*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 and M17x Benchmark Thread - Part 4

You only have to post it once.....you have to say what 3DMark you are using....otherwise that info means nothing to us

DR650SE, sick run!

 

Holy poop! what a run DR650E! man that score makes me want to go bench too. too bad I no longer have my M17x.

 

Too high GPU core clock sir, which cooling mod and bios voltage are you using?

 

Thanks guys

Vbios was at 1.15v. Cpu was at +75mv. As for cooling I did the retention mod to the gpu's and adjusted the cpu screw tension. As far as additional cooling, lets just say it was unconventional. I don't want to give that secret away quite yet till I can bench more. I won't be back in town till Monday so ill do more benching then.

 

Brilliant run well done
is the 11.4 previews any good?

 

6970M is in my R2 with the 720qm processor. Vantage benchmark coming shortly.

 

This is a good day for benching

And how unconventional? lol

 

So you made 6970m works in R2? Congrats

 

Its a secret something like your set up in a sense

 

nice setup scook, now this is what's called professional notebook benching

 

Here it is with the 720qm. The CPU definitely holds the card back.

 

Na, a pro would have SS lol

I try though

You can see the numbers I pulled. Would be better but the BIOS has some bug with TS where my mem bandwidth tanked heavily while overclocking

 

That is a beast of a single card....

 

Could we dream about 6970CF ? lol
Thanks for the result

 

We need neptune to get in here, hes got the 485m working (no S3D) in the M17x. I think he said he was hitting pretty high on 06, higher than the 6970

 

Comparing your scores...

Vantage P12348
GPU = 10884.26
CPU = 20700.9

My 6970 scores 3k lower than yours. Is this strictly from your overclock?

 

Seems to be though with a powerful CPU vs the 720qm I used, you should be hitting 11k+ GPU.

 

Damn, hope I didn't get a dud ....



Anyway I used to have a key for Vantage, but somehow that left with my M15x. So I'm about to buy another key, but I don't know if I should go with 3DMark 11 or stick with Vantage. Anyone plan on benching with '11?

 

I would get both. You need vantage to compare to non dx11 cards and need 11 to bench dx11

And no such thing as a dud, if it is working it is working, just needs a tweak or different driver

 

Duds are for real mate, some chips just can't go high, for example some of the GeForce GTX570 desktop cards are made with 580 chips that couldn't make it at this level.

5150Joker, good job, but no cigare yet, and I think you're right, the CPU is holding it back.
I'm more concerned about the TDP to be honest, did you check the power consumption?
Crossfire at this point seems out of question considering the standard power supply capacity, a single 6970 in this laptop is already like a giant rhino sitting in a car.

K-Nabeesse! Je savais pas que tu étais la aussi, c'est B.Stinson de P4G, keep it up mate!

 

Many thanks for your bench Joker. And what about your temps ?

(Décidément, P4G est partout^^)

 

Just bought some 5870's. Plan to buy a 920xm in the future, but not anytime soon. Would I get a benefit from an OC on the 5870's I already OC my 720 when I play games, and my 4870's, but is there any point in OC the 5870's?

 

Hi there buddy,


Long time no see.

Congrats on getting the 5870s.


I recently got a 920XM ( finally LOL)
Man it is top notch!


Give the 5870s a little OC. They should be great.
Let us know how you go.
Perhaps some before and after benchmark runs.



Cheers.

 

Hey bud!

Has been a while, but yah finally decided to take the plunge and get the 5870's.

I will take some before and after scores for sure. I really want a 920 but that will be a later time cards get here tomorrow excited I gotta plus rep msparrow. Fast shipping great deal.

 

Here's my latest from my R3 with the 6970m/2630qm with a modest overclock on the GPU:



p14,368

GPU: 13,590

CPU: 17,347

 

Did you get my PM re: the heatsinks?

 

What I meant by dud, is it will work at the rated performance or not at all. These chips are rated and verified to work at 6970m spec. Overclocking is simply luck of the draw, benchmarking however does take some skill.

A card is not going to "break" and only work at a percentage of its full potential

 

Last run of the night, more to come tomorrow



Score: p14,931
GPU: 14,222
CPU: 17,555

 

Is it stable at 850 for the core ?

 

Stable for benching yes, can't say for gaming as there's not really a need for clocks that high with most of the games I regularly play. I think the biggest thing holding this card back, especially stability wise at high clocks, is that the voltage needs to be higher and so far the voltage can't be changed

 

use atiflash and RBE to change the voltage

 

Anyone got a FPS benchmark for World Of Warcraft with their R3?

 

I don't think there's a benchmark for wow

 

Here's what I'm squeezing out of my R2. CPU is definitely my bottleneck. I'd love to get my hands on a 920XM or 940XM CPU, but it's not in the budget for now.

 

A couple of drivers for you to test out when you get your new pair of 5870s.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/565839-nbr-exclusive-amd-catalyst-11-3-cap.html

or

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/563703-new-amd-11-4-drivers.html
(Probably better for benching).


Rage3D


Cheers.

 

For some reason changing the voltages using a flashed vbios gives nothing but crashes/bsods. There's been speculation that these gpu's don't have the correct voltage chips on the board to allow voltage changes from what was set at the factory.

 

I would not be surprised if this was a conscious design choice. Remember that the new stuff from both nvidia and ATI has built in throttling for extreme load situations at least in the desktop world. I hope these "features" do not make it into the laptop world as well

 

I don't know, but it seems to me as though dell may be trying to implement this type of thing into the vbios code. When I recieved new cards, I was unable to flash using ATIflash from DOS. I was given an error that the current bios was not erased. I had never encountered this in any of the 5870's prior that I had recieved from dell, nor the 4870's I have used. It took me using ATI Winflash to flash one card from windows, removed that card, insert the slave into the master slot and repeat the process. It was only then that I was able to flash using ATIflash from DOS. PITA, but got the job done.

Has anyone tried to flash the vbios on the 6970 through ATIWinflash? I highly doubth that it will make a differance if you can flash through ATIFlash.

 

I've got 14700 with same spec as yours

 

Yeah it's ridiculous that I can't change the voltage even .01 without throwing a bsod. I haven't tried ATIWinFlash yet, if I were to flash with that can I still flash back to the stock vbios using Atiflash if it throws a bsod in Windows? I tried multiple different voltage levels with Atiflash/RBE and nothing worked, any changes to any of the voltages resulted in a BSOD when Windows tried to load.

 

Wow, that stinks, that could be a massive beast of a card if voltage could change. But yea you can. It flashes through windows, and then you can still flash through ATIFlash. Thats how I perfer to flash, I just used ATI Winflash to unlock it initially. I didn't try the unlock command through ATIFlash mainly because I didn't know about it till right after using ATI Winflash. Just make sure you have a good bios on a thumb drive, because if the card is locked, once you flash through ATI Winflash, it may cause an immediate BSOD, or worse. I don't want to see you brick the card. Although a warranty would come in usefull

 

I hear ya man, with some additional cooling and voltage this thing would be an absolute beast I think 15k gpu scores would be very possible if we had voltage control. I'll try ATI Winflash and let ya know how it goes. Also do you know if ATI Winflash requires a reboot to flash the vbios or not? I know ATIflash through the dos prompt well but have never used ATI Winflash.

 

It does require a rebbot unfortunately.
I've been trying to get some serious overclock out of mine too, just for the heck of it. 825/1150 is my max furmark stable so far.
And every attempt to change the voltage has failed. It booted up once at 1.15, but the gpu was running at 81/150. So no help there. haha

 

joining in on the fun. had a few thing running in the background and running an extended display so scores could be effected. but still very awesome!!!

 

Yeah if it requires a reboot I'm guessing it's gonna be no dice. If we could flash without a reboot we may get it to not crash but I'm guessing it's just a card we can't change the voltage on

Yeah running an extended desktop will probably lower the score as it has to render even just the 2nd desktop even if nothing is happening on it. Nice run man, just like old times again lol

 

hahaha yeah, this card is sweet man. too bad there is no way to change the voltage for benching yet. but oh well more then enough for gaming.

 

Nice run, that CPU definitely helps. I can't wait to see what scores a 2920xm can push out when coupled with this card. If you're hitting almost 15.5k overall, then 16k should be very doable--pretty amazing. With 2x of these in the M18x, I see 25k scores being a very easy possibility (I think x7200 is already hitting that).

 

I hope there will be a way to unlock the voltage on this card so we can see what can we squeeze out of it.

 

I don't think there will ever be a way to up the voltage. In RBE, if you click Help under "BIOS voltage table" on the "Clock Settings" tab, you'll get this:



If there was any hope of changing it, I would imagine someone would have found a way to get the 4870's above 1.15 by now.

 

You can set them higher....you will just bsod and not be able to confirm the effectiveness of such a change