Secondary GPU issue?

Hello,

I just picked up a M17xR2 from outlet and so far pretty good, except for one little issue - the GPUs don't go above 70% or so each for SLI.

Currently I have the latest VBIOS as well as system BIOS (A10) with drivers Cat v11.4 (tried with many others as well) still the same issue. Using cleaning tools in between to wipe older drivers out.

Furmark stresses the GPU to its limit. Granted I am happy it doesn't kill it, but I am just wondering if this is normal for a Xfire (never had dual cards before) type of situation.

I have included a CSV (in zip) so everyone can see for yourself the issue.

Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: Changed the title but it didn't reflect in the main forum :/

 

Hey there Smooth_J,

Congrats on the new Notebook purchase.

Now with your GPU usage. They 1st thing is to check out whether or not they are reaching or running at the max speed. In this case it would be 700mhz and 1000mhz. In the CSV log it seems to show that they are hitting that range fine.

May I ask what you were running when you were logging the information above? Also what are the rest of your Notebooks specifications? CPU? etc?

Also if you have a chance. Try running a benchmark like 3d mark 06 or 3d mark 11 or Vantage so we can gauge to see if your machine is performing like it should. So far it seems fine.


Cheers.

 

Thank you for getting back to me!

Here are my specs:

Alienware M17x R2 Laptop
Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
17 inch UltraSharp WUXGA (1920x1200) RGB LED Display
Space Black
Dell Wireless 1520 802.11n Half Mini-Card
240W AC Adapter
125V Power Cord
Crossfire 1GB ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5870
Processor Intel Core i7 740QM Quad Core Processor, 1.73GHz
9 Cell Primary Battery
Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module
Notebook Keyboard
8 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)
320 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)

I changed out the HD already to a 320 GB 7200 RPM cause the 5400 RPM wasn't cutting it.

Also, the program I used was HWiNFO32 for logging and Furmark in fullscreen.

This order was actually an attempt to get a machine since my order for the XPS 17 wasn't going through and still in production. However now pretty much it has shipped, or in the process of shipping and honestly cause of the solid build quality of this machine. I think I will send the XPS 17 back and stick with the AW - even though the specs of the XPS win over the AW. I took this thing apart briefly cause I was concerned with the Xfire connection and saw the construction. Granted I won't put this thing through a brick wall, but still it was nice to see a solid product minus a few issue with the KB giving in some areas. From what I can tell it was built on 2/18/11 and in Canada, and here I have it in the USA.

 

Some graphics drivers will detect FurMark and will deliberately limit the speed of the GPUs. This is done supposedly so that the cards aren't being pushed to their limits for extended periods of time, but this doesn't make sense as the cards are designed to be run that way (it's what games do).

I'd suggest running a game while checking the usage of each card. If you can, run something recent, and at max detail settings. That should put enough stress on each card to get them above 70%.