Just got my 880M twins!

Yeah I thought about that. Hell I thought about calling them and seeing what they would charge me to switch the system to a 9570 with 780M cards!

I'm willing to pay more I just want to get what I paid for. Right now I'm mulling over selling this machine at a loss and getting an M18xR2 from Dell outlet and finding an XM and a pair of 780Ms for it.

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I was actually considering doing the same. The only thing putting me is that Dell may well introduce a better revision in the future. I can claim off my warranty and can hope for an upgrade in my current situation.

 

Not an option I would rely on myself.

 

Yeah Dell has a history of not fixing their issues... And in fact making them worse...

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I more meant getting the machine swapped.

 

Eh, its not like I would expect a straight across the board swap, I'd pay whatever penalty was involved in doing so. It's an extreme option though for sure and not something I want to actually do. I'm just frustrated. If I can't get satisfaction then I'll just sell the machine at a loss and call it a day. Either way, I'm not going to keep it if I am not satisfied. It may be cheaper just to sell it at a loss and pick up a used M18xR2 or even just sell it and put the money into my desktop and keep my Inspiron 17R for the foreseeable future.

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I've already had mine swapped. It took 3 days of arguing, but I got there in the end.

 

Was just reading back a bit and I think you just got unlucky with those chips not handling a memory OC, Ethrem. My cards handle 950/6000 pretty well, though there is a rare crash. But it's at stock voltages I'm dealing with. I haven't tried getting my clocks as high as 1088 though. I think the heat in my location would just about fry everything at those clocks XD.

I hope you get your own stuff sorted out, good luck. By the way, what's your temps for that CPU? I use a -80mV on my CPU too, but yours automatically draws a full 10W more or so. I always wondered how the 49x0MX cpus would run temp-wise in these machines, since my CPU almost always gets hotter than my GPUs, except in one or two rare games which are basically GPU toasters more than games.

 

Temps are crap. With the undervolt, temps will be 85 or so under load (chip will run 3.59 to 3.69GHz). I'm not happy about it at all. It's an absolute embarrassment that the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips hit higher clocks at lower temps.

I don't know what is up with my system, I'm starting to think that with the random freezes I have one bad card that will likely give out eventually. It would appear to be the second card in the system at first guess. I checked my pads and thermal paste on it today and everything looks fine so I have no clue. It's not stable though. I already had another freeze with the new power adapter. I guess I am just going to say screw it and drop back to the old drivers and hope for the best.

My ambient temps are 21C and I've got one GPU that likes to hit 89C, one at 82C, and a CPU that likes mid 80s too.

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Well I have no idea on what to say. I know I needed the updated vBIOS from johnksss and svl7 because at 120Hz my games'd artifact like crazy without it, and honestly my performance both improved while temps went down with that. So I'm confused as to why your 880Ms are doing that. I think the haswell chips are so hot because the CPU heatsink is a piece of poo. The 780M/880M heatsinks I believe remove an extra pipe and heatsink row that the old 680M chips had allowed in the P370EM series. I could be talking out of my butt though; since I've only had a D900F and a P370SM3

 

The cpu heatsink used to share the secondary gpu heatsink yes in that model.

 

I did a little experiment with the secondary GPU. It doesn't have proper pressure on one of the sides of the core so I both put extra ICD there and screwed that side down first. It still will hit 89 and 90C but it takes longer to get there. The heatsink isn't creating enough pressure to make even contact with the GPU and I don't have the slightest idea how to go about correcting it. At this point I can run Valley for three straight runs before the secondary GPU gets up there which is better than how it was previously. I wish there was some way to increase the pressure. If there was, temps wouldn't be an issue any longer.

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A shim could do the job.

 

Good idea... if 0.5mm is not too thick, one of these may work: Thermal Copper Shims | Page 1 | Sort By: Product Title A-Z - FrozenCPU.com

Of course, you will need to use thermal paste on both sides of the shim.

 

You know what worked? Going back to the stock vbios.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...1-ethrem-s-np9377-s-review-7.html#post9700598

Still boosting 993MHz pretty much the whole time in games but instead of passing 92C and setting the fans on max, neither GPU passed 87C and the fans never went on max.

There is something broken in the modded vbios, its not functioning correctly in any system that uses it. It doesn't make any sense to have GPUs turning into balls of burning rage at the same clocks. Watch Dogs was totally unstable with it and now I've played it about 4 hours tonight, with 3 hours of that being straight through after I restored the stock vbios.

I even burned the GPUs to the limit with 8xMSAA and the master hit 88C, the slave hit 87C. Average temps were 78C for the master card and 78.6C for the slave card across a 1 hour period of gaming. During the 8xMSAA (it was 2xTXAA before that), the card averaged 80.7C on the master and 80.8C on the slave for the 21 minutes that 8xMSAA was enabled. Clock speeds took a beating though, averaging 955MHz on the master and 952.5MHz on the slave when 8xMSAA was enabled - with 2xTXAA, it was a consistent 993MHz throughout unless it was changing scenes or something.

It doesn't seem like the forced 993MHz clock speed is worth the significantly higher temps at the same clock speed when the card is boosting on its stock vbios at lower temps. Something isn't right.

Either way, my temps are back under control again and the insane fan noise is gone and games are still boosting. I can't overclock but the thermal headroom just isn't there anyway. Even when I was testing lower clock speeds, it was still maxing out the fans.

EDIT: And yes, the throttle sucks for benchmarks... But I'd rather have a stable system with lower temps than high benchmark scores and GPUs as hot as the sun. If I want to benchmark, I'll look at a modded vbios again in the future.

 

Probably need to be asking Prema about this. I am not sure Prema has any reason to visit this forum, so it is unlikely he will see your question posted here.

I don't know why that would have any effect on your GPU performance, but if it does there must be some kind of explanation for it. If Prema's BIOS mod actually changes something other than removing a flag to hide menus it would be more likely to change performance. The Alienware "unlocked" BIOS we have been able to use before this new generation of cancerous firmware was merely a stock BIOS with hidden menus revealed so it did not change anything except menu accessibility. Enhancements to function and performance come not from the BIOS itself, but from tuning what you had no access to before "unlocked" BIOS.

One potential explanation could be a setting you had manually enabled or modified with Prema's BIOS mod may be different than it is with the stock BIOS.

 

He said vBIOS though, so I'm assuming he means johnksss and svl7's 880M bios. Unless he did mean Prema's motherboard BIOS?

 

Maybe I just misread it. I thought it said BIOS. Sorry if that's the case.

Not likely the vBIOS is messed up as far the mod itself is concerned because stock 880M performance is dreadfully poor. But, it is possible the vBIOS needs further modding to fix more problems than SVL7 and Johnksss discovered during their abbreviated testing phase. As he noted, the stock performance is lousy. The GPU throttles. That's unacceptable in and of itself. Excusing it because the laptop is poorly designed and runs too hots is also unacceptable. Tolerating bad performance because the system runs cooler due to throttling is silly. Hopefully, it will be something a good thermal paste job will cure.

 

Yeah its the modded vbios, Prema mod is wonderful and I have had zero issues with it.

I don't know why the modded vbios is stressing the cards so much harder but it is.

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Its only crap in benchmarks. Real world performance it's boosting the whole time unless it gets too insane of a load (8xMSAA so far) then it starts throttling below boost.

I have used a modded vbios before but not on Kepler so maybe it behaves differently but there is nobody running it who has a stable system so I'd say there are issues that need to be worked out.

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100% sticking with stock vbios on this one

 

If I had a new system with 880M I would be looking to RMA the sucker by now and try to find something with 780M instead. The modded vBIOS is not stressing the cards... it's only making them behave and stop throttling. Throttling is never acceptable. It sounds like your system has a poor factory paste job or its cooling system is gimped. I'm not sure which one, but a repaste to try to get it running cooler is the first step. Living with a gimped stock vBIOS because the laptop cooling system cannot keep up with it is an equally good enough reason to RMA in my mind.

 

It seems the mod is only necessary for benchmarking (you won't see above 954MHz on benchmarks).

I noticed that Precision X *does* allow voltage control on stock vbios but I haven't tested if overclocking actually works in games, it doesn't do anything for benches they stay at 954.

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I've repasted a bunch of times. I know you don't believe me but my temps are lower with the same load. Go look at the link I posted, I have time stretches where I was gaming. Boost the entire time unless I was in a menu or loading yet my temps are averaging 80C compared to 90C.

My temps now are lower than they were from the factory and my fans never hit maximum speed anymore either. I was hitting 90+ *with* maximum speed.

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If using the vBIOS mod to force 880M to run at a consistent clock speed and stop throttling is required to have good temps, then it sounds like Clevo clearly missed the mark on the cooling system. It should not be running so hot with so little stress. I'm all about blaming NVIDIA for 880M being gimped, but we cannot fault them for the cooling system being inadequate.

 

There is no doubt that Clevo doesn't have optimal cooling in this system but at stock clocks, a max of 87C is more than adequate (the MSI systems have their 880s running 91 and 92 as normal operating temperature).

I think there is something else at play here. Name one person using the mod that has a stable system. There currently isn't one. If you go look on TI, there is another user who posted the exact same issues that I was having with mine and he's on Alienware.

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I'm not making it excuses for either one. There's clearly a problem with 880M on all platforms. But that does not excuse the facts that, even while it is throttling and underperforming the Clevo and MSI systems are running 87°C and hotter with a stock vBIOS. That's totally unacceptable, and it's way too hot for stock. I'd be asking for a refund if that is the best cooling they can offer in that model. Sounds like the P570WM is the only good dual-GPU option available. I'd be looking to return it and get credit applied toward that system or a refund.

 

Its not throttling... 993MHz core, 1250MHz RAM the whole time when gaming. Benchmarking, it throttles. Gaming, it does not. Playing with Precision X, Clevo left the voltage adjustment unlocked yet locked power target but left temperature target open and up to 135 on the core, I'll test it later to see if it works for gaming (it doesn't change a thing for benchmarks, tried it early this morning).

The point is that it's not throttling when gaming and the average temperature during gaming is 80C for the secondary and 76C for the primary. That's with fans on auto. Since they never hit max (max isn't triggered til 92C), it would probably be a few degrees cooler on max, I just prefer to actually hear my game, not my fans.

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I am running an 880M (single) with the modded vBIOS. I tweaked the modded vBIOS slightly to suit what I wanted and it's working fairly well.

My temps while gaming are up to 86c with the clocks at a constant 993/2950.

I did remove the diamond paste and repasted with AS5 (what I had on hand). I also altered my bottom panel for much more airflow through the heatpipes. Overall I am OK with my system. I shouldn't have to do this stuff to get it to run "just OK".

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Yeah you and to do a crazy mod and that's one video card, it was my slave that was having heat issues. The way Clevo designed this thing, the second video card is tucked in the system and has to rely on heatpipes to run the heat to the fan... I wish they would have made the system thicker to put the fan on top of the cards but then again that's a P570WM.

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I`m sorry but this spewfest you guys are having are just too funny.

You blame 880M for performing less than 780M at stock. Yet the proof you have indicate that the GPU perform 15% better than 780M.

You complain that the chip overclock pretty badly, but totally disregard the fact that Nvidia haven`t promised anyone that clocks above stock was guaranteed. Even for a heavy overclocked 780M, you still think its fair to expect more.

You show some promise by acknowledge that the chip runs hot (not optimal) in a Clevo system, but fail when you mention vbios being the problem and suddenly its Nvidia`s fault. Nvidia doesnt make vbios. Nvidia give guidelines to what base specs a chip should have, then its up to each OEM to create a vbios that is tailored to their system.

Some people here think Alienware cooling system are standard on all brands, but sadly its an exception where AW machines are just better than most (Except Asus). Hence a comparison between AW18 and a Clevo machine is wrong.

As noted before, GPU Boost rely on temperature on the chip. If too hot, clocks go down.
GTX 880M + 4940XM 1600 in Combined score
GTX 780M + 4700MQ 2000 (ish) in Combined score.
Everywhere else the 880M system beats the 780M system.

You say the temperature in the Clevo machine is too hot.
Here is a hint: Combine score is based on a Stress Test where the GPU and CPU are stressed at the same time. Benchmarks shown in this thread shows that when GPU run alone, it beats 780M by 15%. 4940XM run alone also beats 4700MQ by a good margin.
But when both run at the same time, things doesnt go the way it should....

I would also like to use this opportunity to say GTX 880M sucks anyway. Should be a no buy for everyone this close to R9 M295X and GM204

 

Actually, the card doesn't boost at all for benchmarks so you never actually see the real performance of the card in benchmarks which makes them totally inaccurate. That little complaint of mine still sticks. They should boost unless they are in danger of failure from the benchmark.

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Cloudfire... bursting bubbles since 1999. =P

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This is what I got with the stock vbios just now

Fire strike 8486. Graphics: 10831, Physics: 10205, combined: 2951

www.3dmark.com/3dm/3370325

Thats a terrible result for this machine...

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I really do hope that there is another modded vbios at some point...

I love how you can adjust the voltage on the stock vbios but doing so causes the card to throttle because its power is fixed at 1v max.

I can overclock the RAM but overclocking the core isn't possible at stock. I did confirm that the overclock will go through with GPU-Z but when I tried to actually go back to Watch Dogs gameplay, the system froze at +50. +5 works

Oh well, games work fine without it. Going to tweak my memory and see what it maxes at. Really hope its not 450. EDIT: Yeah, 550 threw up pink artifacts and a freeze, 450 is the max this Samsung is going to do stable. Bummer.

 

Tell me about it. I've come to the conclusion that the latest driver changed something on my GPU. I've tried multiple drivers, I've even gone as far as to emulate a 780m. Not one of these drivers solved my problem with Slv and John's vbios acting up. As a last resort, I went to reformat to windows 7. That didn't go as planned, so I reformatted back to Windows 8.1. Same problem. I'm experiencing very much the same thing as Ethrem, without the over heating issues. My core clock at stock never boosts above 954mhz. However, I'm still able to change my memory, core and voltage. However, power % is completely greyed out. But doing so , even at stock, crashed the latest driver over and over by increasing the clock by a measly +20. So after all of this testing, I've come to the conclusion that the new driver crippled Slv's and John's modified vbios for the 880m. I'm now done with Alienware. I shouldn't have to go through hours of testing to figure out a solution for such a small task. Sorry, but my money's going on a solid custom build. I expected far more out of these Alienware laptops than they have given me. I'm sorry to say, but the m18x R2 with dual 780m's is currently the best laptop Alienware offer. I feel sorry for anyone that has purchased these damned 880m rigs. I hope you get a solution to your problem brothers, I really do.

 

Stock vbios should at least get your boost back to 993MHz in games.

It sucks that these can't be super tweaked but at the same time, its not really necessary to do so right now so its not the end of the world to me. Its true that the 780m can go higher than the 880m right now but there's a possibility that these issues all have a fix.

I'm starting to believe that the difference between what happens with the modded vbios has to do with which card its on (Dell or Clevo) as the Clevo cards seem to be experiencing the temperature issues and the Dell systems are having the uber throttle of doom.

 

Your system is acting exactly like the stock vbios does. Do you have the boot message saying that its modded when you turn the machine on in non-UEFI mode? It sounds to me like you're on the stock vbios and not the mod on at least one of your cards.

I would flash it using -4 -5 -6 just to see.

 

Yeah, my Dell card is throttled at times. I believe that Slv and John may well come up with a fix, but patience is not my strong point. I'm even willing at this point to work with John and Slv at testing vbios's out in order to fix this problem. But I've seriously been kicked down over and over this past weekend. To work on finding a solution for almost 4 days, is not my idea of a fun. I actually want to enjoy my time on my computer. At this point, I'm actually starting to hate turning the damn thing on, as I can't be doing work the hassle from both the 880m and Windows 8.1.

Edit: Ethrem, I've had both custom and stock flashed to my single 880m (AW 17). Nvidia Inspector will allow me to push the core clock over +500 with Slv and John's vbios. Stock, the mod I can push to is +140. Nvidia Inspector also shows (Modified) next to my vbios when I flash the modified vbios. NI shows my vbios as just the revision number when my stock vbios is flashed.

 

Does it show it on both cards? Sometimes one card gets flashed and the other doesn't.

Sorry just trying to be helpful.

I hope that you get yours resolved. I don't mind my cards running at boost speeds since they are working as advertised at that point. I heard svl7 was taking a vacation, might be a bit before he can fix anything.

 

Don't you think the mobile variant of the flagship Maxwell is at least a year away? I've read the rumors of the desktop Maxwell coming late 2014, but I don't expect to see a flagship mobile Maxwell until 2015.

If you're willing to wait a year for that, then when it arrives, I'll just say, "The next generation of Maxwell is only a year away, wait for that."

 

At that point you might as well say that you are going to wait for Skylake too.

I highly doubt we'll see the high performance mobile Maxwell until 2015. They might introduce a Maxwell-based high end mobile chip in 4Q 2014 to boost holiday sales and then release the real unlocked beast in 2015. That was too long for me (the money I had needed to be spent within 90 days) and I don't regret my purchase. I was under the assumption that it wasn't boosting at all since it wasn't doing it in any benchmark I ran but that is not the case, it is actually boosting in games so its performing as intended. Anything else is just a bonus and I'm sure we'll get that figured out later.

 

Who decides what is a game and what is a benchmark? That's my question. How does the GPU know? It doesn't know, of course. If the GPU doesn't reach and hold it's full boost clock speed in 3DMark, 3DMark11, Vantage, etc. then it's crippled and broken technology that needs to be fixed and should not be regarded as acceptable. A GPU needs to follow the orders it is given by it's end user owner whether it wants to or not. It's up to the owner to keep it from melting and not doing stupid stuff to damage it. It's not acceptable for NVIDIA or any of its "business partners" (Alienware, Clevo, Asus, MSI, etc) to implement any kind of performance restrictions or behavioral modifications (GPU Boost and "adaptive" garbage) through firmware.

 

Exactly. Well said brother Fox!

 

Its pretty obvious that nVidia has put something in the drivers to sense when you are in a benchmark and when you are in a game. The throttling is immediately evident when a benchmark starts vs when a game starts.

I don't agree with them doing this but my games aren't throttling, its just the benchmarks. With the modded vbios, the temps go out of control and it starts throttling the memory anyway since it can no longer throttle the core which chokes performance even more than the standard throttling of the core would.

Its highly likely that under a lighter load, the cards don't max out either. I think that's perfectly acceptable - its a laptop, after all. If it doesn't need to boost because the frame rate is smooth then why boost? Same thing with the turbo boost on the CPU - if its not needed, its not used.

But yes, something is definitely throttling benchmarks. Both 3DMark and Catzilla don't pass 954MHz according to GPU-Z logs, not even at the start of the benchmark.

 

Just wait until you find a "demanding" game that it does throttle and FPS start dropping. This is a bad thing they are doing here... very bad, and not acceptable. Makes you wonder why they really invented the "Geforce Experience" if you're a conspiracy theory type. They silently push out updates if you let them, kind of like how Micro$haft spreads their digit cancer to computer users that let them.

 

I have evidence that even the most under demanding game, can even throttle the card. I recently fired up Child of Light. Child of Light switched over to my intel 4600HD because my 880m was running at 83mhz. That is way below the threshold in my opinion. I can't fully tell if it's just Windows 8.1 at fault, as I've not had the pleasure of testing on Windows 7 due to limitations. But I've seen even Alienware forum members complain about this latest beta killing there cards even on Windows 7. So from that, I'm taking that the beta driver crippled the 880m.

 

I'm not saying I'm happy with the practice but the only instance that I found that bogged the system clocks down was kicking Watch Dogs up to 8xMSAA which is unplayable anyway - that throttled the GPUs out of boost and they ran at their base 954MHz clock. Checking the GPU-Z logs, it was because the cards hit the power limit. There is a hard coded 1v limit on these things which is annoying. If they would easy that to 1.025v, it probably wouldn't throttle when being pushed like that.

Perfect example - I tried to overclock earlier. I was able to set the voltage to 1.05v but doing so the card hit the power limit so it throttled the core to the low 800s, completely negating my overclock and thensome. Basically, I can squeeze +5MHz on the core with the stock vbios

But running the modded vbios probably would have resulted in a failure of my secondary GPU within months so the small sacrifice of going back to the stock vbios is fine for me for now... its disappointing... but the system still outperforms a stock 780 Ti so its not the end of the universe.

 

Its weird that mine didn't suffer any ill effects from the beta. I think I'm the only one who was able to run the beta and not have issues with the card.

I'm downloading the demo of Child of Light right now and I'll put up GPU-Z and run through some game play and see if it throttles and report back.

 

It throttled it... but I don't really think there's any reason why it shouldn't in this case, this game isn't demanding on the GPUs at all, its not even pushing the core up to 1v and it has zero lag.

Spoiler

In this case, I agree with the throttle. Why increase temps when the GPU is being loaded in the teens?