So, uh, my GPUs failed. Again.

Congratulations on finally getting the resolution you wanted. I hope that your new machine fulfils all your needs!!

(Oh, and don't worry about whining - I did PLENTY of it, so I know exactly how you felt and it is totally understandable)

 

Did you have to pay for the 880Ms?

 

Nope, they did it for free after all the problems I've been through. Provided I agreed to never ask Dell for a free upgrade again...

 

Ha. I think this would be a greater loss to me than getting M290X cards and selling the AW18 and re-buying a new one when the 980Ms came out. It means they'll NEVER give you a benefit if something's broken... so if and when those 880Ms temp-spike or whatever, they're probably not gonna help much haha.

 

As this is the EMEA region and not the US, I was unlikely to get any more upgrades anyway...I did consider just getting the first offered replacement and selling it, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of doing so, plus it wouldn't be enough for my ideal mini-ITX desktop plus a fairly nice laptop.

This replacement will still be more than enough for another two years for me, so I'm happy to stick with it.

 

So....when does the Saga....Part 2 start up.? LOL
AW M17 with a new 980M.

j/k

 

Bloody hell, I hope not. If the replacement goes as badly wrong, I think I'm done with computers in general. Or at least done with laptops, besides maybe Macs (yes, really, because they're some of the most reliable and well made computers out there. Not that I'd like moving to such an ecosystem and soldered components...)

 

Macs are like PCs... extremely reliable until you get one that isn't. I've heard a few horror stories from Mac owner's, too. You don't hear about problems as often, probably because it is against the religion of some Mac owners to talk bad about Apple products in public.

 

Oh, of course, I've got no doubt that Macs go wrong too. All computer products have some fraction of hardware failures. But knowing Apple's fantastic support, they would likely be very quick to fix anything that goes wrong.

Hopefully it won't come to me considering a Mac, though...fingers crossed that my new 18 is reliable. I'm hoping I'll receive it within a week, seeming as the estimated ship date for an 18 on AW's website was this Friday when my replacement order was made (and the manager has, of course, requested an expedited service).

I'm actually considering sticking with Windows 8.1 on the new system, with a classic shell installed. How is 8.1 these days compared to 7?

 

Same as before... overrated and CPU-hindering performance. I've got mine so heavily modded that it actually looks nice now. It doesn't even resemble the abortion from Redmond any more. Windows 7 is still superior at most things. I keep Windows 8.1 installed on my mSATA in dual-boot for running Fire Strike benchmarks, which is one of the rare things it actually does better. Fancy-looking Fire Strike scores do not rely on a powerful CPU... the overall score is really fluffy even with a wimpy CPU as long as the GPU is a good one. Making Windows 8 a Good Product

<iframe width='1280' height="720" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kTAqqfNH8zk?rel=0" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

 

Right, so Windows 7 it is then.

The recovery disc from my M18x R2 should work, right?

Also, I think my stock setup is a 1TB HDD with the mSATA SSD caching it...how would I stop that caching setup so that I can install Windows on the mSATA SSD?

Thanks again for the help.

 

Yes, the W7 recovery disc should work on any Alienware system. I used it from the M18x to install Windows 7 on the Alienware 18 and it worked flawlessly.

To turn off the cache, launch the Intel Rapid Storage Technology, disable acceleration and flag the mSATA as "available." You can then re-initialize/format the mSATA using the Windows Disk Management utility.

 

The mSATA slot on the 18 is full SATA 3, and not SATA 2 like on the R2, right?

My replacement went into production this morning, it's currently showing an estimated delivery date of 6th October which I'm hoping is a very conservative estimate...I was hoping I might have it by the end of this week seeming as the order is meant to be expedited. Still have my fingers crossed.

 

The mSATA slot on the 17 and 18 is full SATA 3

 

Replacement shipped earlier today. Disappointed to see that the delivery ETA is in a week's time, particularly as I'll be away for a couple days at the end of next week. Maybe I'll phone the carrier to see if it's possible to expedite it in any way...or just keep my fingers crossed that it somehow gets here earlier.

I'm also a little surprised to see it coming from China. I knew that the American AW computers were built there, but I could have sworn that they used to have a factory within Europe for EMEA orders. Maybe I was just imagining that.

 

No Euro-factory....they all ship from China. At least it's on it's merry way......happy days.

 

Maybe I'm thinking of Pre-Dell-merge Alienware. My old M17 was built in, or at least shipped from, Ireland.

I'm happy it's on its way, of course, it's just...by the time I get it, I will have been without a working computer for almost two months. Can you blame me for wishing it'd be here a little faster?

I'm still hoping it will somehow get here, clear customs, and be delivered to me by Wednesday, but I really doubt that it's going to happen. In fact, I called the courier earlier and they claimed that they don't even have possession of it yet, and that the Oct 3rd ETA could be very optimistic...

It's also quite sad that it's cheaper for Dell to build it in China and pay what was presumably hundreds of dollars in shipping than to build it in Europe. Our reliance on China for so many consumer goods is really going to bite us all in the rear one day.

 

Maybe I'm thinking of Pre-Dell-merge Alienware. My old M17 was built in, or at least shipped from, Ireland.


In the old days, everything was much cheaper and produce in the West.

 

It's not quite that old. It was...about 5 years ago, I think?

As for my new system, the tracking hasn't updated since it shipped. This is starting to really annoy me...not so much because I'm bored without my games, but more to do with needing a computer next week for university work...it's going to be very inconvenient if I don't have it by then.

 

Well, I finally got my new 18.

So far everything looks good. I've installed 8.1 on the 80GB SSD (decided to stick with 8.1 in the end), and removed the 1TB HDD to put in my own 500GB SSD and 750GB hybrid drive.

About to put it through its paces to see how the CPU turbos at stock settings and how badly the 880M's throttle. Will probably repaste later or tomorrow, but I'll see how it is before a repaste before I start messing with it.

And I have to say, it's nice to finally have a screen that's less reflective than a polished silver mirror. It's a beautiful display too, it does seem better than my R2's screen was at a glance.

 

Glad to finally hear some good news for you, Bro - nice that you are happy so far. I agree - the matte screen on my 14 is way better than the glossy type screens of the R1/R2, but many will disagree - personal preference, I guess, but I prefer matte any day of the week....

 

The 18 still has a glossy display, but it might as well be matte compared to the M18x, which pretty much placed a mirror in front of the display panel.

I'm definitely going to open it up, because this wireless card absolutely SUCKS. I could barely believe it when I opened up the Wi-Fi status and found it connected at 36Mbps...This is on 5GHz Wireless N, no other 5GHz signals on the same channel, about 3 metres from the router with a direct line of sight and a strong signal strength of between -40 and -50 dBm. As a result I get an internet speed of about 20-25Mbps, whereas my internet's download bandwidth is 70Mbps. Ugh, why did they stick the card under the keyboard in the 18...

The Intel 6300 I had in the M18x got about 150Mbps to the router...time to stick it in this and hope it works properly.

 

What was it Mr. Fox said? You'd have to pry his M18xR2's beautiful screen from his cold dead hands?

 

Hmm.

Well, I just took it apart to replace the wireless card and repaste it.

The good news is that it boots and runs fine, and the wireless card is working as expected.

But...the DVD drive and both 2.5" drives have disappeared from Windows. This is particularly odd as the DVD drive will accept discs and Fn+F4 ejects the disc as expected...

No idea what to do about this. It boots so fast that I can't even get into the BIOS or boot window. I've double checked the connections for both cables and they all appear solid.

 

Try turning it fully off, then as SOON as you hit the power button (before your screen or keyboard light up) rapidly tapping F2. I have the same problem with this machine where it passes the BIOS screen too fast lol

 

Just tried that before you posted that, got into the BIOS and all of a sudden all the drives are detected. Weird. Eh, whatever, it's working now!

I repasted both GPUs and the CPU with IC Diamond. I was going to use Liquid Ultra on the CPU, but unlike the Ivy Bridge CPUs, there are a load of exposed components near the die and I REALLY don't want to risk blowing those up. I'll take the slightly higher temperatures/lower turbos.

 

You either lover or hate 'edge to edge' glass - I know Brother Fox loves the E2E, but for me, it threw out far too many reflections in bright lighting...so much so that I had to move my whole setup around to avoid the sun.....can't be doing with that, personally. They are fine in dark conditions, but if you are trying to do any work in the sun or outside, forget about it.....at least that has been my experience with matte/glossy displays. The only thing I preferred about the R1's screen I had was the ease of cleaning and no bezel to gather dust....saying that, if you are as particular about cleaning as I am with my machines, they never get that grimy in the first place.....

 

My driver crashes (nvlddmkm error) every 1 or 2 weeks. I'm on latest driver. Should I be worried?

 

Well, I finally decided to install the modded vBIOS on the 880m's. Running fine at 993/1250, but they're pretty toasty, the primary GPU is currently sitting at 87C after about 10 minutes of 100% load. This is compared to 73C on the stock vBIOS which seemed to hover at a core clock of around 750-800. I tend to think that the significant jump in temperature is not so much due to clock speeds but also due to the higher voltages, it's running at 1V whereas I think it was slightly less on the stock vBIOS, even when it was running at 993 (briefly). Can anyone point me towards a program which will let me lower the voltage a bit on the GPUs while they're running?

 

nVidia Inspector will do it.

 

Thanks, much appreciated. I might play around with that, see what the lowest stable voltage is for me (because voltage has a huge effect on temperatures) and then I'll probably offer to buy svl7 a beer to make a modified vBIOS for me with the clocks and voltage I'm after.

Or I might just stick with the stock one...I flashed back to stock because the modded vBIOS was too toasty for my liking, but for some reason the GPUs are now behaving differently. Rather than hovering at a core of around 750-800 and 72-73C, it's now mostly sticking to 954 at about 80-82C. 954 @ 0.975V seems to give the best balance of stable performance and temperatures, so that's probably what I'll go for if I flash the modded vBIOS again.

 

Good luck!

 

I told you it's a sticky situation. Something is horribly wrong with the 880M. They will literally go from working great to just burning up and tonight I actually heard the coil whine... I was running 3DMark 2013 Ice Storm to prove that it was CPU bound and I heard this whining sound like someone was letting air out of a tiny hole in a balloon... And I heard that over my keyboard. It's because that benchmark kept the cards at 419 and 770 so the fans never kicked up but it blew my mind, very noticeable...

Oh and if you want a mod, I can do it for you. It just takes some tweaks with Kepler bios tweaker to drop clocks and voltage on svl7's vbios.

Personally I ran mine at 849 @ 0.896v which is still faster than a 780M but ran cool as heck, never passing 72C with max fans in Sleeping Dogs which would burn the cards to 82 and 84C with max fans with stock vbios.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, I know something's up with them. I wouldn't have paid for them if I was purchasing a new computer, I'd have done what many hopefully did and wait for 980M's. But I'm still happier dealing with these 880M issues than AMD's crap with the R9 M290X's.

I might just take you up on that offer. But if it's as simple as opening up svl7's vBIOS in the Kepler BIOS tweaker and changing a few numbers, I could probably just do it myself. Also, is it possible to get rid of the message that shows up on boot with the modded BIOS? I don't want Dell complaining if I have to send this in for whatever reason and they find out I have a modded vBIOS.

I'm about to flash back to the modded bios and try a few values in nVidia Inspector to see what works best on my cards. I might give your clocks/voltages a go but I'm a little more ambitious, I might try something around 900 at about 0.95V.

 

Here's the stock voltage tables. Master/slave, numbers under 954MHz are slave only because my master never throttled like the slave

993MHz - 1.012/1.018v
979MHz - 1.006/1.006v
967MHz - 0.993/0.993v
954MHz - 0.981/0.987v
941MHz - 0.981v
928MHz - 0.968v

I got 928MHz running @ 0.95v on both cards @ 89C.

The reason I went for 849MHz in the end? Because none of my games needed anything higher and I figured why not run my machine cooler and quieter and give the cards a bit less stress.

Anyway, it's not hard to mod the BIOS with KBT, use the 1.27 version.

As for the boot logo, no, it's not possible to get rid of. If you ever need Dell to service your machine reflash the stock vbios every time.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

It is possible to get rid of it for you using UEFI and fast boot I believe. I don't have the logo; I simply see the mythlogic logo with a spinning circle and then windows loads up a short while after.

 

Yeah UEFI kills it on Clevo machines but I don't think it does on Alienware.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

Great. My worst nightmare has just happened.

Despite me being as careful as possible, both GPUs somehow got hit with a bad vBIOS flash, and now it won't POST on either dedicated GPU, no matter how I swap them around, so I can't recover from it.

I have no idea how it happened. In my infinite wisdom, I was flashing back to the stock 880m vBIOS. The ROM was one I backed up from my own cards. I've flashed back to this ROM before so it definitely works, and I flashed the GPUs one at a time to try and avoid this happening. I flashed the secondary GPU first, rebooted, confirmed that it was working fine and running the right BIOS, rebooted, flashed the primary, and now neither card works.

I have absolutely no idea what to do now. It's technically my fault, even though there's no way the procedure should have been able to go wrong as it has. I don't have the spare cash to buy a replacement GPU, even just to use to flash the other cards again. And while I'm sure I could probably phone Dell support and claim that the cards died on their own, I'd feel horrible doing so. I might be shooting myself in the foot by being honest with you guys here - no doubt you guys would not take it well if I get Dell to replace them under warranty, and quite rightly too - but I'm hoping that there's some solution to this that you guys can give me. The computer boots up fine on the Intel IGP, but (of course) neither dedicated GPU is detected by NVFLASH when it's running in IGP mode.

I can't believe I've managed to do this to myself after everything that's happened to me. I'm almost in tears over it. Perhaps this is some sort of karma for me not taking the 18 with AMD GPUs, I don't know. Please tell me there's something I can do to recover these 880m's that won't cost a fortune.

I'm also considering just selling this computer off as it is now, and using the money to buy a desktop. Any ideas roughly what the system is worth as it stands now with non-functioning GPUs?


Actually, now I think about it, I've got accidental damage coverage. I've just looked at the cover conditions, and it mentions nothing about damage caused by opening the computer up or through software modifications. It simply states 'accidental damage' with no further clarification. Could I legitimately use that to claim for this?

 

You probably could. But first, have you tried 1 GPU at a time? No SLI enabled at the hardware level, and see if they work? If that happens, it could be you actually somehow have a faulty AW, and would not be as a result of your flashing.

Which means you are even unluckier than I, but then again you live in the US, so... XD.

 

Tried one at a time in the primary slot, one at a time in the secondary, tried switching them around, tried with and without the SLi bridge. It just refuses to POST. Can't even blind flash, the USB drive I was booting from isn't lighting up with any access (and it's the default boot device in legacy boot, which its in right now).

I'll probably ask if Dell can send a temporary GPU out. I only need a working 880M to flash the two cards I have now (and this time I'll make sure at the hardware level that each GPU can boot independently after a flash) and then I can send the temporary GPU back.

This is assuming there is no hardware fault of course. Given what's happened to me over the last year, I really wouldn't be surprised if something is faulty. But I have a gut feeling that the problem is a bad flash on the cards.

 

If you were flashing the GPUs in Windows, a lot things might have caused this to happen, perhaps none of which you may have been able to avoid. It is much safer (very little risk) flashing from DOS.

If the problem is nothing more than a bad vBIOS flash, this can be easily fixed with any M18xR1 or M18xR2 with an unlocked BIOS. Unfortunately, in Dell's infinite wisdom, they have decided to block us from unlocking the BIOS on the new Haswell turds. If you can find someone nearby with an Alienware M18xR1/R2 with an unlocked BIOS all they need to do is change the BIOS video from PEG to SG mode, shut down, install your GPUs, flash them in DOS, shut down and put them back in your machine. I have done this numerous times to fix AMD and NVIDIA GPUs (I have needed to fix bricked 7970M cards from bad flashes more often than any other GPU I have seen before) including with the GPUs in this Alienware 18 that I have here after experimenting with my own vBIOS tweaks.

Steviejones133 may know of someone in your neck of the woods with the right kind of machine that can help. If you cannot find anyone locally, send me a PM.

I hate to beat the dead horse, but this is just one more (of many) examples why the M18xR1/R2 is a much better machine than the Alienware 18. The ability to fix this super simple problem using another laptop is very rare and valuable. Why they made a stupid business decision to lock us out from being able to do awesome things with the full functionality of the BIOS on the new machine defies logic. Having full ownership rights of your Alienware avoids and corrects more problems than it has potential to create, but I suspect selfishness and ignorance prevailed.

 

So here's my grand plan. I've called up Dell and told them that the GPUs aren't functional, requesting replacement parts. They're sending out an engineer with a replacement mobo and GPUs. I'm going to be honest with the engineer, telling him/her exactly what's happened, and that I simply need to temporarily use the replacement GPU to flash my current pair back into life. Dell then gets to keep all the replacement parts and the engineer hopefully just tells them it was a loose cable or something like that.

I won't blame anyone for saying that I'm wrong to do this - while Dell (hopefully) won't be paying anything in replacement parts, they're still paying for the technician - but I saw this as the fastest and easiest way to fix it. (After all, I do have accidental damage cover - I just didn't want to jump through the hoops of explaining exactly what's happened to the guy on the other end and messing around if they refuse to do it.)

This should hopefully all work fine for flashing the cards back into working order seeming as it still booted and worked before flashing the primary, despite the secondary having the bad vBIOS.


Mr. Fox, I was flashing from DOS. I was using a USB drive with the method described on the TechInferno forums for the modded Kepler vBIOS's. I'm still really not sure how the hell it happened. It's entirely possible that I got the BIOS's mixed up and flashed a bad one rather than the stock one, although I was fairly sure I was flashing the right one. And yes, I know the M18x was a better computer - I still agree with that, despite the vastly better screen on the 18 - and I still wish I had my old M18x in perfect working order, but after all of the problems I had with it, I would not have been able to trust that it'd work no matter what Dell replaced. Oh well, Dell's now taking the hit with the cost of the technician thanks to the lack of unlocked BIOS.

 

I don't see how what your doing is wrong. Go ahead, and since you have accidental damage cover, fair enough... Hopefully the engineer is understanding but from what I have come across dealing with the engineers, they're great guys... Let us know how it goes..

 

Man, I feel for ya. If I could have helped, I would.....but I only have a little Haswell turd LOL. Let's hope that Dell sort you out.....

 

I suspect that I'm either ridiculously unlucky or have seriously annoyed whatever deity or deities may exist...but, in this case, it's completely solvable at least with a relatively simple procedure.

The Dell tech I spoke to was also far better than the ones I spoke to before. He understood the issue, and he actually suggested a mobo and single GPU rather than a pair of GPUs...in his words, it's highly unlikely that both graphics cards would have blown at the same time. So he was knowledgeable when it comes to tech. Even asked me if I wanted the parts sending to me to do it myself, which surprised me...I declined as I'd rather have a technician to be able to say to Dell that there wasn't a hardware problem after all, to back up...well, my lies, I suppose.

All of the engineers that I've had so far - both here in the UK and over in the States - have been great, understanding guys. So I'm hoping whoever turns up this time is understanding.

He/she won't even have to do any work on my system, I plan on having it disassembled to where it needs to be before he gets here and I can do the flashing myself with the replacement card.


Rather more worryingly, after checking the warranty online, it's still on the stock 1 year warranty. The warranty on my previous system hasn't been transferred over...I won't bring it up until after this is over and done with, because I don't want to tell the executive that I've screwed up these cards with a bad vBIOS. I doubt he'd be particularly pleased.

 

I have to concur, all the engineers I have had in the UK are awesome guys. And phone support is a bit sketchy at times but generally good. I just feel really sorry for you and your rotten luck with Alienware PCs.

And do you mean the Alienware Execs or is your PC purchased by your work, given to you?

If you're worried your warranty has ran out and they just haven't noticed..

Legally and in terms of the situation, the cards were already faulty before your warranty ran out, which means you're still entitled to warranty because the problem occurred during your warranty period. A similar thing happened to me, and they couldn't argue it.

I'm sure the engineer will be compliant, he has no reason to get funny about it. After all, they get paid on a per-call out basis in the UK.

Best of luck.

 

All fixed now, two working 880m's. The tech took the primary 880m from my machine and swapped it for the replacement card...I offered to flash the dead primary so it would work again but he said not to bother.

I'm back on stock vBIOS's now, and with a fresh application of IC Diamond, not using a ridiculously excessive amount, the cards are almost working great...at near 100% load, they hover at a little above 80C at their boost clocks, but every minute or two the cards hit 85C and throttle back to about 700MHz for a few seconds, and that's frustrating me. I think I'm going to continue looking at a modded BIOS (although this time I'll flash it to the primary first and make sure it's bootable before committing it to the secondary as well!), I think I'll go for something around 900MHz at about 0.925V.

Is the Kepler BIOS tweaker easy enough to use myself, or should I ask someone else to make an appropriate profile?

 

All I want to add as a word of caution is that Kepler BIOS tweaker might not play nicely along non-stock vBIOS files. I have once bricked a card by flashing a KBT-modified svl7 vBIOS for the 780M. Fortunately I did the primary card first (literally a lifesaver!). To be safe, either use KBT on stock vBIOS or just stick with svl7's version.

 

Fair enough, makes sense. I'm happy to modify the stock version, as throttling is unlikely if I lower the maximum clock speed to around 900MHz (it's barely throttling at the max speeds).

What values would I need to modify to achieve this? I've opened the BIOS in KBT and there's a LOT of things in there that can be tweaked. I don't want to risk something like this again by making a modified BIOS that won't work.

EDIT: Okay, I've done a little digging. Would I be right in saying that if I wanted a clock speed of 901.5MHz, I set the TDP Base Entry to 903 and disable the Boost Entry? Do I disable the 3D Base Entry? If I try setting TDP Base Entry and 3D Base Entry to the same 'entry' (#2/#0) I can't change the 3D Base Entry. Would I have to set one to #0 and one to #2 and change them both to 901.5? And do I have to change anything in any of the other tabs?

 

I'd suggest trying to donate a $5 or so to Svl7 and ask him to make a specific modded vBIOS for you to run at I guess lower clock speeds + lower voltage by default so you don't need to load profiles every restart of the PC?