*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread

That doesnt seem right to have a primary drive port that wont run sata III 6mbps - maybe a drive issue and not a port issue?

 

seems more like an intel bug Drives randomly change from SATA 3 to...: Intel Communities

 

Dunno...been doing a lot of CDM tests and always stayed @SATA3 speeds.

 

mine stayed at sata 3 speeds but what it would do was error out and lock me out for like 30 seconds to a minute on port zero. this time i loaded ahci mode and put it on port 1 and it's working like a champ, when i tear it apart later...ill switch it back to 0 and see what happends.

 

Hi Canious! did you oc on dell driver? oc with what tools? help please I want to try oc mine.

 

AMD Radeon HD 6990M Crossfire - Notebookcheck.net Tech

The Fat Lady Is Singing.

 

I thought it was a foregone conclusion after seeing all of the various benches that were run on the two setup's - close, but I thought AMD would take the crown....sing on, fat lady

 

Used the latest 11.8 preview driver from amd and sapphire trixx

Hey guys im having some issues - i just downloaded Crysis 1 and Crysis wardhead from stream and even with latest drivers/cap/radeon my fps is like 10-18 and is unplayble. Ive been googling for hours for a fix but none seems to be fixing the issue... could anyone offer some wisdom?

 

Go into Steam and check the integrity of the game. I usually have to do that for every other game that i download off Steam. If that's not it, make sure your Xfire didn't get disabled in CCC after driver installation.

 

Sounds like you are using the old firmware. If you haven't upgraded to the 0002, download it from Crucial. The problem should be fixed with the update. If not, you can do the reg tweak found in the ssd section here on NBR and you should fine

 

Glad to see you got it working right. Makes benching more productive.

 

the 3DMark Vantage Score for the 580m SLI isn't up there yet for the comparison shot, and there are no game benches yet.

also, are we sure these aren't still desktop simulations? klaus from notebookcheck said a few weeks ago they wouldn't be getting their 6990m's until September.

 

They look correct Pearson ... they are pretty much identical to what people here are getting stock with the 2920xm....

 

We have the 6990M's coming in the next couple of weeks and will do some benching, but I'm sure, by that time there will be enough data here.

 

Issue Fixed... I turned on my sapphire trixx on and set the load oc 820/1020 and the fps is back to 50-60 in crysis and all games... its weird after i restarted ever since i used sapphire all my games were in 10-20 fps range and radeon pro did not force CF - on the CF bar only shows 1 gpu card running... i tried unistalling drivers/etc couldnt find any solution... until i turned back trixx again and enabled oc then all games were back to normal fps... any one have any idea?

 

Yup, just buggy AMD Catalyst software and drivers... par for the course. Are you running 11.8 or Dell factory drivers? 11.6 are the most stable.

You can hack the registry to force CFX to be active 24/7. Simply change the DWORD value for every instance of EnableCrossFireAutoLink from a zero to a 1. You'll find those registry keys right above every instance of EnableUlps, so you can verify the change all of those keys with a DWORD of 1 to a zero at the same time. I am running a manual install of the 11.6 drivers without CCC or any other AMD software and my CFX is permanently enabled with this tweak. As an added plus, there's no such thing as AMD PowerPlay on my system.

 

For GTX 580M SLi owners, apparently this is what can be done with them when overvolted. However, the system is an X7200 and has the fortune of being able to use two PSUs simulaneously

 

Pretty unimpressive if you ask me. It requires overvolting and even then they get about 10-12% above the 6990M's. And all that with a dual PSU system and the most robust cooling in the world -still hitting 90C (memory is probably 110C) in Furmark. The 6990M is begging to be overvolted and it actually wins across the board in benches vs stock voltage SLI. We have seen 28K Vanatge GPU and 8.6K Mark11 for the 6990Ms.

 

^^^ That pretty much says it all. If anything this actually points even more to the superiority of the 6990s.

 

Yup... agree with your observations Aikimox. I looked at the information linked and felt the same way... I actually thought to myself, "this is supposed to be good?" There comes a point where the cost becomes frivolous and effort wasteful to get a few extra points in a benchmark. The 6990M and 580M are roughly equal in performance, and the 6970M makes more sense than a 580M from the perspective of cost/practicality. It's only my opinion, but personally, there's no way I would ever pony up the $$$ difference for the 580s and get so little difference in performance in return. For the price difference, the 580s should be getting at least 30-50% higher benchmark results than what the 6990 can achieve.

Now all we need is for AMD to get their act together and give us some good drivers. I think NVIDIA spanks AMD when it comes to producing quality drivers.

 

Even if based on nothing more than price, the 6990M CFX is superior to the 580M SLi. Why anyone would pay more for little or no increase in performance is a mystery. The $700 difference in price would pay the cost to upgrade my 2720QM to a 2920XM Extreme CPU at Dell's retail prices with $50 to spare.

 

Down under pricing!

SELECT YOUR VIDEO CARD
Help Me Choose Help Me Choose
The video card handles all graphics processing for your system. Increased video memory help delivers more detailed graphics, sharper images and smoother video.
Dual 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 6970M - AMD CrossFireX™ [Included in Price]
Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M NVIDIA® SLI® Enabled [add $999.90 or $11/week-1]
Dual 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 6990M AMD CrossFireX™ [add $129.80 or $1/week-1]

 

Canada is screwed again

 

Lol yup lucky we got our sweet deal when we did ehh!!

 

Yup, some of our customers got super lucky in getting a 580M SLI for free, lol but no more it seems, now Dell Canada is going to rip off the rest to compensate for their own website typos

 

I think the vantage results are somewhat impressive and if those clocks stand up in gaming, even more so. However, its undermined by the fact that at those clocks, the 580M becomes a 150w card and loses its power efficiency (imagine two of those in the m18x). If the 69xxM can overvolt to even to 1.12v, we would probably see similar numbers to those, but at a lower and more reasonable power envelope.

 

ichime ... ok you are right too

 

Im using the 11.8 preview driver from amd. Thank you this was exactly what i needed +1 rep

 

150W!?? Wow, that's some power draw. X7200 is truly a remarkable beast. With Sandy E and quad channel RAM, it will rock.

 

There is also the GTX 570M, but I'm kinda disappointed that neither Clevo or Alienware picked up this model as an option for their systems. Being based off the regular desktop GTX 560, it seems that it would be the best balance of performance and overclockability in its power envelope, and I'm sure it would be priced competitively with the 6990m (even though the 6990m would be the better performer).

 

these cards are already 100 watts....at least that's what the sticker says on mine. (when i opened it up)


fortnax:
do you have a link to that cpu heat sink? (a picture of it) thanks

 

I have a crucial M4 256GB on port 0 and I am getting SATA3 speeds as well. I am using the intel rapid storage technology driver 10.6 and I updated the firmware of the SSD to 0002.

 

This the one you looking for Johnksss?
Another user had this up. Thanks

Thanks Aikimox!!!

Cheers.

 

lol, that's my pic, thieves!

 

yeah, thats the one. lol

is it all copper?

fortnax:
are you running that now? the dual pipe.

 

yup 10 char

 

no wonder your temps are better than mine...

 

Is there a triple pipe? Thought i read something about a triple pipe or is it in the design process?

Why don't the just make it one big fat pipe as opposed to a dual pipe?

 

Back to topic Crisis 2 Adrenaline benchmark ultra Dx11 stock clocks

 

Nice run Speedy.

How about with a GPU and CPU OC?
TIA~

I'm going to try and do a run on my system soon just to add as a comparison with a last gen system. To see the GULF in class and performance.


Cheers.

 

Stock run!

Gee the game looks soo..... GOOD!

Cheers.

 

nice one, speedy! i would say the m18x 6990m xfire is holding it's own.

and for a comparison;

my desktop build; i7 930 @3.84ghz and stock gtx 580.

 

3-piped HS was used by Dell initially in the systems sent to reviewers.

One big fat pipe would have to be flattened severely to fit the limited vertical space and as a result of the flattening thermal flow would be much worse (at least, that's what our thermal engineer says)

4-piped HS is an interesting project but we still have no ETA

 

after comparing the cooling from this and the d901c to the x7200....clevo wins in cooling hands down.

 

only because the clevo's are elevated from the rear.

i do wish the m18x was a little more elevated, though.

 

no.
because its designed to cool a 130 watt cpu vs ours at 55 watts.

 

Hmm. Thinking about it the heatsink.thing makes a little sense. smaller pipes can fluctuate temps quicker and more efficient.

As far as clevo goes, I had a pair of 6970s from clevo and the heat sinks were really nice. For the x7200 gpu's. Even the lady at the post office commented on how heavy they were lol. Maybe when i get them back ill some how try and incorporate some of that copper into my system, be it R2 or 18x. They used a lot of copper.

 

same here...my 9800M gtx's were pretty heavy, but i like the heat sinks allot.easy to take off and get too.

 

clevo always has better cooling than alienware. they can have 2 fans for the cpu lol.

 

OK, a little more progress... I achieved my best scores yet this morning.
3DMark11: P7398 - Vantage: P22981

Spoiler

Reviewed BlackViper's services tweaks and disabled more services and uninstalled Norton Antivirus. It appears Norton was also causing some problems for me using Catalyst 11.8 preview. I need more time to test and confirm this, but for now I am running Vipre antivirus 15-day trial and not having any more problems with atikmpag driver errors. I think maybe NAV process scanner may have been overly aggressive at monitoring high-usage CPU processes. That's great for malware detection, but not so much for running benchmarks.