*OFFICIAL* M17x Benchmark Thread - Part 3

I have two M17x's, I'll probably keep the one with dual 4870s and call it a day. I haven't fully decided yet though. Once I run through a few more games (especially BF BC2) I'll decide. IMO these Dell drivers are holding back the 5870's but then again, I have very little faith in Dell remedying the situation in a timely manner. They should not have made it nearly impossible to run official ATi drivers.

 

Quitters!

Im sticking with it.

 

yo joker, install the ATI drivers through Have disk method and see if there are any big improvements.

 

I don't know if its been mentioned before, you might try Unigine game engine benchmark tool from Download | Unigine (3D engine for games and real-time virtual worlds) , that'll let you pick from DX9/10/11 and give you something to compare against at least. Not sure how reputable it is compared to 3DMark but with ideal configurations it might at least give you a solid A versus B comparison on DX11

 

Tried that all day yesterday, all the recent drivers fail. BSOD galore.

 

terrible. no 5870s for me. that 128bit bus really messed those cards up.

 

Well we also can't modify their voltage as well as the ASUS cards. I was on the phone with a rep earlier and he said he'd look into it.

 

I was able to flash the cards with 1.1v. But you can't do it through software.

I have it laying around somewhere. I'll see if I can get around to installing it.

 

wow mall these people waiting& returning systems waiting for the vaunted 5870s to arrive and...well.....dell chokes them to death and proves you should just by a laptop when you decide to, instead of waiting, for the next best thing, which will never live up to the hype.

 

Stock clocks, drivers, i7 620 + 5870 crossfire.

3DMark 06: 16235 marks. http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/8259/3dmark16k.png

3DMark Vantage GPU: 13001 marks. http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7915/vatage13k.png

After experiencing the dreadful touchpad, power draining after got stuck in stealth mode and now these benchmarks, my conclusion is "I'd rather have my money back."

 

How much faster was the 4870 than the 3870? Was it a much larger jump than the 4870 to the new 5870?

 

One stock 4870 about equals 2 stock 3870s

One overclocked 4870 about equals a stock 5870

 

Yeah. That's actually pretty damn lame.

 

That is why unless I can get my unit swapped for an R2 with 5870s I do not feel left for the time being

I know I will get spanked in benches but at least I have the best Core 2 scores around

 

I can only run metro 2033 on high at 1920x1200 with directx 9. Running on very high and directx 10 and 11 is unplayable. This is with a single 5870, I'm very curious to see how dual 5870 improves the frame rates.

 

What kind of temps are you all seeing during all this benchmarking? How about some screenshots from HWInfo32? Thanks.

 

I agree, the jump from the 3870s to this machine has been pretty awesome, but i cant imagine all the waiting & wanting only to get the 5870s and them be choked out by dell, and only give a 10% increase in measurable power(output) i was going to try and get and upgrade from dell , but it doesn't seem worth the trouble really most i might do is get a 920xm just so i can do a little overclocking =)

 

hi all ive been reading the posts, but whats wrong with the 5870s are they not as powerfull as we all hoped, also i did read about ati drivers not working well, are they old drivers that they are using and new drivers wont work, how old are the old drivers, how many revisions behind are they.

just mine will be here next week and ive been working nights and come home and now im reading all these and its sort of put a downer on the new laptop.

and is it something that can be fixed

p.s how do the single 5870s asus ones some got of ebay compare to single dell ones.

i.e is it vbios problem or something else.... im devastated this morning its made me not look forward to my new laptop.

or have we been expecting too much of the cards.

 

i think everyone expected too much, with all the hype & such. im sure the same will happen with the Nvidia 480s will receive the same fate

 

Well no, it's just like $200+ for what? 10%? That's a rip off if you ask me.

 

Hi Joker

When I placed my order the rep told me that Alienware was having trouble with the 5870 CF drivers and this had delayed the release date. Here is hoping they make some inroads and present us with a better driver soon. I was also told that Dell was surprised at how high the demand was for the 5870 CF. I did order the single 5870 at first and was told by a tech in Costa Rica that the system would be very intense with just a single 5870. I would agree with you that the Alienware drivers are probably holding it back as the unit is power hungry and limited to 250W. I think Joe has the right idea with his custom made chiller desk. If the frame rates aren't that much better than it is a real conundrum for many. I think ATI has sparked a lot of interest with their 5000 series cards and hopefully we will see some better games in the next quarter. I get tired of going into gaming stores and having to select used games in the back of the shop while xbox rules the day. I think with price points dropping and better graphics cards Since 4'th quarter 09, maybe we will see better games.

I think there are three ways to benchmark this card.
1) A Crysis game - we all had a graphics card that sucked two years ago.
2) The Heaven benchmark as it benchmarks DX11 (there is a youtube on single 5870 benchmark on heaven)
3) A modern game like Bad Company 2 to see if they are utilizing the DX11 more efficiently than DX9 & DX10.

Cheers.

 

$100. People who got nice discount will be worth it though. I got 320 to 500 GB HDD and Ultimate WiFi with 5870 CF for $100 more than the previous M17x. It's worth it for me to keep the 5870s! Who knows, Dell might bring out some solutions later on, I mean it did just come out. Also you get DX11 which might come in handy later!

 

I agree, Scook, and envy you a little. After all your QX9300 is only slightly less powerful than the 920XM, but runs much cooler. Plus, you got the battery life and also the 4870's run much cooler than the 5870's. So with 90% performance you have too many bonuses. And, you can also get the RGB LED when they drop the price.
I even doubt that you'll feel left out when SB hits. Something tells me, it's gonna be another 10%, lol.
Will see...

 

Lol nice doublee. Yeah certainly if you got a great deal on it, I was talking about people outside who, you know, don't have the hookups like we do. Oh and the wait some of you guys did for these cards, like months man. I mean think about Dan in Iraq, that man waited a long time for this day. It pains me.

 

Ahhh I see... Now I feel bad I guess for those who didn't get much of a deal vs their 4870s would suck! But back on topic, I was hoping to get ~40FPS AVG on Crysis at highest without any AA. Guess that dreams still far away.

 

So far pretty dissapointing news regarding the 5870 CF. Looks like the owners of 4870s don't miss much. Didn't expect that after all the wait..

 

So far - yeah. But we should give it some time, I'm sure there will be some BIOS and drivers updates to squeeze some more juice out of these cards.
Also, 480M is coming. Will see if offers better better performance.

 

Welp, I got a tad over 13k in 06, haven't installed Vantage yet but will. Played BF2BC and it looks awesome. Big improvement over my M17 with 4850's

 

For the sake of the 5870 owners, I hope Dell gets it sorted out with a BIOS/Driver update. I was a little bummed when I got my unit and the 5870's were announced the following day. With only a meager increase in performance, I am happy with what I have. The new nVidia offerings though, those look exciting to me...provided they aren't nerfed like the 5870's appear to be.

One question though. Is there a thread out there that sums up some of the performance tweaks we can do to these machines that are not dealing with overclocking? Like OS tweaks, killing certain services...etc.? Forgive me if I have missed it...

 

Hopefully we can just mod the vbios ourselves and bring the voltage up. I'm hoping that'll bring the 5870 onto par with the ones in the clevo and asus without any additional help from dell

 

I don't get why you guys are crying so much. The performance is pretty close to what was expected, maybe slightly lower. Once better driver support and we get to the root of the problem with the vbios, I'm sure we'll be hitting much higher scores. As it is right now, dual 5870's are benching almost as much as a single desktop 5870, both at stock.

 

I like your brain soysauce. +rep

 

I agree with S0ysauce!

 

I for one am happy with mine, anyways, I ran Vantage, I don't know how to insert a screen shot but I got P10601, and gpu 12286 and cpu 7510. Going to install the new cpu

 

Ok guys here's some more benchmarks with Dirt 2 using the following settings:

Resolution: 1920x1200 4xAA
Everything on Ultra except post processing (set to medium) and whatever else the preset sets to high.

System 1: Dual 5870s + i820

At stock: avg min fps=55.72 avg fps=64.83
Overclocked to 860/1000: avg min fps=59.32 avg fps=70.54

System 2: Dual 4870s + i720

At stock: avg min fps: 52.4, avg fps 62.3
Overclocked to 630/1100: avg min fps= 49.5, avg fps= 59.2



Yes what you are seeing is correct. The dual 4870s seem to be getting a lower score when overclocked vs stock. Could it be throttling manifesting it's ugly face again in bios a05? I'll find out soon enough.


Edit: Nope, no throttling that I can find in the GPU-z logs or Throttlestop logs.

 

I agree. Last few pages of this thread talk about these cards as if they are junk and people start planning returns for their systems. Let's not forget that no matter how you look at things, the 5870CF is currently the most powerful laptop gpu config. And another reminder - it supports DX11, which will play much bigger role in the upcoming year.
Also, a lot of people are getting too excited about the new 480Ms from nVidia and they are all having high hops for them. Well, I wouldn't cont on them too much, yet. A single 480M won't be a match for the 5870CF. And I doubt that an SLI solution will be released soon from AW.
My point is, if you already have 4870CF stick with it, but it if you are on the market for a new m17x dedfinitely go with the 5870CF

 

Didn't see that BIOS on the Dell site... Did you get a pre-release?

 

Oops nice catch, typo. Meant A05.

 

Joker, when I turn on HWinfo32 it show's my video cards running at 100 and memory at 150? When i turned off Powerplay it went up to 300 and 400

 

Keep powerplay on, the 100/150 clocks are normal for 2D operations.

 

Has anyone hit 15K vantage with the 5870s?

 

Thanks Joker, I'll run more benchies tomorrow, going to bed

 

Hey Joker, I wanted to ask you if you could try running Vantage with the memory over clocked to 1050mhz and 1100mhz by themselves and then with a combination of 800/850 core clock. If you don't want to do it no problem, I'll try it with mine when I get it in a couple weeks. I'm starting to suspect the 128bit memory bus is becoming a bottleneck at certain clocks, and I want to test this theory. With a 50 to 100mhz jump in memory speed we might see a significant difference by itself and when OC'ing the core.

I would also like to see how much a slight bump in memory OC affects the memory temperature as well.

 

i dont want to believe you forgot to mention that you had lower cpu with 4870s. it would be better to try stock 4870s and same cpu for comparisons with 5870s.

and yes 4870s have lower score when you reach a limit. thats why i never OCed them on the R1 as long as i had it.

as for the 5870s what i understand is that Dell offered what the machine can handle, maybe a few less. so overclocking them? you can try.

 

I didn't forget anything, I've mentioned several times already that the 5870m system has the i820 vs the i720 in the 4870m system. Not that it really makes much of a difference at those settings. The 4870s should not drop fps when overclocked, the 5870s certainly don't.

 

i believe it would be 5 fps more with 820. fps drops when 4870s are overclocked is not contant but during time periods affecting the benchmarks, something like stuttering. at least this was the case on R1. i will know more when i get the R2. i suppose this is maybe because 4870s are more power hungry as you people say.

 

He's a cool dude even though he talks bad about me.

The Cat 10.5 drivers were a total fail with my Asus also. So far the Asus Cat 9.12 drivers work the best for me. In other words this isn't just a Dell issue.

I completely disagree. Once the software catches up to the hardware you'll see how much more powerful Core-i is.

These cards are showing a significant improvement in other systems. Dell must be having power related issues just like the release of the original R2. If they don't fix it there won't be any point in buying this system.

In my G73 it runs fine with DX10 at very high settings but there is a significant decrease when running DX11. I was hoping dual cards would help this.

 

Just got my system and I'm going to start upgrading drivers and benchmarking. For a baseline, I ran 3dmark06 x3 15,152 14,997 14,815

 

I told you I would give the 5870s a challenge

 

So, the 5870's need to reach 16K in vantage to make a clear difference. Right??