*OFFICIAL* M17x Benchmark Thread - Part 3

I'll be succinct about my point of using AC on a laptop (specifically M17x-R2): Pre-Rivatuner workaround/Cat 10.7/Setfsb hack/TS TDP you could throw the entire arctic on the GPU/CPU and still barely crack 17k. Why? Because the system was handcuffed by low TDP, 5% BCLK and dell drivers that throttled the GPU's after a certain clock (not temperature dependent).

Thus why I always maintained that if one wants to be a pro "benchmarker" for laptops, then the best method is to find ways to be innovative and get around those barriers.

Dell actually does have a lot of say and control over the drivers handed to them by ATi. They may not have a hand in coding them but they can certainly request that AMD tailor the drivers for their system. Dell also has an in-house driver team both in Miami (I saw a few of them) and in Texas. They do outsource their hardware design to Flextronics. None of it is actually made by them and I don't think anyone thought it was. But they do have their own engineers that oversee the design process and they have a lot of input before Flextronics starts cranking out the hardware.

Speculating about Fermi's potential if given more voltage is just that. Until someone finds a way to give it more voltage and it can prove itself in games without gobbling up the PSU, it's real world gaming performance will remain underwhelming given it's hefty price tag. nVidia's driver support is second to none though and it's why I would even want the X7200. If Dell offered 285M's for the R2 when it was released, I'd never have purchased an ATi config.

 

i disagree with the driver support for nvidia, they always have issues with every release which is why there are so many releases. it may be the tastiest turd in the bowl , but it doesn't mean it tastes good. i agree mostly with Johns muddled list/post. but i guess were getting a little OT now. i agree with the samation that Joker gave about the perceived performance, it likely that the cards will eat up the psu and wont be much better than it is now.

 

Been a little while here, but have had time to sit down and do a little more testing. I ran vantage for a 14.3k gpu, 12.6k overall result but I accidently deleted the pic on my external drive. I will sit down later today again and will most likely replicate that run, or beat it if all goes well. These runs were with throttle stop disabled, no case mods, ambient 68 degree air cooling, PSU running in a micro refridgerator. Yfrog Image : yfrog.com/7d191k06runp

 

I don't think that every benchmarker should reinvent the wheel. It's perfectly OK to expound on what other benchmarkers have already found to work. You're saying that you pulled the benchmark run in your sig on ambient air temp, using just the stock fans and heatsinks in your laptop?

 

Hahah, nah,I've been known to have a bit of a competitive edge to me I 'm trying to push everything I have so that I can get on with actually using the system. I've been working onm the M11x and the M17x together. today work was slow so I ran quite a few M11x runs. Although with this I'm not getting crazy or going to great lengths too keep it cool. Just doing it on my Cryo at my desk tp put points on the board.

EDIT: Addint this. Not sure what numbers you guys are seeing on the X25-M SSDs, I have yet to use any of mine. But here is a quick bench off my X25-V Benchmarking drive. The V series are a lot slower, but the 4K numbers are better than I thought they would be.

 

Unfortunately you have the exact same slow 4k random reads/writes like everybody else...

 

ehh, still beats an HDD. Be nice to get the full potential though.

Oh another note, I think I got everything out of the i5 520M that I can. Looks like it's time to move on and do some extensive benching with the 920XM. At least work tommorrow will be slow.

 

very interesting choice of words there....

Main Entry: 1 mud·dle
Pronunciation: \ˈmə-dəl\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): mud·dled; mud·dling \ˈməd-liŋ, ˈmə-dəl-iŋ\
Etymology: probably from obsolete Dutch moddelen, from Middle Dutch, from modde mud; akin to Middle Low German mudde
Date: 1676
transitive verb
1 : to make turbid or muddy
2 : to befog or stupefy especially with liquor
3 : to mix confusedly
4 : to make a mess of : bungle
intransitive verb
: to think or act in a confused aimless way
===============================================

as for dell....ill let you guys find that out on your own.(like the rest of us did way back when. the same stuff being said today is the same stuff that was said then...only thing that changed...was the year..)...it's just one of those things...usually takes people a while to realize what is going on.

and speculations are good...fermi will rise when it's time. it will sit on top till the next card comes along and knocks it off. unless you guys are ati/nvidia specific? me..could care less. ill run the top of the line card till the next one comes along.

 

thats crazy. you must have the ultimate golden samples there, no cooling? and no throttle stop? & 700 clock on the 4870 with no external cooling? nobody else has ever been able to do that. cant imagine what it would be able to reach if it was cooled, or further more if you had a 920xm chip. i had pretty much the same exact clocks on both the cpu & higher clocks on Memory on the GPU, and score almost 1k less with the same drivers, but i had to cool my machine with an external ac , and it still reached high temps on the gpu. ant more and it wouldn't complete the runs in 3d or vantage.

 

it was just all clumped together, that's all. thanks for the thesaurus entry though.

 

im wondering the same thing, i want to know how you got the cpu to oc that far without altering the TDP, as soon as i hit 174 on mine it shuts down,without throttle stop enabled & external cooling. its hot here in NC, but it aint Kuwait hot, its right around 76 in my house with the ac going, about 100 outside. i dont think anyone else with the 4870s could match those clocks without cooling them. id like to see some shots of the temps @ those clocks.

 

Man, this makes me want to get home and do some benching Here it's hitting 120*F everyday and at night it cools off to a low of around 90*F. Once I get home, it should be a lot easier to keep temps down. Especially since I'll be home in the fall.

Well, time to do another CPU switch Becoming a regular occurance

Agreed, isn't that why we're here? To throw ideas back and fourth and to learn? When I finally got back from leave and got my system set for benching this thread was desolate and I had to read 50_ pages just to catch up on where the game was.

 

Yea I am saying that is the case with my setup as I mentioned with regards to cooling. I have played with throttlestop and this is one of the first times I have run with it disabled. As I have mentioned in earlier post's I really praise the Griffin laptop stands, as they complement the M17x's cooling system layout perfectly, and allow plenty of air to come in without restricting the fans by placing a cooler so to speak right underneath it. That's it really, no other special tricks. I have really just been taking basic physics principals into account here, whilst not going over the top I guess. Screen dimmed, FX in dark mode, an OS slightly tweaked running on a pair of Intel X-25m's in RAID 0. I have included a few pics of my setups. The digital thermometer reads ambient room temp and humidty and also the temp of the PSU in the fridge. The sensor is mounted to the brick itself so I can maintain consistency between runs. In my next runs I will post my Hw32info temps screenshots as well.
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/3737/p8070023.jpg
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/3661/p8070018z.jpg
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2158/p8070021z.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1746/p8070022.jpg
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9122/p8070021.jpg
http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/4382/p8070020q.jpg

 

You have several thousand dollars worth of computer in there, and you're drinking Pabst? You made my day man!

All you have to do is go to the wiki and see who's name is where man. I think all of us are just chipping away a few points at a time right now.

 

Judgin by those pictures Jeep, you are going to fit right in here lol

Quick question though....not to be a party pooper...what resolution did you run 06 at? You blocked it in your screenshot. I ask because your windows task bar seems too big to be 1920x1200 which would mean you have the 1440x900 screen and did not run 3DMark06 at the standard 1280x1024 resolution.....

So that score may not be as good as it seems to be

 

Haha, thanks. I have the RGB 1920x1200 screen the taskbar seems big because I have the font set at medium in the control panel. This was because before I was using the old Setfsb with the presets before I paid Abo for the key to be able to use the sliders, so you needed to be at a larger font to have them show up as described in this thread. Benchmarks are run at the default resolution. My other posts show the resoluton at this, I will move that box off to the side next time, that is where it lands by default as you know.

 

actually, no it wasn't. ergo the numbering system. for the quick reference.

 

All good, just checking. Awesome scores!

 

Hey thanks all, yea I have literally owned and reworked and sold every Alienware laptop they have come out with over the years. I type all this at the the kitchen bar next to my significant other on our matching older m3450 and m3200. Can you say obsession. Those on the desk are all maxed out previous models "M17x's D900k" as far as hardware is concerned, mainly used for CAD. Alright just did another run 5 mins ago for some of the naysayers I forgot to open hwinfo though for it though. I will do that though for my upcoming runs with Vantage and 06' though for comparison purposes. I also posted the pic of my temp readout so you can see how much the PSU raises the temp in the fridge off of just one run. And to TurboTalon, before computer's it was DSM's. I have a mint modded 92' 300hp GST in the garage! Quite frankly I don't know which hobby has been more expensive
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/2999/19k06run.png
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7056/p8070026.jpg
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/3025/p8070030.jpg

 

i see you moving up the list there buddy!.looking real good.
(they really need a thumbs up gif)

 

Still got some work to do john

 

I'm just noticing a lot of different varying GPU clock and MEM settings for the 4870. They all seem to be from Dell too. Are people doing VBIOS flashes to change the default clocks or something?

Just wondering what exactly was the default clocks for the 4870 and 5870 (GPU clock and MEM).

Cheers.

 

it will show a list of gpus to the right, just click on yours or the one your interested in.

Notebookcheck: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M

yeah, me too.

 

You can edit the scores in the Wiki by yourself jeepinjake. It obviously relies on honest users. Benchmarks - Alienware M17x Wiki. Welcome to the party my friend!

Yeah, my Talon has been a money pit. Don't have any dyno numbers, because there's not an AWD dyno here. Both hobbies are super expensive, but my laptop has minimal downtime compared to my DSM!

 

never mind.

 

@JeepinJake
Welcome and great scores! Your pics make me thirst for a PBR. Havn't had a real beer in a while. Out here it's near-beer and benchmarks for me. Awesome setup as well with all the notebooks.

 

So what thermal paste are you guys using, thinking about ordering some seeing as the one i put in is crap and constantly reaches higher temps than the one i had previously used(thermal take or something like that). Im using some zalman grease now. Im thinking about arctic silver 5, but i just want it to last for a year or two without me changing it again.
Got tired of tearing down the system

 

Unless I'm missing something, Jake's score's while scarily good for an i5 don't quite hit the top 5 for R2's?

 

LOL, why not expand it top 10 or 20, then he'll fit right in

 

LOL, I've torn my system down 3-4 times in the last 5 days. I'm using AS5 right now. But once I get the system together for good I'm using IC Diamond. I put that on the GPU cores as well since I don't ever pull those. The reason I went with AS5 is because it's pretty good quality, and from newegg.com I can by a 12gm tube. Since I'm changing CPU's so often it helps to have a lot. I havn't found another decent brand that sells a big tube. If you want to not change it for a year, I'd go with something like IC Diamond. It's great. Thick too, like putty. But supposed to be some of the best. Joker perfers Shin Etsu (sp?) others perfer MX-3. I've read that IC Diamond scratches the CPU die, but it's not really a concern for me. When I don't plan on removing the CPU for a while thats what I go with.

I've used AS5 on all my other systems without issues, but AS5 supposedly has a 200hr burn in time before optimal use. IC Diamond doesn't but not a big issue since you don't plan to change it. I havn't kept AS5 in my M17x long enough to see the burn in results.

 

LOL, nice right up on everything Seeing as i can only order from amazon. Im going with the 12 gram arctic silver, and the 3.5 gram arctic silver with the cleanup kit, and OCZ Freeze. I couldnt find the IC Diamond on amazon, otherwise i would pick that over the OCZ.

200 hour burn in time you say, So how far is she now

BTW, your killing me on HWBOT

 

Lol, yea I felt kinda bad about the HWBOT thing, but work was a half day today and nothing going on so I was benching lastnight and this morning at work where I have a decent A/C.

On the AS5 I have in the system now I have about 5 hours on it lol. I switch CPU's so often. Maybe now I'll stop till I can grab some more hardware lol. Yea the 12gm is a good idea, you may even consider buying two of them so you don't have to later on if your going to be switching up hardware. Before benching I ordered new thermal pads, paste and a cleaning kit from frozencpu.com I replaced all thermal pads in the system and IC Diamond on the GPUs.

 

I'll soon try and get back to benching, some testing, and try to finish up some unfinished reviews when I have time next 2 days.

 

exactly why i say...it should be benched as hardware.
if you were stuck benching a 920 and 5870's...you would get board after a while...but benching all sorts of parts in the same machine...now it becomes fun.

 

Exactly my thinking as well. Unless I take on some extreme cooling measures, which I don't have access to those resources at the moment, then I think I've gotten most of what I can out of the 920/5870s. Although I'd like to make it to the top of the 3DMark06 board. closest I've come is 2 pts shy of my current personal best. And that was this morning when I had some extra time. The cards do really respond to further overclocks so I gotta figure something else out. Which I will

Now I'm going to be looking for other CPU's to bench and sell off. Not doing to bad for being registered for a week or so.

HWbot profile.

 

31 gold cups is not bad at all!!
looking pretty damn good if you ask me!

told you you could grab a bunch of free cups. haha
does wiki have some sort of point system?

 

Wiki? As far as I know not yet.

 

thanks jub

 

LOL I just saw this post. I'm going to add that to my sig. BTW the Wiki takes HTML so if you can link an external source that keeps a database of the points but the front end on the Wiki, a points system would work. I think Stamtisx said he knew how to write the code for something like that.

 

can we make it happen though? is the 50,000 dollar question....

 

what are ya'll talking about the 480m in the m17x???

 

what up my brotha! long time no see.

 

I know I know. I'm still alive and kicking just getting some stuff together. BTW I'm selling my dktop if you want anything to play with

 

i was just looking at it. was looking at that board...i have a spare 920 and ram sitting around...might do another folding machine.

say, anyone using these laptops to do folding@home?

that will stress any over clock while helping find a cure.

ps;
what video card did you have?

 

I have a 8800 gt. LOL. Mai

 

Unfortunately we can't do that on the wikia page. We need a front end with dynamically generated web pages (like jsp or asp)

 

i pulled this from another thread dr650se posted in
YouTube - ‪The Monster - ASUS GTX 480 4-way SLI setup‬‎[/QUOTE]

this is a perfect example of artifact cheating so to speak....
if you slow the video down...look at all the water jumping out of the ocean and all the glitching going on. this is what i was talking earlier. this type of benching gains quite a bit of extra frames. or if it black screens...you just wait and then it jumps to the next test. some say it's cheating others say it's not.... anyone's benching look anything like this?


8800gt huh don...let me check on how many points that is worth.

 

That...thing...can't even be considered a computer anymore. That is the sickest thing I've ever seen! Makes our BS little 18-19K scores look ridiculous.

 

600 mhz shader overclock on those fermis. They didn't really push the core/memory up too much, guess the 480's can't budge much or don't need to with that shader clock.

 

Yeah. I like to 'use' my computer in an everyday fashion.

Difference between that machine and ours - when we overclock our machines we can still use them as they were meant to be.

-Ash