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

Have you already taken the thing apart to clean out all of the lint and dust from the fans and heat sink radiators? If not, that's where I would start. May need to re-paste, but it's usually just a matter of cleaning those out. Being elevated is not going to do much if the air flow is restricted.

 

I cant believe it was just a simple fix like that! I took off the bottom plate, unscrewed the fans, and didnt a quick dust clean up and now it runs AMAZINGLY. You would think that having a high end PC that I would be a bit more savvy with these things. But regardless, it was painless and now its like a brand new computer! Thank you so much!

 

SWEET! I love it when there is an easy fix that brings great results. Glad that it was something that required such minimal effort. GTX 580M SLI is such an awesome product. It's outgunned by the latest and greatest, but it's still a very powerful beast that delivers a really wonderful gaming experience... and in SLI it's equally powerful as any of the newest gaming laptops with a single 680M or 7970M GPU.

 

^^^^^ Agreed - totally STILL loving my 580m's :yes:

 

Im curious, is it possible to upgrade to something better sometime down the road, or is this Alienware topped out at the 580's?

 

Currently 680's are top of the line that you may install and who knows what next year will bring. I'm currently upgrading from 560's to 580's just cause they are affordable now. I would love to get some 680's, but the price can't be justified by me right now.

 

Hmmm so it is possible. I heard that the R1 series of M18x couldnt take anything higher than the 580's. But then again thats when the 580's were pretty new and nothing else was out. If I can upgrade some time down the line, that would make me a VERY happy person. I like my alienware now, but if I can give this thing more legs when I get the money, the better off Ill be.

 

Not sure where you heard that, but I don't consider it to be accurate. A number of people already have 680M SLI and 7970M CrossFire installed in the M18x R1 and there is no problem with compatibility at all. Other than a new HM77 chipset and a few extra bells and whistles (extra HDD bay, mSATA port, PCIe 3.0, etc.) the M18x R2 is basically the same system with a few newer features. A lot of the parts are interchangeable.

 

FYI:
I tried "nvflash -5 -6 yourbios.rom" with svl7's techinferno's modded VBIOS for Dell 680 and I reached a Buffer error that fried my VBIOS. Awaiting warranty repair to complete, assuming they will.

 

I'm sorry to hear that dude. Hopefully they take care of you. You might want to leave out the part that you were trying to use modded vbios to flash with.

I have flash my cards ~15 times with different variants and I and others have had no problems at all.

EDIT: Also if you don't have an account over at techinferno you mgiht want to create one. If you do contact slv7 he might be able to help you out. His signature does say soemthing along the lines of "bricked vbios contact me" or something.

 

Hello

I want to flash my 675M GTX, but I don't find vbios...

I've tried MSI Afterburner, but I can't change settings... and I want to change the voltage @ 0.92V

How to OC my 675M GTX ???

 

What would cause my system to have a Windows Experience Index of 5.3 & 5.6 for graphics?

3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3920XM (8MB Cache, up to 3.8GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)
16GB,4X4G,1866MHz,DDR3
Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M - SLI Enabled

 

check if SLI is enabled in the Nvidia control panel, or check if your running on the internal graphics. and lastly driver problems, check those three and report back.

Edit: also be sure to be plugged in, and not running on battery.

 

Thanks for the reply:

SLI is enabled (maximize 3d performance) is checked, windows prompted me to enable it. But even if it wasn't, those numbers are very low for a 680m are they not?
What's the best way to determine whether or not I am running on internal graphics? When I unplug I am prompted to switch to internal graphics (alt+f7 I think it said), but I have not.
I have installed the latest driver from NVidia.com 306.23.
It wouldn't let me run the index without being plugged in.

 

If you're on integrated graphics you can open the intel control panel - it won't show up when your using the 680s

I'm not 100% sure but I don't think nvidia control panel will open if running on the integrated card

 

Just flashed them today and all went smooth. Tested them at 823/900 with Unigine and Metro 2033 benchmark (DX 11, high, AAA, AF 4x, 1920x1080, no DOF) and saw a noticeable increase in FPS (from an average of 75ish to 100+ in Metro). Kept temps under control (always below 65 C throughout the benchies) with HWinfo fan profile.

+rep

 

You have to edit the vBIOS to change the voltage. That is most easily done with an editor such as NiBiTor or Svet's vBIOS Tuner (neither of which support 680M yet). I used both of those utilities with my GTX 580M SLI setup. You will have to flash the firmware after editing, so be sure to save a backup of your original ROM. Voltage is not adjustable through software on mobile AMD or NVIDIA GPUs. You have to enable the overclocking feature in Afterburner to change core and memory speeds.

 

I'm Getting tired Of This, no matter what divers I install still the same.

 

Sorry to see you are getting those errors. Maybe we can help solve it.

The 0x116 STOP code is a Windows TDR error. This indicates that an attempt to reset the display driver and recover from a timeout failed.

Are your 580M cards running at stock values or overclocked? Voltage stock, over or under?

When does this occur? During normal use, idle time, gaming or benching?

You can try turning off TDR in the registry. I had to do this with the 7970M CrossFire setup to stop it from happening. Below (in bold blue) are the DWORD values that need to be added to turn off TDR, and reboot.

(To re-enable TDR you would simply delete the two added DWORD values, then reboot.)

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers]
"DxgKrnlVersion"=dword:00002005
[COLOR=#0000cd][B]"TdrLevel"=dword:00000000[/B]
[B]"UseXPModel"=dword:00000000[/B][/COLOR]

 

thanks a lot Brother Fox!

about overclocking, I don't overclock everything is at stock. the only thing I did was installed the nvidia driver version 306.23 and after that my computer start acting weirds. this occur During normal use, idle time, and gaming.

well I did a Clean Windows Install againg and it look good for now, weird!!!

 

I'm glad everything went well for you.

You might want to try out the 900mhz core clock ones that svl7 has made. I get the best results with that vbios. It's on page three of his thread over at tech|inferno.

 

The tech guy is coming late this week to install all the 680M hardware including heatsinks. What tool do you guys use to overclock and is there is a modded Vbios out there could someone please give me a link to it? Thank you

 

I just use NVIDIA system tools.....but why would you wanna overclock these cards? they max out any game out there!

 

I'll second what Devil said. Unless you want to show off on benchmarks, I see no reason to o/c the cards. Mine giggle like, "awww, that's cute...I thought you were gonna test me" at any game I throw at them.

 

I gave it a try to the 900mhz core vbios you suggested: the performance now are simply mind blowing. Played Metro 2033 all maxed out (+DOF, Physix, etc ) with fps ranging from 47 ~ 65. Unigine Heaven now runs at an average of 120+ and Metro bench fps average is almost always above 100. This vbios rocks! I appreciate it, man, thanks :thumbsup:

 

Might I ask you how you arranged for this swap? Are you receiving the 680s in place of the failing 7970s listed in your sig?

Or did you contact Dell and ask for an upgrade to the 680m? If so, can an awesome guy ask you what you paid for that?

 

Yup it's a great vbios. Glad this one worked out for you as well.

 

So, let me share my personal experience with various vbios and their performance so far. I tried all the various modded chips skillfully made by svl7. All of them allowed higher clocks and noticeable improvements in game and benchmarks. As well, all of them but one (the New OCedition svl7 posted on 09/08 that you can find here ) have locked core voltage - it's not possible to OC them further through Afterburner - and throttle about 100mhz and higher. The vbios I linked below is in my own experience the only one that starting from a locked 758mhz core clock, allows a wide OC margin, and although throttles a bit still doesn't drop a single fps during game. I just wanted to share, as I'm not sure if others will experience the same results with their own set-up and cards.

In order to be respectful to svl7 and the people at T|I I created an account there as well and posted this same thread to provide svl7 with some feedback on his amazing work.

 

I have a little problem. I just swapped out my 560s for 580s and now my screen is completely blank. Doesn't show any alieware logo or windows, desktop...nothing. I can tell there is power to the screen, but nothing being displayed. I double checked all the connections and still nothing. External monitors don't work either.

Any suggestions.

 

Other than double checking that the cards themselves are seated correctly in the MXM mobo slots, ensuring the SLI ribbon is firmly connected (I seem to recall someone saying it was not bi-directional so might be the wrong way around??? - havent had my Nvidia rig stripped down to check this out so I could be completely wrong!) and that the display ribbon is firmly connected to the mobo, not sure. I imagine it's something fairly straightforward such as something is loose or not connected correctly.

 

What Stevie said about them not being bi-directional could be your problem.

I'm not sure with the new cards if they have cards dedicated to "MASTER" and "SLAVE" but this was the case with my old alienware. If this is the problem, there would be a sticker on the card itself that says one or the other.

I got around this problem by flashing the "master" vbios into the "slave" card if this is your case and don't want to deal with it later.

 

I was able to get at least one to work, but than a friend of mine went into bios before I could do anything else and said he changed something with the PCI slot. Now my system won't fire up at all and gives me five beeps.

How do you clear the BIOS? I tried pulling the CMOS battery overnight and tried rebooting this morning...still five beeps. My 2920xm processor just showed up as well....going to be a new computer once I get it running.

 

The last couple of generations of MXM cards are not master and slave. They are interchangeable and both are the same part number.

No need to leave the CMOS battery removed overnight. With the battery removed, AC adapter disconnected, removing the CMOS battery connection, short across the posts. Hold down the power button 30 seconds, then reconnect the CMOS battery. This should completely clear the BIOS settings and put them back to factory defaults.

If that still does not work, try removing both video cards and see if the system will boot.


Alienware Laptops: Beep Code Table | Dell Support































<colgroup><col width='99' style='width: 74pt; '><col width='399' style='width: 299pt; '></colgroup>

Laptops Beep Codes
Beep Code	Description
1	System Board, covers BIOS corruption or ROM error
2	(*)No Memory / RAM detected
3	System Board Chipset Failure
4	Memory failure
5	CMOS battery failure
6	Video card / chip failure
7	CPU failure
8	LCD failure

 

Thank Mr. Fox....your a life saver as usual...will keep updated once I get back home from work.

 

Thats good to know. When I first was saving my vbios that's what I thought as well but wasn't sure and this is my first power computer pruchase since my m9750 so things have obviously changed dramtically since.

Would you happen to know if there is a way to only test the slave gpu other than in sli mode?

 

I can use my computer now, but it's not recognizing my 580's at all. I download the Nvidia drivers, but it says no hardware is detected. If I go into device manager I see one 580m showing, but not two like it should.


Update, Both cards are recognized in BIOS...going to rus sweaper and then CCC to see what that does.

Nothing has worked thus far. I can't even open Nvidia control panel...

I believe what one of my problems is that one of the cards I bought used has been flashed to the 675m card.

Problem is solved. I had to reflash each card back to Dell original vbios....

 

GLad to hear you got your cards situated.

I can imagine all the agony you probably went threw trying to figure this out.

 

Is 1035 the most you can Oc core clock on 680?

 

Unless you have a modded vBIOS the core clock is locked. Changes made with software like MSI Afterburner or NVIDIA Inspector don't really take effect. They appear to, but monitoring the actual GPU core, it's not really happening.

With an unlocked version of the vBIOS, I don't know that your GPUs would be stable overclocked that much. May end up with driver crashes, etc. You would have to try it and see. Not all GPUs are created equal. The GPUs in one system may overclock with stability to a higher speed than an otherwise identical system.

 

Guys I have a question why does my 680m show only at 324 to 648 mhz overclock for graphics clock? See attached pic

I though these cards where clocked much higher thant that.......720mhz? its so weird im confused .... does this mean I cant even overclock them past 648mhz?



also here is a snapshot of my 3dmark 11 score......... no overclocks ix this normal?

 

That's a great score for stock. Next time it would be better to post a link to the Futuremark score so we can see all of the other details.

 

I looked and really couldnt' find it. Is there a Vbios flash out there for the 580's that really works? I would rather have something installed than using MSI afterburner where I do get artifacts once in a while.

 

There is a couple of vbios' flashes for the 580m's - one standard voltage, the other over-volted at .92v - the flash ensures that throttle is eliminated. Have a look at the following:

M18x: NVIDIA GTX 580M SLI vBIOS Flashing Instructions - Link 1 of 2
M18x: NVIDIA GTX 580M SLI vBIOS Flashing Discussion - Link 2 of 2
M18x: vBIOS Flashing Kit for 580M Download

 

Thanks Stevie, got them to flash to the OC .92V with no problems.

 

Excellent!

 

So I have a query. I have decided to get back into GTAIV and I am noticing that I can play for like 5-10min before my GPUs throttle to where the FPS is like 11. I open GPU-Z and see the highest temp was 77 degrees Celsius. What temp do these cards throttle at? I am running the vBIOS with .92v and the clocks are set to 750 core and 750 memory. What's the deal here? I notice it does this sometimes even in League of Legends but that is far and few between. I am not hearing the fans being very loud. I can feel the fans are on but they are not like super duper high like I know they can be like if I force them to full using HWmonitor but why should I have to force them? shouldn't they be on by themselves? Any help would be appreciated.

 

If this just started all of a sudden and nothing else changed, like a driver update or something else in your software environment, then you probably need to vacuum out the lint and dust bunnies from your fans and heat sink radiators. Or, it may be time for a new heat sink re-paste job. Simply remove the bottom cover and take the screws out of the fans so you can lift them up and away from the radiators to do a thorough job of cleaning. Most of the time that does the trick. You might be amazed at the amount of performance issues this can cause.

 

Good morning all.
I have had my M18X with dual 580Ms for just over a year now and have loved it but i am starting to think that something has gone wrong with my setup. Until recently autodetect on games went for very high/uber on games like skyrim and the witcher 2(pre enhanced edition). However i recently downloaded the Enhanced Edition of Witcher 2 and the settings were only detected at very low, I then updated my drivers and CPU BIOS and used NVIDIA investigator to optimise settings. I should also mention that during gameplay the FPS would crash to single digits at random which led me to install MSI afterburner to monitor my GPU usage and temperatures.
At this time i began to notice how hot my processors were getting (sitting at 60degrees c when the computer is idle and quickly hitting above 90 within a minute of game launch), which i found odd considering my computer is sitting on a Cooler Master running on max. After weeks of searching online and trying various 'fixes' i lost patience and decided to try other games (Fable 3, Fallout NV etc) only to find that the graphics issues had transfered to those games also.
I have run both the NVIDIA and Dell health checks on my computer and they find nothing wrong. My next step i fear is to restore to factory settings and try again which i dont want to do so any advice you can give would be appreciated.

Alienware M18X
Intel Core i7-2860QM CPU @ 2.50GHz
16GB Ram
Windows 7 64-bit
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M x2 Latest Driver 306.97
BIOS A05

One more thing i have never used overclocking and all my software is official.

 

First thing I would do is double check the vents and fans for dust, that should cure the problem, but if not a repaste maybe needed.

 

I give them a good clean out on a regular basis, have never done the repaste tho, not sure i want to risk going inside yet how much difference can it make?