*Official* Alienware M18xR1/R2 CPU Overclocking Thread - Learn How and Share Tips Here

No, not really. Electrically, nothing is different. Cosmetically, there could be some differences, (like the color of the plastic on the CPU base,) as well as what firmware/EC version the BIOS had been flashed prior to the system pull, but the board itself is unchanged according to Mr. Bruno.

 

I actually had a really good look comparing the two i had and as Fox said they are identical. It is wierd how some have SATA 3gb/s problems like my original rev G2 1115 board

 

Rev: E2 1122 is what i have now. Does this sound like one of the effected ones?

 

what you two were just mentioning and the thread you pointed me to Mr Fox... It seems at one point a set of boards not physically different were manufactured with defects in some way that lead to the problems that were being reported... so this fits what you said about certain dates etc... Seems maybe anything from a certain plant from a certain date got bad boards from fan issues to sata probs

 

No, I don't think so. I think it was just random defects in some components attached to the boards. Buying stuff from Taiwan any more seems to be "like a box of chocolates" to quote Forest Gump, LOL. Just crappy quality control, think. If you look at the list of numbers on the thread I linked you to, you can see they are all over the board. A number of M18x that were shipped in September/October with 6990M CF had issues, but I doubt it was every system that shipped. Honestly, if everything checks out OK on your refurbished/used mobo, I doubt you have anything to worry about.

Alienware Engineering "fixed" the AMD 6990M CF overheating and thermal shutdown problem with A05 and a driver update helped the situation as well. Truth be told, I suspect it had something to do with issues or changes to some of the AMD 6990M cards rather than the mobo or BIOS. I have no insider intel to base it on, but I think they may have implemented a workaround in the A05 release to eliminate the need to replace a bunch of GPU modules.

 

makes a lot of sense and have heard of the "fix" this is my 4th m18x motherboard over 2 different systems... My first had 6970m crossfire and seemed to had the fan issues before A05 and eventually died before that with 8beeps with discrete gpus in but would boot on intel gpu so seems like i had one just like the one you noted in that thread note #2...

exactly seems orddring oversees with all thats going on is very unpredictable... e2 1122 rev seems earlier than all of the ones reported on. But if i find no issues im glad because i have had many repairs a depot and exchange a gpu install when delivered with wrong gpus and now this motherboard. My first m18x got a mobo replacement and came back damaged from depot and gpus before that. All this came from a M17x r2 that had other issues after many repair attempts and other stuff i had enough and got exchange for this m18x. Been through the inferno and back... I am hoping there is no issues to be found on this motherboard and be done with this. Lol i just want to use my system :| so i am going to hope for the best and have full faith that all will work for a long time to come. I will check over tonight.

 

So i fixed the bluetooth connection issue... The other end connected card was not it right. I got al 16gb ram in with no problems thanfully all my ram dimms work now. I mentioned it was Rev E2 1122... this on was in fact on bios A00 :0 its now on bios A05 im surprised my 2960xm and GT580m were registering... Both were given bios support in later revisions than A00 and surprising it was booting and showing them correctly at all.

 

The GTX 580M would register fine with A00, but it would throttle down to P8 or P12 within about 5 to 10 second after launching any game or benchmark program. A00 basically rendered the M18x completely unusable with GTX 580M.

 

Hey guys here are my current scores with my new cpu..
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: 22648 3DMarks

but my question is this..

whats the best over clock settings for the 2960xm to run say 3.9-4.0 ghrzs..

i want to be stable and at that speed .. and does the energy saver effect any thing.. I have intel turbo monitor and the speed jumps from say 2.7 to 4.2 right now.. even at idle it just jumps around..

so if some one could tell me the best bios setting to try that would be great..thanks.

 

It is normal for core speeds to constantly fluctuate. You can turn off C states to make the cores run a consistent speed, but watch your temps closely.
Turning off C states prevents the CPU from throttling when temps climb higher than you want them to.

The settings below work pretty decent for normal everyday use. You might want to give them a run. Temps on my system are managed well with these settings.

Spoiler

For a little more horsepower, these CPU overclock settings work good as well...
(Kudos to residualvoltage for turning me on to the settings below. I really like them.)





Here is a sample run of Unigine Heaven with the latter overclock settings (44x4). Note that this benchmark was with native fan controls. The temps are with the M18x sitting flat on a desk without the back elevated. It was not necessary to force the fans using HWiNFO64, although I had it running in the background to allow the OSD CPU monitoring using HWiNFO64's Rivatuner plug-ins. ThrottleStop was not in use. This is also with stock voltage on the GPUs and minimal GPU overclock using NVIDIA Inspector software. See OSD in upper right corner for GPU settings.

 

awesome! ill give those a shot

just wondering if these temps are to high for a 2960xm,,
when gaming the temps get pretty high.. altho im on a stock 2720 cooling pipe..

Spoiler

 

I'd be a bit worried on the cpu temps, the gpu temps are great.

anything 90+ on any machine is just too high for comfort.

 

Yes those CPU temps do seem a tad high in comparison to what I have seen on other 2960 owners. But what do you mean your on a stock 2760 cooling pipe? Does each cpu have a different cooling pipe? Cause that could be it.

 

I agree. Your GPU temps look fabulous (mine sit at max 76°), but that CPU is really hot, though I think the thermal limit for a CPU is much higher than a GPU...

 

Yeah, temps are way too high......that is because the single pipe heatsink that shipped with your original cpu is not efficient enough to keep an extreme cpu cool under heavy load. If you order your system with a 29xx cpu, by default it ships with a dual pipe heatsink for this exact reason. Any other processor comes equipped , again by default, with a single pipe heatsink as that is sufficient to keep those chips cool under heavy loads. Anyone upgrading to an XM chip aftermarket should seriously consider the fact that they are gonna need the better heatsink or run the risk of thermal shutdowns due to inability to keep the processor cool.

I would advise getting a dual pipe heatsink ASAP.

 

Yeah definitely purchase a dual pipe heatsink. It'll solve your problem.

 

I think it depends on what game you are playing. I get the same kinds of temps playing Rage, a horrible game which maxes out all 4 cores, but my CPU stays quite cool if playing something like Skyrim. I have a stock 2920XM.

 

Rage, a horrible game? I love Rage. It's one of my favorites and I do not have any overheating issues with it.

That stock one-pipe non-XM heat sink is the reason his temps are so high. It is not sufficient to cool an Extreme CPU.

 

thanks! ordering a heat sink now or i might look in the for sale section..

 

Testing that game right now on a customers m17xr3. I liked that game allot as well.

 

I don't mean the game is horrible to play, but that it gobbles CPU and doesn't use the GPUs like it should. It IS going to heat up ANYone's CPU a lot more. With settings maxed, it maxes out all of my cores at times, and my max temps can be just like the OP. I've notched down the settings just to keep CPU temps more reasonable.

Compare that to Skyrim, which inarguably looks better, has better detail, performs better, makes much better use of GPUs, and keeps the CPU quite cool.

 

Yeah, that's a given..Skyrim was and is a far better game. Now that game i loved playing.

 

After watching my boys play Skyrim on their consoles, I am eager to own Skyrim as soon as the price falls into my acceptability range. I don't remember the last time I paid more than $20 for any game. I'm keeping an open eye for another Steam blowout sale.

 

Skyrim is a fantastic game indeed, one that will have you investing a good 200 hours

 

Yeah, I played it for 200hrs, got to level 81 and went back to play Baldur's Gate series. These modern titles look nice that's not enough for me. Too few spells, abilities, classes, artifacts, locations, quests, etc. They say that Skyrim's map is huge but it's tiny compared to BG. Dragons are pathetic, lol. Any player can beat any dragon at any point in the game without a need to think about tactics... Are we getting zombified?

 

hi i am new to ovc so can any body help me to ovc my laptop and how i can make the intel extrem work

Spoiler

i want to get 4.00 ghz for every day use and without any problem

 

Just noticed this on eBay today for those who are interested in a 2920XM:

Intel OEM Core i7-2920XM Processor Extreme SR02E (NON-ES) | eBay

BID BID BID!

 

Thanks Mr. Fox, I just got my M18x in...WHAT A BEAST.

After playing around with it for a few hours, enabling SLI and a mild OC on the cards via Nvidia Inspector my jaw dropped when it pulled a 27k GPU score in Vantage....with room to go (temps didn't exceed 72 C) but I am happy for now.

Considerable stuttering in Batman: Arkham City with DX 11 enabled on highest settings, any ideas?

Still learning how to unlock the CPU....Anyone recommend ThrottleStop or should I just stick with the BIOS?

 

Intel XTU seems to be the preferred OC method

 

vulcan78 - congrats on the beast. The M18x is nothing short of awesome, especially with an XM proc and 580M SLI.

You need an unlocked A04 or A05 BIOS to do anything good with CPU overclocking and XTU. Basically, we are only using XTU to raise multipliers over the stock limits and to change BCLK without entering the BIOS. Changing voltage and amp (flex and pri plane) in XTU does not work.

I am running my 2920XM at 44x on all 4 cores with BCLK at 100Mhz (99.8 is what is shows in Windows), flex VID at 10 and pri plane at 2400, short duration disabled and long duration power at 99 and time limit of 56. These settings are working great for everyday use and gaming. Temps are fine in games with these settings.

hoot_hu - this should be helpful for you also. You need the correct version of XTU for it to work. See thumbnails.

I have also attached thumbnails of BIOS screen shots showing where the adjustments are made that I am referring to in the comments above.

 

Here is what I find works well for normal everyday overclocking...

You need an unlocked A04 or A05 BIOS to do anything good with CPU overclocking and XTU. Basically, we are only using XTU to raise multipliers over the stock limits and to change BCLK without entering the BIOS. Changing voltage and amp (flex and pri plane) in XTU does not work.

I am running my 2920XM at 44x on all 4 cores with BCLK at 100Mhz (99.8 is what is shows in Windows), flex VID at 10 and pri plane at 2400, short duration disabled and long duration power at 99 and time limit of 56. These settings are working great for everyday use and gaming. Temps are fine in games with these settings.

hoot_hu - this should be helpful for you also. You need the correct version of XTU for it to work. See thumbnails.

I have also attached thumbnails of BIOS screen shots showing where the adjustments are made that I am referring to in the comments above.

 

ok here are my current results

AMD Radeon HD 6970M / 6990M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: 24356 3DMarks

but there is some thing I cant figure out in the A05 unlocked bios.. the power plane I see in your screen shots and the advanced cpu control.. where do i find those..

 

Go to Power, then Advanced CPU Control, then scroll down.

 

thanks MR: FOx forfor quick response but the problem when i but all configuration like your screenshot and do stress test i got thermal throttle and the test can not stand to five minute so do you have any other idea

 

The stress test may be taxing your CPU more than you will ever realize in normal use. The issue is heat, so the CPU throttles to cool off. Mine will throttle in the stress test as well, but during normal use and gaming, it never gets hot enough to matter. So, ignore the stress test and see how things work in normal operating conditions.

Your experience may vary depending on a number of things, including the climate you are in. If you are in a warm environment, you may not be able to run the same settings without taking additional steps to keep your system cool.

 

okay that's true without stress test the laptop moving fast and i like it thanks so i will ignore stress test

 

Mr. Fox you are the man! Coincidentally, upon booting up I just checked to see what BIOS I was on as I surmised that was the reason the primary plane and EIST options among others weren't available to me, I am on A03. Downloading unlocked A05 now.

I will just use your settings, I've followed your experience in other threads and you definitely know what you're doing.

Thanks for the help.

 

Thanks, vulcan78. I appreciate the compliment. +1 If the settings I am using don't work well for you, give a shout and we can tweak a little differently for your situation.

 

Mr. Fox, Great Success!

I duplicated your settings to the T, but also upped the CPU throttle temp from 85 to 90 C in "Thermal Management", let me know if this is inadvisable.

I gained roughly 700 points in GPU and about 1k in CPU in Vantage.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P26934 3DMarks

CPU temps didnt exceed 86 C.

GPU temps didnt exceed 71 C.

Ambient temperature ~70 F.

I take it I no longer need ThrottleStop?

I cant believe how manly these video cards are, makes me want to sing national anthem at rodeo in Texas!

"A Mr. George Bush, we support your War of Terror!"

"May you drink the blood of your enemies!"

"May you kill every man, woman and child so that not even a lizard will live in Iraq!"

 

Mr. Fox your Vantage score is insane!

 

Ha ha, that's awesome, bro. Glad those settings worked well for you also. I have my throttle temp at 90°C as well. No problem with that.

You can actually still benefit from using ThrottleStop when benching. No need to use it for gaming and other normal uses. See the attached screen shot for the settings I am using. Click the TPL button and manually type in 300 where indicated. This will push your CPU harder for benching, just keep it cool to avoid thermal shutdown.

If you click the links for my benchmark runs and go to the Futuremark web pages for them, you will see the CPU and GPU settings I was running typed into the description field. As for the insane Vantage score, I was using an AC unit in a hotel room to keep the system chilled down for those runs. I had the AC turned down as cold as it would go, AC fan running on high and the M18x fans running at 100% with HWiNFO64. I sat the M18x fan intake vents directly on the AC outlet. I also had C-states disabled in the BIOS to keep the CPU clocks running full blast.

Most of the credit really goes to Brother Johnksss, as I learned most of my benching tweaks from John. Also learned a few things from Brother RV (residualvoltage), so you can give both of them some rep also. I'm very happy to share the info with you.

 

Over the weekend, I stopped in a lan with some local guys. Funny, I've talked to fox about my temps on my cpu. So, of course, I sit next to a guy with a water cooled I-5 running stock cpu speed. Temps were a third of mine and barely higher than that when running. I mentioned my temps (he was having issues after setting up new hardware, thats where the subject came up) and he was surprised how high mine was. During gaming, cores hit 88/89 and the package runs around 90. I reset the bios defaults out of curiosity, with stock 3.7, ran same temps. So I set everything back to 4.0 and called it good.

I know were cooling on air, wish the temps were a little cooler but I've never had any problems with shut downs or anything like that. Guess thats my point for this post.

 

Hi guys (hi again Mr Fox),

I have an M18x with 2960XM at stock speed and I was wondering if there could be a problem with the temperatures (temps are registered with latest HW Monitor).

For example, when running Windows 7 performance test or 3DMark11 (especially the physics bench), the temp of my proc rapidly goes up to 99/100 C (fans follow full speed as well) and I assume proc immediately reduces frequency (again followed by fans) just after because temp goes down again abruptly (and so on until the bench ends).

I also see a big difference between cores, 2 of them being at least 10C hotter than the 2 others.
For example: max values after a bench look like that:
- Package 99C
- Core #0 86C
- Core #1 96C
- Core #2 98C
- Core #3 85C

For comparison, when PC is idle (for example when I am typing this text), temps look like that:
- Package 58C
- Core #0 55C
- Core #1 57C
- Core #2 57C
- Core #3 50C

During the same bench, my GTX580 SLI are quite cool (max 64C and 68C).

For information, the M18 stays on a CoolerMaster Notepal U3 with fans running at full speed (and positioned just under the ones of the M18).

Do you think there is a problem with the CPU?
Do you think I need to repast it?

I was thinking of overclocking it but with those temps it seems stupid…

Thanks in advance for any useful advice.

 

The Good Bear,

I should be able to give you a pretty good comparison here as I too run my M18x on my NotePal U3 with its fans on full (as they are so quiet on full anyway).

99c is way too hot - even after/whilst running a bench like 3dMark11. From recollection, mine doesnt even get into the 90's during a run.

As for idle temps, check out my screenshot in the spoiler below - again, yours are a good deal higher than mine at idle, I have my cpu set to factory level 3 OC in bios.

I think there may be cause for you to contemplate repasting the cpu to bring those load temps down quite alot.

Spoiler

 

Thanks for the quick reply StevieJones, it seems there is definitely a problem with my CPU temp. In fact, even you GPUs are nearly 10C cooler than mine while idle…

Before repasting, and knowing that my M18 is quite new (less than 2 months) and has full 3 years support, I have a few questions:
<o</o<img>
- Do you think I could call Dell for this, and will they do a correct repasting by themselves?
- If I do the job myself, don’t I take the risk to void warranty?
- What is the best thermal paste to put on?
- I am sure someone has already done that, do you have knowledge of a link to a tutorial for M18?

By the way, I really like the little windows monitoring your GPUs and CPU at the right of your screen. What software is that?

 

Well, I would call Dell and tell them of your high temperatures, they are above what would be considered "normal" - your cpu is almost hitting shutdown limits without overclocking it which isnt right.

Regarding repasting yourself, it doesnt void warranty as they are user servicable machines - but on that note, if you break anything yourself, its unlikely to be warranted.

I see alot of people using IC24 diamond but as I havent repasted, I am not sure of the best out there.....if you do decide to do a repaste job yourself, take your time, familiarise yourself with the service manual and also have a watch of the teardown video below.

M18x Teardown Video by HIDevolution.

Oh, and those sidebar gadgets can be found here (you might need to google translate as its a german website): OrbLog - once you have downloaded them, just apply the following settings (courtesy of Mr. Fox):

 

Thanks for all that stuff Stevie.
I will call Dell tomorrow.
And I am already installing the gadgets. Thanks also to Mr Fox.

 

No problem Bro, glad to help. If Dell deem your temps to be too far out of line, they may well send a field tech to do the repasting for you....as with anything in life, you can get good and bad technicians so my advice to you would be that if you feel comfortable with the teardown and repaste job yourself, you will probably do a better job than any tech, simply as its YOUR system that YOU paid ALOT for and YOU will take your time and get it RIGHT.......bit like the old saying "If you want something doing right, do it yourself!"

Keep us posted on what Dell say/advise/do for you.

 

If I was going to buy either a 2920 or 2960 CPU, where would I get an unlock BIOS at?

 

There are many links throughout the forum. I believe there are multiple links even in this very thread, but here is a post with a link.