*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread

hummm...its working....so thats all that matters at the moment...lol
till you get like me and go and break it again to understand how you fixed it in the first place...and why...lol

 

I'm starting to think it's because you take apart your M18x all too often . On a serious note all I can think of is that the card is definitely defective and this problem will happen again, OR that there's dust or something of the like in one of the PCI-E card slots/XFire cable slots.

That is definitely a weird issue...

 

Here's what happened:
I used Trixx to OC' the cards (sync'ed, ULPS disabled) to 800/1050 and it worked fine completed 3Dmark11 without a glitch. So I set it to 850/1150 and it crashed during '11. Also, right after that the secondary stuck at 75C temp with zero load and while trying to reset the clocks with Trixx the system froze. Had to do a hard reset and after that the secondary stopped working, that is upclocking while in CF.

 

hummmm, interesting

 

Ok, after some more stressing and loading the cards with Furmark and games, I cannot reproduce the glitch... Temps well within norm and both cards up&downclock with no problem. Mystery....

 

Yeah, well I'm not at all thrilled with the AMD 6900M video cards overall. Based on my ownership experience, they're unreliable and inconsistent, or the drivers are just really lousy and cause hardware malfunctions. Yesterday evening I turned on my machine and tried to game and things seemed slow. CrossFireX was disabled and grayed out in CCC. Here is what I saw...

Spoiler

This happened after doing some gaming with older classics like Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena earlier in the day. While running those game, I had issues with OpenGL causing driver crashes and the screen dimming to where it was almost black.

I uninstalled both of the video cards in Device Manager and rebooted. Everything, including CrossFireX being re-enabled, was back to normal.

 

I think the 6900 series has some flaws. In the M17x R2 6900 guide thread we've noticed an abundance of bad cards. And none of them have been user error that I know of. Really kinda disappointing. Glad the 6990s I have haven't failed me yet. Finger crossed

 

Wow, that doesn't sound good at all Mr Fox. Out of curiosity were you overclocked at the time of these issues? And if so was it a light OC or heavy OC?

I have had mine only a few weeks but it has been the most rock solid gaming laptop I've owned. I think I was able to BSOD it by OC the CPU too much but other than that it just seems to do whatever I ask of it.

 

wow, what a joke lol. if it keeps happening ask for 580s .

 

I'm very glad yours are working well. Much of the time mine do, but they have their days when they are unstable.

Yesterday I had 16 instances of " Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered." Prior to yesterday, that happened once on 10/7 and, once on 10/6, twice on 10/2 and 49 times on 10/1. (All documented in Event Viewer.) This generally happens during gameplay at stock clock speeds.

 

No, when that happened (as posted in the screen shot above) I just turned on my computer after being off for a while. I don't frequently overclock and when I do so, it's generally just for a benchmark.

 

I wonder if it's the work of Sapphire Trixx. I don't have it installed atm and so far so good at stock speeds.

 

I kinda wondered that too. I have only used the built in overclocking with the drivers and have never had any issues. I did have to change the settings in the BIOS to go higher than default would allow. I think I changed the max to something like 900/1200.

It's just like with the NVidia cards I've had. I always use the built in OC tools unless there is some reason not to.

 

No, I don't use Trixx much any more. It does not load with Windows and has to be manually launched. I use almost exclusively Overdrive in CCC when I want to benchmark.

However, after this problem occurred I fired up Trixx this morning to help diagnose what was happening. Like GPUZ and Catalyst Control Center, Trixx also saw only one video card. Device Manager saw both, both enabled and no problems indicated by Device Manager.

 

ewww ntune? that program is horrible . msi afterburner is probably the best. it has continuous support.

 

It seems to me that you have the problems when overclocking or after you have overclocked. Maybe the cards have become unstable. When they stabilize, it seems to only have problems after another OC attempt. Maybe your cards, at the end of the day, were not good samples to OC. When you continually used Furmark and other stress testing resources, coupled with continued OC attempts, you may have damaged your cards.

Depending on your driver, it can cause the crossfire to be grayed out. The preview drivers did that for me.

I don't know what to say, but hopefully other people take note to some of the actual problems and risks associated with overclocking and the conseqeunt headaches that pursue.

Hopefully you can find a good solution. I only have the 6970s right now but I have been very happy with the performance and the drivers from AMD. I was die hard Nvida years ago and have to say AMD and their catalyst suites have really impressed me. Outside of a few games that definitely tip their hat to Nvidia (through optimizations and gimping of AMD) I have to say they are very solid cards. The 6990s came out much faster than the 6970's and outside of the extra shaders, they are clocked higher but based on the same architecture. Getting stable and high overclocks, outside of a few outliers seems more difficult on these cards.

It furthers the real need a lot of notebook members have to understand when it comes to overclocking notebook GPU's you run much greater risks given thermal and design sacrifices to even getting these cards to work at spec. A benchmark really is, at it's core a measure of system performance at spec. hardcore benching on laptops is relatively novel and while I am not against it, it does show bring with it much more considerations and risk.

For people, like yourself, that rarely overclock as you say, it would seem futile to even engage in it for a sole purpose of a higher bench as benching is something, on the desktop front, a passion and very purposeful. But for casual overclocking it really does not serve any point other than, "how far can I push my cards." But without a lot of dedication and reason and passion to take those calculated risks, you end up with scenarios like this in which the costs much outweighed the benefits for a "quick bench here and there."

IMO of course but hopefully some people can see that benching is a very risky process and really only a select few on the forums should be doing this; especially considering the price of notebook Vs desktop parts, thermal constraints, etc.

 

the money i spent for just this one notebook....i could bench quad sli 580s under 4 ln2 pots + dual 590's to the 8 580's i already binned.

or about 10 highend amd gpus under ln2.

or bin about 40 2600k cpus next to the 15 i already did.

or 4 990x or 4 980x to the 3 i binned there.

 

Something tells me you will be benching those in a couple of weeks lol

 

the only ones i didnt bench were the 590's...they were not over clock friendly till tin went to work on them...

 

damn youre so lucky lol. hopefully some nvidia users or yourself post arkham city benchmarks w/ physx running. i always wondered how well 580m sli handled physx.

 

hummm...might have to find batman...i have it some where.

 

Those are assumptions about my computing habits. I don't overclock often, use Furmark even less frequently and neither my CPU nor either GPU has been overheated even one time. My processors are normally 72°C or less under the heaviest use they are subjected to. I don't mess with voltage and 95%+ of the "stress" my system is subjected to is just ordinary gaming. Most of the time it's web browsing, hitting the threads here at NBR and reading email. When it is not in use, it is completely powered off, unplugged and sitting at room temperature. All-in-all, very low stress and I baby everything I own. Any system that could not manage the sedentary kind of life I subject them to would simply be too fragile to consider owning.

The problem with the CrossFireX being grayed out in CCC began at first boot after having earlier been playing OpenGL games at stock clock speeds for about 4 to 5 hours. (There is no reason to OC during games or normal use.) For the last 2 or 3 years, AMD video drivers seem to have ongoing issues providing proper OpenGL support. You're comment about it possibly being a driver issue is probably accurate. I'm also running Catalyst 11.10 v2, so if this this CrossFireX being disabled happened to you with the same package, I think we have an answer to what I encountered.

 

one thing...your running crossfire..crossfire X means 4 amd gpus....is that what you got over there..mr undercover??? lol
system thinking it's got 4 gpus instead of two....lol

j/k

 

hmmm... first I have heard that it is only systems equipped with 4 AMD GPUs that qualify. I learn something new every day.

I have always thought " CrossFireX" was the moniker AMD selected for all of their multi-GPU systems. Even CCC uses AMD's terminology incorrectly if that's the case.

 

I used 11.10 preview with the same problem; version II may likely still have that bug. Crossfire was indeed working and it was just a grayed option that I assumed to be driver specific.

Regarding assumptions, if you read my entire post I clearly stated you were obviously not benching a lot and using those programs like others typically do. However, even slightly playing with benchmarking for the sake of it (outside of being hardcore) is dangerous fire and really serves no purpose (IMO) because the typical use of a benchmark is to see how your system is running and relative to other users. Benchers will use it to see how far they can push their cards and it really is a lot of work (as I am sure you are well aware of). So I didn't make any assumptions really other than go off the information your provided I think you missed the gist of my entire post.

hopefully you get your system sorted out and I would assume that your current CF issues are related to the current driver (but I am not running Rev.2). Maybe roll back to 11.8 and see if that resolves that issue. Good luck.

 

yeah, it's been like that for years...
and they still argue over it...lol
saying..
single=1
crossfire=2
crossfireX=3 or 4 (extreme)


so they say anyway...

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245454-33-crossfire-faqs

 

These last few pages have actually inspired me to cancel my 6990s. Though the price was right, the upgrade was pretty expensive and honestly there is such little ROI and the possibility of having problematic cards had me decide to just be happy with my system with the 6970's. They clock like no tomorrow if I need to but really wanted to use them for BF3 and Crysis 2 (Crysis 2 being a game I cannot run Ultra on). However to spend a lot of money for a game or two isn't really worth it at this point. Will definitely hold off until 7 series and realistically, these cards run almost anything very well.

Likely the 7 series will be needed for full eye candy on BF3 as the beta should not be running at the highest graphics settings. A forum post over at Hforum was discussing how their 580SLI (desktop) was even having some problems with minimum FPS hitting 40s in intense battles; they are obviously very keen on being at the absolute bleeding edge. Therefore, going 6970 to 6990 is a graphical setting or two difference. So...saved me about 900 bucks! haha.

 

my reasoning...
my last dual highend machine...2008/d901c first with 9800m gt's then 9800m gtx's

single gpu highend machine after that was the g73jh/2010

then the m18xr1 dual gpu..6990m's first...then 580m's

so waiting 3 years was a long enough wait for me...
and every few years i have to buy top of the line...that's just me. i live on computers every day...ill be damn if i have bottom of the barrel for 10 years..haha.

and so far this m18x has been working every day for many hours a day. not to mention playing rage...which in my opinion...needs work or is it really suppose to look and play that way?

its fun as hell though.

 

@dave - I thought you were suggesting I had damaged my cards by pushing them too hard, which is definitely not the case. After reading the post again I can see that you were speaking in general terms. I think it was the quote of my previous post that gave me that impression, but no worries. The fact that removing and reinstalling them in Device Manager corrected the issue is a pretty solid indication the problem is a driver issue.

@john - thanks for the link to clarify the proper terminology. It has become so normal for folks to use wrong terminology in our culture that it's sometimes difficult to even distinguish what is technically accurate from that which is not. So, this "CrossFireX" faux pas is the equivalent of all gypsum board being called "Sheet Rock" and all laminated counter top brands being called "Formica."

 

i was just making light conversation...

 

Hi Guys had a play and got my cards 6990 upto 860 and 1200 and just to help with temps i ran hw64 with manual fans , all was fine completed benches but there was stuttering throughout resulting in a lower score than i had before , i assumed that it was the cards being pushed too hard , and even after benchmarking had stutterring with the mouse on the desktop without anyload and though oops i have damaged my cards , so i then thought i will remove all drivers re install but everytime ran same prob , anyway to cut a long story short
It was all down hw64 , i tried the bench again same speeds without running the fans through hw64 and there was no stuttering at all but finished the bench early due to worrying about heat issues , so has anyone else had any isssues or is there another program i can run which i can control the fans manually .
thanks .

 

I dont know if applying the tweak to avoid lock-ups when using hwinfo would cause any probs if you HAVENT checked the relevant boxes in settings. Might be worth trying or maybe someone could pass more of an expert comment on the topic?? Below is the Mumak's thread on the freezing caused when using hwinfo. Seems that you lose fan control unless that has been fixed.

Lockups on models with Compal EC

 

murphy - I do not have any issues with stuttering using HWiNFO64. You had the clock speeds cranked up so high that may have been the reason for your stuttering.

I use HWiNFO64 for the sensor readings and really like it because just one program can do the monitoring that several do.

I had to play around with the configuration so that I did not have issues like hanging on shutdown. I do not have it included in my auto run configuration and I shut it down manually as well. See the thumbnail attached for the configuration settings I use.

 

Hi Yea i did , but at the same clock speeds 860 and 1200 without hwinf64 running the fans i had no stuttering that was my point , and it was me who cancelled the 3d mark run because of poss heat issues but it did run at those speeds , as soon as i enabled the manual fans and had that running in bk ground the issued returned , anyway there was one setting that was enabled and that was persistent driver compared to yours will try again and see , thanks Mr Fox

 

Aikimox I had your issue of clocks locked at low power in second gpu with xfire enabled and it turned out to be an issue with ulps... I had it disabled via trixx... well to fix I had to restart after renabling it in the options and have trixx start at startup... then when the card worked right again... i renablned disable ulps and restarted and then set trixx not to start up at start anymore. This was after I had updated my drivers with a clean install of them... so ulps has to be renabled and sometimes screws up locking low power clocks instead of full power... also now I just flash my cards to the values i like and set it the same for all power profiles in the vbios. There may be no problem if you manually edit your registry and set all ulps entries instead of using Trixx.

 

yeah...what he said aiki...

 

Huh,...wow thanks, guess I have to start doing a proper OC'ing via vBIOS flash.

 

Glad I could shed some light on this. Btw guys I'm on 11.2 v2 preview since the other day and in crossfire on 6970m's and flashed at all time 830-1100 with ulps properly disabled. So no crossfire issues here both cards are working flawlessly. He he I am repasted with ICD 24 on cpu and gpus and did a test of my overclock in furmark... the paste job is about 4 months old... I left it running till I woke and after running with all features on and at 1080p with 8x antialiasing... 3 Hours later I checked to my astonishment my highest temp was 81c and al the rest were mid 70'sC. I thought not bad for 3 hours lol. On another note... John I had the chance to push the cards individually and it seems for me at room temps... 855 Core may be max on my primary and about 830-845 on my second... But seemingly the cards don't handle so well at different core speeds for me... any thoughts guys... 830-1100 Is my 24/7 for now and id like to find my max on vantage etc... I guess my max won't be reached at room temp...

 

your guess is correct...so go throw some cold air on it and quite bs'n around already....lol

side note:
looks like amd is still holding the 3dmark03 tititle at 125k amd vs 122k gtx

 

My M18x arrived yesterday, I've added my HDDs and ran Alienrespawn to put windows back. Quick benches usung installed graphics driver (8.851.2.0 according to device manager).

3D Mark Vantage
AMD Radeon HD 6970M / 6990M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2760QM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P22220 3DMarks
P22,220

Heaven Basic
API: DX11
Stereo 3D: Disabled
Shaders: High
Tesselation: normal
Anisotropy: 4
Anti aliasing: off
Full Screen: Yes
Resolution: 1280x1024

FPS: 78.4197
Min FPS: 37.8777
Max FPS: 183.983
Scores: 1975.39

Ran as above but at 1920x1080
FPS: 58.3084
Min FPS: 35.6799
Max FPS: 127.776
Scores: 1468.79

 

moved up a little on the single gpu score...

Spoiler

 

I know this thread is full of overclockers... but can someone with 580m's show me their 11/vantage/06 scores with stock clocks and the newest vbios?

im also using 285 beta drivers.

Here are my results, i really just want to know if they are normal. Btw, this is a system replacement. I had an m18x that seemed to be overheating, so they replaced it and upgraded my CPU:

Spoiler

My main concern again is: are these scores normal? I just want to know that I finally got a good build...

 

Yes those are well within spec. Very nice Vantage score as you can see that is mostly from the CPU. The 24xxx GPU score is also well within that range as well. Your 3Dmark is also good. The main reason you will see higher 3dmark is people manipulate settings a bit to more "application settings" Vs "optimized" settings (whatever those are on the Nvidia side). You can clearly see that many people were just TRYING to get 30K in Vantage and you have that nearly at stock. You have a great build; congrats!

 

Those are the average scores for these tests given the hardware.

I'm getting about the same in Vantage GPU, slightly higher in Mark06 and about 400pts higher in Mark11.

 

Ya but he has the Green side which makes a difference. Seems like AMD is beating the Green team on 3Dmark11 unless times have changed. But his GPU score on Vantage is very in line with other completely stock scores from AMD as far as I know.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys. I really appreciate it, and our community.

 

considering i had 6990m's and i know the real reason why that is...amd turns off tessellation in this benchmark and heaven for higher scores.


and that 28k is counterfeit..considering he turned on physx.

side note:
please run again without physx..thanks



with and without physx

Spoiler

 

My interests are not in comparing my cards to ATI cards.

My interests are knowing what scores others with Dual 580m's (bios A01) (drivers 285 beta) are getting without overclocking.

So that I didn't turn PhysX off (it is on by default) is not relevant to my inquiry. Thanks though!

 

ok, sure. no problem

 

wow I missed a few weeks and already have over 3000 points in vantage John congratulations no one can compete with you