*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17xR2 Edition Owner's Lounge - Part 3

Hmm. I must have been one of the lucky ones then. My Avatar BD worked fine. There have been some issues with a variety of BD drives as well, but I've never had an issue with the BD-RE drive in the R2. The copy protection schemes employed on some commercial BD movies sometimes does not play nice with all BD drives. It seems like any time a technology tries to play Gestapo it seems like something or someone suffers as a result of the propriety. It's always a real shame when performance is sacrificed in the name of greed.

 

Mine works OK too but I did read this AVATAR Blu-Ray Problems Cause Uproar Among Fans - Avatar Blog about problems with the disc being recognised in BR drives.

 

DR, powerDVD will reproduce blueray just fine. what you need to do is installing the software from the resource dvd. After that it will ask you for 2 updates. Let it download and install them. After that the software should reproduce the blueray just fine. At least this is my experience with it.

 

Good article. So, it is a Gestapo tactic in play and specific to certain BluRay devices. Don't you just love it when technology gets in its own way in the name of money? This is probably more prevalent on home entertainment systems than computer BD drives.

I never have any issues with BluRay. Thanks to our friends in the UK, everyone plays nice at my house.

 

Thanks for the info guys. +1 when I get home. I don't really need it to play in my notebook, but it would be nice. I get an error saying that it doesn't support a mouse and Doeat play after that. Other discs give the same message and others work. I just need it to work in my home theatre. I also realized the blank blu-ray disc i bought are single layer 25GB discs which will work for some movies. The altar disc is something like 43 GB so it looks like Im going to exchange some of the single layers and pick up some dual layer discs. Otherwise the blu-ray burning/spy/backup software i have seems to work. No dry message yet. Its 1click blu-ray copy for those interested. It just makes a 1 for 1 copy of blu-rays. Its free for now till its outta beta testing. Get it while you can

 

I am not convinced...yet...

Speaking of blu-ray, I'm thinking of upgrading my drive to a BD-RW (I have just an 8x DVD Burner) and not sure if it's worth it. I'm getting a spare Lid and Base cover re-anodized so when that's finished and reassemble the system with the new parts, I can sneak the swap in there...

Good news that the Panasonic UJ235 goes for around $130 on Ebay, though I was hoping for the slot-load version of the UJ240.

 

I'm really curios to know on how exactly are you planning this?
It'll be something like:

Spoiler

no?

 

Physically, I probably won't have to do any of that since the pins for the Sandy Bridge mobile CPUs line up with the PGA988 socket. Inteface wise will the the issue. Apparently ASrock made a P55/P67 hybrid board (called the Transformer) by exploiting some parts of the P67 chipset that intel left unchanged from the P55 chipset. It won't be as simple as just adding a set of microcodes to the BIOS, though I'm sure that'll be part of step 1.

I'm betting that Intel got lazy on the mobile side of things and made even less changes between the 67 series chipsets over the 55 series other than SATA 3, etc.

I know I sound crazy, which is fine. But I'm willing to try this after I get most of my office work out of the way for these next two months.

 

Not to me.
Interesting and now that you put it this way it'll definitely worth a try!!

Thanks btw.

 

Constantly impressed with all the brainpower on this board

 

Agree... brainpower and bravery abound on NBR forums. It's nice to be in the company of so many mad scientists.

 

I hope you got it working and did not get any issues with Avatar. I played it on my brothers PS3 without any issues. If your still having trouble with power dvd reg code check the software downloads on dell.com (on the account page not driver page). I had to reinstall mine and it did not ask for a reg key, it only verified it was an alienware computer.

 

6970's have been installed! Witcher 2 running maxed out like a champ. Still doing some more stabilization testing, then I'll get on the benchmark numbers for everyone.

Hottest these cards have got (after a couple hours of the Witcher 2 and with IC Diamond paste) was about 85*C, and this was OFF of a notebook cooler in a room with mild ambient temps (70's F).

Seems very promising.

 

Fantastic!! I hope to have mine soon as well. How was the installation process? Any gotchas or tips that you have for those of us who will be doing the same process? Really happy for you!

 

I can't really comment as to the installation process because I had a friend of mine perform it. He was much more comfortable working on the complex innards of this laptop than myself and I truthfully just lacked the confidence to perform the "operation."

Before posting specifics, I can confirm that this is absolutely a working upgrade and has next to no drawbacks. My temps are phenomenal and the cards run like a dream.

 

That's great to hear, will be very interested in any benchmarks you can provide as well (although hearing that Witcher 2 now runs fantastic is enough of a benchmark for me)

 

This all is fantastic and as you said looks to be a stable upgrade. You mentioned laptop cooling, is your R2 cooling system stock or did you have it modded?

And while we are in the topic of r2 modding, besides the software/firmware limitations that prevent the 330 watt power supply, will the mobo even support that much? I remember having this same issue with the m9700 series alienwares when the m9750 came out. The main concern was the mobo could not handle the 240~ watt adapter on the amd boards. Being that all the systems are from arima/flextronics is that something to worry about? Not trying to be a joy kill but need all the info I can get. Also if I'm wrong please tell me, because knowing is half the battle.......GIJOE!!!!! Thanks again.

 

The only cooling mod was IC Diamond applied. I'm getting temps idling in the 40's and rarely pushing 80 in intense gaming. I also have the R2 sitting on an NZXT Cryo LX.

I'm going to compile some benchmark screenies for you all. It's just a matter of time, been quite busy the past couple days but I'll get them up as soon as I can.

The only thing I've noticed, as iChime has pointed out, OC'ing headroom is limited and not recommended on the stock power supply. It can be done, I've had this system mildly overclocked just to check for stability, but just as he said, I wouldn't recommend it either.

Good thing it's not really needed (cards are champs!).

 

I average between 40-60 FPS in Witcher 2 on ultra at max res only with ubersampling off. Ubersampling gives desktop 580's trouble, so I'm not worried.

 

Hopefully by the time these cards will need to be OCed, a solution for the 330W PSU in the M17x will be found

 

Awesome!! Glad I waited to play Witcher 2 until after this upgrade. Sounds like it will be a whole new experience.

 

Who wants to buy ma' 6970's now then lololol...form an orderly queue....

 

Stevie! nice to see you here

I almost joined you guys on the 18 inch side of the moon... lol, but my silver AW with rgb led screen almost forced me to buy a pair of 6970 and call it good (still waiting for them)

(sorry for the avatar but i couldn't resist my self )

 

Howdies fella, hope your doin' good. I know what you mean about the R2 - I would have kept mine if it was working proper.....this new theing flies...nice pic btw!!!

 

Go here for some of my preliminary temps/benchmark results for xFire 6970's.

 

Hey guys I need some NBR assistance. So I rarely ever unplug my R2 and I always leave the battery in. Well I fanally decided to unplug it and take into another room to play music and let the battery drain. I got a low battery warning at 10% and plugged it in. When I did that I noticed it said plugged in, not charging. I played with the cord, checked the power strip, and checked the wall socket, and noticed nothing strange. I finally shut the system down and it started charging when the system was off. I powred the system back on and it stopped charging. I did a battery removal and a power drain, and now it charged but throught the day it will pop up charging for about a minute.

I have done the A10 bios update back in March, and my battery can hold a full charge. Is this something normal or is there something wrong here? Thanks inadvance.

 

I am just going to keep my 17 and get an M18R2 if it comes out. If not, then I am sure I will be able to find an Outlet M18R1.

 

Hello guys,

I got a small question/problem

I bought a m17xr2 a few days ago from a friend, only 10 hours used
Specs are :
940xm
8gb ram
5870cf
512 ssd raid 0 (2*256)
rgbled 1200p

My problem :
before the format I had a windows performance index of 7.2, after format and install of ALL the drivers from the other topic (in the right install order) my performance index is only 5.6

cpu : 5.6
ram : 7.1
video : 6.7
video for games : 6.7
hard disk : 7.8

Before the format my hd was 7.9, my video was 7.2 if i'm not mistaken, and the CPU was a lot higher (atleast 7.2)

Does anyone have any idea why my performance index decreased on almost all the components ??

Any idea's or advise is welcome
Thanks a lot for your time

 

Check your power setting and make sure its set to high performance.

 

this is my benchmark result :
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-940 Processor,Alienware score: P3716 3DMarks

Is there something wrong with my drivers or machine ?
I just checked and performance setting is set to high

Also i tried a game and it lags now and it didnt before, i installed all the drivers from dell (only for the gpu i used the ati site drivers) (CF is enabled)

 

when i use EVGA E-leet and compare it to the picture from other people i see this:

Core speed 1330mhz , multiplier x 10 ?
Turbo boost is enabled in bios and i never did any overclock or adjusted a setting in bios :x

I hope someone can help me find out what is wrong :s

 

Obviously, something changed when you did a clean install so it's unlikely to be a hardware issue of any kind. Just need to find what is not set correctly and what you've described sounds like a power management issue.

You're running on AC power and not battery... correct? If you're running on battery, plug it in and everything should work fine.

If you're already plugged into AC, go into the advanced settings for your Performance power management profile and make sure everything is set to 100% on both battery and AC power and disable everything related to sleep. Any setting that looks like it might save energy, turn it off or set it to maximum.

 

yes i'm running on AC power, i just checked the advanced power settings and everything is set to max performance, all the sleep stuff is disabled....

 

I know you indicate that you installed all the drivers listed in the correct order, but there seems to be something with software that is holding you back.

I would uninstall the video drivers, reinstall the latest Intel chipset drivers (not the chipset drivers on Dell's web site) and then do a clean install of the video drivers. By clean install, I mean using Driver Sweeper and CCleaner to wipe out the old AMD stuff before reinstalling AMD 11.6 Catalyst and CAPS. I know 11.7 is out, but I haven't tried it yet. I know 11.6 works great.

EDIT: You may also want to try resetting to BIOS defaults. Make note of the settings on your SATA controller first, so you can make changes if you have difficulty loading Windows on BIOS defaults.

 

Look in Device Manager. Do any of the icons show a problem with being unknown, unable to start or disabled?

You can try deleting the CPUs in Device Manager and the rebooting if reinstalling the chipset and video drivers does not help. Deleting the CPUs and rebooting sometimes corrects some issues with Windows not properly recognizing things.

 

Please create a forum signature with your system specs.

 

Intel auto detect utility says this :

Product Detected ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870
Current Driver Installed 8.763.0.0

Product Detected Intel® 6, 5, 4, 3, 900 Series Chipsets
Current Version Installed 9.1.1.1015

Im trying to delete ati and intel chipset drivers and reinstalling them, ill reply in a few minutes on result

 

I have 8.861.0.0 dated 05/24/2011 for my AMD drivers.

 

I have the same ati driver version now as you 8.861.0.0 (11-6)

I did ccleaner and driver sweeper for the ati driver and downloaded the intel chipset driver from the intel website

Atm i'm still getting 5.6 or 5.7 performance index windows

all devices in device manager are installed and none give a error

Strange stuff tbh, performance index was 7.2 before and now 5.6 :///

 

I can't get power dvd to play sound over my DAC. Any suggestions? Other programs work fine but power dvd is the only program I have that plays blu-ray. Also I just moved so have no access to the internet except on my driod. For now

 

Which device is pulling down your overall WEI score to 5.6/5.7? Is it still your graphics system or HDD? Does CCC show CFX enabled?

It's got to be something simple that is being overlooked. You might try running CPU-Z and GPU-Z. Make sure both GPUs are detected by GPU-Z. Maybe you can post screen shots of both for all of your friends at NBR forums to look at.

 

Are you sure your HD Audio driver is installed? Remember, it's not installed by default with AMD Mobility drivers. You have to manually install it using the desktop driver package and dragging the WDM folder into the Packages\Drivers folder for the Mobility package. (There is no WDM folder in the Mobility package.) I've forgotten about this a couple of times when updating my video drivers.

 

my gfx cards are dying on me and im out of warranty

getting artifacts randomly while not in games and 100% guaranteed artifacts when gpus are underload.

not sure if its both cards or just the master because turning xfire off doesnt make a difference.

are there any online stores that sell those cards and ships out of US(to singapore specifically) you guys would recommend? the ones i see posted on this forum like newegg etc dont usually ship out of us/ca and i live in singapore

 

I feel sorry about your problem.
But I have a question here for you guys, what would be the cause of the dead GPUs in the M17x?
Is it the heat?
I thought the cooling system in M17x is enough to keep it in safe temperature range?
Or is it overclocking cause this?

 

Try contacting member pkhetan...depending on what sort of graphic cards you are looking to upgrade to.

Also you might look for members selling their graphics cards as well

 

Heat........AMD cards...........could of been damage by OC's...........Crossfire are the problems.

 

Yeh, your hands do look young and sexy too (laptop that is).

 

Hmmm.. Im using a mobility modded version of 11.6 which does have the WDM folder installed. Ill keep tinkering.

 

I hope it's something quick and easy to fix... probably will be. If you have the ATI HD Audio showing in Device Manager, the problem is something other than not having that installed.

 

Yup. Got it. Although mine is AMD HD audio device. Ill mess with it tomorrow. Not something that's bothering me too much at the moment.