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

All systems should have the SLI cable or CrossFire bridge on top of the palm rest, sandwiched between the keyboard and palm rest. If it is underneath it, then it was not installed correctly. The design leaves room for improvement because of it passing over the top of the heat sinks. That subjects them to damage from heat. The steps that can be taken to achieve better results are posted here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-red-flickering-caused-toasted-sli-cable.html

 

I've upgraded my m18x r2 with dual 680ms to Windows 8. What Geforce drivers should I use?

 

Seems like just about all of the recent NVIDIA drivers have been decent. I am using 310.90 with Windows 7 and Windows 8 (dual boot) and it is working great for me.

You may need to reboot Windows 8 with Driver Signature Enforcement disabled to successfully install the drivers. For some reason I have to, but it's not a big deal.

 

I just received my R2 with dual 680's that I bought from a fellow board member and I have a question.

I went into the power options and set the screen to max brightness but for some reason it dims on its own after a few minutes or when opening a program. When I go back in and check the screen brightness setting it's at full bright. (all the way to the right) As soon as I move the slider the screen brightens back up. Driver installed is 310.70.

Is there a fix for this or is it a possible issue with the LCD?

 

The screen isn't set to auto dim after a short period, under the power options settings, right?

 

No, although to be fair I didn't check that until after I'd posted this question, would have felt pretty stupid if that turned out to be the case.

It actually flickers a bit (dim/bright/dim) when I first move the slider after it's gone dim on me. I just updated to 310.90 drivers and once I have a few minutes I'll see if that resolved the issue.

On another note, apparently you have to re-enable SLI when you update a driver, talk about a panic attack!!

 

Haha, yeah - always have to re-enable Sli after a new install. Keep us posted on how things go with the dimming, hopefully a new driver install will have cured it.

 

Mine does that automatically, too... unless I go into the advanced power profile and change everything to turn it off.

 

Thanks, so far it's staying bright with the new drivers, maybe it just didn't like 310.70 for some reason.

 

I have the 680m SLI and Far Cry 3 experiences stuttering and fps drop from 60 to 30/20. It seems a completely random issue that while I'm aware it has never occurred to many still affects a few people, me included. For more details take a look the thread related to http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/698473-far-cry-3-performance.html

 

Hello guys, I want to let you know that I just upgrade to 680M SLI and I'm loving it. It was the first time and also last time I use AMD cards, I'm so glad that I switch back to Nvidia. Special thanks to DumbDumb who gave me a good deal with the 680M's, and Jonhkss who helped me for installing.

Now I have a question, what is the driver are you guys using? Jonhkss told me that the 310.70 is better or something, even though 310.90 is the latest one.

 

First of all, welcome back to the Green side! Secondly, I'm using 310.90 and it works perfectly for me. Game performance was stabilized in games such as Far Cry 3 and Skyrim, leading to an overall smoother performance.

 

Congratulations on the NVIDIA 680M SLI upgrade... awesome product, as you have discovered.

I find that 310.70 and 310.90 seem to work exactly the same on my system. Other than a few enhancements (such as what Radi324 indicated) for a couple of games I think there is not much difference between the two.

 

Oh and has anyone tried the GeForce Experience app yet ? Please share some reviews

 

I have been using it for a long time. It's nifty, but not something I could do a review on. It simply applies the best settings for some games. It does a good job of it, but if you already know the best settings to use it is not an indispensable app.

 

Hey guys, how to mod Nvidia driver for 680m in R1 ?

 

As provided by the wonderful Mr Fox - more info can be found from the same thread over here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...18x-r1-upgrade-discussion-22.html#post8885608

 

Anyone notice resume from sleep causes black screen with the latest NV Beta drivers?

 

Thanks for the compliment, Brother Steve.

Have you tried using a different power profile for resuming from sleep? There is also another setting with the Sandy Bridge setup... cannot remember what it is called now. Something like hybrid sleep or similar... try enabling that. (That option is not in the power profiles with Ivy Bridge, or I would post a screen shot.)

 

No, I didn't try that as resume from s3 works fine with 310.70 as I just rolled back to them to see if the problem persisted, and it doesn't

 

Did a clean install back to Windows 7 a few days ago and decided to give the 313.96 beta's another shot to see if my sleep/resume problem persisted - it did. I think I have it nailed down now though, I've uninstalled "Nvidia update" and also the "3d driver". Sleep/resume seems to be working fine thus far (fingers crossed).

EDIT: maybe I spoke too soon.....still having resume issues....

 

314.07 has been released, you might want to check that one out brother Steve.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-314.07-whql-driver.html

 

Need help ^^

Just received my m18x-r2.
A quick vantage run already showed me in 10 seconds of the first test something is wrong, as I had 20 fps when the girl entered the cave on the jetski.

This told me that SLI is not enabled (also confirmed in hwinfo64), and that the single card is also not by far running as it should (I get in the 100fps the first seconds on my single 7970m in my m17x-r2).

Shows 2 x GTX 680m in Device manager, temps are good. (sidenote: I have the battery out of the system, as I always use it on power and never use the battery, don't think this matters, but still mentioning it)
When I open Nvidia Control Panel, I have no option to select SLI (also doesn't show in the menu, instead it shows a PhysX config item).

Any thoughts on troubleshooting this while I download the 121 Windows updates ?

 

Edited because I'm stoopid sometimes..........see below.

 

It is showing PhysX, but just PhysX, not SLI.
I also tried both the most recent NVidia drivers as well as the Dell drivers.

 

I'm sorry, I meant if it's not giving you the option to enable SLI, I'm easily distracted when I type.

 

Checked and reseated the SLI cable, no difference

I'll start with a fresh install, can't troubleshoot if I didn't install the system myself in the order I want ^^

 

Do both cards show up in device manager and are they both free of any error codes? - I know you have reseated the Sli cable but maybe the secondary gpu is not seated in the PCIe slot properly.

 

Yes, both show up in Device Manager without errors. Reinstalling currently, let's see what I get.
The weirdest thing is also not just the SLi not working but a single 680m not performing even 1/4th of my 7970m, so definitely something is wrong (and I hope software related )

 

Gah...

Just reinstalled Win7, installed correct driver order and used the Dell/AW NVidia drivers.
Used this order:
1. Chipset Driver
2. USB 3.0 Driver (11xR3, 14x, 17xR3, 18x only)
3. Intel RST Driver / Intel Management Engine
4. Freefall Sensor Driver (Optional - many members choose not to install this. Also, as long as your drive supports it, the 'App' will work with aftermarket drivers)
5. Alienware On-Screen Display Driver
6. INTEL/AMD/NVIDIA Display Driver

That's where I stopped with the drivers, to make sure some other device driver isn't causing this problem.

But same thing, both GTX 680m show up in Device Manager working correctly, yet SLI not showing up in Nvidia Control Panel (Only PhysX).

So far for that plan. Help. ^^

 

DirectX installed and up to date? Download Download and Install DirectX9 End User Runtime | Install DirectX, DX9 from Official Microsoft Download Center

Did you clean install the whole OS?

 

Yes, clean install all the way.

It really seems like a software problem to me (also did the directx update above by the way).

In HWiNFO64 I see the 2 GPU's also, both Dell GPU's etc, original factory stuff.
What I noticed is that GPU #0 shows 4096Mb of memory, and GPU #1 shows 2048Mb of memory? Does the first GPU show this due to SLI counting the memory from the 2nd together with the first? This would at least indicate some form of SLI, although I can't enable it in Nvidia Control Panel and the benchmark clearly shows something is very wrong.

Made a separate thread for this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ere-performance-problems-non-working-sli.html
As I think this might take some posts to troubleshoot

 

Hello.

I have weird lines showing up across the screen when I play games with sli.
It happens both on laptop monitor and external monitor so it's not monitor issue.
Everything's fine when not gaming or if I disable sli.
I've tried reseating both cards and the sli cable.
I did take out that cable from R1 since I bought R2 with just one GPU.
Could the sli cable be damaged or something?
Hopefully it's not the secondary card.
I can't try putting it as primary card yet because i don't have any thermal paste for now.

 

Try re-seating the GPUs in their existing PCI-e slots. I have run into that before with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. While you have the GPUs removed, clean the contacts with a lint-free microfibre cloth or electronics contact cleaner. If you don't have either of those things, blow out any dust that might be in the contacts.

Are the lines more like distortions of what is on your screen, or are they white or colored lines? Yes, it could be the SLI bridge cable. It possible, but less likely to be something wrong with the GPU.

 

Ok, I'll try cleaning it again later today.
They are small white horizontal lines.
They don't always appear either.
But the performance seems to be really bad in games that support sli.
That's why I thought it's sli cable.
It's a lot more smooth with no white lines if I disable it.

 

Are the lines like the ones illustrated on this thread?: [Guide] Curing Shorted Support Plate - GTX 580M (Error Code 43 - Revision FF error) - if so, the problem discussed there could be your culprit- your gpu/s might be shorting on the support plate. A fix is included in the thread. Sounds to me like your secondary gpu is shorting out on the backplate as you don't get it if Sli is disabled.

Let us know if this is what you are experiencing.

 

Oh no!
It's not even close to that. That looks really bad.
It's bad enough to bother me but the game performance is the real problem.
I took a quick picture from FIFA 13.
The lines move around, disappear and show up again.
It happens in every game that supports sli.
There's nothing wrong outside games or in the BIOS like the problem in that thread.
Maybe cleaning and reseating is all I have to do. I'll report back.

 

Still check what Steve suggested while you have the GPUs out. There should be a black rubber gasket under the back plate that should be larger than the metal plate and extend beyond it all the way around the plate, and possibly some plastic insulators in the corners where the heat spreaders are attached. If the metal back plate comes into contact with anything on the PCB is it going to case issues. Just give it a look to be sure everything is peachy.

 

I took the cards out and cleaned the contacts with a microfibre cloth.
I also checked if there's any contact with the metal plate. Everything looks fine.
After enabling sli, those lines are back again.
and they're not white. I tried Far Cry 3 and some of them are colored.
However, I was having performance issue along with the lines before.
Games seem to be running fine now. No frame skipping or anything like before.
But the lines are still there from time to time.

 

If you are running stock clock speeds on the GPUs, then I would suspect the SLI bridge cable at this point. I still doubt it is a problem with one of the GPUs.

I looked through your last few posts and did not notice if you had tried different driver versions. You might want to give that a shot and see if it changes anything if you haven't already tried that. I recently saw an example of drivers causing this kind of thing for an M18x owner in the Dell Community. He did not have the issue using an older driver.

 

I don't know if it's a coincidence.
I tried updating the vBios to 80.04.5B.00.02 on both cards.
After that, I've been playing FIFA with sli on for about 30 minutes and there's no white/colored lines or performance drop so far.
Hopefully it stays that way.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
---
It does seems fixed.
Trying Far Cry 3 now. Those lines were the worst in FC3.
Now they seem to be gone.

 

Cool... that's awesome. I hope it stays fixed, too.

 

So, I don't know if this is redundant. If it was already discussed I apologize and mods feel free to delete this post.

I was wondering what's up with the new Unigine Heaven 4.0. I downloaded and installed it yesterday. I tried to set it as the former version for comparison and I see that they included out of focus image blur, and everything overall looks more vibrant and defined. However, the fps are a bit lower than same settings in ver. 3 and even with high fps the whole camera movement sutters a bit. There's no clocks or fps drop when it happens. I haven't played with it a lot. Just installed and tried it. Anyone experienced something similar?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Afaik 4.0 uses AO by default, so in hires you have a lack of performance.

 

Yes, that's understandable, but thing is even with high fps there's some stuttering. I never see in the former version, even maxing out settings and getting lower fps. I still have to give it a serious try and do some tweaking though, I'm not really concerned. Thanks for replying Weller.

 

Well, it seems that one of my 580’s is dead. I’m getting a code 43 and can’t seem to get rid of it. I’ve tried taking the back plate off and put electrical tape between it and the card. I’ve even tried putting the card into the primary slot and the computer won’t even boot up with the card in that slot.

 

I noticed that, too. I thought maybe somebody at Unigine just got a little sloppy with the benchmark. When it looks choppy at 75-100+ FPS, I start looking at a problem with the software. It's not all the way through the benchmark for me. Some parts are very smooth regardless of frame rate. It think that maybe it does it the most at the point where the camera moves through the windows of the small tower and across the roof tops.

Oh man, I am very sad to hear that. Hopefully, Dell/Alienware still has you covered under warranty and will dispatch a replacement GPU right away.

 

Recently, I saw some people discussing about updragding BIOS for 680M.
My BIOS is : 80.04.33.00.32 (P2051-b503)
Do I need to up upgrade?

 

I wish that was the case, but I bought these via EBay, so I'll have to find another one here in the forums or on EBay again.

 

No, that is not necessary unless you have an M18x R2 running Windows 8 that needs support for UEFI Secure Boot/Fast Boot options. That is the only purpose the newer vBIOS serves. You can use that vBIOS if you wish, but you will not likely see any benefit from it. I tried it and although it added no value, it still worked fine.