Aw m18x R2 Dual 980m SLI upgrade!!

System throttles when total usage goes above 340W. Power supply is holding back these cards. I've noticed while playing game avg. system usage around 330W which is almost on edge of 330W adaptor capacity.

 

Hmm my 330w for aw18 consistently stays above 355W of power usage when I crank things up, but maybe it's cause I have a weaker cpu, but still, I don't see why your power supply should give up at such a relatively low wattage output.

 

Are you sure the 340W that you're seeing doesn't just correlate with lowish GPU usage ceiling that you had before, or is the low GPU usage really a thing of the past now since your new install? When you say the 'system throttles', what exactly happens - decreased clocks on CPU/GPU, or just decreased GPU usage? I'm not sure what it looks like when a system throttles due to the power adapter not being able to output enough wattage, but from a Mr Fox post a couple of days ago he said you'd know if you were getting such a power throttle by a dimming screen, dimming Alienware lights. Ah yes, post #612 in this thread, (quoting Mr Fox):

" If you were exceeding the capacity of a single 330W PSU you would know it instantly. The screen would momentarily dim (sometimes) and the system would abruptly turn off and the internal circuit breaker in the AC adapter will often trip. You have to disconnect it from AC power, then reconnect it to reset the breaker. If you were teetering on the brink of exhausting your power source but not enough to shut down, you would surely be having other manifestations such dimming screen, AlienFX dimming/flickering, STOP (BSOD) errors, games and benchmark programs crashing and similar unstable behavior."

Sure it's a lack of power from the power supply?

 

Well every adaptor have slightly different efficiency, you may need to consider watt meter accuracy into account too. My system CPU stable clock 4.4x4 and stock 980ms in firestrike. I had to clock down my CPU to play this game at maximum settings to minimize system throttle.

 

There shouldn't be that little headroom over your powersupply. And a watt meter wouldn't be THAT off. On second thought, it souldnt matter how fast your cpu is, if you aren't even touching the max power supply, so it shouldn't be powersupply. And like robo99999 said,things should dim and all the other symptoms.

 

No before GPUs were throttlin due to stupid windows update. Now it is fresh install, and ran many benchmarks without throttling. First i've played this game at CPU clock 4.5x4, throttling every few seconds. Hence, lower down clock to 4.3x4, then it throttle very less in game. While playing game gpu power usage always multiply at 10x or higher factor. I'm using external monitor to minimize total system power consumption.

 

Why don't you try NOT overclocking the cpu. See if that would hinder performance or would it eliminate the throttling.

 

@Peter

So 980m sli in win8 throttled but in win10 they dont?
That's very good news.

 

Now I have some questions: You have dual adapters, correct? You've been using them with your previous cards in the M18x R2, right? If this is the case... are you SURE you are using a 330W power brick? And that it's not a 300W brick? If it is a 300W brick, I could understand being throttled at 340W pulled from the wall. If it's a 330W brick, it should not cap out at 340W, because it shouldn't be delivering near 330W to your system at that point. This is the only way it makes sense to me.

 

@Peter
@Johnksss

Are your 980Ms working as PCIE [email protected] on m18x R2?

(you can check this with nvidia inspector)

 

If they have SLI turned on, they'll be PCIE 3.0 @3.0x8 (I don't know if you already know this, disregard this post if you do XD)

 

Okay I am on single 980m now. It works 3.0 x 8.
I didn't know that though. Thanks.

 

3x 8.0 is going to provide plenty for a single card anyway.

 

Yeah. The CPUs we have only have 16 PCI/e lanes, so we'd never get PCI/e x16 for both cards. But if you only have 1 card plugged in, you should be getting x16 on that. At least, I know I do whenever SLI is disabled on my machine. The M18xR2 might function fundamentally differently to my P370SM3 though. But as Meaker said, it's more than enough bandwidth.

 

With the M18xR2 unlocked BIOS there are some PCI-e settings that can be tweaked. Might want to look into tinkering with those.

 

To be honest. I think your meter is not reading correctly. speculation only.
I had two of them and they never read right. So now I use my cyberpower ups backups to read the watts. I have 6 of them and they all read the exact same watts, while my meters were 20 to 100 watts off.

Nope. No M18x r2 is going to run at x16. Not even with one card.

Best to be careful with this stuff or run the risk of a tear down and gpu removal. lol

 

It's simpler to route 8 lanes to each without switches to divert them to the first slot. I would rather it be kept simple if there is no performance benefit.

 

No i dont have Dual PSU but im looking forward to mod one. yes im using 330W power brick. Actually, 330W power adaptor do not deliver 330W output, you got to consider losses. lets consider 330W power supply efficiency 96% ( including energy loss in heat ), then output will be 330x0.96=316.8 - 3w(line loss + internal circuit loss ) = 313.8 average watt system can get out of 330W power supply. Remember i did consider 96% efficiency which is hardly possible. Now if i dont understand this simple logic, then my Electronics & Electrical BEng. and Control System MEng. degrees are wasted. I gone through some previous posts about AC watt to DC watt. There is not any difference between that, you just need to calculate conversion losses to get efficiency.

Anyway back to topic, i just ran game at 4.1x4 and no gups throttle. I did notice output watt, which is stayed below 320W. Hence, gpus were throttling due to lack of power.

Nope it will be x8

PCIe Bandwidth Comparison
PCIe 1.x PCIe 2.x PCIe 3.0
x1 250MB/sec 500MB/sec 1GB/sec
x2 500MB/sec 1GB/sec 2GB/sec
x4 1GB/sec 2GB/sec 4GB/sec
x8 2GB/sec 4GB/sec 8GB/sec
x16 4GB/sec 8GB/sec 16GB/sec

lol £10 watt meter cant provide accurate reading I got it just to get idea how much approx power my system draws. Now i know that i will need dual PSU to get more performance out of my system. Actually, around 98% accuracy meters are very expensive and sensitive too.

 

No it will not throttle at Stock Win8.1 or Win10. Just make sure do not update windows, i think MS has released update to save power or somthin to improve battery. I did revert back to Win8.1, cosz my important work software (LabView and Matlab) are not working with Win10.

 

Not sure what expensive would be, but my ups backups were about 50 bucks on craigslist or 100 to 180 dollars in store.

We spoke of this when I first started testing the 880M. And multiple programs can force this to happen, not just windows updates. Doesn't seem as aggressive as it was with the 880M though.

 

So johnksss 980m works at x16 and Peter and mine works at x8. Strange.
It is good news that 980m sli dont throttle down witj stock win8.1.

 

It works at x16 on a Clevo but not on a M18 or an AW18.
Mine was down clocking on windows 8.1 as well

 

Thanks for the confirmation.

 

Uh-oh, I think those degrees might be a little wasted! ;-) A 330W rated power brick is rated to deliver 330W to your system, whereas the Kill-A-Watt meter is measuring the Watts going into your Power Brick (not from the power brick). If you consider a 90% efficiency then the calculation to determine your max load would be as follows to determine based on your Kill-A-Watt reading at the wall:
0.9x = 330W
x = 330/0.9 = 367W

So, theoretically, you should be able to see 367W on your Kill-A-Watt meter before you get symptoms of an overloaded PSU, and that's not assuming that the power brick is likely able to output more than that for short (or even longer) periods.

I'd still be surprised if some of your issues are due to lack of power supply, unless you're overclocking both your CPU & GPU really hard, and I think you've only quoted an absolute maximum of something like 340W seen by your Kill-A-Watt.

 

lol 330W rectifier required 367W @90% efficiency. If we go by your logic, then consider 10% efficiency 0.1x = 330W, x=330/0.1 = 3300W, lets calculate AC amp. 3300W/230V = 14.34 AC AMP. it means it can draw up to 14amps AC. There are some books (Power Rectifiers, Inverters, and Converters, Advanced Power Rectifier ) you can read to know more about Full Wave rectifiers and Half wave rectifiers, efficiency, losses, AC vs. DC and so on.

Let's back to real issue, I played game last night after down clocking CPU to 4.1X4 and GPUs did not throttle even ones in 30min game play.

 

Hmm, I think you're talking rubbish, PSU ratings are for Power Delivered, not the amount of power that the PSU draws from the wall - simple as that, and when you're using your Kill-A-Watt to measure power it's measuring what's going into the PSU (not what's coming out of it). (I also find it hard to believe you have any kind of science degree given your logic and rigour (or lack of it) that you've applied to testing your system). No, but anyway, I don't think it's your power brick, unless it's defective, but you're not seeing symptoms of stressed power brick based on a Mr Fox post earlier about what you would expect to see with a power brick that's not able to deliver enough juice.

(I don't want to get embroiled in an argument over nothing, like I did a while back, so I won't say any more on the power brick situation; I've put my opinion across, that's all I can do.)

 

I knew that at end you gona say somethin like tht.

Here is game play without throttle, CPU @ 4.1x4 and Both GPUs constantly stayed at Boost clock.

 

Peter - does NVIDIA Control Panel have the DSR option enabled in the Global Profile?

 

peter
My gpu throttled after windows updates.
I heard from you that stock 8.1 would not let it happen.
So before erasing all the updates, I just tried to reinstall nvidia driver.
Throttle gone.

I think it is not the updates that cause the gpu throttle but something differnt. I think updates just change the battery boost setting.

 

DSR is not available for mobile cards yet. Just like how Shadowplay took a few months.

 

You know i have to mess with you on this one.

What's up with the no combat and looking around at the sky.(indirectly)

j/k


Dang, i might need to play that game. it's been a while since i played assassins creed anything.

 

Nope it is not available, i think it's only for desktop GPUs. I'm gona try some mod. driver to make it work.

Alright so it mean updates throw in some power savin stupid feature on gaming systems. I hope next Nvidia driver fix that issue. Nice find godfafa

@Johnksss hahaha i think i got to play this one little more to get on with

You can push this game to 4k with your 4 x 980, graphics at 4k will be stunning.

 

Damn this is very weird.

Two days ago, 980m worked perfectly.
After updates and installing games I usually play, I went to bed.
Before I went to bed, everything was okay. All benches work great.

Yesterday I woke up and ran 3dmark11. Clock and FPS fluctuate alot.
So I reinstalled GPU driver. Then it worked great. I did nothing after installing driver again.

Today morning, about an hour ago, I ran 3dmark11.
Damn it happens again.

Today I will reinstall windows8.1 and wont do any updates.
Only windows 8.1, Dell drivers and games I play will be installed.
And I will check again tomorrow.

Seems like "cold booting" (I dont know what you guys call this. booing after a few hours or nextday),
has some effect on this too.

 

Better not to use windows update, i had to formate system three times 2 days ago just to sort out this glitch.

 

Yeah I think you are right.
I am just afraid that 980m might throttle even after no updates
I had too many problems with this.
Thinking of getting back to 780m sli with win 7, or even selling alienware and buy a clevo p375sm.

Can't use win7, can't updates.
Isn't this kinda funny?

 

lol I'm usin it from past 2 days without any problem. Just dont use windows update you will be fine. Goin back to 780ms, i dont think you wann do that Clevo with desktop CPU is just for benchmark. I'm tryin to fine solution to install win7 in UEFI, no luck yet but there will be solution soon. In meantime, you can use win10 if you have not any special software requirement.

 

Okay using 980m w/o problem for two days sounds good enough.
I will try no to update. Thx buddy.

 

Yeah, that is not correct. Both machines have their place in the world.

 

Yeah, at this point I'd actually rather have the P570WM3 specifically because of the desktop 6-core CPU and ability to run Windows 7 in legacy mode with 980M SLI. I'm going to "settle" for upgrading my R2 to 980M SLI and force myself to put up the Windows 8 atrocity only because I am not in the position to spend the extra money to purchase a P570WM3 at this time. Hopefully, by this time next year Clevo will have a new X99 laptop with 5960X and 980M SLI or "1080M" SLI available.

 

It's a little disenchanting to see these problems with 980m in the AW's. I'm almost happy enough to get a pair and hope we'll see a real vbios for it. Other side of the coin is its about US$1600 including delivery to me here. That's alot to 1. Not be able to see that extra performance (in most cases) using a 1080p 60hz screen, 2. Have my CPU neutered.

Off topic. Is it possible to mod a 120hz AW17 screen to a m18x if a custom bezel is made?

 

And a 120Hz 1440p gsync glossy 95% gamut screen for you right Mr. Fox?

 

I don't believe it will work unless the M18x R2 has the proper slot; as people have shown the AW17 has a separate connector for the 120Hz screens.

 

Yes it can't be modded but you can try to overclock your current display.

 

Probably not, because it is eDP and not LVDS. There is no port for it on the mobo. The M17xR3/R4/17 has both port types on the mobo.

I'd definitely like that a lot, and prefer it. That said, it's not that big of a deal to me. I like 1080p and don't really have a problem with 60Hz. For me, buying one would be 99.9% for number chasing with the 4930K or 4960X CPU and the ability to run 980M SLI in legacy BIOS mode with Windows 7, and the screen would only be a nice fringe benefit. I'm not in the least unhappy with my M18xR2, but I am less than happy about whatever kind of nonsense is causing 980M SLI to require UEFI without Legacy Support in order for the machine to boot. If I didn't hate Windows 8 so much because of its CPU performance-robbing qualities, then I wouldn't even care about it that much.

I cannot afford to buy a P570WM3 with 980M SLI right now, but I can afford a couple of 980M, so I'm going to have to compromise to stay on budget. Unless I can buy a P570WM3 complete minus GPUs for the price of 980M SLI, then I would temporarily steal the 780M cards from my R2 and sell my M18xR1 for some extra cash to put toward a couple of 980M cards for the Clevo, move the 780M SLI back to the R2.

 

It will be interesting if 10 will be able to get some of those things right again.

 

So is there any OC'in software that works for the new 980M with our AW systems, if so please name them and any special tricks they need to work correctly, thanks.

 

There is always a chance. Right now, Windows 10 is actually broken a little worse than Windows 8 with respect to CPU performance killing. Not sure what the imbeciles in Redmond are doing, but I'm extremely unimpressed by their incompetence.

Don't EVGA Precision X, MSI Afterburner and NVIDIA Inspector (or at least just one of them) work with 980M right now?

 

I've tested both with my 240W power supply on my Alienware 17 and my Clevo w860cu with 120w pb. My Alienware have used up to 251w while my Clevo w860cu used up to 150w under Sky diver test in 3DMark. Clevo its 120w power supply can deliver a portion more watts than intended, but it turns off after a while.

 

P570WM3 definitely peaks my interest. My concerns are that it's a little late in the game to jump on the x79 train now x99 is here. But even more than this, if I were ever to have a problem I'd have to ship it off internationally every time. That could potentially cost a small fortune over a life time.

 

I guess your right, they all seem to already work, i am still not sure why i ever went the AMD route (my 7970m did server me well tho) because everything was much more difficult. With that being said what is a safe "max" memory overclock, currently i applied +135 core and +300 memory. I gained 600 more points in firestrike.