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    Just got my 880M twins!

    Discussion in 'Alienware 18 and M18x' started by Arotished, Apr 22, 2014.

  1. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    Hi guys! Anyone here have EUROCOM Panther 5SE? thinking about sell my M18X r1 and buy it , it`s too much head hurt with GPU, disassembly etc --''
     
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  2. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    Don't waste money on that. It's an overpiced Clevo. Get a generic P570WM or a Sager-branded version of the same machine and save some money. Eurocom and FalconNW charge too much for their Clevo machines. PowerNotebooks, LPC Digital, Xotic PC, R-J Tech and other Clevo resellers will treat you better on pricing. Avoid anything with a Haswell CPU in it.
     
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  3. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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  4. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    The 5SE is basically a P570WM that has an option for a XEON server processor. You'll pay mega bucks for one of those CPUs, and to realize much benefit you need get one with 8 or 12 cores (16HT/24HT) and that is even more costly. You're talking some pretty insane money for a little plastic box because of the CPU cost.

    In other words, Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! - Jacha-chacha-chacha-chow! - Fraka-kaka-kaka-kaka-kow!
     
  5. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    hahahah :DI can not stop laughing
     
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  6. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    Then Fox will buy another gtx880m, I buy the ram memories too, which were even those who said that you run at 2133? , There already buy with memory and gpu
     
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  7. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    I am running Corsair Vengeance 2133 DDR3L (1.35V) in the M18xR2. I have not tried it in the M18xR1 motherboard. I think it will work fine, but cannot confirm it by experience. (Other Corsair Vengeance memory had serious problems working with the M18xR1, but it was not this particular memory.) Kingston HyperX 2133 is confirmed to work flawelessly in the M18xR1 and that is what I used until recently in both machines. I would still be using it and only have the Corsair because I went from 4x4 to 8x4. The speed and performance were almost identical between them. I can run the Vengeance at CL10 and the HyperX could only do CL11, but the benefit of CL10 was barely measurable and has zero "experience" advantage. The benching numbers look nicer. I wanted 32GB for a surplus to play around with RAM caching, otherwise I would still be rocking 16GB and being happy about it.

    Since I purchased the Vengeance, Kingston has announced DDR3L 2400 memory (darn it! - thanks for the info, Brother unityole). Google these:

    • HX324LS12IBK2/8 8GB 2400Mhz DDR3 Non-ECC CL12 SO DIMM (Kit of 2) 1.35V HyperX Impact5
    • HX324LS12IBK2/16 16GB 2400Mhz DDR3 Non-ECC CL12 SO DIMM (Kit of 2) 1.35V HyperX Impact5

    I am almost skiddish so far with GTX 880M. The only fantastic performance examples I am aware of are single GPU benchmarks from the test modules that svl7 and johnksss had the pleasure of playing with. I have not seen a decent 880M benchmark from anyone else yet, so I don't know if that is a reflection on the inexperience of most 880M owners or an unprecedented inconsistency in quality in the 880M product. This would be unusual for NVIDIA, but we live in a day where garbage flows to the public in bucketloads (i.e. Intel's Haswell and AMD products) so it should not be a huge surprise if NVIDIA has jumped to the laziness bandwagon. With no competition to speak of, I'm sure their motivation is pretty low. I have my arms crossed, teeth clenched, and watching to see what happens next with 880M SLI. An upgrade for me was more or less off the table due to cost anyway, but I am open to the idea of having my mind changed (and maybe my wallet being sodomized) if someone can produce some show-stopping overclocked 880M SLI benchmarks. (Single GPU bores me, so I don't care if it works well unless it does so in SLI.)
     
  8. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    but that you recommend I buy, now you made ​​me even more doubtful
     
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  9. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    Yup, I am starting wonder, bro. Seemed pretty great at first, but I'm getting really skeptical because of all the bad performance examples even with the unlocked vBIOS.

    It might be due to a bunch of defective GPUs. The earliest batches of AMD HD 7970M video cards were defective (which is usually the opposite for AMD) and I'm wondering if the MXM vendor(s) released a load of 880M trash on the public.
     
  10. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    I really hope not, you have some suggestions that I can do to gain some points in the 3DMark tests?
     
  11. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    I hope not, too. I would hate to see that for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I don't like seeing my friends here at NBR getting screwed. I had a hard time letting go of being mad about 7970M CF being such a pile of poop, and I don't want to see the same thing happen with another red or green GPU anytime soon.

    I don't know what's happening with your machine. The fact that it is not working correctly with the unlocked BIOS makes me wonder if something is messed up with the mobo. It should behave more or less exactly the same with the unlocked versus locked BIOS apart from not having access to all of the extra settings for fine tuning things. That could be something that a blind recovery flash might clear up. I don't like suggesting that on a system that is booting because user errors can result in new problems. (On a messed up system there is nothing to lose and everything to be gained by it.)

    There could also be some kind of power delivery issue to the PCI-e slots. We know 780M works on the M18xR1, so I really did not expect to see 880M be any different. That's why I question the integrity of these GPUs that are not working right in the M18xR1 and M18xR2... plus seeing it worked fine for johnksss in his R2 and svl7 in his M15x, something else is going on here that is not understood.
     
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  12. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    You remember what are the codes of DELL GPU Spreader / X-Bracket? those used for purchase from the dell site ... I'll send the codes for ebay seller to see if he gets to me, because I've given up the dell, they do not ship to Brazil, both sides , left and right , remember M18X R1 =]
     
  13. Arotished

    Arotished Notebook Evangelist

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    Found them on ebay, 60 dollars each.

    Anyway, some updates. Just got a call from the norwegian clevo distributore telling that the P570W has a long delivery time at the moment so I desided to cancel it, and ordered a AW18 with 4940XM and 880M's instead which will be shipped next week.

    The the plan is to move the 880m's over from my R2 and see if they work on my new AW18 laptop, if they do...then I can sell my new 880m's along with my 3940XM CPU and conclude that my R2 motherboard is damaged and also cover up for the AW18 price.

    One question, are the gpu heatsink on R2 and AW18 the same?
     
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  14. Branzy1987

    Branzy1987 Notebook Evangelist

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    I can bet they are the same
     
  15. nightdex

    nightdex Notebook Evangelist

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    I can't see it being the mobo as your previous GPU's function correctly.
     
  16. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    3MHHT nVidia support plate GTX 680m

    Hey, look at this... maybe this is what is happening to your system... Maybe Brother Arotished also. Brother Johnksss said something about the crashing causing the drivers to shut down the cards as well. Something similar to happens to 780M SLI as well if you have repeated crashes, but it is not nearly as exaggerated as what seems to be happening with 880M. And, it seems to be something naughty NVIDIA did with the drivers. Which is maybe why going way back to 327.23 sometimes straightens it out. (Might be before they invented that stupid feature.)

    No, they are not the same. They have minor differences. If what DumbDumb says is accurate (and it definitely should be) the Alienware 18 heat sinks will fit in the M18xR2 chassis, but the opposite is definitely not true. I measured them and the R2 heat sinks are a shade longer and will not fit in the space of the 18 heat sink radiator pocket. I tried that and it would not fit. However, I did not try taking the GPU/heat sink assemblies from the 18 and dropping them into the M18xR2. That might work. I'll probably try this just for kicks to show myself it works.

    DumbDumb is getting better cooling results using Alienware 18 780M heat sinks in his R2, but I don't know what to think about that because my 780M cards using 680M heat sinks run a good 8°-10°C cooler than my 780M cards do in the Alienware 18, and this has been consistent among multiple repaste jobs. It could be the fan profiles, but now that HWiNFO64 lets me control the fans the difference is still about the same between the two systems.
     
  17. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    And left side fox ? know the cod?

    not quite understand the explanation of Mathieulh
     
  18. mathieulh

    mathieulh Notebook Consultant

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    From what happened to me, this is what I found out so far, on any driver newer than 327.23, (anything that officially supports Geforce GTX 8xxM really) as far as the mobile 800 series is concerned, NVIDIA added a nasty "feature" to get rid of most overclocking attempts. Basically when the new driver detects a GPU crash (I think it need to crash at least twice or trice) The driver will set some type of flag within the GPU (it's not OS related, there is no point looking for some windows registry value).
    The driver will constantly look for that flag, if that flag is set (which it will be, should the driver set it), it will cap the performances to something worse than an Intel HD4000 integrated GPU, that's either on the stock VBIOS or the modded one, in fact the modded VBIOS behaves worse because it isn't meant to run using this restricted mode, which means any application using 3D acceleration, including stuffs like 3DMark, will just crash your computer.

    Using the stock VBIOS allows you to use 3D acceleration software again, albeit at incredibly slow speeds (be prepared to drop from 50+frps to 5fps on Firestrike 1.1 !)

    Here is the Firestrike 1.1 benchmark with the limitation flag set, that's using both GPUs as SLI:

    http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/3210832 (Just look at how bad the graphics score is !)

    That's once the limitation flag is gone :

    http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2247450

    This is both using stock VBIOS and stock values (no OC).

    Because this flag is set in the GPU, there is nothing you can do, at least operating system wise to unset it, that means fully reinstalling the drivers, even using a specific display driver uninstaller tool, or modifying the registry, or even reinstalling Windows will NOT fix this.

    There are only 2 ways that I could find to fix this:

    - Forcefully install the 327.23 driver, I finally did manage to do this, that means you need to disable secure boot, disable driver signature check enforcement, modify the 327.23's nvdmi.inf to include the GTX880M as part of the GPUs the driver can install on top of.

    This will restore your GPU's regular speed because the driver is old enough to not check/know about that restricting flag (although the flag will still be set) but there are a bunch of issues with this solution:

    1. The driver is too old and no matter what you do, you can't use 2 880M as a SLI setup (although you can set one as a dedicated PhysX card)
    2. The driver is just too old and does not have current profiles for newer games which in the end may show in performances.
    3. Updating back to any newer driver does NOT fix this, and the performances issues will show up once again.

    - Getting rid of the nasty flag. I have no idea on how to do this at runtime, there must be a way since the driver sets it in the first place, the good news however is it's not stored in ROM, this means the flag gets cleared when power gets cut to the MXM cards.

    Just powering off your computer and removing the AC won't do it, you also need to remove the battery, if it's on the new AW17/18 since the battery is internal, this means opening the case and removing the connector.
    Then you can either drain the laptop of its power (keep the power button pressed for 30 seconds) or wait a bit longer 5/10 minutes until the power is drained from the capacitors.

    Then you connect it back to power and *shrug* hopefully your problem will be fixed (I only fixed it once, so you will need to replicate this to make sure the method actually does work).

    This seems like a pain and a very lame move from NVIDIA, it makes no doubt that once the flag is set, the performances are artificially kept down by the driver. In fact switching to internal graphics made 3D rendering faster, and I was using both GPUs !

    NVIDIA really needs to answer for this, they are crippling their costumers just to stop them from overclocking their cards.
    How much do you want to bet that on Maxwell GPUs this flag will be set on ROM/NVRAM ?

    This is getting too far and we need to show NVIDIA that we, as costumers will not abide to these kind of practices.

    As to the receipe to make sure your GPU gets crippled, simply overclock a bunch of times until a crash occurs, personally I had increased the Memory clock to +400Mhz (+200Mhz per GPU) which by the way was stable, and had the fancy idea of trying to unplug my AC and see if it crashed (which it did), that did it for me. (I had crashed once before though)
     
  19. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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  20. n=1

    n=1 YEAH SCIENCE!

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    wow what nVidia is doing is even worse than what AW is doing. At least with AW you can see it, this one you won't even know what hit you. I wonder if this affects 780M as well?

    Also, what john said during his initial 880M test run finally makes sense now. He mentioned you had to "do something in a very specific way and in a very specific order" in order to get rid of the performance crippling bug. I wonder what method he used?

    EDIT: Original quote from John below:

     
  21. mathieulh

    mathieulh Notebook Consultant

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    If this doesn't apply to the 780M already, it probably will since all it takes is a driver update to make it happen.

    Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
     
  22. n=1

    n=1 YEAH SCIENCE!

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    You know come to think of it, I don't think (or at least wishfully think) this applies to 780M. God knows how many times I've crashed the driver while benching my 780M on 331.65, and I don't think I've ever run across the problem you described. Or maybe for 780M the trigger is different?

    Btw, how did you find out about this nasty little feature?
     
  23. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    It does happen to 780M, and it has been for at least 6 months or longer. It's just not anywhere nearly as wicked as what is happening here with 880M. It's more subtle and your average gamer might not even recognize it unless he also gets into some hardcore overclocked bench and it will suddenly develop a new throttling issue that is tough to get rid of... and from everything we can see it's some kind nasty new secret sauce they added to the drivers. Chronologically, it seems like they started doing this kind of nonsense to their drivers shortly after a rash of Fermi owners started complaining that NVIDIA drivers were burning up their cards, which was near the end of the 32X.XX driver series.

    John and I have both mentioned this more than once about 780M a number of months before 880M was released, but I'm not sure who was paying attention. Once you get things working right again, it's smooth sailing, but if you're doing something like trying to find your max stable GPU overclock it can be a real time-wasting setback and a major pain in the bottom to get rid of it.
     
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  24. n=1

    n=1 YEAH SCIENCE!

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    That's true, I game first and benchmark second. Never bothered with overvolting the GPU because it wasn't necessary for gaming. Probably why I never noticed it.

    But since we're on this topic, could you describe the symptoms for 780M? You said it's more subtle, so I'm curious what it's like and how you'd pick up on it.
     
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  25. mathieulh

    mathieulh Notebook Consultant

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    How do you get rid of it on the 780M ?

    Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
     
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  26. bumbo2

    bumbo2 Notebook Deity

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    I agree on that.
     
  27. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    Sure... I found one of the posts where I mentioned it a while back... see quote below.

    I tried everything under the sun... stripped out all old drivers with DDU, re-flashed stock/modded vBIOS multiple times and even went back to the 327.23 driver and it would not stop. Bear in mind, the M18xR2 and Alienware 18 were both doing this. It happens on one GPU with SLI disabled and both with SLI enabled when it starts happening. I even swapped 780M GPUs between the two machines to see what would happen and it changed nothing. I eventually did a format and reinstall of Windows on both machines and that fixed both of them. I'm still scratching my head because it make no sense at all how it happens... not sure if the newer drivers add something obscure to the registry, or maybe flips some kind of firmware switch on the video cards or what. It's really odd, and it does seem to me like it is triggered by crashing due from overclocking instability as best I can tell. It's like the GPUs get a "memory" of something that doesn't work so they try to reign in the overclock to keep it stable. It actually works and keeps it from crashing by throttling, but the problem is I don't want it to do that, LOL.

    And, it not actually fixed and I wasn't able to get rid of it permanently. It's just not doing it right now... knock wood.
     
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  28. Blossom81

    Blossom81 Notebook Consultant

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    Hi boys and girls, From reading this about the new 880m's is it worth upgrading my M18x R2 from 680m's to 880m's with 8gb gddr5? no point spending all of that money if nvidia are downclocking them.
     
  29. TBoneSan

    TBoneSan Laptop Fiend

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    I think I've noticed this behavior recently. To play and record Watchdogs I'd run + 120/435 on stock volts. Granted its near the limit of stock volts but it was downclocking as it pleased rather than 100% going for it's life.
     
  30. j95

    j95 Notebook Deity

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    Keeping temperatures below 85C fixed it (@1266/1197).
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3940XM,Alienware M17xR4
    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3940XM,Alienware M17xR4
     
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  31. Meaker@Sager

    Meaker@Sager Company Representative

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    I've avoided any throttle issues with my 780m too.
     
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  32. deadsmiley

    deadsmiley Notebook Deity

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    Interesting. I installed the 327.23 driver to try it out the other day. I modded the inf file and it appeared to install fine. I did not install Geforce Experience at that time. During benching and games the GPU didn't go above 135MHz. Monitoring the GPU with nvidia inspector I saw a blip where the gpu ran at speed at the very beginning of a gane or benchmak, then immediately clock down. I did not record what that speed that was. I thought that maybe I borked the inf mod and just went back to the latest driver and everything worked. I wanted to try the older driver because John got a higher score than me at stock speeds with that driver.

    Sent with love from my Galaxy S4
     
  33. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    There is no doubt in my mind that keeping the GPUs cool is very helpful, but this is not the cause of what I have described. I wish it were that easy. It even happens benching on AC with the video cards running about 15°C maximum. I could be a components on the GPU that is getting too hot, but I am all but convinced it is something sneaky that is being controlled by NVIDIA through its newer drivers. Why it affects some machines differently than others is not known. Maybe Alienware had NVIDIA put something obscure in place that only affects their hardware ID. It affects the 18 with Dell 780M cards as well as my M18xR2 with Clevo 780M cards, but the hardware ID with either system is tied directly to Alienware.

    Until we see more examples of 880M doing amazing things, probably best to not spend any money on that upgrade. It's too expensive to not work right. If it ran exactly the same at 780M with 8GB of vRAM I'd be thinking about it. Hang tight and watch for now, because it might be something that gets addressed with drivers. I certainly hope so. The upgrade parts alone are expensive enough, but I feel really bad for the guys that blew $4,000 on new brand Alienware 18 and P570WM machines with 880M SLI that are slower than the previous models with 780M SLI.
     
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  34. boris369

    boris369 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello I have exactly the same hard throttle with my 880m on alienware mx17 R4

    Just look : Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3840QM,Alienware M17xR4

    I try the mathieulh method :
    but it doesn't change anything for me :\ or maybe I forget something ?

    The latest thing I didn't try now is to reinstall windows, it is possible that it change something ?

    My thread about the same problem with 880m throttle : GTX 880m 8go on M17X R4 120Hz 3D screen problem ? - Page 16


    @mathieulh, if you can explain step by step.

    This is how I done :

    uninstall 327.23 driver with Display Driver Uninstaller software.
    unplug AC power and battery and press between 30 second the on/off power button
    boot again and install the new 337.88 driver

    Nothing happen for me, always the same throttle...When I install 327.23 again, all is good.

    My vbios it the standard vbios for this operation
     
  35. mathieulh

    mathieulh Notebook Consultant

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    This is what I did, step by step:
    I wanted to verify that whatever was causing the throttle wasn't some hidden Windows registry setting, so :

    - I unplugged the AC (I had the laptop set on the Intel HD cards)
    - I unplugged the battery
    - I removed the HDDs and replaced them with my original Alienware's HDDs (I kept the original hdds and had them replaced by my own SSDs)
    - Connected the battery back
    - Connected the PC back to the AC
    - Went in the bios (F2 at first boot) to select the proper windows boot manager option in UEFI boot (because I did change the hdds)
    - Booted in Windows
    - Pressed FN+F5 to switch back from integrated gfx to the 880Ms (discrete graphics)
    - The system rebooted, then I ran 3D Mark to check if the throttle was still happening, it was fixed at that point
    - Powered off, disconnected the AC, removed the laptop cover, disconnected the battery
    - Replaced the old hdds back
    - Booted back to bios to select the right boot order again in the UEFI menu
    - Booted back to my regular windows OS
    - Ran 3D Mark to check if the thottle was there, it was gone.

    That's all the steps I did.

    I also did run Display Driver Uninstaller and reinstalled the drivers countless times before attempting this procedure, so maybe I did clear some registry value from Windows that'd reenable the throttle back.
    I do know that running DDU or reinstalling any current drivers did not fix the thottling at all though.
     
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  36. boris369

    boris369 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Okay I guess your current driver is 337.88 and you don't flash the vbios between this operation ?

    I also changed my hdd by a ssd so I'll try to test with my old hdd but it's strange, I don't understand where this flag can be placed. On my side , when I flash the vbios it doesn't change anything, and with your method, it don't seem be a problem with windows registry, but where is placed this flag ?

    the difference for me, I can't switch with fn+f7 because I have a 3d screen and Intel HD cards is not recognize.
     
  37. mathieulh

    mathieulh Notebook Consultant

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    I had the stock VBIOS flashed back already, that's the first thing I did after I noticed the throttling, it didn't fix much.

    I had the Intel HD selected later on, because the GTX 880Ms throttled so much that it was unbearable, I was using a lot more power to get results below than when using the IGP.

    Also just switching to and from the IGP didn't fix it for me ( I tried that too )

    And yes, I am using 337.88
     
  38. woodzstack

    woodzstack Alezka Computers , Official Clevo reseller.

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    Im getting some 880m GTX's , and I might try them on my M18X-R2. Did you guys only get issues after crashing, and was the crashing, ONLY from OVERCLOCKING, or was there issues before that too ?

    Anyone able to just use the modvbios and stock clocks and maybe even just a single 880m GTX, and have no issues at all ?
     
  39. Lucifer Nymphetamine

    Lucifer Nymphetamine Notebook Consultant

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    M18X r1 2960xm 4.6
    750x2 raid 0 1.5 TB
    16 Gb
    Single GTX880M 8GB (buyed from ebay seller upgradeyourlaptop)
    to me stock bios work`s awsome
    moded bios = error`s / crash`s all kind of error. ''to me'' Ps: stock clocks
     
  40. TBoneSan

    TBoneSan Laptop Fiend

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    Not so, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater :) . The cause of the problems isn't to do with the modded vbios. Its to do with Nvidia perhaps sneaking a performance limiting trojan in their drivers somehow.
    You're still going to get loads better performance from the vbios mod regardless.
     
  41. Robbo99999

    Robbo99999 Notebook Prophet

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    It almost seems that the action of changing the boot drive (even if you ended up going back to the original drive) was the thing that fixed it - the thing that removed the flag you talked about. I say this because another user had tried a Windows reinstall & it didn't fix the problem, and someone else tried the 'Removal of Battery & AC & Holding down Power Button Process' without sucess. No idea why that might be the case, maybe the flag is stored on the GPU and it is the process of changing the boot drive with it that resets it on the GPU. Thought I'd mention this, because no one else has picked up on that being one of the differences.
     
  42. Papusan

    Papusan Jokebook's Sucks! Dont waste your $$$ on Filthy

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    Nvidia has maybe put a code in the new drivers. Nvidia think maybe maxvell lose to Kepler when maxvell gpu coming out? :laugh:
     
  43. TBoneSan

    TBoneSan Laptop Fiend

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    Lol well we're still yet to see Maxwell scale into high end cards and wow us.
     
  44. Keith

    Keith Notebook Deity

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    I've never had this 780m/880m throttling happen on my 680m's, and I don't recall seeing this sort of behavior from anyone else's either? It would be interesting to see just from a research/curiosity perspective if a 880m could be spoofed with a 680m hardware ID and see if the cards still freak out, if it's even possible to do such a thing. If it truly is the drivers, maybe the drivers would leave the cards alone then, so to speak.
     
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  45. deadsmiley

    deadsmiley Notebook Deity

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    I have actually been using the modded vbios to run my 880M at 954 gpu, 2950 mem, 950mv. Cooling doesn't appear to be as good with my NP8278 as the Alienware. It never overheats no matter what I throw at it now.

    Sent with love from my Galaxy S4
     
  46. zombiewarpig

    zombiewarpig Notebook Enthusiast

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    I am using the modded vbios on my AW 18 with Dual 880m's and no issue at all. The only thing to mention is there is no room left to oc with one psu.
     
  47. TomJGX

    TomJGX I HATE BGA!

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    You see this is the thing I find strange.. 330W PSU's are the max size you can get.. Why do manufacturer's not make 400-500W PSU's?
     
  48. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    Because the OEMs don't listen to customers, don't understand what they are selling, probably don't give a rat's butt that it's inadequate, and last but not least, the ODMs don't make them because the OEMs do not require them to. The ODMs (Compal in this case) simply build what Dell/Alienware, Lenovo, HP or other OEM tells them to build.

    500W would not be enough anyway. I frequently exceed 500W benching my 780M SLI setup. Needs to be about 650W to be truly useful, and it never hurts to have a tad more than the absolute bare-bones minimum requirement. Getting by with as little as possible on something like this is kind of a retarded way to do things.
     
  49. Keith

    Keith Notebook Deity

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    The End. :D
     
  50. Robbo99999

    Robbo99999 Notebook Prophet

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    Those MXM cards sure can take some abuse then! ;-)
     
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