*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread

Great Success!!! Finally!

My CPU Temps were once again creeping 95, GPU temps 64/65

 

that is the only reason why your cpu score is in the 29k range...i think once we change that...you should be able to almost grab your 31k cpu back on a full run. also try benching in balanced mode.

ps:
congratz on the 29k score!

 

What's balance mode?

 

Laptops have three default power profiles: Power Saver, Balanced and High Performance.

Sometimes benching in balanced mode will shave a little Vcore/TDP off the CPU while the CPU will continue to turbo boost as directed by the BIOS/inately and the lesser heat results in a better OC.

 

Thx bud, very interesting.

 

Guys if your flashing the bios just for benching try placing the throttle temp at your shutdown temp so it doesn't throttle and use the short and long limits to keep the cpu in spec... within thermal shutdown limits. Thats what I do and it allows it to continue working in excess of that 95celcius to complete the bench at the levels you were talking about. And all the more if your going to be improving cooling somehow soon it still pays to do this since you will be able to maintain even higher speeds with the better cooling and push father if you don't throttle at 95 or whatever you are setting. also the balanced power plan is a good method although you may want to make sure the minimum processor state that is set isn't to low that it don't drop your score because for that moment in the bench it ran at 800mhz lol... (on Sandy Bridge)

 

Guys help me understand something. I am running CF 6970s with a 2720. On vantage my GPU score is 24399 (OC 830/1050) and is very very stable at those clocks. A few pages back I saw stock runs with similar components but with 6990s in CF. GPU scores were about the same to my OC'ed scores. Now I am looking at 2920s and CF 6990s and 580SLI GPU scores at 28500ish. Does the CPU affect the GPU score somehow? It just doesn't make sense that 2630/2720/2820 GPU scores are all about 2300-2400ish. When I ran Metro2033, a GPU ONLY benchmark, with a forum member with 6990s we had an FPS difference of 2; both stock and OC'ed. So these very very high Vantage scores are confusing to me? The extreme CPU's HAVE to be affecting the GPU's...does anyone know why???

 

simple. vantage is based off of speed plus gpus. the faster the cpu the faster the gpus can run

 

Just reinstalled Team Viewer 6. After trying to bench Vantage on my R2, from my M11x R1 it does hose my drivers. I think. I was getting 10FPS. Restarted, didn't do anything with Teamviewer and still 10FPS. GPU-Z shows both cards enabled.

Man, and I thought I found the perfect way to bench, and spend time with the wife on the couch

 

ok yeah

what's the TV id. hit me in pm

 

Thanks Johnkiss. That was my hunch. My question now is: is it worthwhile for GAMING to upgrade to an 2920 as they are pretty cheap on ebay? Do these benchmark scores affect gaming much? From my understanding even older i7s run just as smooth as the SB processors (from an FPS standpoint in gaming). I don't care much about benchmarking but if these scores translate to a better gaming experience, I may want to upgrade my CPU. What do you think?

 

put it this way...
unlocked cpus are more than just gaming.
you can run all 8 threads at the same speed.
your not bound by 3.7 ghz.(the max for a lower class chip)
you can run as low or lower than the 2630qm
you can run in any core mode
bragging rights
video encoding/trans-coding/
es chips run pretty damn well in here. i would grab that before wasiting money on a 27/28 series cpu. why? they are locked.

but for better than half the games...you're fine where your at.

 

Faster processors do help in all programs and games making it win win... its the single core speeds that make little difference. 4.0ghz single and 4.5ghz single isn't much of a performance increase... as compared to 4.0ghz quad core and 4.5ghz quad core and with these chips you can, making them worlds apart in games like Metro2033 and many in the near future. That is the direction things are going in gaming.. its like the combined test in 3dmark11. The processor is doing all the norm plus some physics shadows etc. while the gpu is possibly doing the rest of the physics and textures with filtering. You guys know this already. So I agree John I feel the XM editions are definitely worth it.. and if you get an ES chip and its cheap its pure win...
Who wouldn't want an engine that you can tell it how fast to go and costs about the same as the top one?

 

Ill have to hit you tomorrow. Im drinking at Applebees. This place is funny. Its "da club" in stafford Va. Karaoke night. This is awesome people watching and a good beer drinking time.

 

I am well aware of the way the chips work. I had an R2 with a 920xm and used TS quite well. So I do know all those advantages. I just meant in gaming, would it be realistic. I am well past bragging rights stage. Quite honestly I am just trying to have solid gaming performance. I don't do much encoding, etc. This is purely a gaming rig for me. So I was asking more for speculation on it having any meaningful impact in say BF3 that will utilize a quad core. That's all. I am relatively comfortable with using a computer and changing chips, clocks, GPU's, etc. I have had:
1. XPS with mr9800 with a whopping 8 pixel pipelines.
2. XPS 1710 (i think that was the name) with an Nvida 7900GTX
3. Alienware m15x 8800 GTX
4. Alienware 17x R2 920xm, xfire 5870s RBG (Oh i miss that screen)
5. Alienware m18x...blah blah..in my sig

I have baked GPU's back to life, swapped chips, you name it. I am no programmer, I just enjoy mobile gaming. I guess I am just saying I am not "basic" in most of my understanding of GPU/CPU performance. I am just a bit ignorant if I need to upgrade the CPU for GAMING. I did that for the R2 I had and saw NO improvement....it was just fun to TS and see how far I could push the chip. Peace.

 

Dave that's cool for me I see a difference in everything on the 2920 over my previous 920xm...even gaming but I didn't have a 2720 to compare to so I'm not sure. I can't speak for anyone else. LOL at DR650SE that's funny about Apple Bee's some people are very funny to watch.
Previous was an M17x R2 2x5870 RGB 920xm blah blah

 

well damn. i was not implying that you "didn't" know anything. you asked a question and i gave you some ideas is all. hell i have about 70+gpu's and about 40+ cpu's gpus under my belt..and i still dont know that much..

 

True true. You know I love you KSSS..smooches your way. I just meant that my original question was about gaming and I got a response about NOT gaming.....

 

so you are right..i was thinking it but forgot to type it. haha! shame on me.
what's missing:the first line..

your cpu is fine for most games...but...

*faceplam* on me


edit:
i was gaming perfectly fine with a 2630qm. fine chip for gaming.

 

hahaha

 

Dave, John, Xen, Voltage, and Dr. .... all with much respect. I will show you the results shortly ... as John knows, I have a 2920 en route and I have the 2630 OC'd to ... well ... the max. I get married tomorrow ... actually today !!! holy crap. in 15 hours ... lol. But I will run some MAX OC'd 2630 vs 2920 stock and OC'd benches / game scores. should lay stuff out pretty clearly. I was a little pissed at people saying there was no point in OCing lower then 2920 chips .... there has been an Obvious improvement for mine ... but ... I will try to throw down examples of the chips once I get the 2920 ...

it might take a couple days. I will test on stuff like SC2 ... which means each test will take at least an hour ..(to run a desert strike map with max units with Fraps on ....) and also standard benches .... Heaven, vantage, 3d mark 11 (hoping to break 9K overall) ... will try to give a total run down ... but its going to take some time. I will however be completely scientific in my methodological approach. I will account for all variables other then the CPU speed/clocks.

Hope you are looking forward to this ... cuz I sure am

 

Shaden - congrats on the wedding. Have fun and make that your first priority, buddy. You'll have plenty of time for benching later. I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll do with the ES chip when the honeymoon is over. By the time you get back I should have my exchanged system with 2760 CPU, 6990 CFX and my new M4 SATA III 6GB/s SSD, so we'll both be posting.

 

Yea I think I pretty much hold the record for Non-Over volted Mobile GPU score on 3dmark 11 and I don't know a F-c-ing thing ... I am counting on JohnK to help me OC my incoming CPU and break 30K vantage ...

I just know what has worked for me .... and that is all anyone knows, and I have and will share it with anyone it can help ....

IN all honesty my brightest hope is for you guys with the 580s ... I THINK if you could solve throttle and get OV ... you could CRUSH the 6990s and compete with high end desktop single cards ... like 35K vantage and 10K 3dmarks ...

And I thnk if we keep working as a community we will see that ... the 6990s might be able to do it as well but the physical mod is ... cumbersome.... at the best.

So all in all .... go team ? hahaha

 

congratulations on the big day shaden!!

 

Congratz brother! enjoy the day brother all the best!

 

Increased my blck frequency for my "little" 2720. New Vantage best:
23406 overall
GPU: 24460 (great mark IMO for the 6970s).
CPU: 20727

Clearly I am CPU bound in this application. Just can't seem to justify the extreme...YET. I am going to wait for BF3.

I have to say, I am very impressed with the overclocking of the 6970's and have not even hit close to my max. I am being very careful because I DON'T want a fried GPU. Just need to allow my OC to last at LEAST until the new 7 series are out and confirmed to work in the m18x. That card is going to be BEAST. I can't wait. IF BF3 can't run on max with the current 6970/6990/485/580m CF/SLI, then those cards WILL for sure. I love technology

 

OK just ran the "proper Crysis 2 benchmark" that is posted all over youtube. It appears to be the first saved game. Right before you kick open the door. Fraps showed NEARLY the same FPS as the 580 SLI with my 6970s OC'ed to 830/1060. I showed 53FPS indoors, then it dropped to the 30s and 40's kicking out the door. Outside it dropped a bit more than the 580s which I saw show a constant 43 FSP. Mine were 39-43.

Here is my problem. There are levels in that games were my FPS dip in the low 20's back up to the 30s on very intensive and highly tessellated levels.

After running that bench I have to call BS on people saying it's "40s constant through the entire game never dipping below." It is clearly evident after watching the youtube of the 2920x and 580m SLI that even that dropped to the thirties while opening a door!

I think some people (no one here specifically) are just not running fraps or not paying attention to fraps during the game. This has to be the most poorly done dx11 rush patch ever and I sure hope BF3 is more properly coded (It should be given that DX11 comes right out of the box).

 

Shaden congratulations for sure that's awesome. I am looking forward to your comparisons for sure.

 

Dave care to post a link to your bench or pics? I have 6970m too and try to learn its sweet spot but there can be differences from card to card

 

Enable AMD Overdrive on Mobility CFX

Spoiler

Revelator! Buddy! This is awesome! Where did you find this hack? It worked beautifully with my 6970M CFX. The RBE work was a little bit tedious, but now I don't need Sapphire Trixx any more. Sweet! +1 Rep

 

please post a youtube video of this bench as no one with 6970m was willing to step up and do it. we have the 580m and 6990m versions already and need the 6970 version!

 

Best wishes!

 

Just modded my 6990m to have OC through CCC, awesome find

 

does it control the gpu fans sam??

 

Didn't try fans. But I doubt it, just like Trixx does not do fans. Will Try now.

Looks like no go on fan control

 

that would have been a serious bonus there.

 

I agree, but it is just accessing a driver API most likely, just like ALL of the software overclocking programs

 

not like all..hwinfo can make changes...

 

But HWInfo is not an overclocking program - it manipulates a bios setting I think. ALL of the GPU overclocking programs plug into the driver to manipulate clocks I assume.

This is one of the big disconnects between laptops and desktop, the video cards are handled very differently at the lower levels

 

i think we are on two different things.
im only talking about fan control only. turn fans up, down, max, auto or off.

kind of why i said that would have been a bonus if it did. but it didn't do it the first time i tried when i got the lappy...so i was hoping something changed now.

 

We are kind of on the same page. I was referring to the fact that all of the programs for GPU overclocking that include fan control most likely function by manipulating an API in the driver. This is what overdrive does as well. Fan control aside, it is nice to have a simpler and more trustworthy method for GPU overclocking in my books

The fan control in HWInfo is VERY unusual in how it functions, at least that is my understanding.

 

we agree about a simpler and more reliable fan control through ccc, but as far as why....yeah, i have no clue so can't really comment.

would have been nice.....but i dont even think my clevo did it separate..but you could control the fans through the fn+ 1 2 3 with out any problems.

 

I think the issue is that the fans are not controlled by the vbios or video driver like in desktops. The Overdrive software is just a copy from the desktop drivers, I don't think that fan control will ever work in a single laptop.

The HWinfo fan control still only works on specific laptops that are compatible with it I think. I think laptop fan control will continue to be a holy grail that really we are lucky to have. I am jealous of Clevo users who can just Fn+F2 or whatever it is to max fans. It is a shame that Dell has not seen fit to include something similar.

 

yeah, technically...im only concerned with one laptop..mine!..

and you are right.. the main fan control is in the bios. controlled through one of the pcie pins. or you can just disconnect the sense wire (which im not about to be doing)

 

I still cannot reach my previous high score with my current 6970M CFX setup in 3DMark11... counting the days for the replacement system to arrive with 6990M CFX.

But, the Overdrive seems to work just as effectively as Trixx did. I agree, we need fan control. Using HWiNFO64 to max fans and record temps, my peak was only 70.5 °C on tonight's run.

Here's tonight's run: P7191

Spoiler

Previous high score: P7479 on 08/09/11 ( NBR Link)
(with original 6970M CFX modules)

 

Do you guys install the CAP profiles when you bench? I never do and was curious if it help at all.

 

i have yet to use a cap profile for anything myself...DR

 

I have my fan on full all the time for the right hand GPU, since the pins popped out I placed them back to be perpetually on, I shall do it for the left GPU fans too. The gains in having them run higher out weight the cost of changing the fans sooner as their life reduces.

But I wont advice others to do the same.

 

I always thought fans were rated for like 40,000 hours or something? Then again that is coming from my brain thinking years ago when building desktops. Maybe I was just lucky, but I have never had a fan go; or CPU for that matter. GPU's...different story!

 

had a laptop that got hair and dust over long period of time and fan must have seized up then it burnt out some and barely spins now... that's like the only way for them too die easily otherwise they usually take a beating. Hmmm guys could an amount of heatcome from a laptop fan motor when on max all the time like that... just a thought... probably negligible amounts compared to our skillet for a cpu lol.