m17xr2 getting rid of the intel gfx part?

My problem is the luxery of having a gaming card and a power-saving card, in my situation i have to plug my laptop in and out all the time, and during those times im gaming, it switches to the integrated card for power-saving even though i dont want it to (i dont see why there is a stealth mode button if it does that anyway....)

so i tried uninstalling the card or anything, but in the device manager it only shows the 5870 which leaves me clueless, any ideas on how to disable the nagging integrated card? alienwares dont have long battery times anyway, and i dont wanna waste that precious time on loading times >.>

note the huge performance drop when i unplug the power cable, it makes it completely unplayable unless i turn the graphics down to the lowest possible, which is something i did not spend a few grant for when my classmates just have 1 gfx card

http://i52.tinypic.com/jb6xw6.jpg

http://i56.tinypic.com/mhc9lj.jpg

 

Don't bother playing anything on battery power. Even running the discrete GPU on battery power is going to give unsatisfactory results. Has nothing to do with how much you spent. Think of the battery as a cheap UPS more than anything else. And before a mod has to say it, your pictures are too big. Link them.

 

Yup I was excited about the prospect of mobile gaming (even if it was only for 1 hr on a plane) but my dreams were thoroughly crushed when it was confirmed that the m17x's battery can't physically supply the power necessary. Sorry dude.

 

Mobile gaming on battery power is best reserved for the PSP, DS, etc. Really just a lack of research before dumping a couple of grand on a laptop. I don't know what else to say.

 

I removed the image tags - check out these two posts on resizing/linking,

http://forum.notebookreview.com/mic...off-your-vista-xp-desktop-second-edition.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/486972-how-properly-insert-huge-image-into-post.html

 

I think what he's trying to say is how to disable the integrated graphics if you have to unplug the laptop for a short duration, to move it say to another room.

I know for me, I game with my R2 on my lap and the power cable on mine doesnt seat too firmly. If I shift my weight to get more comfortable I sometimes have a tendency to unplug it. And WHAM, my FPS take a nosedive. Kind of annoying. Then I have to plug it back in and wait for it to catch up on full power. Again annoying.

 

hmm well thanks for confirming (and sorry about the images 0.0)
Before I bought this, I thought of the stealthmode as a nifty tool when I'm not gaming, but battery life is always poor on these beasts =P

I tried overclocking, but even OC'ing to the stock speeds makes it higly unstable, which is unfortunate since I liked ATI cards for better OC compatability

but don't get me wrong, I love this laptop xD

 

You don't happen to have a setting in the bios to turn off the IGP?

 

I'm using the modified A10 bios, there's a IGD option under the LCD tab, but when i turn that off, the entire list dissappears... .
when i change it back to default, it appears again, but im not so sure what disabling the option will result in, worst case is no video at all and do a bios reset... curiosity kills the cat, i cant resist to try now lol *fingers crossed*

edit: nothing happened that i'm aware of, too bad

 

correct me if im wrong guys, but as i recall:
- system lives max. 2 hours w/o power cable on igp
- disabling igp by trying to mess with hardware may reflect on warranty (IMO, am not sure about it)
- imagine how much will it last on discrete graphics without a charger? give it 20 minutes?

 

okay let's just say, and by that i mean imagine, that i cut a wire so the IGP doesnt work

I would be perfectly fine with that, I'm not a fan of warranty because I've had too much issues in the past with that (old times... playstation 1 and such...) and I have 4 jobs beside IT college, so I could pretty much buy the R3 if i had any reason to do so

because of school I have to relocate alot, from class to class, and i keep my game servers running during aswell as when i have lunchbreaks, so it's just short periods of time of which I don't have a power source. not even mentioning the "pranks" of janking out the extension cord, but i'd be the only one to notice because of this lol... but usually I'm the host of a game, and that's one of the minor but often reoccuring issues im getting

let's put it this way, what on earth is the stealth button for if it only works while im on an external power source since it doesnt work when you're already in battery mode?

isn't there maybe like, a dummy plug to fake a power source? xD god that sounds so cheap it doesn't solve the problem since the actual solution is not switching gfx cards at all, but it'd be funny

 

well the R2 doesn't have an build in IGP it only has what ever gfx you bought like 2x4870, 2x5870, 1x4870, 1x5870 or what ever you can get from Nvidea

 

I remember this too, lol


dude, no computer can utilize its power to 100% due to lack of psu power add, same time one r3 user over here couple days ago posted same thing (works perfectly on psu, without - unplayable)

 

Really? that would explain why I can't find it lol... I wonder what I just disabled in the bios o.0

But okay I guess it underlcocks itself when it lacks power, my bad!
But then my next guess would be that it's just a design flaw and it can't be helped for demanding games? (like oc's without getting major stability issues, mainly lock-ups)

There are lots of other laptop models that can perform nicely even on battery power, so i'm a bit dissapointed

 

Have you tried adjusting the power profiles when on Battery?

 

it's maxed out in the profiles all the time, but putting the clocks back to stock makes it unstable, it works, but it locks up after 5 mins of gaming, changing the vcore doesnt help, im using amd's gpu tool for that

 

Are you trying to overclock the gpu's? have you tried reflashing the vbios with an edited one? That's a lot more stable

 

Not yet, can't find a download or topic related, though i remember it being a sticky some time ago... I'm using a single card though, hope it's not a CF only thing

edit: after searching around I can't seem to find the latest driver, as im confused with beta/nonbeta/dellprovided, can anyone point me in the right direction?

e3: dell's vbios seems to be released a month after i bought mine lol so im going to try that, can't hurt going to a newer version (20-9-2010 one)

no clue on which edited vbios's there are though

e4: okay what the hell



in gpu-z its named 5800 series aswell in the device manager instead of the 5870, gonna try reinstalling driver, maybe that solves it...

e5: hmm okay extracted the exe and made it manually, everything works perfect now, i guess its time to go play with oc's and check the difference =)

 

That is what you should do.

If you want the GPU to not downclock when on battery, mod the vbios so that all of the lower clocked perf. levels are identical to the max perf. level (not just clocks, voltage and timings also).