M17x R2 - possible 5870 CF issue?

Hi,

I recently acquired an M17x R2 with crossfire and I'm wondering if there is something going on with the second card. When I run the sensors feature of HWinfo64, the second card doesn't report any temps/speed clocks/etc. It just has a line item for it, but no details like for the first card.

Any ideas?

Is this a situation where the second card only becomes active (and therefore reports data) when needed and otherwise remains dormant, such as when surfing the web?

FYI - within CCC it shows crossfire as enabled

Thanks!
Chris

 

Nevermind - I downloaded Furmark and all the sudden I get data for the second card. Must be a situation where it doesn't report any data when it isn't being stressed/utilized. I never owned a laptop with dual GPUs before so I guess I've got some catching up to do knowledge-wise.

Chris

 

HWINFO64 should display information all the time about the card, like temps, utilization etc, although the card is not utilized.


It happened to me sometimes that it didn't report back, but that was because of an driver-related issue.


- Scott.

 

Ok...sounds reasonable. I did update the drivers and then temporarily lost the ability to open CCC. After some driver cleaning and downloading, it's back up and running now.

I also downloaded and ran 3Dmark11 and have to admit I'm somewhat disappointed by the frame rates and overall performance I'm getting considering this laptop is running a Core i7 920XM, 256GB SSD, 8GB of ram and of course the CF 5870 cards...

Chris

 

What are your scores? Keep in mind 5870s are a first gen DX11 cards and 3DMark11 is very demanding on the cards. If you want to make yourself feel better, go into CCC and disable Tessellation, than run 3DMark11. Your score will go up around 400-500 pts, but will be invalid according to futuremark, but its a benchers trick. Futuremark recently implemented the whole "Invalid" thing for overriding tesselation because it was "unfair" to Nvidia users...

Also look into "throttle stop". Increasing the TDP will help with keeping your turbo up, but also adds heat so watch your temps. It's the best benching tool for the 920XM.

 

I was using the "basic" (free) edition and the scores I got are:

3DMark: P4322
Graphics: 4213
Physics: 5825
Combined: 3629

Note that I do not have anything overclocked, nor am I running any experimental drivers/BIOS software.

Let me know if there is any other info you need from their results screen to render an opinion.

Thanks!
Chris

 

Good that you sorthed the issues out - The drivers with the 5870's are kinda sticky. If you want to know the proper way to install from scratch to the newest drivers, check out the link in my signature.

Further on, what does 3DMark say? Does it tell you that your performance according to your hardware setup is good, or bad?

The FPS / performance in the 3dmark test isn't supposed to be good, it is just supposed to see what your PC is supposed to "crank out", and then rates it from what it does.


- Scott.

 

It says my performance is a little low when compared to similar systems...

Thanks,
Chris

 

Thaya because all the other systems are overclocked.

 

Ok - just wanted to make sure my system doesn't have a problem that's easy to correct or needs intervention from Dell while it's still under warranty.

Thanks!

Chris