M17xR1 - BIOS A07 (CPU Throttling Fix) Released - Discuss Here

It seems Dell have made the test bios for the r1 official in the new bios A07.

Bios A07

I've installed it and games are running very smooth. I've tested heavy hitters such as Crysis: Warhead and Battlefield BC:2 and have yet to receive any throttling. As far has the NVIDIA Verde issue being fix, I am currently testing the 266.58 with PCI Gen 2 Enabled. No lockups yet, but, I'm not keeping any fingers crossed.

Update: With PCI Gen 2 Enabled, 266.58 is not functional with it on. Having multiple black screen crashes with the driver saying it has recovered.

 

I briefly tried it this morning and it hasn't borked anything normal in my Win7 setup. Will try more tonight, as Bordelands was something I nearly always had stutter with.

BTW, what does the "PCI Gen 2" setting do? I remember when I first got the laptop trying it, and all I got was a black screen as well, so figured it wasn't valid for my config and left it at that.

 

Well Scyphoz found out that if you disable PCI Gen 2 in the bios, you are able to use the latest Verde NVIDIA drivers which are the 2xx.xx. As of right now, a majority of M17x R1 owners cannot use the latest Verde drivers so we have to resort to using the pre-verde's which are the 197.xx and below. A thread has been created with this fix if you'd like to read further and maybe try it out yourself

Verde Driver Fix

 

Yeah i couldnt use the verde drivers for months and i went back to an old driver and then i flashed my bios to A06 and turned PCIE GEN 2 off and now im running the new 276.24 beta and ive had no issues. That thread sheds soooo much light on the issue the R1s have. I spent months trying different fixes and stressed myself out and it was such a simple fix. Is the A07 bios stable so far?

 

wasn't there just a new bios for R1 this week? :O

 

Errrr....that's what this thread is about the new BIOS for R1

 

Seems I've been lucky then as I've had that setting disabled since day 1 - if this new BIOS and the chipset driver updates fix it, I might be in for a tiny increase in performance which can't be bad

 

As far as I can tell, A07 BIOS seems to be very stable. My guess is that it's pretty much just the A06 BIOS with the added throttling fix.

With a little bit of further testing, I feel this throttling fix has a slight improvement over the A06 + Test BIOS. My games seem to be much smoother with no hiccups at all. Either way, I'm very happy with these recent releases and fixes for this laptop.

 

A07 is stable and resolves the throttling CPU issue. To refresh everyone on what the throttling was about, the behavior was along the lines of -

During game-play, FPS would suddenly drop-off. FPS would drop to sub 20 frames per second. This drop would last anywhere from 10-45 seconds or so. FPS would recover and game-play would resume at expected FPS for your system - of course you were noob bait by the time your FPS recovered . This was not a driver issue and could occur at any time. This issue was seen more with the extreme CPU however some non-extreme CPU owners had reported the same behavior.

According to the BIOS release notes, this was resolved with an EC update. The release notes do not indicate any other changes.

This BIOS does not change anything with PCIE GEN2. As others have pointed out here and in the linked thread above, PCIE GEN2 disabled produces stable results with the NV Mobile (Verde) reference drivers. To discuss the PCIE GEN2 apparent incompatibility with the Verde drivers, please use this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...idia-verde-drivers-bsods-freezes-m17x-r1.html

Thanks all.

 

It completely killed my windows.

BSOD ON BOOTSCREEN!!!

What do I do now???

 

Have you checked the SATA settings? Each and every R1 BIOS update reverts it to default AHCI-only, which then causes RAIDed setups to blue screen.

 

Wow, i panic'd there for a sec.

Thanks

 

I will have to give this a go. The modded A06 from TheWiz was not greatly improving my overclocking so this will probably become my main BIOS now.

 

Thewiz should have all the code compiled so all he would need is get this bios, run the update and the new bios should have all the unlocked features and maintain the new throttling algorithm.

 

Anyone tried this with overclocks?

I almost don't even want to switch as TS gives me more options anyway.

 

You will still stutter with TS eventually. Just push your system to about 260W to see what I mean

 

Anything much above what I have it at now for gaming either gets me into temperature/vcore ranges I don't feel comfortable with, or causes instability.

 

Well I flashed this new bios and overvolted the 4870s and overclocked the CPU (barely any at all, just to kick to the higher voltage) and ran Crysis Benchmark Tool. Sure enough, as soon as power usage got up to 235W BAM, throttled. Way to go Dell.....

It did seem like it recovered faster at least.....and it is a higher threshold than A03 was....still throttles though and still rapes your performance in the process

 

Soo.. Throttling occurs only when overclocking , right? Using this BIOS and normal clocks keep the CPU from throttling? (Under 240W power consumption)

 

If it does then that will not be cool for us who own extreme CPUs (and into pushing hardware).
The 240W PSU can supply higher amperage for it to sustain 300W consumption so i see no point for them to be so scared into letting us manage this.

@ scook you who tried the unchained BIOS made by Wizz does the throttling option turned to off change anything?

 

Will be testing that this weekend I think as I am curious to see if it is more effective than using A07.

 

I just installed A07 via the Windows-EXE, which went smooth and fast. Thanks to the people in Forum and to the Dell-Support for the ongoing M17XR1-Support. I hope the Throttling-Issue will be gone now (I use 266.x Drivers with PCIE Gen 2 disabled).

 

I'm confused here, how can you push your system to 260W?
Mine says 240W in the BIOS and I see no option to raise it.
And what are the benefits of raising it to 260W?

 

You might be able to overclock anyway. My overclocks don't cause throttling as long as i have TS enabled. I'm not sure what they raised the limit to in this BIOS.

 

240 is just what the adapter is rated at and not necessarily what it is capable of.

 

If you simply overvolt your gpus and CPU and turn up screen brightness all the way you will easily get up to around 260W while in a heavy 3D load (I use Crysis Benchmark Tool for all of my throttling tests)

 

ok quick question for you guys. I have a M17x that I am trying to use the windows version of the BIOS update. Embarrassingly I am going from A02 to A07 but the install crashes with no specific errors. I get the "program has ceased to function and windows is checking for a fix" but it comes back with nothing. I have tried a couple of times and it does the same thing.

I am guessing I may have to update to an Interim version of the Bios like A05 and then do a second upgrade to A07.

thoughts and suggestions will be most appreciated.

 

Have you tried running as admin?

 

My overclocks don't cause throttling as long as i have TS enabled

Sorry for a noob question: What does "TS" stand for?

 

Throttlestop
Google it or do a search here,great tool.

 

Thank you!

 

And how on earth can I overvolt my CPU?
There's no option for it in the BIOS, not even the modded A06 Bios (wich I'm using).
Now I'm getting realy confused
My english is not that good and maybe overvolt means something different then what I understand.

 

TS allow you to rise the voltage of a Core 2 Extreme.

 

Exactly, using ThrottleStop you can take the voltage anywhere from 1.005V to 1.500V. Use caution though and make sure that you have adequate cooling as you can do permanent damage to your CPU and motherboard. Do not come crying to me if they break.

 

*Runs crying to Scook.* WHY, SCOOK? WHY--?!

Heh. Anyway.

I tried a bit of overvolting on both the CPU and GPU ends. System seems stable. At stock -- it's perfect. . . so far. I know I am being cryptic, but I'll never be sure until this solution stands the test of time and various games.

 

I just use Crysis Benchmark Took because I know it can induce throttling on my system. And sure enough....it still does. I did not test at stock clocks and voltages, I guess that is worth doing to see if the system can at least function at factory clocks but the ability to overclock without a throttling penalty would be nice

 

You know that I am a major proponent of the idea of using Crysis as a cornerstone benchmark for both throttling and performance.

I did try the benchmark and didn't get any issues, but perhaps we should compare notes on the level of the overvolting.

 

I have both GPUs (4870s) at 1.15V (flashed) and the CPU at 1.225V via TS

 

Since upgrading to A07 I'm getting about 25 rapid beeps during POST, any ideas?
I didn't change any settings at all except to reset my SATA to RAID after the usual change the upgrade makes.

Everything seems to be fine otherwise.

 

I would try a CRISIS recovery flash.....

 

Flashed back, re-flashed A07, sorted!

 

I still seem to have sometimes throtteling Issues (currently with Shogun TW2) even though I have Bios A07 installed. It occured only once yesterday, so I keep watching.

[M17X R1, Q9100, 2x Gtx280M, Bios A07, 266.58 Nvidia Driver]

 

This does not fix the throttling, it just makes it less severe I think.

 

I've come to the same conclusion with my testings, gaming experience is way better but the throttling is till present. Sometimes I still use throttlestop and its clock modulation...

 

Right click on the file and go down to properties... make sure you "unblock" under the general tab and then run as admin. This got me the first time I tried to run it too.

 

I have Win 7 home premium 64 bit - can I use the Windows up date to go from A02 to A07 or should I use the .zip file version (Dell doesnt say if Win 7 is supported)?

Thanks

 

Microsoft doesn't offer/build BIOS updates lol
You'll need to download the file and flash it yourself (follow instructions)
As for OS support the m17x was designed to run Windows Vista and 7 to this date so there's no reason for it not to "be supported" by Windows 7.

 

.

What I mean is the Dell site doesn't refer to win 7:

 

Anyhow - as I suspect there are some lurkers on here with as little a clue as I, here is a simple guide to up-dating the BIOS.

Go here Drivers & Downloads.

Scroll down to "BIOS(1)" and click the blue arrow.

Click "Alienware - Bios"

Scoll to the "Windows/Dos" .exe file and click. This brings you to the download screen. Click the blue "Download" button. This brings you to another download screen. Click the second download button and then save the file.

When the file is downloaded, click "open folder". Right click on the file "M17xR1A07-W64" and go to properties. Unblock the file. Close the dialogue box. Next, right click on the file and click "Run as Administrator".

Click yes.

Something odd might happen first, but be patient - you will soon see the file is actually working. It takes about 2 mins to execute, your system will automatically restart and Bobs your uncle - BIOS vA07 is installed.

Don't know what it does yet though

 

Because you can't create a MSDos start up disk in windows 7 without a 3rd party software. As in the kit you have a .bat file that you can run in DOS to flash your BIOS. In windows use the .exe file.
THIS will tell you more.