Alienware M18xR2 New/Updated BIOS Mods - NOW WITH MAXWELL LEGACY SUPPORT - Testers Needed

Haha, that sounds like an unfortunate talent!

 

My talents tend to be talents AND curses... Don't know why. What can I say, I'm a WALKING contradiction, wrapped in a riddle that's wrapped in an enigma - and then wrapped in a TACO. heh (Again, go figure)
Anyway, I'm hoping to get the SSDT table for the throttling fixed ASAP. That is REALLY al I need to do. I was able to get the file COMPLETLY decoded / decompiled without ANY errors or warnings - again, FINALLY! Now it's just a matter of finding the flags, and then I'll be in really sweet shape cause I'll be able to compile it, add it to bios (or overwrite the old ssdt table with the throttling that is in the bios) and then flash. IF this works the way I hope it works, we will be in AWESOME shape... NO JOKE! This could really be it, FINALLY! I'll be in touch and let ya'll know what is going on!

 

Been watching the forum for a while and felt compelled to join, the knowledge you guys have is simply amazing although half the time i have no clue what your talking about but im trying to learn.

Swick1981 i would just like to say thank you for what you are doing, i love my r2 and seeing you bring it back to life is quite impressive.
I have no idea the amount of hours it must take to do what you are doing but im very grateful that your thoughtful enough to do it. I totally agree with others here and that is you should be well and truly compensated for all your efforts.

I look forward to following this thread to see you accomplish this amazing feat.

Keep up the good work mate, Cheers.

 

@shredded
Thanks for the kind words. Means a lot...
And yes, i felt the same way as you, I wanted this system to come back to life. It's gotta be one of the BEST machines ever made. I realize there are insanely awesome laptops out there now, but still... This is something that I HOPE helps people save some money and get even MORE out of their R2. As for the time it's taken me, you don't even wanna know... It's embarassing! HAHAHAHA
Again, thanks for the kind words! It really means a lot!
(And FYI - I can't WAIT to get this released! the ONLY issue I'm having is the throttling, and the more I research it the more I keep finding more info saying it may be the DSDT table, the SSDT table, or drivers. I'm going back and forth, and it's CRAZY!!) heh
Anyway... IF anyone has an idea, please let me know cause I'm pulling my hair out doing this! heh

Thanks!!!!

 

@Swick1981

No problem at all please take your time, i have a feeling just buy reading this your a perfectionist so i would imagine that it won't be released until you think its perfect.

I agree about the R2 being one of the best made, things have certainly changed so to have hope it can get a new lease of life is encouraging.

Anyway i will stop cluttering up the thread and let you get back to work but i just wanted you to know that there are people out there that really appreciate what your trying to achieve, as a computer wizard, well i was a really good football player lol.

 

You're not cluttering up the thread. Thank you, again for the kind words. And Yes, I CAN be a perfectionist at times. (Not in ALL things, but some, heh. Depends on how much I like what I'm working on. That determins if I want it to be perfect or just "good enough", heh)

As for the release - I'm HOPING really soon! I know that's not an exact date, but it will NOT be much longer, because I've had Raidriar AND myself POUR over the freaking code (dsdt, ssdt) and as much as I really THOUGHT there was a chance it was being throttled by the bios, it appears it is the driver. So, I'm looking to see if there is a way to alter the driver so we can get around the issue that way. Problem is, that the driver makes calls into the power settings, THROUGH the bios, and I can't really get rid of that call. The ONLY other option that I have, realistically speaking, is that we disable ACPI or APCI (I get them backwards - the one that deals with power management) from the device manager as this MIGHT be able to keep the GPU's at the FULL speed. Down side to that would be obvious, the cards frequency would be maxxed, even when you are not doing anything. Therefore, the only OTHER option would be to use nvidia inspector and use the command line option to bring the frequency down. But then you'd need to use another shortcut to bring the frequency back up to "Full". It's a real pain in the ***! But, the only thing I can say is at least there MIGHT be a chance to FORCE this card to run at full. It's a procedure that we will have to "deal" with, BUT you'll get full speed. And once it's setup, you MIGHT be in good shape. Just need a few to test for me. And finally, there is a chance some bios settings may be needed too! So... Just trying to get this finished, as I'm DYING to get it out! Be on the lookout, as the time to release is coming SOOOOOOOOOOON! (VERY SOON)

 

There was a user @j95 that developing some non-throttling drivers, he's on here & on TechInferno, don't know if you'd benefit by catching up with him.

 

I'm in touch with him. He's testing the legacy support for the m17xR4...

Thanks!

 

Hey Swick!
Thanks again for all the hard work.
My 2 cts :
- If you can find a way to deal with throttling in bios, then that would be a very good thing and fix was others haven't managed yet!
- according to the knowledge available until now which you have confirmed in your last 2-3 posts, the throttling is power/driver related.
- Other users @j95 and @Mr. Fox for example have also looked into the driver issue and it is another monster of a mess!
- just saying don't sweat it too much : you've already given M18 R2 owners a big chance at a new life for their beast and that is a hell of a lot as it is
- if you do want to keep searching/pushing in your bios mod, the idea of some kind of "POWER" switch controlled in windows to enable (and lock) full power (meaning no ACPI / throttling temporarily, for a gaming session for example) on the GPUs at the user's convenience, that I think would also be a great leap. You would also need to sort a way of puling the switch off a reverting to normal use ... without rebooting the laptop if possible...

Don't know if this makes any sense in the bios programming world but...

 

Even if the throttling is ultimately driver related the fact that we would have the use of legacy mode means we could switch to the older less buggier drivers if needs be. Regardless having an updated unlocked bios in terms of the base firmware and legacy support for the 9xx series is the best news any of us have seen. Means that upgrade I bought last year would now give my m18x another 2 or 3 years of life so long as the hardware holds out. At the very least it means I get enough life outta it until either alienware cop on with a better a18r2 OR eurocom release an 18inch or bigger version of their sky x9 laptop.

 

My original assumption was correct in the drivers being the issue here..Swick and I have sorted though hundreds of lines of ACPI code, and it appears there is nothing in there that gives probable cause for throttle. Either it is vBIOS related (unlikely...) or more likely, the drivers, since the behavior is reproducible with the 780Ms and 980Ms, with the 780M to a lesser degree. I did find that undervolting did reduce throttle behavior on the 780M

At this point, I would be happy exchanging my 780Ms for 8970Ms....

 

i have gtx 780m sli/windows8/latest nvidia drivers/unlocked a10 bios but im not experiencing any throttling IF i undervolt the card to -.62 , if i leave the voltage to 1.000 the card will throttle down constantly after a while .

 

See, you are experiencing the same behavior as I am. At 1.000V, there is throttling. If I undervolt by -12.5mV, the throttle happens much less, and by -25mV, it is gone entirely. Go figure.

 

yeah i have tested all voltage settings below 1.000v one by one and the one that works for me is -62.5 (or something like that) if i bump up voltage to say -50.0 ish i will start getting throttling issues which according to gpuz are power supply related.

 

SAME. My "Perfreason" is always "pwr", so I know its a power issue, but I think its driver limiting power, not the system itself.

 

Both of you seem to have serious differences in voltages (-0.62 and -12.5 mV) so this is strange.

In the end what is the drawback of undervolting?

To you both have this throttling problem with the moddified drivers and Prema vbios?

 

Well you have to remember, every graphics card is different as to capability. My 780M cannot undervolt beyond -25mv, panamaniacs seems to have better examples. No impact on performance with undervolting, but it does tend to limit your overclocking ability. I run my cards at +50/+50 and -12.5mV

Now the kicker is...Prema and svl7 have been unable to get the nvidiainspector slider to work with undervolting for Maxwell...which really sucks. Don't know if either is actively pursing that or not

 

im using the perma unlocked bios a10 (i think) , svl7 vbios and the latest official nvidia drivers (not the modded ones)
drawbacks? none so far
positives? lower temps

 

is a shame maxwell cannot undervolt , i bet it could fix the throttling issues

 

Got it! Will have to try it then

Ok so that's bad but it is for Maxwell GPU's so for the moment we (at least I) are not concerned with 780Ms.

 

So the big thing is being able to use latest drivers instead of the older ones, the so aptly called "Cancer drivers" by @Mr. Fox !

Any performance difference between :
1) Older modded drivers with no underwolt
2) Newer original drivers with undervolt

(we are talking Kepler (780M) not Maxwell)

 

that is a good question i may try that when i get home from work. so you suggest using mr. fox modded drivers?

 

Yes, this is a GeForce driver cancer problem for 780M SLI owners. NVIDIA is asleep at the wheel here. I have communicated with Manuel Guzman @pidge privately about this many times and they claim they cannot replicate the problem. There is no question it is driver induced because it happens like flipping a light switch off and on again. Anything newer than 345.20 is going to make 780M SLI perform poorly, and it gets much worse if you do any overclocking. I have a hunch (no proof) that driver changes that were introduced to accommodate Windows 10 and the plethora of BGA turdbooks with severe power handling limitations affected something with 780M SLI in a weird way and they don't care enough about their 780M SLI customers to bother fixing it.

If you install my 345.20 driver mod (the last good driver version for 780M SLI) it will be gone, but you will not have profiles for the latest and greatest games if that matters to you. Install new drivers, export the profiles for the games you care about using NVIDIA Inspector, then DDU and install my 345.20 mod. Then you can import the new driver profiles for the games you care about and that will be fine for the majority of them. Games that use NVIDIA Crapworks (like Batman Arkham Knight and Witcher 3) need to have that garbage disabled using "Game Ready" drivers released before the titles were released.

 

Well... Since it's a driver issue, the ONLY thing I can think of doing is trying to screw with ACPI settings in bios AND windows that way. I mean, it would be a REAL B.... But, to be able to overclock without ANY throttling, etc... would be nice! But, would hate to have to do some kind of procedure to turn off and on, that's the only sucky thing. Anyway, gonna do a few more tests today to see if anything can be done. If I can't, and the driver can't be screwed with at all, then I guess my work will be done - well, not exactly, as I'll still keep working at it, but then I'll know there is no reason to delay the modded bios release.

Read OP for info on how the mod will be distributed, etc... Still finializing things, but I am FINALLY at the finish line! heh

 

Well like I said, since I only focus on undervolt and slight overclocks, I'm not affected on this on my 780Ms. However even on my Alienware 18 with 980Ms, I get throttle, and I can't undervolt them to fix it.

I really don't recommend disabling ACPI altogether...some of us still use these computers as laptops and we do need power management to an extent.

 

Oh, no.... You misunderstand (or I was;t specific enough).
This would be something you would have to turn off and on, yourself. I wouldn't change any bios default, etc...
I'm just looking to see if there is a way to come up with a solution to actually get this to STOP throttling... heh Then you could turn it back on when you are in need of the ACPI support, etc...
I figured it's the last ditch attempt / Hail Marry play... LoL
(How I HATE throttling!)

 

Nvidia drivers after 345.20 DO throttle without OC (in standard voltage) ! that is the whole problem of these drivers and why @Mr. Fox did that mod...

 

Not for me, but I'm not using a stock vBIOS. At stock voltage and clocks, I do get throttling if I leave my cards at stock voltage, but it resolves with undervolting.

 

i wonder if using stock vbios the same thing happens , because i got these cards second hand (in flawless condition i might add courtesy of Mr.Valle) with svl7 vbios preinstalled i have never used vanilla vbios

 

The behavior is worse with stock vBIOS, i've tested both stock and svl7

 

Yeah, but I refuse to do that and so do a lot of other people. If I cannot overvolt and overclock the crap out of a CPU and/or GPU without throttling that product is 150% utterly worthless to me, just as mammary glands on a boar are worthless, and I have no use for it. I never undervolt anything. That can only be viewed as an unfortunate workaround for someone that doesn't care about overclocking. The proper solution would be to have a product that functions correctly at every point on the spectrum of voltage and clock speeds. If it were not for talent like @Prema fixing these vBIOS messes we would all have a pretty miserable existence. I'd have to ditch the entire notion of high performance notebooks as a futile endeavor. NVIDIA's cancer drivers still have potential to ruin everything for us in spite of @Prema talent.

 

We have no other alternatives. It is either go back to 680Ms, or undervolt the 780M. I would personally move to a 8970M Xfire system, but the clevo cards are so ridiculously priced, it is unattainable to see my 780Ms and spend another 150$ on top. I've STRUGGLED to break 13K on 3dmark 11, wheras I could hit that with ease on my 7970M crossfire setup, which I"m honestly starting to regret selling at this point....

 

Well, we do have an alternative. Until I sell my M18xR2, I'm having zero throttling issues using my 345.20 driver mod. Since I do little gaming compared to the amount of benching, having new "Game Ready" drivers is not critical. In most cases, exporting profiles from new drivers and importing them using NVIDIA Inspector works fine. There are a few game titles that still don't play nice without a cancer driver, but not many. I don't care a great deal about the driver being old if it works better for overclocked benching.

 

Yeah but for my newer games, I need the newer drives. ARK doesn't play nice with the older driver

 

This is just so sad...
No work around at all with new drivers is devastating.
But the one thing that confuses me is that good drivers are in some ways limiting the power to the graphics cards. That means they must be using power management in some way shape or form. The only thing I could think of is that the power throttling and voltage throttling is hidden in the dsdt table within the wake up power settings, though i doubt thats the case... I am seriously tempted to remove the power management completely from the BIOS. This way the drivers will have no way two actually throttle the graphics cards. Or anything else for that matter. The only downside is, as mr. Fox stated to me, the 330 watt power supply that it comes with may not be enough.

 

Again I would caution against this...ACPI is responsible to prevent your machine from burning out altogether. I wouldn't omit it from the BIOS.

 

I said i was tempted...
Didnt say i was gonna do it...
Just VERY tempted, heh.

 

all in good jest of course

 

of course.....

 

@Raidriar
Hey, you around??? There IS one bios mod I'd like you to test - Or more specifically, a bios value I'd like you to change and try. THIS may actually prohibit the GPU from talking to power management and stop throttling... (MAYBE?)
3d mark isn't working for me now, so I can't test!
PM me...
THANKS!

 

Currently at work, won't be home for another 1.5 hours

 

@Swick1981
If you need I'm available to test it right now. I know next week I'll very busy with Dark Souls 3 =)

 

@Prema actually understands this issue and can speak intelligently to it. I, @j95 and @johnksss have tested with ACPI on and off and it does not affect the throttling. There are multiple factors that come into play, including BIOS power caps, power protection mechanisms and algorithms in the vBIOS and drivers. The other thing is that 780M SLI throttling with newer driver is an extreme example of what can happen with any GPU if you use a crappy driver. If disabling ACPI were dangerous, there is no evidence of that. That is a power management feature, not a power override method.

The features in NVIDIA Control Panel affect clock speeds as well. Just enable adaptive power management mode and you will see any GPU act really stupid.

 

Thanks Prema... That means a LOT coming from you! Mr Fox tells me your the MASTER at this stuff. I'm just a guy that taught myself this stuff on a weekend. I know NOTHING compared to you. Guess it's better to be lucky than good, right? (Once in a while)
Anyway, now i'm TRYINT to get the legacy support for the m17xR4!

Thanks again... I'm honored by your compliment!
(If you ever decide to teach remedial bios modding, let me know - heck, save me a seat! heh

 

I would say that at this point theres little more you might be able to do with the bios if the drivers are ultimately the culprit. I know that with FFXIV for example the FPS and Pstate drops occured after 350.12 on my M18Xr2 with max settings. Up until that driver at least while CPUZ would show some perfcap Pwr/Sli spikes it wasnt dropping the pstates from 0 to 1. Newer drivers definately do that unless I cap the FPS and/or disable the HBAO settings. Other games dont tax it to the point that I notice it.

Really tbh just having legacy working with the 9xx cards is something I find more than useful as it eliminates the 8beep issue expecially with the default setting for the bios set to Igfx instead of the GPU's and the updated modules are a nice boost as well.

 

Get in line!
@Prema

 

R2 owner:

People with single GPUs and 970Ms shouldn't see any throttle (when using the Clevo v2 mod).

People with 980M (and Clevo v2) should only see throttle in SLI and only when OCed.

(The above being with the public versions! The internal betas can be OCed without major problems.)

@ a R2 user with dual 980M and public v2 vBIOS. What happens when you disable CPU Turbo and hyperthreading and then OC your GPUs like 150/150Mhz? Does it still throttle?

Haven't forgotten the adding more cores thingy for P570WM...you are on the list

 

Was trying to get on the bios modding list as well.

 

there are no further developments on unlocking nv inspector voltage slider bar on maxwell chips?

 

@Prema University sounds great... please don't leave me out. I'd love to possess the firmware editing skills to be viewed a serious threat to every OEM on the planet. That would be so sweet.