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

Best to just watch temps and fan speed while it's idling...Then you can get an idea of what is going on and what temps are kicking the fans on. Also to make sure it's only one fan and not cpu/gpu fans both spinning up.

 

Thing is John, this is when the screen has turned itself off. Ive had gpuz open in the background and when i've brought the system back up to normal, the temps are in line - well, they havent exceeded 63c which is the level that the fans seem to kick in at anyway.

It just seems like they are in an almighty rush to cool the primary and come on strong when they dont need to. I've had my hand at the rear and the cpu/secondary fans are super-silent with little or no activity but the primary kicks out lots of air whilst this happens. Like I say, the primary does cut out relatively quickly (as if its done its job and goes off) and gpuz show temps of no more than 62 or 63c when the screen come back up - I just dont know why it comes on full tilt all of a sudden whilst the screen is off and no activity. It happens at random and I have not yet been able to find a procedure to reproduce.

Ive monitored temps whilst the system is in normal use and the gpu fans take "turns" in spinning up to cool each gpu. One gets up to 62-3c and the fans kick to cool and then the other gpu heats up till it gets to the same temp and then it kicks to cool whilst the other is maybe low 40c mark. That is perfectly normal, as far as I know but its just the activity when the system turns of the display and idles with the screen off that seems to cause the erractic fan activity.

 

Maybe try logging the temperatures (I know MSI Afterburner can do this) so you can see if ther is any variation in temp before the fan kicks in?

I'll have a look tonight on mine.

 

Meaning more along the lines of setting it on it's side and you physically looking at the fans. Remember, you can rotate the screen so it's in 180 mode.

 

Just sat here now and it kicked off again on my other system still in my possession. I had gpuz and hwmonitor in the background whilst the system had its screen turned off with no activity other than browser open with 3 tabs minimized.

Here are the results literally 2 seconds after the left gpu fan kicked in on high - both show primary gpu no more than 63c (although I didnt click "max" in gpuz, I did after taking the screenie and it showed the same....63c max.

Spoiler

 

So are all three fans on now?

 

Heck no. Its only the primary that comes on at this stage. The screenshot is right after the high fan activity for the left gpu has happened. I took the shot as soon as I could and no other fans were on.

 

Humm, after 5 minutes just sitting there only the cpu fan is running now...

 

Thats about the same as what mine does. Too. Interestingly, the behavior was very similar with my AMD 6990M system after the A05 BIOS update.

I actually thought it was the CPU fan spinning up at first.

 

John, have you experienced this kinda fan activity when the system has been left idle/screen off ?

Sentinel, I seem to recall it too with my 6990 based system when it was on A05 - maybe the fan isnt getting the signal to kick in when it should.

 

Could also explain why GPU1 is always 5-10C hotter than GPU2 I suppose.

 

Might be worth reflashing to an earlier bios - maybe I will do it later as they are all available from A02 onwards.

 

Lol. You live in England... You could probably just unplug the fans.

 

Hahaha - yeah, probably could this time of year. Its f-f-f-freezing today, could do with some Sydney Sunshine if you wanna send some over (obvioulsy when its back up!)

 

We haven't had much of that lately. Coldest summer since 1960 so far.

 

Climate change and all that I guess. Wish my parents had stayed in Sydney instead of coming back to the UK in the early 70's - my Brother is Australian but sadly, not me......

Regarding the wild fan activity, I've logged temps from Afterburner in the background, whilst it was left idling with the screen off and 3 tabs open. Sure as eggs are eggs, the left gpu fan ramped up high for a few minutes before settling again. At this point, there was no activity from cpu or right gpu fan - just primary.

Spoiler

As you can see, the temps dont actually get out of hand but the fan is getting a signal to come on full thwack, more or less, for no real reason (that I can see anyway).

I've attached a copy of the log - the left gpu fan came on at around 12:54pm, right down the bottom. Activity prior to that looked normal - to me.

 

I was wondering what is the procedure in case of a failed vBios flash.
I am always afraid to break something when I flash my SLI for overvolt and overclock purposes.
Can you please tell me if it's possible to recover from this?

 

Yes it's possible. Click the link in Mr Fox's sig.



Edit:
Ok, so today I let it sit for like 30 minutes and noticed that gpu fan 1 kicked into high gear. 3500 rpms to be exact. Second gpu fan kicked in also. (2000 rpm's) And cpu fan was on low. This stayed like this for about a minute and a half. then both gpu fans cut off. and are still off....4 minutes later. Im sitting with google chrome open and a few other windows open.

Edit:
Now they are all off.

 

John, are you running the modded bios or Dell A05? - did your system turn the screen off during this 30 minutes? - I've been noticing that this "high speed" left gpu fan activity only happens whilst the screen is off. Otherwise, fan speed never gets to that kind of level.

Side Note: I tested one of the rigs I have here with Bios A04 and it made no difference to the activity. I've got A02 and A03 downloaded to maybe try out. Noticed that A03 notes say the fix was to resolve 8 beeps at DC Boot with Nvidia systems - I dont know if "everyone" who may still be on A03 with 580's gets this symptom or if its sporadic. I may well give it a shot on the rig that is to go back soon....that's my "guinea pig" rig atm lol

Another Side Note: Guinea pig system just span into high again with screen off - left gpu fan only. Temps max 62c. Fans span on high for about a minute, temps rapidly dropped to 42c and then fan cut out again. Normal service resumed.

Cant for the life of me think WHY its revving up sooo much. Its not quite as audible as a bios flash but still, its pretty fierce for a system doing next to nothing.

 

That time the screen was on. Going to let it turn it self off.
You know you can use hwinfo to see the fan speeds on the task bar right. I kind of like that little feature.

Right now both my fans are off.

Edit:
Screen is off and both fans are still off.

 

Is Hwinfo still "buggy" - last time I used it, it made my system lock up big time. I recall having to turn something off like LPC or something so that the system wouldnt freeze/lock up.

 

Im only using it to monitor and not control fans. But the new version of this software seems to work fine from what RV said.

Edit:
Ran a cpu test and all fans kicked on, but gpu1 fan kicked in high gear and stayed on the longest....Interesting...

 

You using Hwinfo64 John? - I would use it too, purely to monitor hardware and not control fans....do you still need to disable LPC/EC to avoid lockups?

You got any hunches about what's causing the erratic fan behaviour ? - my test "guinea pig" system is buzzing in an out of high fans/normal fans quite regularly !

 

HWiNFO64 3.90-1445 is working great for me. No longer buggy like it used to be. It works great for manipulating fan behavior and monitoring temps, clocks, etc. This works without even installing the HWiINFO driver and I use the portable version, so there is nothing in the registry. I'm having no shutdown problems or any of the issues it used to produce.

I have my M18x set up with sleep disabled and the screen never turns off because I have that disabled as well. I notice the same type of fan activity but temps are great and I don't really see it as being an issue. It's not causing any problems from what I can tell. I notice that GPU0 fluctuates between about 45°C to 62°C at idle and GPU1 stays below 50°C at idle just about all the time. Under load, temps are much closer to being equal and GPU0 runs a little warmer because GPU1 starts out at a lower temperature.

It would sort of make sense that GPU0 fan should spin up more frequently while idle as GPU1 is never going to have any load in 2D operation because SLI/CF is not being invoked. It's not until 3D demand kicks in that multi-GPU performance comes into play. The rest of the time, GPU1 is just sort of tagging along on the ride, waiting for a job to do.

I used to have similar fan activity with AMD video cards and never really paid much attention to it. It was not quite as pronounce, but that was before A05 was introduced to prevent overheating on AMD cards. I have always experienced a difference in GPU temps with AMD CF similar to what I am seeing with SLI. On that basis, I think it may be normal as long as the temps are controlled and there is no overheating.

Remembering what we heard on the conference call with Bill and Louis, the GPU fans are essentially chassis fans on laptops and the BIOS probably makes no distinction between AMD and NVIDIA GPUs modules. Whatever they did to prevent overheating the with AMD cards may have an influences on fans with NVIDIA cards, too. (These are logical assumptions on my part and I could be full of baloney.)

 

Fox, I'm sure if you let your rig turn the screen off (to test) you would hear just how loud the primary fan comes on at. Like John said, its 3400rpm - so close to max fans - on a system that is essentially idle. I don't think that it should be like that - I know it is keeping temps in line as max is ballpark 62c but if the fans came on sooner at a lower level, there would be no need to "wake the neighbours" - so to speak.

I think my only gripe really (as temps are under control) is why does gpu fan 0 come on at such force when it could cool sooner at a lower level...if you get me? - instead of gung-ho "balls out" fan activity.

I have reflashed A03 now to see if that makes a difference. Fox, you may also be interested to hear that whilst on A03, I have also tested for latency with Nvidia 290.36 - still there, maybe not as prominent but still getting yellow peaks using DPC checker and latency monitor is just as bad. I seem to recall gunner saying that A03 had no latency issues with nvidia drivers but that doesnt seem to be the case.

Back to this issue. Will let the system do its thing on A03 and see what gives.

 

Good info, Steve. Let us know about A03 and the fan behavior... looking forward to hearing what you find out I'm using the unlocked A05 and love all the options. I am not sure I would want to drop down to A03 unless there is an unlocked version of that also. (I'm sure there is, but I haven't looked for it.)

If I recall, 'gunner had to flash A03 more than once to get the DPC latency level down to what it was, and I'm not sure it ever returned to the level it was before he flashed A04 (which was the current BIOS at that time). You may need to reflash A03 another time or two to erase any remnants of A05. It seems the Insyde BIOS is more persistent (much larger file with more data) than the old minimalist Award and Phoenix BIOS were.

I was doing some experimenting with recreating Alien Respawn on my Crucial M4 from "nothing" but a factory HDD backup image that contained the Respawn partition (which was successful, by the way) and reinstalled Windows a few days ago. Before I went through my ritual of disabling everything with sleep, hibernation and display power settings is when the fan behavior was most noticeable for me. It still does it with the display staying on all the time, but maybe a little less frequent.

 

Thanks Fox.

Well, flashing to A03 had no effect on the gpu fan issue - maybe vBios?..... It still ramps up high. Whilst I am in "test mode", where is the link for unlocked A05? (Im too lazy atm to look for it lol) and are there any prerequisites to use it/flash it?

 

It's on the Tech|Inferno web site. There may be a link someplace here at NBR, not sure. It's a factory BIOS with hidden menus unhidden, so it's essentially identical otherwise to the Dell A05. It flashes exactly the same and is identified as the same BIOS.

 

You have to look at both sides of the coin...
While the fan may do that from time to to time...Look at how long all the fans stay off. which is nice when browsing the web in a library or for bragging purposes of "look how quite my laptop is" (mac users) Because for as big as it is...it's pretty darn quiet.

 

It sure is quiet on the whole. I just dont like full blast fans out of nowhere lol - I am actually gonna plug in my U3 cooler and see what gives with that on.....'cos that is silent as can be.

Side note: Funny thing is, I have both rigs on and its really only the older one thats kicking off with the fans....I think its happened once with my new system - maybe thats one of the reasons the other is going back !

 

hi all and happy new year

with which soft you edit and change the bios of gtx 580m ? nibitor dont work with this card

many thanks

 

To my knowledge, there is no program like NiBiTor that works with the 580M. If you are looking for a vBIOS for the 580M, you should be able to find assistance with it here. MVKTECH should be releasing an update to NiBiTor at some point.

 

Ok Mr.Fox, thank you

 

Is the system with the funky fan behavior the one you received first, with the AlienFX issues and odd behavior?

 

Well, I gave up on trying various Bios' to see if they altered the fan behaviour. I decided to plug in my U3 cooler and see what happened with that on with its fans on max (which are really silent anyway).

I left the system again with 3 tabs open on IE9, for about an hour....came back periodically to see if fans were kicking off and they werent. Brought the system back out of "screen off" state and checked HWMonitor for the results. Gotta say, I was gobsmacked to see how cool things were. Check it out. (room temps not really any different from previous shots).

If you look back at my previous screenies, you can see just how much lower the temps are ! - bearing in mind, this is after an hour of idle with the same test method, I think its pretty much a miracle LOL !

Side note: the other system has been left idle, this time with NO browser open and hasnt kicked off once.

 

Really? I have a U3 cooler and the fans make no ifference at all to my temps under load or idle.

 

Yep. I havent tested any differently from before - ambient room temps were the same or thereabouts, so thats not a factor. The only difference from my last HWmonitor shot was that it was left running for an hour or so (at idle, screen off 3 tabs open) with my U3 on highest setting.

You can see from the figures that during that time, nothing got over 50c - including cpu. Compared to the other shot, it tells me that its doing a great job of keeping things cool - I dont even think the system fans kicked in unlike before when they were coming on hard and fast.

 

I have a U3 cooler and I dont use it.

 

Actually, both systems show the same kind of behaviour / activity. The primary on both spins up high when left idle with open browser / screen off.

The newest system (in my sig) is fine when the U3 is on, it doesnt balk at all - no high fan speeds out of left field, which is good - cant help thinking that it shouldnt be like that though...having to use a cooler to eradicate "the issue"

 

Is it normal for the FPS (shown using Fraps) to bounce all over the place? For example, with Battlefield 3, my FPS dance all over the place depending on what I'm looking at or where I'm at on the map. It'll usually dance between 39-75 FPS on Ultra, rarely touching those lower and upper bounds, but still possible at times. Even Skyrim does the same thing. Is this something that everyone experiences with their dual 580Ms or is it just me?

 

^^^yes, I think that's fairly normal for FPS fluctuation. Enabling vsynch can keep them more consistent, but if your in-game performance is good it is not a problem and should be considered irrelevant.

 

It's perfectly normal. More detailed areas require more grunt and will result in lower frame rates. Walk right up to a solid wall in battlefield 3 and you'll see your frame rate jump up super high, cos the GPU isn't having top process much. Then look at a detailed scene with smoke, wind swept trees etc and it will drop right down.

 

Thank you for your responses. So any news on the next driver update for our GPUs? Is it even possible for a driver update (at this point) to really change the performance of the 580Ms? Maybe I'm just getting greedy here, but I wouldn't mind seeing BF3 running at 60+ FPS at all times!

 

I am using 285.62 WHQL and it works nicely.

 

BF3 won't even launch unless you have 285 or newer installed.

290 beta works well and ahs better SLI performance in most games, but the DisplayPort doesn't work yet.

 

I keep switching between driver versions testing various things.

Yesterday I purchased PowerDVD 11 Ultra as an upgrade to the factory version of PowerDVD 9 OEM. It performed like absolute garbage. BluRay movies were getting like 2 FPS and were un-watchable.

This evening I installed Verde 290 beta again and PowerDVD 11 Ultra is now working great. I already had Nero 10 Multimedia Platinum HD that I was using for BD playback, but I wanted the NVIDIA Cuda support that PowerDVD 11 offers.

I also wanted to try out the Android remote control features, but it does not work on the older version of Android that my phone has . (I don't think the phone can be updated to a compatible version.)

 

Of course it can, brother Fox. Time for a cooked rom!! Android & Windows Phone: Tablets, Apps, & ROMs @ xda-developers

I'm currently running Android Ice-cream sandwich on a 3 year old Windows phone!

 

Offtiopic:
Blazer rom with over clocked kernel @ 1700 mhz

 

Well, ok what I meant was, without doing something out of the ordinary to the phone. I'll try to be more clear next time. Sorry about that, LOL.

This phone is new enough that it will most likely work fine. It's this one...

Samsung Galaxy Precedent™ (TracFone) Android Smartphone SCH-M828C

...on Wal-Mart's Straight Talk unlimited plan. Running 2.2 Froyo...

 

Ok, buy a new one.