ON, Vsync OFF, threaded optimization ON, SLI nvidia recommended, single performance monitor, texture filtering quality performance, texture filtering negative lod bias allow.

after this I don't know what else to tweak with. am I doing it right?

in vantage the resolution is the default for the performance test

 

those are all tweaks in the right area

even though you have PhysX disabled, which package you use still effects your score (don't ask me why lol) but video card drivers are probably the biggest influence besides overclocking. You can also play with stuff like the SLI mode

 

thanks, I understand now

 

which were your cards clocks?

 

Oh! Thanks bro

 

I believe all of my top Vantage scores were done with 680/1700/1075 and that was the limits of what my cards could do. I boosted voltage to 1.07V for that core. As you clearly see, you are already clocked further (suggesting more headroom in the GTX 285m) so the difference can definitely be made up with tweaks

 

thanks! I'll figure out how to play with the settings then

BTW yes, I believe there is plenty of overclock headroom. I got it at 700/1750/1000 with just 1.03V, though I am not 100% sure if it is it's limit for that clock of if I could gete there with an even lower volt setting.

is there an application oput there that would give you the best clock settings by software test?

I remember the old ntune would allow that

 

Hey! One_J what application are you using to overclock the graphics card?

 

hi,

I use nvidia system tools or MSI Afterburner.

MSI afterburner has a limit of 715/1787 for my 285Ms whereas with nvidia system tools there is virtually no limit, assuming that my cards will never reach 1100MHZ

 

I did all of my overclocking through vbios flashing. I just trusted it more.

 

you were right!! I finally found the right spot with the 197.84 from Dell's web site and the Physx pachage with the last nvidia drivers 258.96.

I was able to score P13707

I was also able to reach 700/1718/1000 with only 0.95V and was also able to reach 650/1595/1000 with just 0.92V.

there is definitely a ton of headroom for overclocking for these cards.

I decided to leave the freq at stock 600/1500/1000 with 0.91V

well, I thike I have served the community enough now. I will stop benchmarking and will start enjoying these cards.

thank you for reading this. I'll still be available for questions

thanks,

 

That score must be with physx enabled.....right? Be sure to run vantage with physx disabled so it gives a fair cpu score

or is that the GPU score? you said P so not sure

 

it's the right one. Physx was OFF as always (I didn't even know that physx ON would give you a better score, I'll have to try it with Phsyx ON too then).

yes, it was the vantage score, not the GPU. I posted the same I've always posted.

it was P13707.

I just did what you suggested, to play around with different drivers and settings

 

I just got back home from work and could not wait to check this. you were right, Physx was on in the nvidia control panel.

man!! I totally thought it wasn't cause that is the first thing I remove once I install new nvidia drivers.

I installed so many drivers last night that I must have forgotten to change it one time.

very sorry to have posted that. I guess I know now why you knew better

thanks,