installed new 580m, acting weird, help plz =)

I installed a 580m in my laptop yesterday and its behaving weird, I'm hoping someone can help me troubleshoot it.

Basically the card works, laptop boots fine.. but the performance is dismal, like slower than the integrated intel 3000 graphics.

I tried different drivers and even flashing different firmwares but nothing seems to make any difference. I noticed one weird thing using the firmware that came on the card.. it goes into .92v power state when idle sometimes even though that voltage is not defined in the bios (ie its not overvolted). When under load however it goes to .87v which is the right value, I attached a screenshot of this happening during windows experience test..

FYI this is in a Dell M6600 but I'm posting it here cause I know more GPU experts are in the alienware section and plus the 580m came out of an m17 I think (I got it on ebay).

I know other people have gotten 580m to work in M6600 so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong or if this card is just bad.. any suggestions on what to try?

I'm really bummed about this cause its my first time working on this laptop and it took me a long time to disassemble everything and replace the GPU and now it doesn't work *cry* =(

 

Hello alisonT. Welcome to NBR. We are glad you joined our community.

That's odd behavior. The current core/shader/memory clocks shown by NVIDIA Inspector in your screen shot are not valid values. It seems maybe the person that had them before may have messed up something in the vBIOS. I did not see it mentioned which firmware you tried. If you have not already done so, try flashing the latest Dell/Alienware 580M vBIOS and see if that corrects your problem. You can download it here [ LINK].

I don't want to ask a silly question, but sometimes we can overlook the obvious. Do you have the AC adapter connected? Be sure your power profile is set to "High performance" and have the system connected to AC power when trying to do anything that requires 3D performance.

Aside from the above suggestions, I am concerned the GPU you were sold may have issues. Was it new or used? Did the seller provide a warranty of any kind?

 

Thank you for pointing out the faulty clock values shown in NVIDIA inspector, I hadn't noticed that before!

It's odd because there is a discrepancy in reporting the values between GPU-Z and Nvidia-inspector. GPU-Z reports the correct values for the current power state, but inspector reports very low values in all P states. Given the horrendous performance I'm inclined to believe that inspector is reporting the true values. (shown in screenshot)

I do have my power supply plugged in, and its a 240W so power draw shouldn't be an issue.

I have tried several different vBios which I found on these forums, including flashing to a 675m, similar issues with all of them. I will try the latest official Dell bios though because I haven't tried that one yet.

I bought it on ebay so I may have to return it or use buyer protection, its possible that it was damaged in shipping because the seller did not package it very well.. it was in an anti-static bag but just floating around in a large box with padding on only two sides.

Urgh this is so frustrating!

 

just to cover all bases.. is your laptop running on optimus? if so are you whitelisting the programs you're trying to run with the 580m

 

Afraid those numbers are looking like you have a faulty card - having tried replacing the vbios. You could try a reseat just in case but grabbing at straws

Shipping damage is unlikely to cause this (with an anti-static bag used) but it could have been faulty all along.

You can ignore the .92v thing. This is a 'feature' on the 3xx driver - something to do with older cards and the 'boost' feature that they do not support. Seems the driver always tries a boost to .92 for a few seconds before giving up.

Edit: saw a 297 driver - was you trying out a 3xx driver when you saw .92?

Good luck!

 

I observed the .92 thing on both 3xx and 297 drivers, and both with and without optimus.. but it happens much more frequently on 3xx series without optimus

I didn't explain properly before about the shipping issue.. the card had been in an anti-static bag but came out during shipping, so the bare card was just floating around between two pieces of eggshell foam. The foam was close enough to touch both sides of the card but not tight enough to restrict its movement very much, which seems like an ideal environment for creating static.

At any rate, I am now convinced the card is faulty also.. but just to be sure I'm going to try it in my friends M18x later today, it has SLI 580's so swapping it with one of his cards should be able to prove for certain that the card is faulty and not an issue with my laptop. I will probably have to use ebay buyer protection so I figure it is good to get as much evidence as possible that the card is bad =(

 

Ahh, not in the bag does make the difference. Yes, sliding around on foam pads could have done it.

Well, you have a perfect test bed then so a return should be no problem. Let us know how it goes

 

You should have taken pictures when you opened the box, but I am sure that out of the excitement of getting a new card you could have never thought about it. Another thing you can do (I am not sure if this will work with nvidia cards), install modded bios A08 or A10 and try to disable the IGP. Only boot from the dedicated video (setting are here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-mobility-7970-m17x-r3-illustrated-guide.html). To enable the NVIDIA CARD ONLY you must set the primary display as PEG and the Integrated Graphic card to DISABLED mod.

I do not know if anybody tried to boot only from their NVIDIA cards with IGP switched off. Otherwise you may end up breaking your bios and you will require a blind re-flash...

 

Actually I did take pictures when I opened it =)

Because when I initially picked up the package I could hear and feel the card flopping around inside the box, so I thought that was not a very good sign.

Also I was running with IGP disabled much of the time, on M6600 you can easily disable it in the bios by turning off optimus. Unfortunately M6600 will not let you run IGP without optimus, so no IGP with radeon cards at all. That is why I want to switch from firepro m8900 because I need WiDi for work presentations, and WiDi only works with IGP =(

 

So, what you are saying is that you have installed your nvidia 580m in an workstation, because that is what m6600 is. As far as I am aware the 580m was built for the alienware systems and that may be the cause of your problem. The vbios is programmed to be used only for such machines. However, sometimes you may be lucky to have them work in other systems, but the chances are very limited (like clevo/eurocom GPU's work sometimes in Alienware systems and vice-versa). You may try to contact a gentleman on this forum, he is well equipped with such troubleshooting issues (modding). His user is SVL7. I hope you will have your GPU working in such system as well and enjoy the switch of integrated iGP + Widi...

 

Thanks for your help troubleshooting this guys! The card was bad and I got a refund, bought another 580M and installed it and it is running perfectly (flashed to 675M)!!

 

I love it when a plan comes together! Congratulations, Alison. Glad to hear the issue is resolved.