M18x GTX 580M SLI Throttle Fix and Software Overclocking - No vBIOS Flashing Required

okies done what the front page has said, i've run CPU-Z but unsure what i'm supposed to be looking at to show that it's working correctly

 

CPU-Z would not have anything to do with your cards, bro. If you are running P0 and P1 at identical clock speeds you should have no issues with throttling. You can try running Furmark or the OCCT GPU test if you want to verify the throttling is fixed. Or, you can simply start playing demanding games and observe that no throttling occurs. Throttling is very obvious when it happens, because games get choppy and run very low FPS.

 

I recently have been paying attention to the throttling on this card. I also have read the throttle fix threads on this forum.

My question is, why exactly is p1 in place?

Just today I started noticing the throttling on my system for the first time. When I run furmark I pretty much am throttled to p1 clocks instantly (temps below 70c). If this is working as intended, why is there even a p0 clock?

Running 3dmark11 also the p1 clock were kicking in within about 10 seconds of launching the benchmark. This can't be right can it?

I also have a m17xr2 with dual 5870m cards. My m18x with 580m sli is performing very close to my m17xr2 when the cards are throttled down to p1, which seems to happen 100% of the time.

I am aware of the bios fix, and have already done it. But I'm still curious why even list the base clocks at 620mhz if it is going to throttle almost instantly to the 475mhz p1 clocks? Or... is my system not working right?

Thanks for any help.

 

Mine certainly didn't behave that way when I was running stock firmware.

 

It is just a poor design decision by Dell. It will go to P1 when you get over 63c, the fans won't even kick up and it will already be running 30% slower. Basically, if you run it stock as Dell intends then the 580m will be slower than the base cards because it always runs in P1 while gaming.

 

mhb112 - I moved your new thread into a relevant discussion.

What system BIOS are you running? If you're not on at least A03 (A04 or A05 is better) you will experience the throttle almost immediately. A00 through A02 performs absolutely horribly with the GTX 580M in my experience.

My M18x recently came back from the depot with a new mobo sporting A00. Any game I tried to run almost instantly throttled down to the power saving mode. I flashed A02 and performance was still very poor. I then flashed A03 and there was an immediate improvement, but my benchmark scores were still lower with A03 than with A04 or A05.

Also, have you applied the latest Dell vBIOS? If not, you'll experience more throttling using the older vBIOS.

Applying either the fix in the opening post in this thread or flashing a vBIOS with P1 matching P0 clock speeds will make the throttling problem totally irrelevant on the M18x.

I experienced a similar issue with the 6970M modules in my first M18x. Instead of throttling, one or both of the video cards would intermittently refuse to clock up from their power saving state. While waiting for an extended period of time for Alienware to replace the video cards, I cured that problem by using Radeon BIOS Editor to set all of the P-states to the full 3D performance clock speeds and voltage. Without doing that on the 6970M modules that I had the system ran very poorly most of the time.

 

Sorry for the slow reply. I have the hardest time staying logged in on these forums so I can post.

I am running a05 bios and the most current vbios. I have changed the vbios p1 voltage to .87 and matched p1 clocks to p0. This, of course, fixes the problem and my temps stay well within acceptable range (65-75c while gaming).

The original bios setting just seemed a little off to me. Running some 3d applications you could easily see visibly the switch from p0 to p1, a "stutter" and then sudden fps drop.

My 3dmark11 score on stock vbios was around 6200, which i thought was a little weak. After matching p1 clocks to p0, and a slight oc (700/1400/1800 seems very stable to me, temps while gaming stay around 72c, using manual fan control), 3dmark score went to around 7200.

Not breaking any records there, but I've been recently playing crysis 2. With the game on max settings in ever way possible, stock vbios was dropping to 25-30 fps at times (game is capped @ 40 with vsync) and felt very choppy. More choppy than other games running similar fps it seemed. After changing p1 clocks the game sits at a stable 40fps solid. Much more fluid.

 

Glad everything is working well for you, bro. The factory configuration of the 580M cards is definitely an epic failure in terms of performance. The updated vBIOS helps a bit, but still doesn't produce desirable results in games. With the P1 clocks matched to P0 even running at stock core and memory speeds Crysis 2 is buttery smooth and 60-70 FPS for me on Extreme and Ultra settings. I don't use vsynch to cap frame rates and I have never experienced a slow down or choppiness with P1 matched to P0. The really cool thing about NVIDIA Inspector to accomplish this is there is absolutely no need to flash the vBIOS to achieve excellent gaming performance. We are fortunate with the M18x to not have the 78°C thermal throttling problems that M17x owners are experiencing with their GTX 580M GPU.

 

Hi having trouble setting voltages for p1 after re flashing to stock vbios.
please help!

 

Welcome to NBR MarsVoltron. We're glad you joined the Community, especially the Alienware Forums. We're looking forward to seeing more posts from you, bro.

You cannot use NVIDIA Inspector to change voltage. It does not work on the GTX 580M. If you are running stock speeds or not clocking over around 735-750/1500 you don't need to increase voltage on P0 or P1 for everything to work out fine. Only need to set the same clocks for P0 and P1 for the throttling problem to become irrelevant.

I customarily share helpful links when greeting newer members. Please take a few minutes to click through them. I hope that you and other readers find the links useful in jump-starting participation in the Community. Again, welcome to NBR.

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Also, click the link in my signature right above the graphic for a listing of useful technical threads.

 

Thank you very much for the warm welcome Mr. Fox! Okay so after reading and trying a series of different things I would like to flash the modded rom file I found a couple of pages back, I just don't know how to flash the modded rom?

 

how did you install the .rom file?

 

Follow the steps under this link.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...problems-discussion-thread-2.html#post8127953

 

Attached are the instructions for both tweaks in a portable "offline" format.

 

Anyone looking for a fix on the DPC latency problem with GTX 580M SLI? Look at this post. (In principle, apply what was presented to stop the throttling symptoms.)

 

Awesome research, extraordinary Mr. Fox, thanks a lot for all your help.

Also I will like to add a comment about your warning message for the usage of Furmark, this is absolutely great, this tool is good for quick testings but not for stress your video card, cause it could end on a damage gpu if you run it for a very long timeframe.

 

Thank you, Federico. I am very happy to help.

It is wonderful having you here in the Alienware Forums.

I have posted some updated information on this thread for your consideration.

 

Its an honor Federico to have you with us here. I also couldnt agree more about how bad furmark and Kombustor etc are if misused. Video games themselves are a much better indicator as they dont pose the dangers a power virus does like those softwares.

 

Agree 100000% with this, its great to have minds such as Mr. Fox's (and yours too, Federico) here on NBR - great fountains of knowledge you both are.

 

its great to have you here AW-FedericoH we all love Alienware products!

 

Hay federico it is greate to have you on this forum, you the man.

 

With the new drivers that just come out do we still need to do this?

 

Yes. The drivers don't have anything to do with the throttling. If you don't have P0 and P1 set at equal clock, shader and memory speeds, the 580M is going to have a noticeable throttle condition under demanding gaming conditions.

 

I don't know if its just me, but I haven't seen any throttling of any kind outside of FurMark. I run MSI afterburner (out of paranoia really) for the on-screen overlay to monitor usage, temp, and clocks, and I haven't seen any reason for concern.

Prior to the vbios update from Dell's website I was using this very fix, but since flashing, I haven't seen the need. I should add that I'm running stock clocks, voltages, and power states.

 

I have never experienced throttling at stock speeds aside from 3dmark 2011 and Furmark....

 

Hi. Is this still a valid fix?
I followed steps 1-7, and implemented it sucessfully. However, my cards seem to downthrottle at the same rate as previous, in Battlefield 3.

I have the A05 Bios, and all drivers and the vbios(ofcourse) is up to date. My cards even downthrottle at "low settings" in Battlefield 3.
Any thoughts that may help me out on this? It does run smoothly on high, and after 15 min, the decrease in FPS drops in, supposedly, it looks like 4-6 fps when this kicks in. This runs for a few minutes, until the fans are able to cool it down.

I haven't tried switching the main GPU, which I will now, run secondary GPU as primary instead. I do think there may be a problem with one of the fans though. It's "rollingbearer" (or what you call it) may be a little too worn out.
I've only tried the fix on this forumpost so far.
If there's any other forumposts regarding this, I would apreciate if I could get any pointers that may lead me to them.

 

Yes, this is still a valid fix and it's used by many of us frequently, if not always. (I have my system set up with this tweak permanently and it works beautifully.) Not only does it fix throttling, but overclocking is as simple as double-clicking a batch file. It's pretty sweet.

If you have A04 or A05 and the updated vBIOS, then I am not sure what is wrong with your system. It should not be throttling at all. Perhaps it is a defective GPU... hopefully not.

You do have a GTX 580M SLI setup, correct?

If you understand what is happening with the throttling, there is no other fix than to have P1 clock speeds set the same as P0. You can accomplish that using NVIDIA Inspector or a modded vBIOS with those equal P1 and P0 3D clock settings incorporated.

 

Yes.
Everything works fine today, apparently.
I'm gonna run a longer session later today to see if it still persists. If it does keep on throttling, I'm adjusting the P0 fan speeds to be identical to the ones in P1.

 

hjsse do you have any overclock going, I noticed if i overclock too high while above 800core with a cpu overclock (using throttlestop) it will power throttle in bf3 every so often from lack of power.

 

That's a good suggestion, littleone.

Honestly, I have found all games to perform very well at stock GPU clocks with the GTX 580M SLI setup and the throttle fix in place.

 

Yea pretty much they do, I do like a mild overclock though around 725mhz cpu and 1800memory nothing too crazy for the GPU.

 

Nothing else on my system is overclocked, only thing which has been the case, is the simple .bat file GPU overclock I've tried. In both those .bat files my system throttle down.

I previously mentioned that I was going to set the P0 speeds identical to the P1 speeds, but that wasn't needed, since they already where set to identical speeds, probably the standard or something.

It saddens me, if its the second GPU is going faulty..considering the fact that my 2nd Gfx card and a new SLI bridge were replaced 1.5 month ago. But the case here, could be that a refurbished part may be a little too worn to begin with.

Out of curiousity.. can this be related with my SSD? I haven't updated to the newest firmware yet, due to I haven't felt it has been necessary.

I checked the temps, and my main GPU reached 89 degrees...
However the 2nd GPU just got 55 MAX.. I know the main GPU take the biggest heat, but shouldn't the 2nd GPU had been way higher?

I monitored the CPU temps as well. All 4 cores were above 90 degrees celsius in the timelapse of a 3 minute period, I don't have the log from the CPU monitoring.

 

No it's not related to SSD. It sounds like you have some serious overheating going on there, my friend. Perhaps that is what the problem is. My GTX 580M modules never get to 89C and your CPU is getting way to hot for not being an overclocked XM processor. If you're still under warranty, you need to have Alienware fix that thing.

It's possible that the person that did the work on the system did not know what they were doing, or made some mistakes. If the thermal pads or paste are not applied correctly, things and never going to work as they should due to overheating. Was the work done at your residence by a tech or at the Dell Depot?

 

It was done at my residence by a tech.
That may be the case, that the tech may had been inexperienced.
I will contact Dell regarding this matter, and get this sorted out.. I know that 98 degrees is quite serious for this laptop, and this was just discovered today. I also know I'm going to have a long journey ahead of me, since I've dealt with these problems too many times before. Both my previous systems were replaced due to heat issues with the GPU, first system also had some serious heating issues with the CPU. My previous system which was at 97 degrees, with CF ATI cards wasn't replaced until the 5th repair at home, and the process is just so exhausting...

Thank for the assistance, I apreciate it.

 

I have that probelm too.

 

Which one, bro? Throttling in BF3? BTW, I like your new I Spy avatar.

 

how do i know if my system is throttling, i don't have any problems running anything outside from random black screens on the new BF3 update whenever i die....

 

If you were throttling, you would know it right away. It would be unmistakable, as FPS drop and things get choppy, then speed up again. You would feel it, big time. Many 580M SLI systems with the newer Dell vBIOS do not have notable issues with throttling. Those that do not can use the tweak in this thread to enhance performance rather than fixing throttling. (It does both.)

If you were monitoring things in-game, you would also see the clock speeds and voltage drop.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html

BF3 is just one of those games that it seems always has a small glitch of some sort, so the tweak in this thread is not going to help. Wish it would.

 

Thorpe24 - did you get the BF3 thing sorted?

 

BF3 for me will Black screen if my Core overclock on gpu is too high... seriously play long enough at high core overclock and no CTD or BSOD but instead a black screen...

 

will this work for single 580m on m17x R3 ?

 

Yes, it will definitely help reduce throttling on the M17x R3. You will still have a temperature throttle with that system, but if you stay below 78°C on the GPU temps, this will remove the other throttling issue.

There is no fix for the M17x R3 with respect to the 78°C throttle, as that is built into the system BIOS by design. However, you may need to have Dell/Alienware replace your heat sink under warranty. From what I understand, that is working wonders. (There were some defective batches of heat sinks.)

If you have not already done so, please have a look at this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ttling-see-post-191-later-37.html#post8448298 at the linked starting point. (Review the entire thread this weekend if you have time.)

 

Thanks alot for the tips. According to the information in the post you gave link to , i have similar problem - Idle temp is around 54-57. But ... been checking GPU-Z last few days , sometimes i got huge fps drop at 67 C.
And one silly question ... wont this method make my warranty useless (described in this m18x 580 Sli post) ?
P. S.
Sry for my english , not my native language

 

No, it will not void your warranty. You can do whatever you want to your Alienware. The mods are not covered by warranty, and if you break something, the owner induced damage is not covered. Otherwise, you're good to go.

 

It's in form of a crash but only Witcher2 and Skyrim for me. I tested in BF3 no fans and exited while monitoring temps in game... Pic shows gpuz no throttle on either card and both at 90c+... It was only for a minute or so... But again nder heavy load 78c crashes and I think it's from switching in those games from P1 or P2 to P8 or P12... as it seems not related to temp causing instability but something more consistent and repeatable like the M17xR3 owners are seeing at 78c
Any suggestions on a way to catch what was going on anytime it's crashing at 78c?

 

I am having temp throtting at 90C, happens when i am overvolted without a cooler at 100% gpu usage. Anyone else?

 

Cannot say that I have ever experienced that. That said, it has been a very long time since my GPUs have seen 90°C, as even heavy benchmarking with 860/1800 does not get them anywhere near that hot. The only software I have seen that can place enough stress on them to create such heat is Furmark and I stopped using that utility because it is sort of pointless. How on earth are yours getting so warm? Are you in a really hot environment? Perhaps you're having an overheating problem rather than a true throttling issue, and the GPUs are throttle to get the cards from frying themselves.

 

I think I have fixed my temp/fan issue I had just by using speed fan. Only thing is, speed fan doesn't seem to work when minecraft is working (at least for me). When running minecraft GPU load on one card goes to 93-100% and temps climb close to 90C. I close the game at 89C out of paranoia lol!

 

I have found SpeedFan to be buggy and carries some other issues with it, including DPC latency. I would recommend uninstalling that and using HWiNFO64 for manual fan control or customizing fan profiles.

Look at the first page of this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html

 

Can anyone confirm with 90C+ temps constant do you guys have gpu throttle to 2d state?