M17x R1 QX9300/CFX 5870 Low benchmarks

Results with QX9300 and 5870 in CFX:
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 video card benchmark result - Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9300,Alienware score: P7000 3DMarks

Pre upgrades: (p8600 +260m SLI)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M video card benchmark result - Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600,Alienware score: P6835 3DMarks




The score looks like the QX9300 is scoring well, but the 5870s are poor.

CrossfireX is enabled and application profiles are installed as well. I am on newest Catalyst drivers. Tonight I will try downgrading to the dell drivers to see if that is the problem.

What I upgraded:
Ram (8gb 1066 to 8gb 1333)
CPU (p8600 to QX9300)
GPU (SLI 260m to CFX 5870)

And a few non essential upgrades like cd drive to another HDD.

So what could be the issue here? I've updated Vbios. My score should be at least 3000 higher.

3D Mark 11 crashes saying it lost control of the keyboard or display, so I can't provide that score.

 

Stupid suggestion, but have yo re-checked your power savings plan to be on performance?

Also I would try disabling the 2nd card (disabling crossfire first, and then also completely disable it in Device manager and reboot). Then run Vantage again, and compare the scores. This should give you a starting point to look.

 

As it turns out, I am stupid!

I haven't used ATI in about 5 years, and never on a laptop. Well, I checked all the settings and noticed my clocks were steady and low. This was an instant alarm to me as I figured I was either in stealth mode or somewhere something was making everything run weak. Turns out, I wasn't in Stealth, Command Center was set to high performance, and so was Windows. BUT, ATI Powerplay, which I didn't know existed, got my dumb ! I switched it and within minutes fans were whirring and frames were speeding by the second.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 video card benchmark result - Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9300,Alienware score: P13112 3DMarks
New score! No overclocks at all, a very acceptable score.

Lock/close/delete woo!

Thanks Jiggy for pointing out the obvious, which I originally scoffed at.

 

Glad it worked out for you, the score seems on par with what your setup should do

Sometimes when running into a problem the most simple things gets overlooked as you immediately get some doom-scenario in your mind and work upwards from that ^^ (been there, done that, did the tour, bought the t-shirt, went home)

 

Awesome! glad things are working well

 

Dual 5870s do offer a decent level of performance still, hope you enjoy your new level of performance, also welcome to DX11

 

Where did you manage to find the processor upgrade?
I am currently running a q9000, would consider the upgrade but I can't seem to find any q9300's around

 

eBay has plenty. I remember someone posted a link to a store called Star Micro as well, that had brand new ones.

Now I gotta get rid of my 260m SLI, P8600 cpu, and ram to someone in need!

I'm going to stress test the cards then later do some overclocking and try to approach the high scores from the R1.

 

Ahh, thanks for the info.

I'd never really looked into the processor, so I figured they were custom units made by dell, so whenever I looked on ebay, I'd search the CPU section of the m17x results, which usually produced nothing.

Thanks for the info! How are you liking your system? I essentially working on upgrading to the same setup, already ordered the 2 5870's

 

Its a huge upgrade from 260m sli with p8600 gpu. I was getting over heating problems with that setup since it was in there so long. I figured if I was opening it up, why not do more? Plus, games wise I was feeling major pressure to upgrade. For instance, with Hawken beta I was able to play with all settings on lowest.

After the upgrade, every game I have is on highest settings. The only game I've had a little sluggish was Metro 2033, which after upping the multiplier on the qx9300, it ran flawlessly.

To be honest though, it is the end of the road for the r1 from here. In a few years im either doing the r1 to r2 mobo upgrade or buying a whole new set up. All depends on how the r2 ages with the advancements coming.

The r1 I have was kind of a passion project, I've had it for several years now and besides the blu ray drive dying, it has been very good to me.

 

That's good to know.

It is definitely the end of the road for the R1. Even with these upgrades, it is still dated.

But I was really hoping to just be able to extend the life of my R1 by a couple more years, so if this setup can do that, then I have no issues with that.

 

You'll be ok until the next generation (in a years time) has had time to bed in properly and games are using it so I would say another 2 years before you really have to start cutting detail massively back compared to what you are at now.