Ordering a M17x R3 with GTX 580M

After some extensive research on which video card to have installed, I've decided on the Geforce GTX 580M. Now, I know this is a laptop and heat/power issues are much different than a desktop, but I'm wondering if it is possible to overclock the GPU/GDDR...even slightly?

 

You can overclock the 580M through modded bios from what I've seen. I haven't tried it, not worth the risk in my opinion.

 

Yep although my advice first is to order via the phone and haggle. Next, after you get your laptop, check from throttling, if there is, it is easily fixable via the link in my sig. And yes you can overclock it as long as you can keep the temps under 78C, which is where the next throttle kicks in and is not fixable.

Edit: @insert you don't need the modded bios. you can do that with software. The bios overclocking is for the CPU.

 

Thanks. So, why do it over the phone vs. the website?

 

because on the website the price is what it is...

if you go through a reseller, expect at least 10% off the website price.

If you call dell, you can negotiate a price too

 

As Widezu mentioned, when ordering over phone you're speaking to a live sales rep which whom you can haggle and bargain the price down. Might save you a few bucks

 

Well how about that. I think I'll do just that! Will I still be able to have it configured however I want via phone?

 

To be specific it should save you at least 20% off the unit price, and some super star hagglers get 25+% off.

Get it just like you want it in your cart, save your cart, when you call in they can see it.

Be sure to start config from here: Alienware Deals

Also, the SSD is a Samsung 830 series, so for $150 that is a no-brainer upgrade.

 

Well now, that I didn't know! Would've saved me some time ordering! Learn something new everyday...

 

580M with pretty decent overclock; there is plenty of room to tweak performance:

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That's impressive!! How are your temps? Stock cooling/TIM?

 

With that overclock, the GPU (core) temp was probably around 70-71C, but the 3dMark11 bench segments are not long enough to cause major heat. In Vantage, top o/c's will push to 74-75C. Using MX-4 and max fans via HWINFO64.

 

Are you able to actually game with that OC? Or does it hit the 77C wall?

 

I don't even try to game at those levels. I'm sure it would hit the wall in the most demanding games, but more to the point, it's not needed. Even at stock clocks, the 580M is a beast (and very rarely exceeds 70C). Or you can use a gentle o/c (750/1700(850)) with very little increase in temps.

 

Do you have any idea what a good constant OC would be?

Since you can easily script the inspector program to OC at start-up I am planning to just always OC my Nvidia card. I have 4 years of Accidental warranty, so if my GPU dies I will just get another, and if it waits long enough maybe I can get a free upgrade.

I was kind of hoping to use 850/1900 as a constant OC, but that might be too high.

 

I think you'll have trouble with 850/1900. First, you'll need the .92v vbios to support those settings, which brings with it additional heat. And, at those levels, the 580M will pull major power (probably 125-140W), so depending on the CPU performance levels you can hit power budget issues. Plus, a lot of cards just can't handle that level of o/c'ing without aux cooling. But cards differ greatly, so give a try, monitor the results and adjust accordingly. I'll be following your experiences.

 

Yoda, that is even higher than desktop 560 Ti speeds. You'll kill the card in a few months if the crashes haven't kicked in within 5 mins of gaming!

 

Just be sure we are on the same page I am giving core/memory numbers, is that what you guys thought I was giving?

I guess I didn't realize 850/1900 was that insane, I have seen several people mention 800/1800 as an OC they use while gaming, I was just gonna push it a bit higher, heh. And I was planning to use the .92 vBios for the extra headroom.

What kind of full time OC would you recommend?

Also, what are the desktop 560 TI speeds? Does it have the same number of shaders and such as the 580m? I am just wondering if I pushed a 580m to the same speed as a 560 TI if I would see the same performance.

 

560 ti (stock)
core: 820mhz
shader: 1640mhz (384 nvidia cores)
ram: 4ghz effective (2000mhz)
256 bit bus

580m (stock)
core: 620mhz
shader: 1240mhz (384 nvidia cores)
ram: 3ghz effective (1500mhz)
256 bit bus

 

Thanks, so now the question is will the 580m run the memory at 2000mhz, if it will then 800/2000 seems like a good goal.

 

The 580m has the same core as the 560 Ti. When OC'd to the same clocks, yes performance is the same. Not stable for gaming though. I used to use 800/1800 for gaming, That with other benching crazy stuff killed my last 580m, with this I use 750/1800. Works great and made me realise that 800 was overkill.

2000Mhz memory will hardly gain you any performance. I only use that clock for benching. Seriously. GPU memory are usually the first components that get destroyed as they aren't as efficiently cooled as the core is.

 

if you get your core to 800 (which is almost a 30% OC), it is probably more important to bring up your shaders than worry about your ram speeds. i don't think you will hit a memory bandwidth bottleneck even at 3ghz

Also as Rev hinted at earlier, you only have 240w of power coming into the m17x R3...if your vid card is using up more than half of that, you won't have much left over for the rest of system. Its all about balance

 

Interesting, so maybe use a lower memory clock but jack the core up more? Do you think that would cause some weird bottleneck effect? Maybe something like 850/1700 or even lower memory speed but keep the core high.

I have a bad feeling I might end up murdering my 580m on accident. It has been a long time since I OCed, so I guess I just don't know what the best practices are, but if the memory is the thing that dies perhaps going easy on it and hard on the core is a good strategy?

 

Seriously though why do you need to overclock? I only OC mildy for BF3 and Arkham City, the two most demanding games on my PC at the moment (not saying that they are the most demanding games of all time). Take my word for it. This is coming from probably the most seasoned 580m user on this forum. For anymore than 10 mins of use, 800 core is the threshold. I wouldn't not advise anymore than 1800 mem for gaming. 800/1800 is the highest anyone should go for extended gaming. I don't even go that high anymore. Overkill. You have to understand mobile cards are not about getting the bleeding performance from the cards but to find a point where the cards will operate at their best and maintain stability and more importantly sustainability.

Plus chances are with a high overclock, you'll hit the unfixable 79C throttle.

 

I think shaders are always 2x clock on the 580m? Not sure if that is correct. If it is then whatever I get the clock up to the shaders follow.

Maybe not OCing the memory much or at all would open headroom on the core? I don't know if it works that way, but if 3Ghz of memory bandwidth is fine then I might just leave it stock and only worry about the core.

Any idea what the max wattage of the 580m is? Until you and rev mentioned it I never thought about running out of juice.

 

The 580m operates at around 90-100w on the regular vbios and much higher up to 150w with the new vbios. The M17x R3 power brick is "only" rated up to 240W so you can see why we keep an eye on everything.

Just for kicks, my CPU draws over 85w of power under heavy 4.4Ghz use 150+85=235W

 

i used to use msi afterburner and you could unlink the shader and CPU clock to set it seperately. That was with a 460m...i assume that you can still do that now with the 580m

At stock load, the 580m is sucking about 100w. I can easily see 130w+ if you start overclocking it to the numbers you are talking about (assuming your card even attains those numbers)

ha! You're right on the threshold lol...but there is usually safety built in, so eventhough its rated at 240w, you're probably good till about 260-270w. I hope you bought an extended warranty

 

Thanks for the advice, I suspect the throttle will ultimately decide my max OC. In reality I probably don't need to OC at all, I would just be doing it because I can, heh. I would want stability, so I will probably go for a lower clock that is rock solid, and I might not mess with the memory much if it doesn't actually increase performance noticeably.

The thought of having a 560 TI in a notebook still gets me excited though, would be awesome if it could be stable at those speeds.

I have the lower end CPU though, the 2760QM, it has a max TDP of 45W. I have no idea how much the rest of the machine takes, but just my processor and GPU maxed would be 45 + 150 = 195W leaving 45W for the rest of the system.

 

Yeah I recently got my GPU replaced so testing some different clocks. Very stable and small increase in performance: 700/1500 and the OC I use sometimes: 750/1800. I'd say anything between 700/1500 to 800/1800 should give you decent and stable performance increase.

 

Thanks for all of the input. It gave me some clock speeds to shoot for and what to be aware of. My desktop is running dual 460's clocked at 850/2200 stable with max temp hitting 60c.

 

Not comparable as the desktop 460's have 336 cores whereas the 580m's have 384. Plus your 460's have large coolers on them as well compared to the ones in a laptop.

Still though, everyone's gotta start somewhere

 

widezu, I have a quick question for you, our stock memory clock is 750, how the hell you guys are able to push it to 1800?!! is it severely underclocked on stock speeds to avoid RMA or something?

 

No no, it is the way we read the GDDR5. Nvidia likes to double up so when we say 1800, that is the clock reported by Nvidia Inspector and other nvidia apps but GPU-z will report it as 900. 750 -> 900 or 1500 -> 1800 Lol

 

750 x 4 = 3ghz

1800 x 2 = 3.6ghz

 

I know. I was just throwing that out there for no specific reason.

 

Yeah I know but I preferring be precise for some people who may get easily confused. I'm OCD like that

 

thank goodness! I was like whooaaa, what the hell is going on?!!

slick, remember I am one of the noobiest people around when it comes to OCing what do you mean!!

 

Dont know if this works in the states but I was told to save my order and i would get a 10% discount coupon. I recently bought 3 alienware laptops 1 mx18 and 2 mx17 (long story) and for each of them i did this and got the discount by doing this...

 

oh yeah, forgot, wait 24 hours

 

you joking right?? oh damn, ultimate discount technique, I wish I knew this 3 months ago

 

Nope - sorry. They send an email saying 'your qoute is about to expire' even though it is not and giving a discount code. As I said, i did this 3 times since mid december and it worked each time!

 

btw you said long story but I am interested, what happened?

 

Well...
I have built many desktops over the years and basically maxed out that hobby with a 5 video card, water cooled (on everything) monster, and decided to buy a maxed out laptop. Went for the MX18 dual nvidia. Once i got it I wanted to know what tv/monitor i should purchase to use 3d in games (nvidia 3d vision). Should I get a 3d tv or just a 120 mhz+ and buy the nvidia glasses/receiver? I hadn't found this forum at this time and went to dell/alienware support. After much discussion with India they told me that the MX18 did not support 3dvision because this is only supported on DVI ports that the laptop chips do not have (sent me to an old nvidia tid that stated only over DVI, but pre HDMI!). So I say, 'even the MX17 cannot use an external monitor for 3d games?' 'No', they reply. Then the HDMI port started to go 'wonky' so I sent it back.
I order a MX17 since this does the 3d out-of-the-box and I was sure the alienware guys were wrong but it was one of those finger pointing sessions with dell saying it was an nvidia issue and nvidia saying 'nothing to do with us talk to the manufacturer'.
This one turned up and almost straight away started lock-ups and blue screens. Couldnt roll it back as it kept hanging during the windows setup. dell failed as well so that one went back.
Now this one *seems* ok and I'm getting into tweeking and tuning...