Im Shocked

hello everyone im new here and would like some advise.

My old computer went wrong few weeks ago and i wanted to get a good new computer so i looked around and eventually bought a alienware laptop m17x r2.

Im a gamer at heart and wanted the laptop for this reason alone.

So i bought the laptop from PCWORLD (crap customer service i might add)

and was apparently sold 2.8 quad core with geforce graphics card 2x (thats what it said on there price ticket) anyways as i know shops inside out i thought id check the specs myself and found out the ticket information was wrong

and i was actually buying 1,7ghz quad with 2xRadeon cards.

Anyway down to the point.. i bought an ex display and it wasnt set up properly so i formatted it and installed everything from scratch from the CDs in the box.

Now ive tested a few games and im shocked at how they run..

World of warcraft runs shockingly bad and never goes over 30fps unless i lower the graphics.

Call of duty:WAW runs even worse and runs smooth with everything on medium and 1080 resolution.

Biowshock 2 runs at 15-25fps with everything on full

Now im no expert but when i pay £1800 for a laptop and it runs worse then my old desktop computer im not Happy.

Ive installed all latest drivers etc for everything.

Crossfire is enabled but says Disabled on GPU-Z?

Ive uploaded some pictures so maybe you guys can help?

Maybe my crossfire isnt running properly?

 

Sounds like stealth mode could be on Chiefs.

Top right button that looks like a speedometer. Press that and enable or disable a couple of times then test the performance again. Also set up your power profile to High performance and go through each of the advanced options. Set them all to high performance and 100%.

You can also get a steath mode indicator program from the forum thread here. Give it a search.

Cheers.

 

the 1.7ghz/2.8ghz mixup is easily explainable: you probably bought an i7-720/i7-740, which has a "normal" setup, during which all cores run at 1.7, and then turbo boost, when the speeds on 1/2 cores are increased up to 2.8/3.0. So they didnt actually cheat you on the cpu, it works as its supposed to

the video cards you are talking about were probably the gtx460/480, and the ati radeon 5870.


the fact that you are getting a ati radeon isnt really a bad thing, the 5870m is inbetween the gtx 460/480 in terms of performance, and a 5870 in xfire is about same price as one 480...

So as far as I can see in terms of hardware your computer is perfectly fine. Regarding game, I think that you probably activated "stealth mode" by mistake, which caused your cpu and gpu to throttle in order to reduce power consumption. Try clicking the stealth button again and try once more?

 

It looks like crossfire isn't working. If you aren't in Stealth mode, you might have a loose crossfire cable or a faulty video card.

Out of the three games you mentioned I've only played Call of Duty World at War on my M17x-R2 back int he day and it ran fine with highest settings @ 1920x1200 resolution and 4X FSAA.

 

Nice catch there Gizmo,

I just had another quick look at the pics and Crossfire is indeed not working or running.
Try checking in the CCC again to enable crossfire. Otherwise try installing another driver.
You can also try using radeon pro and using global settings enable the crossfire logo whenever in use. This will let you know that crossfire is being used in games or not. A ATi crossfire logo will appear in your top right hand corner of the screen when a game or application is indeed running in crossfire mode.

If all fails still a reformat and reinstallation of the OS is in order (however you are already running on a fresh install); so a call to dell is the next step. You might indeed have a faulty GPU/s or Crossfire cable.

Cheers.

 

Ok Right first of all thanks for all the replys you guys have been very helpful and fast and at replying.

Now ive formatted again reinstalled all the basic drivers etc and made sure ive disabled stealth mode and also put everything on high performance.

Launched my Games and exactly same speed.
My crossfire settings in CCC is enabled but on GPU-Z says disabled (option ava).

Now ive tried to check to see if i have loose cables but i can't access the graphics cards as they have special Star screws inplace.

Last option to try is the drivers?

Could you please explain to me what i need to do to install the Radeon pro drivers?

e.g what i do i need to remove and install from my current setup.

Thanks for your help guys

 

As a quip, benchmarking anything with WoW is absolutely awful. It is a dated, poorly optimized engine.

 

hey there chiefs. Just wanted to double check in your device manager is there anything still not installed?
Also after your recent reformat did you install all the drivers from the dell support site? You will need to do so and then also update which other drivers are out of date.

You need to make sure you installed the intel chipset drivers as well otherwise you may have trouble with the GPU drivers.
Once that is all done you should install the video GPU drivers last.

There is a certain type of order that you will need to install the drivers otherwise things can stuff up as well. In most cases just make sure to install the video GPU driver last.

Also Radeon Pro is just a really niffy program it isn't a Ati driver or anything. You just dl it and install it then run.

Also can you try other games or benchmarks such as 3d mark 06 or vantage and tell us how they run or score?
Its a bit hard to guage with the performance of WOW only. Thanks.

If it saids that Crossfire is disabled in GPU-z then something is wrong. Crossfire is not on or functioning properly even though it is enabled in CCC. Either something is not installed correctly or missing. Worse case scenario is you have a bad 2nd GPU or crossfire cable could be out or loose.

Cheers.

EDIT: added more content

 

Well as i play WOW(i know its but still) alot its the main reason for me getting a decent laptop

Just tested wow=
800resolution
All Low settings
30-40fps

So im guessing my crossfire isnt running?

Might send it back to PCWORLD and have a arguement with the clueless sales advisor about getting a refund and ordering from alienware Direct and gettings a slightly better system...

 

I havent fully updated yet so i will get on that now

Hopefully its software related although with my luck nothings easy..

 

Dredduk,

I am sure you have read many things and post on this forum and I am sure that by now you have figured out that your system is not working properly as you should be able to play all the games you mentioned at max settings and with max resolution and still get over 60FPS for WOW and more for other games...

Make sure stealth mode is off and if it is and you have formated and installed all the latest drivers then you have an issue with the PC. I would ask for a new system to be sent out to you.

 

1. Getting out of the Stealth mode can be a really pain in the you-know-what. Do an all mighty power drain first: take the battery out, hold the power button for 30 sec or so, release, put the battery in and restart. If you ARE in the Stealth mode, run Alienware Command Center and there under power schemes it will say "Stealth mode". When that picture goes away or is not there I'd say you are not in stealth mode.

2. As mentioned, install 3DMark06 and see what do you get there. I get around 16k on crossfired 5870s with almost identical CPU (nothing overclocked), so you should be I guess slightly lower than that.

3. If all else fails, I would try opening the computer and manually check whether the actual crossfire cable is connected. (There have been few reports where the cable was loose...) Your screenshots prove that both cards are recognized in Windows, so that part is fine.

4. WoW works really awkward on m17x. A single 5870m eats Bad Company 2 in multiplayer on maxxed out settings for breakfast (or for that matter any other game I tried), yet WoW struggles even with shadows on medium. So I play WoW on crossfire maxxed out and works fine. Even though I have to mention just yesterday I was in Orgrimmar on Cataclysm Beta and had some significant stuttering with new sunflare effects. Just an example, as said, of extremely crappy engine and algorithms that may have been optimized (and thats a big IF) for some other cards.

 

He has 4870's and there is no star shaped screw on the M17x

 

That's a good point, I was wondering what he was referring to when he mentioned that and I figured it was a typo.

 

Stealth Mode is definitely on. I have an M17x R2 with two 4870's and Bioshock 2 runs at 1200p with 24x AA and 8x AF without so much as a hiccup. It looks wonderful.

This may be too obvious a point, but...

1. Make sure your unit is plugged in (you can't game on battery power), and
2. Make sure Stealth Mode is turned off.

--Hank

 

Whoa washalaa, hah. eh...huh heh huh, hmmm, facepalms for a bit, hmm huh heh..Hope you get it working! Always is no good to see new alienware owners not geting what they want or having troubles. Wip that back cover off Id say and reseat the GPU's and crossfire cable. In all honesty though its not your job to get hardware working, so Id send it back as much as it is a pain after waiting, buying, unboxing god forbid.

 

I have checked my CPU settings and they are all running at 1.7ghz ?

I have enabled Turbo mode also and it makes no different at all still at 1.7ghz

And also anyone got a diagram of the inside of a m17x so i dont mess anything up and i can see if a cable is loose etc

thanks for the comments guys i appreciate it

 

you can download a pdf file of the repair manual for the m17x if you go to your dell page and put in your service code. i did it once to check out my gpu's.

 

Videos:
YouTube - Alienwareservices's Channel

Manual:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/Alw_M17xR2/en/SM/sm_en.pdf.

 

from that video i don't really think i want to check the graphics cards myself

From what ive Gathered from everyones replys is:

My CPU is running at 1.6ghz(just looked) and should be 2.8ghz?

My crossfire is disabled.

All games that i mentioned everyone else has said they run fine on max settings.

Im lost on what to do

 

There are some steps to omit such as removing HDD and RAM All you really need to do is take off the control strip and the keyboard. Everything will be there.

 

Perhaps time to use the Dell Alienware customer service?

 

No. That is not how "turbo" works on these chips. The cpu will normally stay at low clock speed until you apply some uneven pressure to the cores. By "uneven", what I mean is that the load is not evenly spread across the cores. When the machine detects this, it will temporarily boost the clock speed of up to half your cores to some level from 1.7 to 3.0 (or so). This higher clock rate is only maintained for as long as the load persists - and the cpu will throttle back down a bit if it warms up too much.

So if you aren't actively playing a game or running a benchmark, it will be normal to see your cores running at the lower clock rates. This is fine, and in fact healthy for your machine. Also, if you alt-tab out of a game like WoW then the game will typically throttle itself... so don't bother tabbing out to check the clock rates

If you are applying an even load across all cores, then turbo will not kick in for a non-extreme cpu. Your processor is already running at capacity in this situation. Turbo mode simply allows the system to take some otherwise unused hardware from the low-utilization cores and reallocate them to the overloaded ones. It also does this many times a second, and if you watch it in ThrottleStop you can even see the chip "floating" the turbo core around to keep overall temperatures level (it doesn't just keep the same cores clocked up).

The "Extreme" cpus (the ones with XM in the model number instead of QM) will allow this turbo boosting to affect all cores instead of just half of them. And they also allow for slightly higher top-end clock rates when in Turbo mode, beyond the ceiling for the non-extreme chips.

 

Ok, Everyone has Turbo boost all types of confused.

Turbo boost works like this on the 720qm

If all 4 cores are under load it will turbo boost from 1.6 to 1.73
if all 8 threads are under load it will stay at 1.6
if 3/4 cores are under load it will turbo boost to 1.73
if 2/4 cores are under load it will turbo boost to 2.4
if 1/4 cores are under load it will turbo boost to 2.8GHZ


this will list actual increases in MHZ for the 720
SLBLY (Intel Core i7 Mobile I7-720QM)

620
SLBPD (Intel Core i7 Mobile I7-620M)

820
SLBLX (Intel Core i7 Mobile I7-820QM)

920
SLBLX (Intel Core i7 Mobile I7-820QM)

740/840/940 haven't been updated yet, but should be similar if not exactly the same(just a higher starting point with same incremental increases in the clock speed).

 

^^ For 840QM - 1.87/2.0/3.06??/3.2 (based on Prime benchmarks)

 

They are similar Incremental increases not exactly the same thanks for the post Aikimox.

If it was based on the incremental increases of the 820 for example it would be

1.86/2.093/2.934/3.2

Maybe it is the same the only one that i see is off is what runs on 2/4 cores.

 

I may have to rerun the test, looks like it should indeed be 2.93 instead of 3.06 (for two cores) based on your post.

 

I edited my post b4 while you where responding I put the "Theoretical" numbers up. If you are getting higher that's a bonus.

http://www.cpu-world.com/sspec/index.html
here is the main page for you i5/i3 users

 

Here's the official turbo info from Intel.



Source:
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/specupdate/320767.pdf

Edit: You can find the same info for the Dual Cores here.
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/specupdate/322814.pdf

Just to clarify the terminology. Cores are said to be in the active state when they are working on something and are in the C0 state or resting and immediately ready to get to work on something when they are in the C1 state. When cores are not doing anything, they automatically go into an inactive sleep state like C3/C4/C6. Cores are constantly waking up and going back to sleep. There are hundreds of threads constantly running even when you are sitting at the desktop and your computer looks mostly idle.

The numbers in that chart are the maximum possible multiplier. If you are exceeding the turbo TDP/TDC limits or heat limit then you will not get any turbo boost and your CPU will use its default multiplier.

The Intel default for the 920XM is obviously a lot lower than the way the Alienware M17x has set the 24 multiplier across the board whether 1, 2, 3 or 4 cores are in the active state.

The CPU constantly adjusts the amount of turbo boost and maximum multiplier hundreds of times a second. Software like ThrottleStop reports the average multiplier. Even when running a single threaded benchmark, there will always be other tasks randomly waking up the other cores which will make it impossible to average the full single core turbo multiplier for any 1 second monitoring time period on the 720QM and 820QM, etc.

The 920XM and 940XM are different animals since you can lock the turbo multiplier to be the same no matter how many cores are in the active state.

ThrottleStop follows the Intel recommended method and accurately reports the average multiplier for each thread of your CPU. Most other monitoring software does not.

If you run one thread of Prime95 and lock it to a single thread of your CPU by using the Task Manager Set Affinity... function, it will be a lot easier to see turbo boost in action.