The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
This is the whole problem with this. Having to down clock & under volt and just flat out baby a high end gaming machine is just ridiculous!
Personal opinion only.
"HAVING TO" I'm fairly sure is not opinion. High end/enthusiast machines were meant to stretch their legs. Not hating on anyone who wants to downclock or downvolt for any specific reason, but it should never be required.
Well you would expect to have it behave how you want it and tweak it up or down depending on your tolerance for noise and power really, having to do one or the other is not ideal.
When youre dealing with 3700RPM you sort of have to yes
Very interesting man. Will read about it tomorrow. I wont do anything that requires me to drill holes or otherwise wreck the original design of my notebook though. Thats a big no-no. Then I rather use software and downclock
LOL I do not disagree with you.
The 44x settings Dell put on this 4940MX as stock was way too much though. Even with automatic speed it was loud and hot.
But yeah, shame on Dell for locking EC support.
Exactly Meaker. Everyone have their own opinions. I try to make it balanced in terms of performance and noise, which is why I bought 970M instead of 980M. Reborn`s trick disabling turbo boost wasnt a bad idea
Cloud I can confirm that after installing the new driver with SLi off the MFAA option is there and I can enable it. However after enabling SLi and restarting the option is gone. So it doesn't seem to work with SLi on the mobile platform.
Also yes 3700 RPM on the CPU fan is a bit much. I would have liked to have more RPM speeds to control and choose from. Also for me the CPU fan is the most annoying. The GPU fans even when they speed up don't seem to sound as loud or annoying.
Yes.. I was trying 345.xx and MFAA was there.. Then black screens when enabling SLI. Infact I'm now wasting time reloading a windows image because all the screwing around stuffed up this crappy windows uefi installation
Fan noise, at least at the moderate level my laptops are capable of creating at full speed, has never been a big deal to me either. Uncontrollable temps were a HUGE problem before we had manual fan controls on the Alienware 17 and 18 because the fans have never ramped up when they needed to and always spinning too slow and too long to react when they eventually did work. Running full blast by force (at their EC gimped max RPM) the Alienware 18 is not very loud IMHO. The M18xR1/R2 with fans that run 500 RPM higher are not much louder. It would be annoying to have them running full blast when doing nothing but web browsing, but with gaming I never notice anything. The fan noise is drowned out by the gameplay.
^ in my case I always wear a headset and I have a big fan next to me that is far louder than my system fans will ever become. Fn + 1 for a game/streaming/etc, Fn + 1 again when I'm done. Simple switch between max and auto =D.
Also, Mr. Fox, I discovered that when stressing both CPU and GPU with 780M SLI (even at stock) I can't let my CPU run free. I was streaming yesterday with my CPU at 3.9GHz (GPUs weren't even heavily under load either) and it just up and off'd itself after about 2 hours. I think I need a second brick. I had 120W allowance and 112A and it never had a problem when pure gaming or pure rendering etc, but it's interesting to note. I think the frugal-at-stock 980Ms allow people more headroom than they understand XD.
Until then I'm gonna have to be changing my settings between gaming and streaming it seems XD.
Then it becomes better cooling for your laptop. You can utilize the cooling at the hotel room, then you can reduce the speed of the fans on the laptop. Win win situation.
I hope they add support for MFAA with SLI soon.
Also DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) isnt available for mobile users yet either. Thats a must for me and I really hope they get their behinds in gear and add support for it.
Just wondering, but has anybody attempted to flash their 980M MXM card with the Dell BGA 980M vBIOS? Its not like we can't recover the vBIOS if it goes south.
Is it me or doesnt it look like its a 5 second job to switch the two CPU fan`s since they have identical screw assembly?
And the M18x R2 can move 2x more air than the AW18 fan?
The GPU fans on the two models are identical though. No point switching them
I wanted to use an 11.7 CFM M18xR2 fan in the Alienware 18. It should fit fine, but the wiring is too short. You will need to length them for the connection to reach the fan header on the motherboard. Otherwise, it should work. Not sure if the difference in CFM is due to higher RPM or what. You may not see a benefit if the higher CFM is due to higher max RPM (it maxes out at around 4500 RPM) if you are attempting to reduce fan noise. I cannot see a difference in the fan blades. The number of paddles and pitch looks the same to the naked eye.
The other thing to consider, if the higher CFM is primarily due to higher RPM, the fan tables in the EC might prevent any benefit from being realized because the fan will not be allowed to spin fast enough. This is why I decided not to waste my time modding an 11.7 CFM fan.
I don't have heat issues? You will never hear me complain about having heat issues.
Either it's meant to be or it isn't meant to run at what im trying to set it for.
I'm a noisy guy and it's a noisy environment here. So noise will never be an issue for me.
I think a few members have done this already. Not sure about links at the moment. The AW18 uses the "quiet fan" approach with lower cfm to keep noise level lower.
Edit: Thanks Brother Fox. There was something about the wiring .
Solder on 5cm longer wires should be piece of cake. Dont even need to do that. Just cut the cables in half, use plastic connection thingy (not sure about the english term) and thats that. Its only 5V that goes through that cable anyway so no danger there.
So we have M18x R2 CPU fan that maxes out at 4700RPM. We have AW18 CPU fan that maxes out at 3500RPM. CFM for the M18x is 11.7CFM while its 5.6CFM for AW18.
11.7/5.6 = 2.1
4700/3500RPM = 1.3
I`m not math genious but that CFM increase from the M18x fan can`t because of the increased RPM. The two fans do look identical but why so much difference in the ability to move air?
Did you notice the noise measurements I also posted? M18x R2 maxed out is a tiny bit more quiet than AW18 when the two machines was running Furmark+Prime95 at the same time
I have no idea. They look the same size though. Will see what I can find
Hey that's great work Brother Fox. It's a really nice way to show people what they might be able to expect if they upgrade to 980m SLI for gaming at this moment :thumbsup:
Thanks. It also shows the maxed out M18xR1 is still a beast that absolutely holds its own against the maxed out Alienware 18. Both with an XM CPU and 780M SLI, not a dime's worth of difference in gaming performance and the M18xR1 has way more features. Also, great example of why BGA sucks. An M18xR1 owner can match the performance of the best spec'd Alienware 18 for about 1/3 of the cost by simply upgrading some parts. Unfortunately, the M18xR1 can't use 980M SLI, but as the numbers show, buying 980M SLI to enhance the gaming experience if you already have 780M SLI is probably not a very smart move. To be blunt, a waste of money if all you want to do is play games. The 980M SLI would merely be a numbers-chasing endeavor, minus all the throttling crap and NVIDIA driver goof-ball stuff that is happening. 780M SLI FTW if you are not a bencher.
All of those benchmark runs are with a single AC adapter and the CPU and GPU on each machine runs as cool as a cucumber. All 3 CPUs have Liquid Ultra, and the GPUs are running IC Diamond or Gelid GC Extreme paste. (Gelid is on the 980M cards, both 780M SLI setups are running IC Diamond.)
^ or have a 120Hz screen and like max graphics. 780M SLI is a beast I have no need for more power out of... but I'll be damned 980Ms don't keep near 120fps much more. Mmmm.
With a 120Hz screen it would be worth it for a pure gamer-boy. I also like having a framerate that is 150-200% (or more) greater than necessary for a nice gaming experience just for pure vanity. Point is though, 780M SLI stomps the family jewels off of any single 980M laptop setup.
I have been using the M18xR1 quite a bit since I have been farting around with 980M SLI throttling crap and, man... I forgot how much I love this old beast and the 2920XM CPU. It's so stinking awesome.
It's a real shame whatever NVIDIA did to screw up 980M that prevents it from working in the M18xR1.
I agree. And now the new drivers don't even allow OCing? What's the point of allowing OCing in a stock vBIOS if you can't do it because of driver locks? *sigh*.
Either way, 780M SLI chews through half the single Titan Black setups out there, let alone a single 980M. So yeah. 780M SLI is indeed quite strong still. My only desires for updating are literally heat, power consumption and the desire for the better CPU heatsink (and more CPU OCing that is streaming stable). The 120fps benefits are actually secondary to me XD.
If there is a difference cfm it may be so. But no one knows
which of these two fans who have the highest static pressure .. High static pressure of the fans can be even
more important, because the air must be forced through the heatsink fins. :thumbsup:
I leave it set there all the time (static). It's perfectly fine, still runs cool, and it is enough voltage for about 4.7GHz without having to change it.
Make Sense When it comes to several oc profiles. What effect does the volts have below benchmark tests with 4.3ghz compared to your normal lower volts ? Thinking of temperature. How much increase temp and wattage?
Hey guys, some people at GeForce Community are complaining about Maxwell not using all of its vRAM and running slower than it should. A guy over there gave me a link to a tool to test.
Yeah, you're losing on the 980M at the bottom because windows is using up a decent chunk. The reason it's not on your 780M is because you're on Win 7 which uses less vRAM for aero etc, so most of the vRAM is still free. My PC uses about 400MB normally so I use okay up until the ~3500 mark, then it starts to get sticky, but that's understandable as GPU-Z shows the memory is fully used up.
Only desktop 970s give the issue, and the issue starts at around 3200MB of vRAM being used if a card is affected. No idea why only 970s do it, but it's only some of them, and I will attribute it to nVidia not releasing a reference 970 card at the start.
Cakefish's 980M (soldered, 4GB vRAM on P650SG) passes that test fine. The vRAM is taken up on his iGPU in windows too.
Fair enough. Thanks for the link. I learned something new. +1 Rep.
I still think it would be interesting to see what kind of vRAM performance the BGA garbage is putting out compared to MXM. Being stuck with whatever gets soldered to the motherboard could have a sad ending if the results are not consisent. It will also be interesting to see if results are consistent among BGA systems. It would also be good to compare results among MXM modules and systems that use them to see if there is much variance.
It's good that the new version of GPU-Z finally has all the empty blanks filled in. It might just be my not remembering clearly, but it seems to have taken longer for an update for Maxwell then it did with 780M... probably since Kepler was well established and Maxwell is not. But, all things considered the update was reasonably fast.
I think your conclusion and maths that the M18xR2 fan is actually more efficient at any given RPM is correct. In fact, if anything it's probably more efficient than your maths indicates, because I believe that as RPM increases then efficiency of cfm/rpm decreases. To me it looks like it could be worth a try.
Glad to see GPU-Z is finally supporting Maxwell fully. I got the update for it today showing up.
But you're right; it DID take much longer for it to show up. It's been what, four months since desktop maxwell was released? And three months since laptop maxwell? I don't remember it being so long in the past.
actually would like to know, the amount of cubic air flow carried by AW18 fan vs M18x R2 fan. i'd think they use same fan makes little sense why dell would switch it up as it may cost more and its more hassle but who knows. anyone got pictures?
Looks like this driver mod helped a bit. Still throttling, but not as bad. At least I was able to use ThrottleStop without things acting all goofy. I was also able to force NVWMI to install by moving code from Quadro to Titan and then putting my 980M hardware ID where Titan's code is. I just left the GPU name alone under [Strings] for testing. Not sure if that NVWMI helped or not. NVIDIA's definitely doing something stupid to limit power utilization... at least I think they are. I hope I can get that P570WM in a couple of weeks or less so I can really put these GPUs to work. If this keep holding clocks after several days, I may try a vBIOS mod again to see what happens. This is with the stock vBIOS.
See how it is losing speed at the end of each test. Ideally, it should not be doing that. It should hold until the end if it were acting right. Might be Windows 8 causing as D2 Ultima mentioned. Wouldn't be the first example of Windows 8 crippling stuff, LOL.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
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Makes me sick. This is more enjoyable reading ..
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