I/D GFX does nothing but cause me headaches.

Hi guys,

I recently formatted my AW 17 due to uninstalling my Nvidia driver and not being able to install the new driver. Anyway, today I start a fresh. I'm running the A10 bios with stock Nvidia drivers for the 880m. Today I went to test 3D Mark 11 out but I didn't get the score I was hoping for due to optimus constantly switching my GPU's. Anyway, I figured I would just run with with the 880m by pressing FN + I/D GFX. Upon rebooting into the desktop, my 880m doesn't appear in my device manager, it shows as a Microsoft adapter what not.. Do any of you guys have any idea why this happening?

By using the 880m on it's own, the screen is really low in FPS as my device manager isn't actually displaying my 880m as an 880m. Any help on this would be appreciated. Honestly at this point, I'm seriously considering selling this laptop as it's starting to annoy me to beyond any other computer I've dealt with.

 

Well, have you tried to reinstall the drivers?
I assume that FN + I/D GFX function is a mux that directly switches your machine from optimus to dedicated GPU, and for my precision at least, I had to reinstall drivers every time.

 

Yeah I did that. It's actually showing in device manager now, but the scores in 3d mark 11 are terrible. P3243

 

Have you changed any settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel? You have to force the system to use the discrete GPU in many cases. This sounds like a driver issue to me, or the FN+F5 switch is not working (which is an Alienware OSD issue). Unfortunately, unlocking the system BIOS on the new Haswell machines is not possible thus far. Otherwise, all you would need to do is go into the BIOS and change the display adapter setting to PEG and that would totally disable Optimus and the Intel IGFX.

If you decide to get rid of it, don't buy any laptop with Optimus or Enduro. Go with an 18 instead and you'll have manual graphics switching that always obeys orders and doesn't require tweaking. Since you'll have SLI you can achieve performance that matches or exceeds a single 780M/880M with two less expensive video cards. Or, you can opt for the 17 with the 120Hz 3D-capable display, which permanently disables Optimus and the Intel IGFX. This will impair battery life, but if you bought the machine because you want uncompromising gaming performance battery life may not matter to you. (How long the system can run on battery doesn't matter for many Alienware owners, but there are a few that care about it or actually need it.)

 

I've set the Nvidia GPU as the main GPU in the Nvidia control panel. I just spent 3 hours on the phone with tech support from AW, and even he can't figure it out. To top it all off, the tech guy asked me to install the drivers off my resource disc. The driver plain as day refuses to install due to my GPU not being compatible. The driver is Video_Nvidia_327.45_W814_A00_Setup_JRT13 and the intel driver from the resource disc is - Graphic_Intel_W8.14_X06_A00_setup-99VYN. The one I have installed now is the one that came with the laptop the day it arrived - 332.44, and the intel HD one was published in March.

I'm considering selling and building a SLI Titan Black setup.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think every revision past the M17x R3 (in the case of 17") uses a muxless design, so the iGPU and dGPU are connected at all times, unless you manually shut one off. I've always always always had issues with muxless design, I'd say avoid optimus or enduro or whatever. At least on the R4 you could get the unlocked bios and manually pick if you wanted to use Intel or AMD/Nvidia

 

Have you checked your power profile? Maybe it's in power saving mode.

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

 

Unfortunately, you're not wrong about it being a problem. I wish you were. The new BIOS stuff is severely crippled and not "unlockable" so far. So, with the new Alienware 17 simply going into the BIOS and disabling Optimus or Enduro is not possible at this time. Hopefully, it will someday be possible to unlock the BIOS and make the system as fully functional as it is capable of being. The 17 would be a much better product if they had used a manual switch like the M18xR1/R2/18.

 

After all the talk I've heard about the M17x and M18x series, I definitely wished I had gone with that set up. Unfortunately, I wanted the latest and "greatest" when I jumped straight into Alienwares.

Thanks for the suggestion. I checked over my power settings, no problems as far as I can see.

This latest bios version has done something to my core clock (gpu). I'm almost 100% sure that my 880m is running at 650mhz at most times.

 

Just wanted to jump in to share some information about the Optimus technology that's on your Alienware and that controls the way the GFX works.

 

Nice explanation. Thanks for sharing this.