Got my new AW17, GTX 880m and everything seems just fine. Need help verifying.

Hello everyone,

I just got my new Alienware 17 with the GTX 880m in it. I´ve been reading, following and commenting a lot of threads on here and other forums about the poor performance of these cards, and was almost 100% sure i would have to replace it.

However, I am not sure that there is anything wrong with it. I might be meassuring it wrong, but I installed MSI Afterburner, Furmark and did some benching (and gaming), and that 880m is plowing through everything I throw at it.

Sure, it does run kinda hot at around anywhere between 80c and 90c when under really heavy load, but according to MSI afterburner the clock stays consistent between 950ish and 1000ish, just as its supposed to as far as I know.


However, I am not really sure of my way of meassuring this, could someone chime in with some stuff I can try out and see if I can get this GPU to misbehave?

At first I had some issues with it in Furmark because when I pressed the "Burn-in Benchmark 1920/1080p 15 mins" It would never go above 850mhz, not even at the beginning when it wasnt hot at all.
Then I tried setting up my own, 1080p, 8x AA and then the manual user benchmark.
In that it goes up to 993mhz, heats up to 80c and stays there consistently.

In gaming (tried Bioshock Infinite, as that seems to be the most demanding game I have), it hovers around 950 and 1000mhz as described, heats up to around 89c and stays there.



Edit: This is running stock newest everything. A13 bios and driver 340.52, havent touched the vBIOS as i dont really know what that is.

 

Max sure power setting is set to maximum performance. Vbios refers to the video card bios, which controls the voltage and clock settings for the graphics card. People usually modify the vBIOS to flash lower or higher voltages or faster clocks. Still, 89C is extremely hot. The 880M will not last long under that temperature. I really would avoid anything with the 880M for the time being until nVidia breaks its silence on the matter. Just for comparison, I know I have a 7970M and its slower than the 880M by a good 20%, but my temps NEVER exceed 70-71C. You want to stay as far away from TJMax as possible, which I believe is 100C or 105C

 

Hi, congrats on the new system, the 880M sli is powerful indeed, although you are wise to check & verify that you're getting the clock speeds that you paid for when it comes to the 880M.

Max boost on the 880M is 993Mhz. 954Mhz is the base clock I believe, meaning it should hit & keep this clock as a minimum during gaming. Don't use Furmark, it's just a power virus that stresses out your cards, it doesn't do them any good, and is not indicative of real world behaviour, so don't worry that your GPUs throttle when running Furmark - that's normal.

What you wanna do is grab a free program called GPUz, it monitors your GPU (clock speeds, temperatures). Download Unigine Heaven Benchmark ( Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 Windows Download). Unigine Heaven runs on a loop, and mimics a 100% GPU load without any breaks, a bit like an intense gaming session. Run GPUz in the background to monitor your temperatures & clocks. GPUz has graphs of the temperatures & clocks on the Sensors tab (once you have clicked on the sensors tab you can make the window larger so that more history of measurements are visible). After you've done your 20min run of Unigine Heaven (peak temperatures), then exit the program & look at the sensor graphs in GPUz and make note of the clocks & temperatures to see how stable the clocks were, etc. Ideally you'd want to see a stable 993Mhz on both GPUs through the whole test, and hopefully a GPU temperature of under 90degC. At any rate you want to see a minimum of 954Mhz, anything below that is throttling below the agreed base clock of the 880M. (Oh, and I recommend settings on Unigine Heaven of: Quality Ultra, Tessallation Extreme, Anti-aliasing off or no more than x4, run as Full Screen)

Also run 3DMark11, and compare your GPU scores against results at this useful website:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-880M.107622.0.html

 

Thanks alot,

I "only" have the Alienware 17 which holds only a single 880m, but I will try the Heaven benchmark and see how it performs.

 

Edited my post with the correct link to a single 880M in notebookcheck. Yes, try Heaven benchmark. It's really useful because it's a constant 100% gpu load, and it's a realistic gaming load simulation (unlike Furmark!).

(If it turns out you're not happy with the 880M, quickly return the notebook free of charge within your return window, and wait for the new Maxwell cards that are supposed to be coming out before the end of the year).

 

Alright, so.

First of all, I never see 993mhz in heaven. I also don´t see 100% GPU utilization. Rarely even 99%, it seems to run at 98% and then drop to 94-97% whenever the scene from the sky is showing, as that doesn´t seem to tax the system as much.

It basically stays a 953mhz and 89c. Is that normal? Ocasionally the clock drops, but it only seem to do that when the GPU utilization does.

 

It seems fine. If you're comfortable with doing so, I would re-paste using IC Diamond. That's a bit warm. It can only help, if done properly.

 

Seems normal for the stock vbios. As J.Dre said, it's running a bit warm.

 

89c @ 954MHz is abysmal. What is your room temp?

954MHz should be in the low 80s.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

Those temps are not abysmal guys, they're perfectly normal from my experience with the GTX 780M.

 

Hey man

I have the same specs as yours but I am running a modded vbios (slv). Forgot to run Heaven after flashing to slv's bios. Will run it now and post my (core clock + temp). I am using a thermaltake massive tm cooling pad with fans on turbo

 

awsome cards not preforming how they should. when you say you see the clock sometimes dropping below the 954mhz clock dose it go to 954 almost instantly after of jump about a bit?

also 89c is shocking as ethrem said. how long did you run the benchmark?

i would also be interested to see what sort of temp you get with the valley benchmark and how your clocks cope in that.

I Hit 993 mhz clock for about 20 seconds on my sli setup then one card will sit at 954mhz and the second card just craps itself and jumps all over the place. you can also log with GPU-z and if you download evga presision you will get a realtime display of clocks and temps on your screen.

 

Alright, not sure if you're going to like this but I just finished running the benchmark.
Quality Ultra, Tessellation Extreme, AA x8, resolution (system = 1920x1080)

Core clock stable at 993Mhz, max temp of 77 degrees. Dropped to 50 in less than 10 seconds afterwards... I will try to run it again without the cooling pad in a bit.

But all in all, I am extremely happy with the 880m...

Edit: room temp is 26 degrees (air conditioned). I am in Dubai and as I type this it is 8PM and 38 degrees outside...
Just to give some additional details on my system, I bought it manuf refurbished off ebay and didnt' repaste it or anything. And to be honest, I am pretty sure the cooling pad IS helping a lot. My idle temp used to be 49-50 degrees before, but now it hovers at 42 degrees

 

98% usage is fine for Heaven. If you think it's not taxing the system enough (you're seeing drops in load), then up the AA to x4 or x8. If you never see 993Mhz in Heaven then I don't think that's normal, it should at least boost to 993Mhz for a while, and some systems can keep it stable at 993Mhz. 954Mhz is the base clock, and if it goes below that figure in Heaven at all, then it's definitely not functioning as it should. 89 degC is a little too hot really. What's your room temperature? Less than 25 degC? You might want to repaste the GPU like J Dre suggested, to get lower temperatures (which might stop the throttling, and then you might get a stable 993Mhz). If I was you I'd just return the notebook and get the A17 again when the high end Maxwell cards come out - if you can wait for a few months (probably before the end of the year).

(nick81 is likely getting a constant 993Mhz due to having flashed svl7's modified vBIOS though, but his low temperatures certainly help too).

 

Yeah I used to get a max of 954 before flashing. But the 993 is only constant in games that "push" the GPU. For example I am playing murdered soul suspect (max settings) and can see the core clock go as low as 820 at times without affecting fps or performance in general. So despite the modded vbios the core clock does go down when it can, giving me pretty low temps on that game in return

 

The modded vbios shouldn't drop core period when in 3D mode, something is wrong there. Hell mine didn't even want to drop back to 2D mode which kept the fans running all the time and annoyed me.

Curious... What voltage are you seeing?

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

He's running 89C on base clocks. That is abysmal and needs to be returned. Pretty much everybody is having issues with the 880M getting too hot.

 

The only time my temps went as high as that, was when I disabled "frame lock" in Bioshock Infinite. Fps went up to 120 constant and temps reached a max of 93... Setting frame lock as on, locked the frames at 60 and got a max temp of 72-73.

I am not really sure why I am not getting the same high temps as other people here. Some people are getting high temps even after repasting AND on stock vbios... Does that mean they have faulty cards? In all cases, I am not complaining... Just hope I won't get any bad surprises down the road!

 

As I told you though that fix will only work for games that shoot past the 60FPS cap, it won't do a damn thing for those that don't so you have a bandaid right now.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

I get the same or often higher temps than that at equivalent clocks with my 780M though :/

 

At what voltage? Usually 780M can't hold 880M clocks at stock voltage and voltage increase heat fast.

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I am running my 880M with the modified vbios. Core clock at 1058, memory at 1450, voltage at 1.025v. Max temp of 81c in Heaven. I ran the loop for a while before I figured out I had to click on "benchmark". Derp...

 

Well they already offered to replace the motherboard + GPU, so i'm probably gonna let them do that anyways.

I've been gaming now for quite a few hours now, clock speed hovering between 954mhz-993mhz and temp around 80c.

 

It's functioning completely normal (for the 880M). Why in the hell are you going to replace the motherboard and GPU? Odds are, you'll just create more problems. Just re-paste with IC Diamond and enjoy never seeing above 75C for at least a few months.

 

I guess i am just kind of afraid that any damage has been done running at these +90 degrees the last couple of days.

 

Sounds like for piece of mind you're just best returning the laptop & buying it again in a few months time with a top-of-the-line Maxwelll card. Having a technician replace the motherboard & GPU often creates more problems & damage than doing nothing (like J Dre was saying). I understand why you've gone down that route though, the laptop has the cover, and you're entitled to them doing that for you - but history has shown us that Dell authorised Techs vary in quality & ability, there's some horrendous stories floating around! (Just don't leave it too long that you leave the window of being able to return your laptop for a full refund!)

 

Thanks alot for the responses.

the thing is, i got the machine at a very, very good Price (around 30% discount), and im afraid i wont be able to haggle that much off if i return this one and order a new one.

 

Yes, well, we're expecting at least a 50% increase in performance with the Maxwell high end products. If that turns out to be the case, then your 30% discount you managed to wangle might be a moot point, at least when talking about performance/value (not absolute cost of course though). (I imagine that if you get a Dell Technician out to fix your latpop, then you might void your ability to return the laptop for a refund, not sure though, anyone else got any thoughts or knowledge on that point?)

 

I totally understand what you mean, but I kinda need this laptop right now, so I'm trying to figure out if there is a way I can keep it. I don't mind paying for a 980m upgrade in the future, as long as its compatible. Although Obviously I would much rather not pay extra for it.

 

Ah, well stay with your decision then. Hopefully the GPU/motherboard replacement will lower the temps, but they'd likely have to replace the heatsink too if you wanted to see a reduction in temps, if that is where the problem lies. If I was you I would skip the Dell technician and re-paste the GPU myself using a quality thermal paste like Gelid Extreme (or I've used Arctic Silver 5 with success - although that's old hat now!). This way you know you're doing a good job, if you research how to do it, and it may fix the temperature problem - a quicker solution & no concern over a Dell tech making a mess of your laptop.

 

Despite the horror stories of Dell techs I think he would be a fair bit more capable of repasting a CPU/GPU than I could, I have never tried it before I think.

Do you think I could buy my own high quality thermal paste and have him put that on instead of the "Dell paste" when he changes the gpu/motherboard?

 

Yeah, maybe he would use your paste. Although, a new heatsink often comes with thermal compound pre-applied, but he might be happy to clean that off & use yours. If you're a practical & patient kind of person, and have done some DIY before then you'd probably do a good job of re-pasting once you'd researched it. Make sure you have the right sized screw drivers though - stripping the heads of the screws is no fun when you improvise with tools!

 

In the UK I was offered a full refund after over 6 months! Once a replacement was approved I got the option along with their estimation of a like-for-like new build, but I had had a bunch of repairs and 6 months pain and suffering to no avail

In the UK (again) once you accept a repair then refund is usually off the table - as is accepting a replacement. So dell went the extra mile for me and I never even asked for it

Local laws and 'locally accepted practice' rule Dell's decision making from my experiences of dealing with them in a few countries.

 

Yes, so full refund likely off the table for ThisIsBrutus if Dell tech visits, although full refund not completely off the table if lots of sh*t happens with his system!

 

Yes, that sums it up from what I have seen

 

Well luckily I live in Denmark where business-to-customer laws are in my favor, so fortunately I won't have to worry about that stuff.

I've been chatting them up quite a few times these past few days. Lost my temper last time and got put through to a manager called David. He was the nicest guy ever, and completely understood my frustration (there were some scratches as well, and they gave me the wrong power adapter). He called customer care, explained my situationen to the retards i have been talking to previously, and then they called me up and basically told me they were gonna send me a new system after I send them some pictures.

I'll update when I get some news.