*OFFICIAL* M18x Owner's Lounge Thread

As I say, dont know about 11.7 but try 11.6 as they clearly DID adjust via FN keys for me. You could also ask Mr.Fox as he has probably kept an eye moreso on this than I have of late....I believe it is a driver issue as ive tried various AMD and Dell drivers on this rig - some it works, some it doesnt....

 

Here is a quick video of my laptop's brightness not doing anything. link

 

Yep. That's exactly what mine is like at the moment and im running AMD 11.8 preview drivers. I loaded them today but prior to doing so, I had 11.6 installed which dimmed the display up and down without issue......maybe you cuold give 'em a go just to see.....if it still doesnt work, you might have a problem...other than that, I still think its related to AMD drivers.

 

@ steviejones133: I was looking around in my bios this morning and like you the QS version of sandy bridge jumped out at me. Seems to be the same for a friend in a french forum. I googled it and saw this thread.
We need more returns to be sure but seems to be the same for everybody...

With catalyst 11.7 the brightness buttons doesn't work either.

EDIT: Confirmed by another guy, QS version in bios for him too. He's saying that's the same for everybody.

 

Factory Default drivers won't let me change brightness. I've used 11.6b and 11.7 without any control either. I'll give Dell a call and see what I can find out.

 

Thanks for the response Pustul, much appreciated +rep to you. I just wondered if it was an anomoly of kinds but if it seems standardised, I can rest easy now.....just seeing QS in bios scared me a bit

 

That is odd .... seems that you may have some kind of issue. Are you able to adjust brightness upon a cold boot? - I know all to well that on occasion, resuming from sleep would knock out all functionality of the FN brightness keys...this was on the R2 - see here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ightness-control-via-fn-keys-bsod-issues.html

 

No control on cold boot either. I just flashed to new bios and still no control. I think it is my display missing a connection or something. Though I'm hoping they troubleshoot it as a gpu problem and they just send a technician over with 6990s. It's not a ground breaking problem and heck I've dealt with it since June but since there are new gpus out I might as well get an upgrade and a problem fixed. If they can't do anything then I'm not going to be heartbroken.

 

‪Crysis 2 dx 11 maxed alienware HD6990M CF‬‏ - YouTube

 

Thanks for the rep
Same for me, freaked me out to see that I've got a QS. I am no longer surprised by anything from Dell.

Switch to the IGP, reboot and try the brightness buttons, should work.

You're playing in extreme not ultra. Here is the fps I'm getting, everything maxxed without vsync:
Singleplayer: min, max, avg: 27, 61, 49
Multiplayer on Pier 17: 26, 62, 45

 

I'll upload the ultra version later after work.
It is 8:13 am here in Japan now.

 

Do you have to have Crysis 2 game disk to run Crysis 2 benchmark?
I have Crysis Disk and bench utility but not Crysis 2
Thanks

 

I used fraps to get those fps. But yes you need to have crysis 2 installed on your hdd to run the benchmark.
I ran the bench utility a few times and I think it's inconsistent cause I get an average of 80-90 fps (everything maxed). Putting the game in ultra or high didn't change anything (0.2 fps at most).

 

Hi guys, I've had my alienware for a few days so far and I am pretty pleased with the performance. One thing that was upsetting me was that the screen kept changing brightness when I switched between light and dark program windows. At first I thought it was my eyesight playing tricks on me, but upon closer inspection it was in fact adapting the brightness. Of course this only happens when on battery.

So I figured it had to be a setting I could change. So I went into the Catalyst Control Center > Power > PowerPlay > and disable Vari-Bright.

Of course this only applies to AMD graphics cards. In case any of you encountered this problem (nuisance), now you know where to disable the setting. Cheers!

 

Hey guys, I had brightness control with Dell drivers, 11.6 and 11.7, but I just did a clean install of 11.8 and there is no way to adjust screen brightness. This is a preview driver, so maybe the final release will work. It may not even be intended for mobility.

Another observation, with 11.8 Trixx version 4.0.2 actually disables ULPS like it is supposed to. I don't have to manually change EnableUlps DWORD values to zero any more. The pop-up message from Trixx tells me to restart for the changes to take place.

Stevie - checked my BIOS and Sandy Bridge version is also QS on my system. After restarting, still not brightness control. The OSD pops up with FN keys, but no changes. Also in the tray/power profiles the sliders are there but moving them does nothing.

 

Thanks for the reply about the QS stuff - seems its normal....thank god.

Yeah, im running 11.8 atm, the OSD icon for brightness DOES appear and the animation goes up and down accordingly with each press but it does NOTHING to the physical brighness levels of the screen.

Also FYI, and for any one else interested in the continued AERO BUG issue....ChrisM has posted over at the Dell Thread that Intel and AMD are working together and MAY have done something to the latest AMD Driver to improve things. Chris wants as many of us as possible to test out.

If any of you guys havent done so already, please feel free to stop by the above thread and lend us your support for the Aero problem etc.

 

I'm on 11.8 now and I have no aero issues. But I never really had it. I made a fresh install on my ssd 10 minutes after boot my M18x for the first time and never had aero issue apart when installing new gpu drivers or running vantage. But aero never crashed randomly.

Still have the brightness issue, no way to change it even with the power options. Only way to do it is to switch to the igp and then everything works.

 

Yeah - I think the brightness thing is def. linked to AMD drivers....Some AMD drivers I have installed have worked fine, others not...11.6 was good for brightness control where 11.8p isnt....hope they get it fixed along with the supposed fix that Intel/AMD have been implementing the Aero Bug.

 

Yea I am on the latest Dell drivers and brightness works fine ...

 

You are on 11.7 then Shaden? - latest OFFICIAL drivers from AMD....the ones I am on are the preview or beta to 11.8 and are not OFFICIAL just yet although available to test out. Brightness does not work on these 11.8 preview drivers for me. Cant recall if it did or not on 11.7.

Let us now which ones you are on so we can rule 'em out of the brightness problem....

 

nope I am on DELL drivers ... from the website ... 8.8.51.2 ...

 

Gotcha. On certain reference driver packages from AMD, brightness gets FUBAR'd.....on Dell Drivers, its probably gonna be fine but you take a performance hit if you stick to Dell drivers, as is my experience. You can get better performance from using drivers direct from AMD website but obviously, the do have some glitches - of which, one is the brightness control going out the window. These kind of glitches are what ALOT of us would like to see get ironed out so we can use AMD drivers without ANY issue. Its something that I believe would be a good thing as Dell rarely update their video drivers whereas AMD will update once a month which ensures best performance.

 

Oh I very much agree, with my 6970s I got crap performance on Dell drivers AND couldn't overclock well at ALL ... switched to 11.7 and got much better performance AND could overclock pretty nicely (not as nice as these 6990s though ) But right now I am rocking awesome OCs already ... wondering if I switch to AMD if I will be able to OC even more ....

On the other hand my fiancee and I watch movies at night and sometimes she likes the brightness turned down ...

 

Maybe worth popping over to the benchmarking thread and see what kinda figures people are pulling down with the 11.8 drivers and 6990's and compare to see if you might get better......tell the missus to put her shades on

 

Apparently I'm in quite a predicament. I'm scheduled to get my LCD, Motherboard and 6970s replaced by a Technician Monday. Apparently Dell still has stock of 6970s. Best case scenario, I'll end up with 6970s that will reach 8k 3dmark11 and have control of brightness. But I'm kind of terrified that some random Technician that probably hasn't seen this laptop in his entire life will be replacing the LCD which is no easy task. Other than terrible 6970s and the brightness issue, everything has been perfect. But I assume if the Technician screws something up big time Dell will have to send me a brand new m18x that would most likely have 6990s? I guess I'm paranoid of my baby.

 

I would think so yes Ray, or at least continue sending Techs until its fixed ... but at that point I am sure you could talk customer Care into a replacement

 

It might be my cards, but I don't know for sure that newer drivers will let you implement higher clock speeds. My ceiling has been 820/1100 no matter what driver version I use... Dell, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8. But, even though higher clocks were not possible, I did see differences in system performance (benchmarks) between each driver version. That behavior was the same with my R2... no difference in clocks, but definitely differences in results.

 

I'm currently having a replacement M18 being rebuilt and notice in the build that there is a difference that being -

N06W1802 which on my original was No5W1801

Does anyone know what this is - motherboard revision perhaps?


BTW Dell sent me order confirmation with DVD instead of BLueray which is a bit annoying....delivery is 17/08/11. Im having visions of my rebuild being taken apart to change the drive! arrgh.

 

any update?

 

‪Alienware m18x crysis 2 dx11 ultra hd6990cf‬‏ - YouTube
dell driver and no oc
some water and explosion heavy scene drops fps to 25

 

"OUI" means "yes"

 

after recieving my m18x yesturday i launched crysis 2 out of the box and crossfire would not work, it would not scale at all. same thing with ffxiv. it would scale perfectly crysis warhead, though....so i am puzzled and a little aggrivated at the same time. how are you getting it to work, exactly? looks like you are using 3rd party applications or something?

also, can you repost the video with some gameplay outside of that tunnel (open streets for example) and please show us that dx11 ultra and high res textures are enabled in the menus?

+rep, thanks!

 

nvm bud, i figured it out

i figured it out. there is a bug. by trial and error i simply switched the in-game graphics fidelity back and forth and it allowed xfire to scale properly. for example, launch the game, the settings are on ultra. change them to extreme and xfire now worked so then change them back to ultra.



i hate bugs like this because this one took me an entire day to find.

 

‪HD6990m cf crysis 2 dx11 ultra‬‏ - YouTube

what is ur score for ff14? mine is 6040.

 

wow!! how did u get 6040???

my m18x have SLI gtx580m and 2920 FOC 4.0 Ghz 16Gb 1866 Mhz ram and 256 crucial c400 still only score 3866?? ?

 

i7-2920 level 3 oc / hd6990m cf at 805/1050 / 8gb 1600mhz / hybrid hdd 500gb cooler master sf-19 at 2600rpm.

‪FF14 hd6990m cf‬‏ - YouTube

 

Welcome to the forum! We're glad you joined us. OsOs - nice score. Both of you have killer specs. Please create a signature in your User Control Panel with your specs.

We look forward to seeing more from you. Have an excellent day.

 

I did not bother running it because the benchmark does not run in full screen so xfire or sli would not well. Bit i noticed you got a score of 6k and it ran in full screen mode?

 

yeah, how did it run in full screen mode? and it seems the ff14 only uses one of my gtx580m

 

here i found this, you have to alter some things and download a custom d3d9.dll
GPU and CPU Score List - FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite
ctrl + F and paste this Howto run " FFXIV Benchmark with multi GPU "


6040 for 6990 cfx is pretty impressive i guess.. i have my gtx580m not OCed with 5068 only..

 

hey folks i can swear that when i was searching through pictures and video of this m18x that the power cord connector that plugs into the back of the laptop had an led ring. mine did not come with this led ring so it does not produce any light.


also, with this slot load dvd drive, i noticed that pressing the eject button on the media panel will not work until windows loads up and starts the, what i assume to be, the media control panel drivers. so how would i eject a disc in the system if i had no windows loaded?

 

No, the LED ring was on the R2 not the M18x.

For ejecting the disc, try this...

1. Enter the BIOS during boot
2. Press the ”eject button”

​

 

Yep. That works as I have actually had cause to do it myself today after flashing my SSD's firmware prior to a clean install. Had the .iso on disc, did the update, re-entered bios, ejected disc using media button. Job done.

 

hi, Im thinking of ordering the m18x, I was wondering if the dual 6990 would be bottlenecked by the 2630qm?

 

Nope, they wouldn't. I went to the 2920X and back to 2630QM and didn't see a huge difference in GPU related benches.

 

Depend on how the game is using the cpu. I have a i7-2920 and I still can increase bench scores only by oc cpu to higher level.

 

ok good, this dell rep is giving a really good deal. I was debating the dual 6990 in the m18 vs the single in the m17. If there was sufficient bottleneck from the cpu, I would have settled on the m17 since it was a good $650 less.

everything else is about even between the two as far as specs are concerned. Do you think the screen on the m18, and overall build warrant the $650 upcharge?

My other concern is that if the single 6690 is adequate enough, I might be better off saving the 650 and losing the performance of the dual cards

 

The M18x is absolutely worth the $650 price difference. Larger display, dual GPU and anodized alloy chassis versus plastic. If you can afford the difference, it's kind of a no-brainer. If you cannot, the R3 is still a nice laptop. It has a rubberized exterior surface that's not as durable.

 

neither of the systems were overly expensive.

the m18x was 2679 with tax for

2630qm
8gig ram
dual 6990
500gig
blu-ray
killer wireless
3 year extended advance warranty

vs the m17, which was 1961

2630qm
6gig ram
single 6990
350gig
blu-ray
killer wireless
3 year extended advance warranty

so my bad, 700 diff. I can afford both, I was curious as if its really worth it. 700 gets a lot of other junk. Im leaning towards the m18 anyways, but im still on the fence

 

There will be no comparison in performance between the two. the m18x will CRUSH the m17x. and you could drop the blue-ray and the ram out of it and add the ram aftermarket for cheaper, and the blu ray for that matter. If you even need the BR ....