*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread

i got 16GB's of HyperX 1866MHz for my M18x; will the 2820qm go that high or was that a waste of money?

 

Should be fine (Correct me if I'm wrong) it depends on the XMP Profile, the Kingston Plug and Play has done wonders so far from everything I've read. No first hand experience but I've used overclocked ram in all my machines and they run it at the proper speed with a little tweaking of the Mem settings (worst case scenario).

 

Anyone here do me a favour? As we all know that the M18x throttles the 580 sli as the card eats a lot of power, but can someone perhaps do a vantage run with a single overvolted 580m run? I want to see if the 330w PSU can support it.

 

Worlds most powerful M15x mk II ???

 

Update my score score: P8299 3DMarks the bench has no my name on it because I'm not willing to spend $50 for advance.

 

Great fricken score man.

I am wondering if these things are biased toward Nvidia cards though ??? Just wondering, i have wondered about this for a while. Due to the physics part.

I have read at least that AMD cards are just as capable of producing physics as Nvidia, but that some software tries to use proprietary 'Physix' to drive the physics .... does 3d mark software do this ??? Anyone know ?

 

M18x BIOS Update A03 is now officially posted at support.dell.com

 

to bad advance doesn't cost 50 dollars...it's 19.95.

 

my bad , wouldn't spend on that either

 

nope. 1600mhz is max. straight from intel's page.

Intel® Core? i7-2920XM Processor Extreme Edition (8M Cache, 2.50 GHz)

 

yeah...im the same way about:
drugs, tobacco and alcohol. so i know what ya mean.

 

none of the supported cpu's for the m18x go beyond 1600mhz.

yes waste of money, esepcially with CAS 11 on those chips at that speed. CAS 9 on the 1600mhz would have been faster because that 1866mhz CAS 11 downclocks to 1600mhz CAS 11.

the best memory to purchase is either the 1333mhz CAS 7 or the 1600mhz CAS 9. they are both equaly fast.

 

so no one is running 1866 as of now?

 

Lol i spend money on benching, tobacco and alcohol Drugs would be a no, would kill my career prospects. That's what retirement is for, glacoma

 

I'm running 1866 and from what I see the 1866 cas-11 is actually a better performer than 1600 cas-9. I can even feel the difference w/o any benches, with the 1866 the entire system is a tiny bit more responsive. I don't think lower latency wins vs frequency here.

 

Those aren't PnP memory

I'll get 2133mhz ram if they released , so we can test it out.

 

nothing is set in stone until it's been tried...i always say...

 

I am

Working like a charm....

 

Any tricks to benching 3DMark11? I am new to it. Did a run with my 6990s at 850 core 1100 mem and only got 7600 GPU....and that was with tesselation off in CCC

Needless to say, I was disappointed and kind of confused.....

Tips?

 

that's why i asked...because you and i talked about it when you were doing it...lol

which driver

 

Are you sure everything is off in ccc? I beat that at 800mhz on my R2 6970s. What drivers are you using?

 

I have 8.871 (11.7b hotfix)

Should I revert back to the dell factory 6990m drivers?

I was pretty disappointed in the score

 

plug n' play (pnp) memory has nothing to do with the physical limitations of the maximum supported memory speed that the cpu runs at.

you can, hypothetically speaking, put 25Ghz ram in the system and it will downclock to 1600Mhz because that is the maximum frequency the cpu can support.

CAS timings are much more important than speed of ram. a 1066mhz CAS 4 will destroy an 1866mhz CAS 11, for example.

the fastest laptop ram is the 1333mhz CAS 7 but i stayed away from that as it appears there might be compatibility or quality control issues and just stuck with teh 1600mhz CAS 9 chips.

 

i never ran 11.7b
ran dell 6990 and 11.8
both bench just about the same.

 

You are hurting your credibility the more you talk on this topic.....physics has nothing to do with this.

The CPU frequency is a multiple of the bclk value. The ram speed is similarly a multiple of this bclk. The "limits" of what a CPU "can support" are simply multipliers set by Intel into the silicon. They are not indicative of "physical limits" but rather what Intel decided is the max they want to officially support. If you plug in 1866 ram, it will run at 1866 unless told to do otherwise assuming that the system bios provides support for this.

And timings are NOT more important than the speed of the ram, they both matter as they both contribute to the amount of absolute time needed to access data.

 

I will try the dell drivers then. Notice that there is virtually NO differentiation between the 6970m and 6990m in the inf? Exact same info for both.

 

all they did was add the strings to the 6970 section....but now go try modding your own and the brightness controls wont work...at least for me. i couldnt get them to work for nothing.

 

Just realized I am still on the A00 system bios, think updating to A02 or A03 would improve the GPU performance?

And I have yet to realize a gain from modding an inf myself

 

i am talking about stock systems.

-intel's white paper states 1600mhz is max supported ram for the cpu.

-alienware's highest ram option is 1600mhz. this indicates that even if the cpu could support faster speed ram the m18x motherboard does not.

-benchmark a real game with the 1866mhz ram vs. 1600mhz and you will see zero fps increase.

i am just trying to save folks some money

 

First thing I did when I got my M18x was take out the stock ram and put in my 1866 ram before even booting it. I did not change any settings in the BIOS at all.

It runs just fine and has since day one. Alienware does not offer alot of different GPUs in their desktop either, but they still work If the SPD has a jedec compatible setting, it should load - that is the whole point of the PnP ram vs XMP

The performance gains would almost always be seen in programs other than games since seldom will you find a game with an appreciable non GPU bottleneck and even more rarely will it specifically be the system memory causing the slowdown.

I am all for people saving money when possible, but as of yet, I do not feel that I am a fool for having bought the more expensive memory.

 

Less talk, more facts, Amigos

1333MHz CAS-9



1866MHz CAS-11

 

On the topic of memory here's another cool article I came across a little while ago. Was run on an i7-2600K desktop but should more or less xfer over to the mobile chips.

AnandTech - Sandy Bridge Memory Scaling: Choosing the Best DDR3

 

gonna have to say...maybe your alienware is broke.. my bios says 2133 max mem freq. and it says that in windows.

yours does not say this?
and for the record. NO intel chip is recommended with anything above 1333.

 

Ya I have had that linked in my sig since it came out. Wonder if anyone actually reads the links in my sig?

 

Well crap ... I didn't even notice TBH lol.

 

Yeah, video encoding and compression should be able to make the most use of the extra speed.

Bottom line, I've seen the difference in benches and real life and that tiny extra bonus is enough for me to justify the extra 20$. Thinking to add another 8gigs of 1866.

 

I'm still using A00 Bios , I wanna know if I can push more on 3dmark11 if update to A02/A03

I'm using ccc 11.7 Driver atm.

 

your gpu scores are holding you back.
i would switch drivers first before updating bios.

 

Mine come with 2133 too.

Thanks for advise , will try again tomorrow

 

I think I discovered the cause of my limitation to 820/1100 is tied to GPU1. When I do not synchronize them, I can push GPU0 up to 860/1100 and possibly even further. GPU1 causes freezes beyond 820/1100. See attached screen shot for details.

Without the cards synchronized, I just hit my highest ever 3DMark11 score. I'll test this more tomorrow night. I am thinking that I need to order some ICD 24 and repaste. I'm willing to guess that I will find little or no paste on GPU1. I have been monitoring combined average temps on CFX, but I am also willing to guess GPU0 is running nice and cool and GPU1 is not.

Spoiler

 

Speaking of RAM!

AMD has joined the RAM making business oles!

AnandTech - AMD to Enter RAM Market with Radeon-branded DDR3

AMD intros Radeon-branded RAM, gives gamers that coordinated component look -- Engadget

Cheers.

 

Now that everybody is upgrading ram if someone wants to get rid of the stock 4gb 1333mhz hynix ram i buy it shoot me a pm

 

AMD DDR3 Rock N' Roll (RNR) 2133mhz Ram?

 

Theres some over here that I have seen for sale.

Mostly Gskill though, not sure if you still want it but thought would link you anyway.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...trade-gskill-1x4gb-ddr3-1333-pc3-10666-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...-1-5v-sodimm-39-can-ship-internationally.html

Cheers.

 

Thanks for the links but I want the hynix because that's what i have now and all I want is to have 8gb for couple games that may use over 4gb

 

that's with your m18x?

 

yes, with the 2630QM.

 

Hey Aikimox any reason you went back to the 2630

 

hes prob waiting for his 4piped hs

 

Yup, it's too hot in my apartment for benching and even at stock clocks the 2920XM runs too hot under load. The 2630QM on the other hand is always under 70C (2-piped HS +ICD24)