M17x-R2 + GTX 580M + SLi

this is indeed a great news

Now... from where do we get 580m?

 

ebay?

prices are bad there...

 

Ok, I've finally got around to get the drivers installed after disabling Driver Signature Enforcement and confirmed that SLi does indeed work (I've tested it in some less demanding games like Heroes of Newerth and Dota 2). However, I can't run benchmarks because there is simply not enough power from the PSU (240w) to prevent the massive throttling. Even with Turbo mode disabled and the CPU set to Web Surfing mode via ThrottleStop, the first Vantage GPU test had the kill-a-watt reading 250 watts on average and definitely spiked over, causing the system to throttle down. 3dmark11 had similar experience.

Just for reference, my previous 6970M Crossfire setup with the GPUs overclocked and CPU turbo mode on (920XM) read about 220w average in the first test of Vantage. Don't know how the 6990M with a similar setup fares...

I'll run some more tests tomorrow, and it looks like I'll need a tutorial on how to make an Aarpcard-Style power supply.

 

mmm if no support for the 330W PSU will be added, this is a deal breaker for me...

Guess that i'll keep my config until it dies (i'm really really happy with it, it perform perfectly for my needs)

 

GratZZ to ichime and TheWiz
I also think, 7xxx series radeon cards have big future in R2 becouse of power consumption @28nm, no psu mods, and cheaper than @nvidia option ofc.
I do wonder when ebay seller will start to sell them

 

Wonderful, I would like to thank:

-Ichime, for starting this project and for not letting it go.
-the devs involved, including TheWiz.
-all folks who volunteered testing.
-AW community of NBR.
-all our wives for bearing with us

 

Just a question here, i am on the verge of ordering a single 6990m until i found out that 580m SLI now works for the r2. If i am to install a single ( soon to add in another 580m in SLI ) 580m would i need to flash the cards like the 6990m's case or would swapping my old cards ( 5870m xfire ) do the trick? And in my case, would a 240 watt PSU suffice or would i need to get the m18x's PSU.

I have tried searching this forum for any guide to install 580m however there are no instructions.

 

From reading several different forums, its obvious that my investment into the m17x r2 was in fact a good one with the ability to add either CF 6970's/6990's or SLI 580's! thats IMO awesome because i get to keep the excellent build quality and my R G B while also having 4gb of GPU POWER! My question is though, is it gunna be "held back" by its 920xm? i mean, yall meantioned it can be OC'ed with Throttlestop to be better than the 2860qm, but (and im not tryin to troll) ultimately, the m18x can do all were doing with our r2's without having to strain our CPUs. Im not sure how Throttlestop works but if you OC the CPU and have 580's in SLI, wont you need to have a larger PSU? If so, im sure it will be a nightmare trying to find a work around to get the charging capabilities to work. im not trying to sound negative and all, i mean hell, i LOVE my r2 and if its possible to increase power to keep up with the 18x and keep the best features of the r2 (which is what makes it the best IMO) then thats amazing! im just worried illl be swapping cpus alot due to OCing..

Great work guys on adding possibilty to my new machine! ill continue to stay updated and support yalls efforts! i wish Dell would also support! i bet they would sell a whole bunch more r2's if they put it back on thier site, lol. once people read about all it can do they would be "upgrading from their r3's lol

 

Congrats guys to getting this working!

After reading a bit on the 580m, it appears that they do in fact draw more power which imo is a concern.

Currently the 6990m's are pushing the R2 enough to require a bit of a juggling act to balance GPU and CPU power consumption. If I did happen to have 580m's and they pulled only another 10-20 watts over my current setup, I believe throttling would be unavoidable and very difficult to manage.

I am very interested to see how these cards handle an undervolt, as I think this may be their saving grace.

Either that or a PSU solution

 

Uhh... 580M cost >500GBP, so it would be 1000 for 2 of them, plus extra psu, and fan at max speed all the time.
I saw m18x with 580m SLI for 1450GBP in outlet.

I would love to put it into my R2, but this card is way too expensive now, and i really doubt that price will drop much even after 6xx relase.

 

So believe it or not I am not an owner of this laptop, I just RDP everyone else's and try to figure out these puzzles In any event, can someone re-explain tome the exact problems/issues when putting in a 330W PSU. Also, if 580M SLi is running unigen with the benchmarks shown in the article, is there throttling occurring?

Thanks for the clarification,
TheWiz

 

The issue is that the 330w psu isn't recognized by the system bios. The psu has an id attached to it. Aside from that, the system will throttle even with a 330w adaptor. It throttlestop when the load goes over a certain threshold. Maybe around 260w or so. People running dual psu setups with 480w available also have the throttling.

 

Yes this was also the case with the M15x. The mobo will refuse you draw any more power than designed. For the M15x this was around 180w even with a 240w PSU.

 

so pretty much, its a no-go ? ive seen someone's sig that listed a 480psu (guessin parallel 240's?) im sure yall will find a workaround, youve made it this far!

 

I'm not sure how everyone missed this.

If this is true, then we may have a fix. Although I'm skeptical - and Stealth hasn't commented back yet.

I don't understand how grounding the data cable is any different than simply severing it - you'd get the same results. The computer is the device reading the data cable, not the PSU - with the data cable being grounded, then there's nothing for the computer to read (it's not going to read signals from ground - it's silly, poor circuit design, and dangerous if that's how Dell designed it). You should get the same results as a PSU with an incompatible data signal.

I'd like to hear more from Stealth as to what/how he's tested it and see if someone else can replicate it.

Feel free to PM me or ask here if you have any questions or want more details. I can link you to some parts needed, etc.

As I stated in the 6990cfx thread, I've been able to sustain 318 watts from my PSU for very very long periods of time with no throttling. I would think that should be enough for the GTX 580m's - but I think the max power draw may be partially determined by the actual gpu's installed in the R2 (not software - more like strange physics) so who knows what the limit for the GTX 580m's might be before throttling - might be more, might be less, but should definitely be more than 250 watts - probably at the very very least 285 watts.

 

So if each card draws a max of 100W under load = 200W, leaving 40W for system, obviously 40W isnt enough. However, if the 480W PSU mod design works, that is clearly plenty to operate the laptop in intensive gaming scenarios, given the motherboard isn't throttling things back. I don't believe the motherboard can throttle the GPU more than by changing the bus speed on the PCI slot, which is either 1.1 or 2.0 or 2.1 and not a huge drawback in performance. If we ran unigine benchmarks and got max of 170FPS with no PSU mods, I would imagine it should be good to go?

 

I'll run Unigine and see if I get any throttling. I've tested some games so far. For instance, Borderlands maxxed out gave me about 223w (which means the system itself is using about 205 watts).

 

You need to test out some more intense games like Crysis 1/2, Metro 2033 and Arkham City DX11.

 

I'm having CF issues atm hopefully its just the cable (not a psu related problem)cant do much testing but i just did 1 . I ran furmark at max resolution with the 330 psu with battery on and psu will trip with in 2 sec of furmark. Then i removed battery did furmark it lasted about 5sec then trip again. I saw a video online about a guy modding his pc psu which inspired me to try on my psu. Guy on vid grounded his psu's green cable to a black so the pc wont tell it when it wants power this way the psu is kinda telling it self to stay at max output somehow. So i try this then ran furmark and no trips but only without the battery. Ill do more test in future ive been trying to find a wattage meter atm.

 

I have both M17x R2 and M18x. Please see my specs. I would be glad to help you guys out with testing. I can swap gpus and try different things... expect for modding the physical psu.

 

Dellienware.... why (excuse my french) do you need 32GB DDR3 1333MHz of RAM for !! ?

 

So my cf issue is the cf cable so when i get that replaced ill do some more test with psu.

 

i got cable fixed (just reconnected both ends to cards) and im 100%convinced my 330 psu is working im currently running it with gpu's flashed at 800/980 and 920xm at x23 on all cores.I get no trips doing benches nor while gaming and psu doesnt heat up. Let me know if you guys want me to do any specific tests.

 

Try Furmark in benchmark mode. That's a real watt killer...

 

So Is there any way to alter anything as far as the BIOS in order to prevent the throttling issue or would u bneed to alter BIOS and get a more powerful psu in order to game with no drawbacks?

 

i ran the furmark bench after i played bf3 for 1 hour. Here is ss of bench
http://tinypic.com/r/2dcfkn6/5

 

Stealth are you running 580s or 6990s?

 

6990's at 800/980 1.1v with 920xm at x23 all cores.

 

Ichime and TheWiz:

any solutions figured out yet on the fan problem?

I think those can be regulated with software tools, right? any better solutions than those tools?

I might get my hand on one 580m very soon so...

Edit: I forgot to ask, what heatsink and screws did you use on your 580m?
Anybody think 5870m/6970m would fit on Nvidia or No way Jose ?

 

Wow, that's crazy that it is working for you even though it doesn't make any sense

Anyone else have a 330watt PSU they can test?

 

xD hey im not complaining i rather have 1 power brick with laptop even tho i cant charge battery or change brightness. I dont move laptop anywhere just stays in room. This wont work with battery in laptop btw. Also in first boot in to laptop with psu first time connected to laptop i restart laptop. This is because when you first connect laptop runs in normal performance mode (even tho its alrdy set to max)like if you were on battery but once restarted it will be good. Sadly i gotta do this each time i connect psu to laptop so i just keep it plugd into laptop even while off so i wont need to restart when i boot in.

 

Ok this is pretty crazy.

I just earthed the signal cable and I ran Furmark with full overclock and it sustained 310-320 without any throttling.

My performance mode stays at high performance.

Brightness controls do not work though. Which kinda sucks...

TIME FOR SOME OVERCLOCKS

 

Lol thats awsome. Are you using the custom 480psu?

 

This mean i could use a modded pc psu.

 

Yeah just using the 480 watt psu.

Overclocked the cards to 800/950 @ 1.1v and CPU clocks to 24x @105/95 and experienced no throttling in Vantage.

AMD Radeon HD 6970M / 6990M video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz,Alienware score: P24388 3DMarks

Although, Vantage isn't overly demanding in terms of power consumption as it doesn't really max out the GPU and CPU at the same time. Most it drew was 300 watts, but there was definitely NO throttling.

Will run 3Dmark11 now and see.

 

Hey douse. How did you do the 480? Can you make te 480 into one case? Pm me im pretty interested.

 

Wow nice gratz i cant OC cpu much heat issues.

 

So ran 3DMark11, nearly hit 7000 P6902

AMD Radeon HD 6970M / 6990M video card benchmark result - Intel(R) Core(TM) CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz,Alienware score: P6902 3DMarks

Combined test saw sustained 310 watts with no throttling.

Stealth, when I have my CPU clocked this high I have the window open behind the laptop..... which is 7 degrees out

Pretty crazy that this is working, it doesn't make any sense. In BIOS where is normally shows a 240 watt adapter, there is no value. Perhaps this really has stopped the BIOS from trying to keep the PSU around 240 watts

I used Aarpcard's design, and no it is not in one case. There is literally 2 x 240 watt PSU's linked together using rectifier diodes....so not very portable... If you do want something more portable a 330watt brick will be a better solution for you.

 

I wish we could use the 330 and have it function like the 240 but supply 330 watts:/

 

Lol i see but my heat sink rly just doesnt sit well on cpu idk whats issue ive tried everything x23(which has reach 100c on long play) is highest i can go but i just like to stay at x19-x21 for gaming.

 

Don't we all

But thanks to Stealth and this method we are getting pretty close, as long as you dont use a battery. And lucky for me I haven't had my battery in my laptop for months now

 

Haha well i gotta have my battery. Im a student. Hope we get a bios mod that allows this

 

Haha, yeah fair enough

Just did a Furmark run, it sustained 320/330 (much to my discomfort ) and even peaked at 350 (even more uncomfortable..) but went back down to 330...I dont know if that was a mini throttle, but I did not see an fps drop in Furmark.

I let it run for maybe a minute or two, I dont like my laptop drawing that much power....however even this would not have worked prior to this mod.

Yeah I play at 21x or 22x as there isn't really a need to go higher.

 

Man. Thats alot of wattage draw. Up goes the electricity bill. I hope we get some real tests in with the 580m's. With a good psu option. See what their capable of.

 

No we need to test grounding the 330W psu on try it on the R2.

 

that was what i did xD

 

I followed this to the T and I'm not getting these results. Furmark will crash and trip the PSU's after about 5 seconds every time I try.

Leaving the ID cable ungrounded, I'm able to pull 320+ Watts fine from the PSU's without throttling - just like I reported before. This time I tried, I saw it peak at 355 watts for a second 8O

Not sure what I'm missing. Everything is as you said it was except I can't run furmark for more than a few second without it tripping with the cable grounded - power draw at the time of the trip is always 300-304 watts.

With the cable not grounded, I can pull 320 watts plus all day long and nothing happens.

 

I did this on a signal 330 psu might differ from the 480. You should ask douse on detailed direction on what he did with cable on his 480 psu

 

So has anyone on NBR successfully got 580M SLI to work in R2?

 

Yes ichme has them and their working.