M17x R1 Test Bios 850-9662 - Post feedback HERE

What bios are you running? It sounds like your running the A04 bios which had serious issues detecting power supplies and forcing the M17x to run with 9400 in stealth mode. If you are running A04 then I seriously recommend you upgrade to A06 which is available from Dell.

 

I have the same issue, but not because the EC, it has been always there (A03, A05, A06), but I don't care, I think it is safer to overclock using TS than using bios.

 

I apologise for misreading. I thought you had the PSU detection issues with the present up-to-date BIOS whilst in Windows, which has been reported by some people. I agree with the others, it sounds like you're still using A04. If this is the case, then switch to A06 as that'll cure the power-adapter detection problem. I had the same issue in A04 and so A06 has been welcomed update in my books.

 

It doesn't cure the problem because I've been using A06 since it came out, but thank you for your input. It detected the brick today upon power-up, so I duct-taped the end of the SOB in place. As long as I don't unplug it from the wall, it should be fine.

Really, AW? Really?

 

Greetings,
I recently applied the "test bios" or more appropriately "embedded controller" update. I'm currently using video driver 257.38. I do see some improvement on most titles that I normally play. Call of Duty Black Ops still tends to feel sluggish at best, and there are stutters here and there. However, this is more than likely an issue with the game.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

Okay, couldn't find my tech drive (think I might of formatted it and installed it into my Home Server rig... d'oh).

Uninstalled all my nVidia drivers, Driver Cleaner + CCleaner, installed latest Dells and reset PCI Gen 2.0 to Enabled.

Crashed. Repeatedly.

When I could get games to run for more than 15 minutes (Team Fortress 2, Dead Space 2, WoW), they ran beautifully. Unfortunately, I got fed up fast and ended up upgrading back to the latest Verde and turning off PCI Gen 2.0.

 

I too gave another try to Dell's 257.38 video drivers,crashed when benching with Vantage(2nd time didn't but ugly result),gaming seems decent but black/pink screens randomly not often though. Didn't had time yet to game and check throttling.

 

I have been trying this update with the Dell 257.38 drivers and PCIE Gen 2 enabled. It has certainly appears to have reduced throttling with the games I tried (tested it with Rift, Dragon Age and SC2).

However, using these drivers have caused repeated crashes again so I have now reverted to using the 266.58 reference drivers with PCIE Gen 2 disabled which has stopped my crashing issues again.

Great work Dell with fixing the throttling problem! Now how about looking into this verde driver problem

 

I would blame nvidia for the drivers, not dell

 

I blame dell for the Verde issue since out of all the manufacturers which use 260M/280M graphics (Dell, Asus, Clevo just to name a couple) the only laptop which has the repeated random crashing/BSOD problem is the Dell/AW M17x (goggle it for yourself if you don't believe me). nVidia shouldn't be responsible for these crases when they only occur on the M17x alone.

Now don't get me wrong... I love my M17xR1 (when it works), but I spend half my time wishing I had bought an Asus just to have a more stable laptop that won't crash on me whenever I try to update to newer drivers.

 

I used to say the same thing but the mainboard wears a nVidia chipset so..
Of course Dell is to be blamed for not taking measures and keeping us with a pre verde beta driver as official stable.

 

Thats true, but I think if dell didn't try and tweak the bios for their own preferences so much (8x PCIE bus restriction etc) we wouldn't have soooooo many bios & nvidia incompatibility issues.

 

For a period of time, most of Dell's motherboards were in fact asus (as well as many other large computer companies). I suppose there's always a catch to manufacturing your own motherboards.

@Scyphoz - I do agree with your feelings about the M17x versus Asus. I have owned both as well, and Asus always seemed turn key. For the most part, everything more or less worked very well. The M17x, on the other hand, has to be constantly tweaked and adjusted. And even after adjusting, it only seems to resolve one small piece of a bigger issue. It's great when it works, but it's the times that it doesn't that makes you wonder if it was worth it.

Gabe

 

Sorry to bring this off-topic more but...

P06 is listed as a beta driver on the support page; the 257.38 verde (A03) is listed as the recommended one to be installed. I tested with the latest Dell drivers and had nothing but crashes and I will reiterate that while P06 is stable support it's support for many recent releases is lacking (showing it's age). Of course, that's the last I'll say about this in this thread (there are many threads about this in these forums, this thread is for feedback on the EC patch)
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Played Magicka and a lot of the Dragon Age 2 demo, still no throttling that I can see. About to attempt some raiding in WoW shortly, we'll see how they hold up for some 10-man Twilight Bastion action...

 

I have the AO3 BIOS, 197.84 P06 drivers, 280m GTX SLI cards, QX9300 CPU, and I have not installed this yet, but will the installation of this allow me to be able to upgrade my drivers finally so that I can get better performance in games, or will the DPC Latency, BSOD's, crashes, and all of the other issues that were solved by the 197.84 drivers come back?

 

i just installed the test bios, i hope it works great!

thanks!

 

This update will not fix the crashing/instability issues with newer video drivers (verde/Dell A03). It only fixes the throttling issue (which is a damn good fix in itself). If you want to get newer video drivers to work without issues at present you will have to disable PCIE Gen 2 in your BIOS.

Also, I recommend you update to A06 bios before using this update. It has resolved the past issues with the previous A04/05 bioses and improved the performance of a few things such as trackpad polling etc.

 

Been working great, had no throttling in CO, BF:BC2, TF2.

Now if they (Dell or Nvidia) can come out with a Verde driver fix I'll be happy.

 

I to really hope that Nvidia comes with a driver that works! But I'm incredibly happy with the laptop until now then

 

Please take the side-chatter in regard to NVIDIA, Verde Drivers, PCIE-GEN 2 to the appropriate thread. Posts here should only be on 850-9662's functionality/behavior. PM me with any questions...

Thanks.

 

i have a question, when yesterday i install this test bios, i had a05 not a06, and after flashing in the bios with test bios, on my bios menu shows bios a05... i need to upgrade the aw to a06 and re-flash the bios or the a05 + test bios works same?

thanks!

 

No they don't.
The A05 was brought out to cure what A04 messed up(the adaptor problem for some).
The A06 will bring some improvements to the touchpad polling rate and some other(see bios page).
And this patch it's recomended to be installed on the A06 BIOS.

cheers

 

As stated in the upper post it's better to use it with A06 (that will also bring you some improvements over A05) and btw when you flash this test the number of your BIOS won't change so it's normal that it still says A05 after a flash (of this test bios)

 

My performance is much worse with the EC mod. I was getting 60-40 FPS in Two Worlds 2 before with 257.38 drivers pci gen 2 off, after EC mod and 197.84 drivers pcie gen 2 on, 15 to 25 fps lots of studdering(unplayable).
Is there any way to undo this EC mod?
My specs: Q9000, gtx 260m sli, A06 bios.

 

I seemed to have corrected the studdering by turning off integrated graphics and disabling pcie gen 2 in the bios, now my FPS are back to 30-52 with no studdering like before I did the EC mod.

 

If in any case you want to undo the flash just flash to A06 back or other version of your choice.
You're saying that you got stuttering with the beta P06,make sure you properly uninstall the previous drivers first (clean your registry in safe mode after uninstall).
Also use BIOS default settings to provide feedback,the EC patch it's supposed to fix issues with no other options changed in BIOS.

Cheers

 

So are M17x R1 users STILL having the latency issues? I didn't realize it was still going on. Glad I had my graphics cards switched to ATi's a little over a year ago. Damn!

 

No, the DPC latency issue has not re-surfaced. it was resolved several months ago. This is completely different. The test fix is to resolve the throttling which was taking place.

 

ok glad to hear it. Should I test this out with my ATi cards? I haven't run into any throttling issues that I can tell...

 

I dont see why not. In fact it would probably be good to see if your system has any issues with it. If willing, just flash it and go about your normal use. if you run into issues, report them here and then flash back to whichever BIOS you are on now. Thanks for "volunteering" -

 

I flashed mine 3 days ago and I run ATi 4870's in CrossFireX and thus far I see nothing out of the ordinary but I don't play games, I do process a ton of photos on occasion but not have had a need with the new BIOS as yet.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/561375-m17x-r1-bios-a07-discuss-here.html