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    Sudden Extremely Poor Performance - M17x R3

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Lakart, Jan 1, 2013.

  1. Lakart

    Lakart Notebook Consultant

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    All of a sudden my M17x R3 is having extremely poor performance, graphics wise. The GPU never seem to go above 30% usage and even at 30% usage it runs games like Minecraft @ 30 FPS or lower. I still have about two years left on my warranty, and I plan to call Dell to talk about having the GPU replaced, but do you think they'll give me trouble about it? I mean, just for reference, I used to get up to 280 FPS running Minecraft when the graphics card was newer.
     
    Lakart, Jan 1, 2013
    #1
  2. radji

    radji Farewell, Solenya...

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    Clean and repaste, clean and repaste. That's always the first steps in determining if it's just a superficial problem or a real GPU issue.
     
    radji, Jan 2, 2013
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  3. ratchetnclank

    ratchetnclank Notebook Deity

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    Check power plan settings.
    Clean vents.
     
    ratchetnclank, Jan 2, 2013
    #3
  4. LeoVainio

    LeoVainio Notebook Evangelist

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    Yeah when I got my Alienware, at first I thought yeah this performance is good and all... but I thought it would be more.

    Then I realized I was on Power Saver... and wow the performance doubled.

    Maybe some of them have magically started running on the iGPU? :S
     
    LeoVainio, Jan 2, 2013
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  5. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

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    Alienware-L_Porras, Jan 3, 2013
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  6. Lakart

    Lakart Notebook Consultant

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    Graphics card got replaced today. Funnily enough, when the guy showed up to replace it, upon booting up the system it first ran on motherboard graphics, and then he managed to get it running on the integrated intel graphics chip, but the 6970 had stopped working entirely. With the new card my machine is back to running at higher fps' & better performance.

    EDIT: Another thing I found a bit funny, there was almost no dust inside the machine, not even in the fans. Just a small irregularly sized smudge of dust on each of the fans.
     
    Lakart, Jan 3, 2013
    #6