Alienware 18 ordered. 4940mx, GTX880m sli. I have a few questions!

Shame nvidia never released a 790 though. Titan Z is a total abomination. Of course only developers would buy it however it was marketed at gamers.
If I were building a desktop PC right now it would be SLI or CF. SLI preferably. The 295x2 definitely fills a void though. If Nvidia did a similar job with more than 3gb VRAM (not 2 Titans) and added a closed loop water cooler I'd definitely be eyeing it off for my dream small MATX build.
It was a gutsy move by AMD and I hope they keep it coming. Competition rules !

 

Exactly, the AMD setup is nice, but some nvidia refinement on the loop could be pretty interesting.

 

It wouldn't surprise me to see power supplies failing left and right from the 295x2 due to the strain that they put on power constraints for that card. Reviews even reported that the power connectors get noticeably warm.

Also the VRMs are over 100C on the BACK of the card and let's not forget AMD loves to give cherry picked cards for review.

With the Titan Z, its obvious nVidia wanted to hold back performance... Likely for their new cards that will be launching. The core clock on the Titan Z is much slower than the 780 Ti is clocked at, like 100MHz less if I remember correctly and the reference 780 Ti is still so much lower than what the chip can actually do.

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Changing the topic breifly..... I ordered my Liquid Ultra. Should I also repaste both GPUs? And will there be enough in one tube to repaste my CPU, and BOTH Gpus?

 

There is plenty for both GPUs and the CPU. You'll be amazed how little it actually takes. Start by painting it on the heatsink because I guarantee you that you'll use too much and have plenty left to start painting the die, at least the first time before you realize how small the bead really can be.

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Titan-Z was heavily downclocked to fit within the 375W TDP envelope. If it was to run at 780 Ti speeds it would be yet another 500W card.

I'm sure nVidia does the same cherry picking with their review cards.

 

That's the point though about the TDP... NVidia chose to stay within spec for power. It would be game over if they released a full 500W TDP GK110 dual GPU card and they wouldn't even need water cooling for it. Hell have EVGA make it and put an ACX cooler on it. Benchmarks showed the 780 Ti SLI beating the 295x2 most of the time and more games support SLI than crossfire and the games that don't support crossfire run at the speed of a single 290X which is slower than a single 780 Ti.

The fact of the matter is that AMD made a card that doesn't follow PCI express power specifications and called it a day while nVidia played by the rules and stayed within PCIe spec. If nVidia wants to, they can copy what AMD did and release a 500W TDP card and decimate them. They have zero motivation to do that, however.

NVidia isn't really known for cherry picking review samples. That's AMD. Every nVidia desktop card I've had has performed at or over the level reviews got, including overclocking most of the time (my 780 Ti is the one exception but it is already heavily overclocked out of the box since it's a super clocked ACX card).

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Currently, what are the best drivers for the 880m?
Are they the 337.88 WHQL directly from Nvidias website, or is there a beta one which is working better?

 

337.88, avoid the beta.

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I'm on the beta. I've actually found sweet spots now with Slv's and John's vbios. But yes, stick to Ethrem's advice. Once you install the beta driver, it's game over unless you flash the unlocked vbios. Even that can take some tinkering now, since Nvidia added some sort of flag.

 

Do you recommend flashing a modded vbios even if I use stable release drivers? I will most likely repaste all 3 components within a week with liquid ultra, will check temps beforehand though. And then I will overclock the cpu to a level which I'm comfortable with, where it stays below 80C Max, Ethrem posted his settings on the first few pages of this thread. I will use that as a guide.

 

Modded vbios is great if you want to benchmark, overclock, or force the 993MHz boost speed all the time but it breaks 2D clocks which can keep your cards in 3D mode all the time which runs them at 1v each at idle and causes the fans to run constantly and a system freeze if you try to switch to battery.

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I don't experience freezing problem on battery Ethrem. My driver simply crashes.

Omen123, I would if you plan on benching. If you plan on just gaming, I wouldn't bother as 880m on its own is more than adequate for gaming as of right now.

 

Might be another Alienware vs Clevo thing I suppose. I didn't have the freeze others reported or a crash so go figure, I was just putting the worst case scenario I've heard on this forum out there.

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I have the same problem with the battery freezing with the SVL7 vbios. If anyone has a solution I would be very happy about inputs

 

Hey Ethrem, could you post a screenshot in XTU of how you have your CPU setup?