*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread

John, What system are you benching on? M18x? Didn't know you came back around Last I knew you were rocking the G73.

 

yep. running a m18x. decided to jump on the AW train... and now i can clearly see...just what i was missing!. and you gotta love that usb 3.0! man!

 

It took you long enough, but I can understand waiting until now, this is the first offering since I have been here that I would expect to get you excited.

Got a pair of 6990m coming my way shortly so I may be able to overclock decently finally lol

 

well...i got tired of batboy always getting on me about being here and not having a AW. so i got one. (just kidding batboy)

nice!
im just doing a little last minute light benching before switching out my cpu.

but yeah...im liking this machine allot! it's going to be my best tech machine yet.

 

Indubitably


I wonder how your CPU (ES?) behaves when OC'ed

 

we shall see in a few hours

 

Using the SS on CPU? Or stock for now?

 

stock for now, but since it's on top...will make for setting the ss on it 10 times easier. that's for sure.

 

well, nothing about this laptop is easy as far as part access is concerned....something I am sure you have already discovered

 

Hmmm.... I may have to upgrade. As it stands I have a bad 5870 GPU so been doing a little gaming (Unreal Tournament 3) on a single 5870, which is plenty for that game. But I may call in and try and either get the 5870 replaced, or jump on board with you guys. But, but but...RGB , ...16:10...plus I love the M17x R2 lid, I dont think I've ever been so torn. Plus when the M18x got here I'd swap in my blu-ray drive burner, not sure if they even still offer it. Im split 50/50. Maybe when the R2 comes out?


EDIT: CPU is on top? meaning...Dice cup usability?

 

yep...looks like a tedious mission indeed.

cpu is on top..

 

DR650SE, stop making excuses and get an M18x. The screen is more than acceptable. Do you need to drive up to Vienna to see mine? lol

Also, do you play UT3 online?

 

I will be playing online. As it stands, I don't have internet. In my area I'm getting Verizion FIOS, Comcast is the only other offering. after the first 3 months I'll be paying about $100/mo, and the internet speed will be 25Mb/s up 25Mb/s dn. But they didn't have an available install date till Aug 15th The cable company I worked for always had the install done within a week. This area is crazy densely populated. The highway is stop and go at 5:40am I may drive down to check it out. be nice to see it in person and compare.

 

Fios is a must

Let me know if you want to arrange a meeting to see the laptop, it is a monster.

 

yes...im going to have to agree with scook9

 

Weird, I only get 59.something on Normal Tess and it takes a hit on the extreme ... Only thing the 11.8 preview did for me was even out the little bit of stuttering that was occuring and give ~1 FPS boost in 3DMark11 and Vantage.

Are you using the stock driver settings or has it been tweaked in Catalyst?

 

I may than, maybe this weekend. All I have here are a few dress suits for work, my R2, Samsung Captivate, iPod, and an air matress. Oh, not to mention some Ramen. I don't even have a table or chair. Apt is bare as can be.

I like that Fios is fiber. My internet in OH was 12Mb/s up and just under 2Mb/s up. So it'll be a nice change.

Assuming I get the 18x as a replacement, I'll end up with the lowest CPU, which stinks. Guess I shoulda though of that when I purchased the R2 with a 520M. Plus I'll have to sell my core-i chips. Though I do have a set of 6970's those will probably get sold as well. I'll PM you about checking out the system.

But to stay on track, it'll be nice to have a new set of standards to crush. I've pretty much maxed out the benches on the R2 with the exception of the 6970s due to PSU limits. Though as far as I can see, no one has come close to my Vantage scores. John beat a few of my 920XM scores on HWbot, and svl crushed my CPU score on Vantage for the XM arena since he volt modded his 15x. He score 24.3K I think. Highest I managed on the R2 was 23.3K recorded, and 23.7K unofficial (crashed while saving screen shot) Though I'd have to pick up an XM CPU via ebay, and from Aikimox has said, they are not quite as good as the OEM chips. Can't OC as high. With the move and everything, gotta save some money. Wish I could take the wife overseas with me and work on contract again. That was a great year

 

ok. so here is the deal. you can turn tessellation all the way down in ccc and then run the bench. the bench will not push tessellation on the run. thus giving stupid high numbers. if your benching this with "real tessellation" your first 10 seconds of that bench will be about 28 to 32 fps max going into the screen change. if your above that...means your ccc tess is at it's lowest setting.



dr650se:
yeah, i was maxed on the g73jh, but never got around to running dice on it. and got rather board with benching it. depressing on the gpu over clocking and all.

 

Regarding the OC' potential, this may well be due to limited cooling + high ambient temp. I have seen a couple of posts about OEM 2920XM throttling to the same 3.7GHz when not in a freezer. Go figure. I'm not a bencher and don't have time for testing the system but Johnksss may shed some light shortly

 

light shed...

 

Ok that makes perfect sense to me, thanks for this.

 

Thanks Aikimox, +1 I'll likely be running it on dice, but if I can't up the TDP for the entire duration of a bench, that will be rather depressing.

@John, I remember that whole issue, I've hit over 1GHz core on the 5870 when on dice, literally a block of dice sitting on top of the GPU heatsink, no Dice cup. But as I recall, the G73 was unable to accept higher than stock voltage at 1.05v. Which=no fun. Like the 6970s

 

Are we there yet? Any results?

 

not yet...i haven't put it in yet.

dr650se:
exactly...asus 5870m's sucked for over clocking...and i tried 2. both sucked.

 

Keep the faith. 16:10 RGB all the way.

That being said, I'd also wait for the R2 to come out.

 

The R2 will have a better CPU/GPU of course but the 16:10 is gone and the stock M18x screen is pretty much the top of what is available in the 18.4" category at the moment.

 

that's a lot of waiting...i waited 2 years to get this.

 

How are you feeling about the M18x cooling vs that of the D901c John?

 

ill let you know once i can actually control all the fans. d901c you can set max fans. does this have that option? i was trying to set the gpu fans to max and them suckers aint budging. but software says it is. what am i missing here?

 

Dice...Lower temps, no wattage for fans

 

I asked the same question in another thread ... anyone with a fan control soloution ?

 

when i have it apart..will see just how much of it has to be together to actually run.

side note: 2630 is actually running at 3044 ghz 105 bclk...never thought that was gonna happen. (thanks speedy for showing how to raise the bclk)

waiting on this as well.

 

I have not heard of any fan controls but have not looked very hard either. Alienware has never been keen on letting users max the fan speed. Compal based laptops are supposedly able to do it through HWinfo30 by Mumak i think - forgot if this is compal or flex

 

I think you can use HWinfo32/64 to control the fans to max speed and such.

 

no problem. when you take the palmrest off all you need is the little board for the power button and you can have the machine running with the GPU's and CPU heat-sinks exposed all you need is an external mouse

 

There's no fan control option for the M18x. The fans controlled through the BIOS and no software can help here.

However, Mumak (HWinfo32) did some amazing work with a few laptops in the past and managed to force fans through the OS level. I guess, we can ask him to give it a shot. He can be found @ T|I

 

damn no fan control...

thanks speedy.

guess that wont work ichime.

and testing this... 106

 

Check out HWiNFO64, I thought the fan control for the M18x got already implemented by mumak. The automatic fan control is still a bit buggy as far as I know, but manual control should work fine, and I guess that's all you need.

Here's what Mumak wrote:

Here's the thread:
Alienware Fan Control

 

ok, ill give it a shot in a few. got tide up for a bit and havent gotten around to running it after ichime suggested it.

 

I tried the HWinfo64 fan control and set the fans speed to maxrpm but when I start the benchmark the fans drop down to stock speed i don't know why they don't stick to that speed

 

thanks ichime & svl7
it works now.

 

I use hwinfo64 for a while along with furmark and the fan control system is working nice

 

This is going to sound a bit random guys but when i overclock my 6990m with Sapphire TriXX and then bench in 3Dmarks 06 it actually runs slower, i'm getting half the fps i get when i run it without TriXX. I'm wondering if its cos when i benching i'm in diagnostics mode via msconfig, i've closed everyt resource down other then what i need.

 

Sounds like XFire is not working.

 

Good to hear! Keep in mind that it always causes a little bit CPU load, so if you need it for benching try to set the respin value to the highest possible and turn off all the monitoring sensors you don't need.

 

hummm, maybe not....

 

Have you put a check in the box for "disable ULPS" in Trixx settings tab and also a check in the box for "Synchronize cards in multi-gpu config" in the same tab? - also, make sure you are using version 4.0.1 or later for Trixx.....

 

Hmmm....average and min fps seem to be alot better on 580 even though your 6990's hit higher max fps.....id prefer higher averages than higher maximums.....just something I noticed. What cpu's do you have and what cpu does barcode have? - maybe there lies the difference? - even so, pretty amazing results for you both....

EDIT: Ahhh, I see you have 2630 and 6990's and bar-code has 2720 and 580m's......im not sure how that impacts on this particular bench....

 

yeah, im inclined to agree with you stevie.

im looking this bench over closer this round...running fps counter. first round never dipped below 70 so we shall see once it finishes.

edit: part 2 66 fps
edit: part 3 69 fps
edit: part 4 52 fps

mind you...this is right when the level stops that it hits this low.
and i reset the driver back to ccc defaults.

 

over clocked vantage...