***M18x - NVIDIA SLI (Driver Questions, Performance, Problems) Discussion Thread***

Quick Question about Bios. Thanks ahead of time for any help.

I just reinstalled. I used most of the drivers from the resource cd however I went to support.dell to check for updates.

I noticed they had a bios a05 release. So I flashed it because I was at a01.

Then i noticed they have a nvidia bios update a02. Do I need to flash that as well ? or will the first a05 flash cover the a02 update ?

Thanks for the help.

 

The BIOS updates are all-inclusive, not incremental. You can jump directly to any version.

My recommendation would be to use the A04 system BIOS. A05 was designed for M18x owners that were experiencing overheating and thermal shutdowns with 6990M CrossFire. A05 works fine, but the fan profiles are a bit erratic, whereas with A04 the fans behave better.

You can get A03, A04 or A05 in the standard or unlocked flavors. The locked (Dell/Alienware) and the unlocked firmware versions are identical except the unlocked versions have hidden menus exposed for those that are interested in performance tuning. Examples of the unlocked menus can be seen here. Even without an XM CPU, performance gains can be realized with a QM CPU through tweaks in unlocked BIOS. I used to get near stock XM CPU performance results from my tweaked 2760QM CPU... http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...u-cpu-throttling-overclocking-non-xm-cpu.html

 

Thanks. I also just realized that i posted in wrong thread as I have just a single 460m. I was wondering why there is 2 downloads for bios update on support.dell ? One is for the BIOS and one has something to do with Nvidia and the bios ? are they the same ? or do I need both ?

 

Perhaps you are referring to the vBIOS specific to the 460M rather than the system BIOS? There are vBIOS updates in a separate section of the driver downloads, but those are GPU-specific firmware updates for the video cards only (see info in spoiler). You can check your vBIOS version with GPU-Z to confirm whether your 460M has the correct firmware already installed by matching the version displayed in GPU-Z with the version available for download.

Spoiler

 

Yes that was what I was referring to. Thats why your KING here Fox

 

Aww shucks, now I'm blushing. Thanks for the compliment.

 

How much FPS do you guys get on Assassin's Creed Revelations maxed out game settings ? & does it throttle ?

 

HI Guys,

I've just bought M18x + 580M SLI + Intel Core i7-2860QM.

My problem is when I am not using SLI I have about 40FPS in 3DMark Vantage in first test (only left fan works), then with sli I have just 6-8 FPS (looks like only right fan works). This is very strange for me.

Windows 7 has just installed with update drivers.

In nvidia inspectors i cant check funs speeds,

Some screens.





Give me a hand, please

Best regards
Rafal

 

small update:

when test in 3d mark 2011 starts in SLI mode I have 40FPS then after couple secounds slow down to 7-9FPS same situation is in 3D mark Vantage in first couple seconds I have 100FPS than 8-7.

Enybody knows?

best
Raf

 

Sounds like an overheat problem to me, did you check your temps?

 

im not a sli expert nor i used it, but try to reinstall your GPU's drivers, might work ?

 

It could be the SLI ribbon cable being installed wrong and being pinched. I had the same type of thiong going on, but with the screen also having horizontel lines at times too. Dell replaced the SLI cable and it fixed the problem. You could see where it was pinched by the motherboard.

 

So after 4 hours of fight I used HWiNFO64 apps to switch on fans to 100%.
Results:
in 3dmark vangate I received about 16500 points (graphic only) and 22000 for CPU (SLI MODE ON)

Health Check
Result on single card, sec one used to phisx

Why Nvidia inspector shows blank space in card0 and 100% in card1 for fan speed? I have never checked it before.

In this case can I trust NVIDIA INSPECTOR temp checker?

I'm using last beta drivers 301.xx and had same problem on last non beta drivers 295.xx

Thanku you for all replays!

 

Welcome to the Community fafal_fm. We're glad you're here. As a new member, please take a few minutes to become acquainted with forum rules. I deleted your duplicate posts. Cross-posting is not permitted.

Check your SLI bridge cable as suggested.

The GPU fans are not really GPU fans... they are system fans controlled by the BIOS EC. Only desktop video cards have fans that are controlled by the GPU. You cannot get fan speed information from monitoring the GPU and that is why the one card is grayed out and the other shows 100% in NVIDIA Inspector. That's totally normal.

Using this thread, http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html, set up in-game/benchmark monitoring and report what your GPU core/shader/memory clocks are while gaming or benchmarking. If they are less than 620/1240/1500 stock clock speeds at any point in game, then your cards are throttling. And if they are, you should be able to fix that with the information in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-overclocking-no-vbios-flashing-required.html

 

i did what you asked for. the problem is now solved. there was a problem with overheating on one of the graphic cards. the gpu2 has 25* higher temp then other one while playing or benching. i've applied new paste, the overheating problem is gone, and the alien is working just perfect.

thx for your kind support, i'll be stepping by here more often, as a fresh and happy owner of alienware m18x

 

Awesome, bro! Glad it's fixed, and glad I could help. Please do visit more often. This in an awesome community and the collective knowledge is staggering. +1 added to your reputation.

Have a nice weekend, enjoying the M18x.

 

Hey guys, just ran through my windows install (installed a new ssd and hdd set up for half the price dell wanted to charge ) for the second time (managed to really mess up my system by changing the default location of My Documents, then merging it with My Desktop and My music which seemed to produce some sort of never ending loop when accessing account controls - weird).

Loving my 18x and completely converted to SSD's (missed them when I built my mountain mods desktop due to them being pretty new tech and ridiculously expensive), the boot times are just exactly what every laptop should have.

Anyways, getting back to topic, drivers are obviously tailored by alienware to some extent and nvidia update therefore recommends not using itself, im assuming you can just install normal 675m drivers and get back onto the nvidia beta system, but out of curiosity what alienware benefits would this be missing out on? is it merely cosmetic or are they significantly altered?

Thanks guys, if this has already been covered, feel free to say so, missed it on the first run through.

 

That is a common misconception. Drivers are not tailored by Dell/Alienware to some extent. With rare exceptions, they are just ordinary drivers. If the hardware manufacturer refuses to fix issues that are having a negative impact on Dell/Alienware customers, there are times that they will take matters into their own hands and fix something in the name of customer service. I just posted about this yesterday in the AMD thread...

 

Hi!
Is normal to have one GPU 6 or even 8ºC higher than the other (in my case GPU 0) while gaming (bf3)?

GTX 580M SLI - 0.92V - same clocks (I'm trying to find the perfect clocks between temps/performance) - with msi afterburner I check both temps and both load %'s. But the one on the left side of the keyboard is 6-8ºC higher than the one placed into the right side.

Is not just a question for curiosity it's because the system hangs and I'm thinking maybe is time to repaste or change TIM.

While playing I use HWinfo to set at full speed the fans all the time.

Any advice or tip to get the system stable again?


GPU Clocks 780/1680 both cards but the right GPU is rock stable on 810 / 1700 with no problems (the other was stable before but no longer more now)

Thank you!!

PS: Even at idle the left one is 2ºC higher.

 

Cheers, thought they must with these 7970m delays being blamed on driver qualification. Oh well, ill see how it goes, generally keep exactly up to date with beta releases on my main but will see how it goes, I know laptops can be more finicky.

 

Nikos, it's normal to have some variance. It's like that with CrossFire on some systems as well. As long as your video cards are not overheating it should not be a huge problem. The GPU on the left is the primary GPU, so it will tend to run a tad warmer. The one on the right is directly over a fan, so that will make it run a tad cooler. It is also possible that your left GPU does not have the correct backplate. The left GPU should have a backplate with a tin heat sink and thermal pad for both memory banks. The right backplate only needs that for the memory bank that is not directly exposed to the fan. You would need to remove the video cards to look at the backplates (on the underside) to find out if yours are correct. It could be the right GPU overclocks better because it is cooler, but it is also normal to have variance in overclocking stability between GPUs. On a previous M18x that I had with CrossFire one of the GPUs would overclock higher than the other one, so I swapped PCIe slots between the cards so the primary GPU could be overclocked to its maximum potential and that improved my benchmark scores.

The first photo shows what the GPU backplate should look like on the left GPU. The second shows the correct backplate for the right GPU (with exposed memory bank). It's OK for both GPU backplates to be like the one on the left GPU, but if the left GPU has a backplate like the right one it will not run as cool as it should.

It is still possible to have a driver qualification delay release. Dell/Alienware would obviously take steps to be sure the M18x works properly with 7970M CrossFire using the drivers AMD provides before releasing systems to the public. I suspect that task would be completed by now, but if there is a stability issue or driver conflict, they might delay the release so AMD can fix the problem first.

 

Love you guys. Was experiencing blue flickering when playing certain games only in SLI and after searching around I finally unplugged and then replugged the SLI cable and everything seems to be perfect! One question though, could that faulty SLI cable install been giving me poor performance or just the flicker? I hadn't run any previous tests thus far.

 

Both... a loose GPU bridge (SLI or CrossFire cable) connection can cause all kinds of issues, especially degraded performance. It can sometimes get knocked loose with a jolt (such as being handled roughly during shipping, backpack getting dropped or knocked over, etc.).

 

Ok! I'm not sure when it happened I just know I noticed it bout a few months back and have been just using a single GPU since. When I unplugged it it seemed to be securely attached but who knows. Just glad it's working and don't need to wait on dell

 

According to notebookcheck testing on benches and FPS running games they are exactly the same. so whats the diffrence ? just the 28nm ... ?

 

I guess we will need to wait and see what our forum members have to show in the benchmarking thread, but it seems mostly they are the same. I think this type of comment has been posted like 100 times in the past couple of weeks, LOL. Notebookcheck is sometimes not the most reliable resource for accurate information, but in this case they might be close. Below are some excerpts of what notebookcheck had to say about GTX 675M, 680M and AMD 7970M...

So, if things play out as Notebookcheck suggests, the GTX 680M and 7970M will be very close to the same performance just as 6990M and GTX 580M were very close, and NVIDIA 680M owner's will continue to reap the advantages that give them an edge over AMD in image quality through PhysX and accelerated apps that are supported by Cuda.

With 7970M and 680M heading down a potentially slippery slope of power saving focus, it remains to be seen how well they will overclock and whether that will be as scalable as it used to be. Both 7970M and 680M are supposed to include dynamic overclocking and underclocking and it remains to be seen how effective that will be and whether those features will create issues with manual overclocking. Hopefully, things will be as good or better for GPU overclockers as they have been in the past. Optimistically, 28nm technology may lower temps enough to allow more aggressive overclocking than 40nm has allowed. Notebookcheck did have some potentially disturbing comments about AMD ZeroCore technology.

Hopefully, ZeroCore technology will not become an impediment to enthusiasts by introducing symptoms similar to the throttling M17x R3 owners have experienced with GTX 580M. AMD never really got PowerPlay working as well as it should have. Let's hope they execute more effectively on ZeroCore than they did PowerPlay.

 

Hi guys,

I'm looking to see if I can get a quick response.

where is the option to enable Sli in the Nvidia screen? someone is verifying that Sli works and doesn't cause black screen, and they are not seeing the option to enable Sli anywhere ..

anyone know what tab, and where to enable Sli is, so I can forward the info the the person..



Thanks for any help

 

Just had my faulty crossfires swapped out for a pair of gtx580's which dell agreed too.

Switched on and loaded the latest driver from the nvidia site and all seemed well. Reboot - then no keyboard! The dell engineer took it apart again and reseated, but no keyboard either in windows or at the start for the f menus. The dell engineer thought it might have something to do with the driver, though that seems improbable. What do you guys think?

Keyboard shows in device manager ok (used an external keyboard to get in - pad works, oh and one of the usbs not working either).

I've had enough. Motherboard replacement 2 weeks ago, now this....can't even use the pc right now.

Mr Fox, I'm writing this here around the driver vs keyboard failure. The rest is an embellishment of my pure frustration

 

Open Nvidia Control Panel - options on the left - near the top of the list you should see "Set SLI and PhysX Configuration" - click it, then to enable SLI put a check in the circle next to "Maximise 3D Performance"

That's it - SLI enabled (after a reboot) if you have a SLI capable system....

 

^ thank you man.. alot of trouble saved


I bought a 6990 CF, and not good.. so I returned it, to try and then get a Nvidia as it's what I wanted, and it has dual SSD..


Thanks again.




a note to anyone wanting to buy a refurbished. always have the check the computer over so you know it arrives working... Kinda makes someone mad to pay that price and not have something work...

 

I have a hunch the wide ribbon cable that attaches the keyboard to the motherboard is not correctly seated. It's sort of tricky and you need to hold your mouth just right to get it properly aligned (connecting surfaces in the end of the cable not aligned with the pins in the motherboard connector). I had this happen to me the first time I disassembled and reassembled the M18x. I would check that. I doubt you will find anything more seriously wrong.

In addition to needing to be properly aligned horizontally (left to right) the cable needs to be fully seated vertically in the connection. There is a horizontal line imprinted on the cable that helps you visually confirm that the cable is seating all the way before the retainer is pushed down to clamp it in place.

 

I removed and put back in several alienware's already, the keyboard. As Mr. Fox adviced, the ribbon has to be straight down kept into place before locking the 'plug'. There is a small edge on each side of the plug where you insert the big ribbon, it kind of guides you that it is inserted into the place. There is no other reason on why the keyboard should not work, as long as the system boots perfectly normal.

 

Thanks bro's, appreciate the advice


---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?m5plkm

 

Iv been trying to figure out what the average temp is at idle for a 580m SLI setup. I have the GPU observer gadget installed and have been noticing that on average when my computer is just sitting around the temps are anywhere from 39-60C. I feel like 60C is sort of high for what is supposed to be an idling GPU. Also most of the time one gpu is higher then the other, and they actually take turns switching and one gets cooler while the other hotter.

I feel like something is happening in the background taxing the GPU's however the GPU utilization in the gadget does not show any GPU utilization.

I personally re-pasted these things awhile back when I got them but I'm now starting to wonder if that is the cause? I haven't been able to pinpoint anything else so figured id ask and see if anyone else had some ideas?

 

It is fairly normal to see the activity you are seeing. Ive seen it with my setup too. As long as temps arent going much above 60c at idle and are normal under load conditions, you should be fine.

If you want low idle temps all the time, what I found helped out was elevating the rear of the system to increase airflow - I also use a NotePal U3 cooler which keeps temps constantly low at idle - no more than 50c if left at the desktop idle and temps actually drop to low 40's primary high 30's secondary if left like that long enough.

Try propping the rear up and see if that helps with the "cycling" and allows both your gpu's to keep at lower temps during idle....

 

Hey all of you. I'm new to the forum and was planning to buy M18x, especially the SLI setup.

I'm very ''noob'' when it comes to computers, especially when talking about specs etc so I thought that maybe I could ask some info from here.

This is what I'm considering to have in my new and first alienware m18x:

- GPU: Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M - SLI
- Hard-drive: 256GB SSD SATA 6Gb/s (I have no idea is this good enough)
- Memory: 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
- OS: Home premium / Ultimate
- Processor: 3rd GenIntel Core i7-3720QM (6MB Cache, up to 3.6GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)

My budget is around ~2900e-3500e, so if anyone thinks that some other setup would be better, I'd gladly take some notes and advices !
The laptop is ment for playing demanding games that are out there, but with a good cost/performance balanche and I'd like to live with this laptop at least few years without performance issues.

I don't trust computer sales men They talk alot but you never know what they really know -_- (Have some minor negative expiriences with'em)

Even when I've read god knows how many posts on this forum my head seems to spin every post alot more :/
I hope this post went to the right section/topic on this forum

 

Welcome, ArcArcher. Glad to have you in the Alienware Community.

Those are decent specs and the system should be a good gaming performer with that CPU and those GPUs for several years. The SSD provided by Dell is most likely a Samsung PM830 and they are very good drives. For the price range you are wanting to stay in, those are very good spec choices.

Be sure to get the advanced warranty with a minimum of 2 years (more if you can afford more).

 

Thanks for the reply Mr.Fox.

I'll probably stick to those specs and when I've ordered my laptop I'm gonna stick around these forums, so be prepared for million confusing questions (don't worry, I'll sweep the forum pixel by pixel before posting)

Yeah I'll try to get that 2 year warranty. Is there anything else that's really important when I'm going to order the M18x, or alienware computer in general ?
I'm going to purchase the laptop via local computer shop because I usually get some nice discounts and other ''addons'' when I buy stuff from there...but is there anything ''special'' that needs to be mentioned when I order it ?

 

Nothing comes to mind, bro. Good choice on the M18x. I hope you love yours as much as I do mine. It's a real beast.

Please do hang around. You'll find a whole bunch of members that love being helpful and answering questions. That's one of the great things about this community.

 

Hey guys just wondering for those that run overvolted and overclocked, when your GPU's hit 89-90C while gaming (vsync off, massive fps conditions at 100% usage) do you guys have thermal throttle (not the usual power throttle)? Happens on mine, taking clocks to 2d settings (not power throttle state). I am on latest vbios/bios. Propping the laptop up avoids these temps, but was wondering if you guys had this throttle too.

 

I have never once experienced that. Have you set P0 and P1 set at the same clock speeds and both at 0.92v?

 

Yea I have, have you ever pushed your laptop to 90C plus temps at 100% usage - basically furmark conditions.

 

Well, none of the games I play cause those temps, and 3DMark11 and Vantage do not cause those kind of temps. Even Furmark never pushed my temps above like 82°C to 85°C while overclocked to like 850/1800. But, I keep my house cool and when I travel I keep the thermostat in my hotel room as cold as the setting allows. I'm a bit of a polar bear, LOL. So, my low temps may be reflective of the operating environment.

Room temperature for me is typically 65°F to 68°F... colder when possible (when my wife is not complaining she is too cold).

 

If you are very noob with computers I am going to make an assumption you are not doing heavy design work and are getting this for gaming and general purposes. So I would drop to 8 gig ram. Save the extra money for either 7970s in CF or just to keep the current specs and drop your price. 16gig will not be used for gaming for the life of your ownership experience.

 

I finally got this item now when I got to CCC, it states AMD Crossfire X internal bridge not connected. How do I fix this???

 

Wow that suck. The only way to fix it is to call dell to send a tech out and disassemble the whole laptop to connect the xfire cable.

 

I just bought this. Do I get a refund or how does this work? I'm calling Dell tech support but I want to make sure they replace or fix this without hassle. Can anyone help or give me advice?

 

I believe you have 21 day return period. The other thing you can do is fix it yourself. If not let the tech come and do it for you. Dell warranty come with NBD, i'm pretty sure if you call them now they will have a tech out by tomorrow.

 

It's not that serious, gentlemen. It may have gotten knocked loose in transit. I travel extensively and this has happened to me more than once just from the bumping and banging around that happens. All it would take is for the box to get dropped or slammed a bit.

The CrossFire (or SLI) bridge cable is easy to access. It is directly under the keyboard. The steps to accessing it are essentially the same steps you would take to add two sticks of RAM to the DIMM slots under the keyboard. So, that is a pretty normal, user-friendly task.

The M18x R1 and R2 teardown instructions are in the opening post of the M18x Owner's Lounge. Click the link for "Documentation" and look for the procedure for keyboard removal. There are videos you can watch as well, at support.dell.com or youtube... the same instructions will apply for an M18x R1 or R2, so no need to be specific on this operation.

The first time can be a little bit intimidating, but after you have done it once or twice, it's 5 minutes, or even less, to have the keyboard off. Be gentle with the bezel so you don't break it. It's not super fragile, but it doesn't respond well to brute force.

 

Think you might be able to connect it under the keyboard. I am not 100%. If so its not that hard to do. Also if you are going to add more RAM it would be a good time to do it.

There is a pic in this thread that shows the crossfire cable and how to get under the keyboard:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/583324-ram-upgrade-m18x-pics.html