m18x and windows aero

If I may ask, where did your call get routed to? What country?

 

Whenever I feel the need to explain a wide spread problem I gather my reference material online(web pages, documentation, forum etc...), then I show the Dell/Alienware Agent with AlienContact, so that there is NO confusion. The OSD problem is difficult to show because the AlienContact remote session disables Aero by default.

 

Nigel - I'm not seeing the update you're speaking of on the Dell Support site for the M18x. Can you please post a link? The newest one I see is dated way back in May (5/25/2011 - 15.21.13.64.2342, A02) and I doubt that is the one you are referring to.

 

Called the Tech Support Team in the UK, where i live.

 

THis may be old for you guys but just in case:

Alienware Posts Fix for M18x Aero Issues

 

Nice!! Charles P. Jefferies really helped us with getting the word out.

Xeneize, I'm getting my M18x w/580M SLI soon. I need your help with setting up the 580M SLI for best performance. I also need your help with 580M SLI throttling awareness/resolution. +rep in advance.

 

Thx and you got it brother, Johnksss is also getting a 580M SLI setup so expect even better help

 

I was debating between the CF and SLI but after comparing a few M18x's, decided to stay with the RED's 100%. But it's good to see more ppl going for the greens as it will make benching thread more interesting

 

Even though I could have "splurged" on the green team, I too elected to stay with AMD....at the end of the day, no way I could justify the added cost/performance ratio....

 

That's the thing, from what I've seen so far the CF is slightly more powerful. I know people argue based on a few poor reviews, so I ran my own tests Now, I could exchange my 6990s for 580s for the same price and still decided against it. Also didn't like the high latency of the greens.

 

Really? Reds are faster? by 5% ish or more?

 

Negative, it's the other way around actually. There's a reason why more people are switching, don't you think? Plus every review out there says so.

 

yea, but if you read what akimo said he had a choice to switch GPUs at no extra cost and STILL chose the reds.

would be cool if akimox would share his results .

 

He'd be wrong

Seriously not much difference in performance but only because of the throttling issue, one that is worked out I can see a good 20% better performance with the 580s...

 

well he's right about one thing. the 580sli vs. 6990cfx reviews suck.

 

Yes more so if you own 6990s

 

well on notebookcheck the 6970s beat the 6990s in 4 tests. but its looking like team red wins in bf3 . the only game that counts .

 

For staters it isn't the only game that counts, secondly that isn't even true with the new Nvidia drivers, and lastly we're starting to sound like fan boys

At the end of the day both configurations rock and they elevate the M18x

 

Here's the deal. I've tested 2 Machines with 580M SLI + 2920XM and 2820QM vs 2 with 6990 CF + 2920Xm and 2820QM, latest drivers and the following games (Just Cause 2, Crysis, Crysis 2, Metro2033, The Witcher2 -AOK, Unigine 2.5, Vantage, Mark11, all tests done with DPCLat Checker in the background).
I don't care about what reviews say any more since my results are different by a serious margin.
What I saw is a clear advantage in Crysis, Metro, Witcher2 and Mark11, slightly behind in Unigine 2.5, a tie on JC2, Crysis 2 and Vantage P GPU.
I'd say, realistically, it's ~5% to the RED's, but most importantly CF has an edge in the most demanding games and the lower the FPS the clearer is the advantage. I don't care about games with 80FPS + as those will run equally fine on both.
Also, the latency is another reason.
I know, there are many who paid extra for the greens believing their are getting the most powerful GPU option, and in a way that's true. With 5% difference I can call it a nice tie. Still, don't you think that as a system integrator with access to all GPU's I'd put the Clevo 6990's in my sig if I saw any justification to go green?

 

I guess everyone has different results, I have seen a 6990 CF M18x and the only games that it perform better is Crysis, the rest was no contest. Crysis 2 580M SLI was 25% faster, which was incredible to me....

I will say that my experience was at stock speeds because my coworker will not OC.... so we were both at stock. Witcher 2 and Metro 2033 were actually better in the 580M setup which was a weird to me being that Metro 2033 shows faster results in every review... I guess the latest Nvidia drivers (.27) had some improvements.

If the 6990 was actually even 1% faster, I would have already swapped the cards, I went with the 580M SLI because I had confidence it was going to be faster despite all the opinions against it.

As far as Benchmarks go, the only Benchmark that 6990 beat my 580M in stock speeds was 3DMark 11.

The more these drivers marture the more they seem to pull away, which is something I sort of saw coming.

That said, I take nothing away from your tests Aki, I'm sure your results were accurate in your tests.

 

I've owned the 6970M's & 6990M's. Both of our units in home currently have 6990M's in CF. My friend got a M18x from Newegg with a 2630QM & 460M SLI. His 460M SLI smoked our 6990M's with 2960XM by at least 15% in Crysis 2, Dirt 2, Bullet Storm, SSIV: Arcade Edition & NFS:HP. The difference is most likely caused by Nvidia driver optimization. I'm sure someone has/can point out some games that run better on AMD hardware/software.

My main reason for going green was for PhysX, Badaboom & Cuda. I know that once they figure out the throttling the 580M's are gonna own. Probably by then the 600M's will be out
Either cards green or red 6970M, 6990M or 580M offer exceptional performance.
It is VERY important that we don't bicker against each other regarding who has the best components. We 580M owners are going to need the support of the ENTIRE M18x community to resolve the 580M throttling/dpc latency problem.

 

Thing that puts me off the 580's is quite simply the price and throttling. With throttling, they are by no means more superior than the 6990's but ALOT more costly. Sure, you could say that the throttle issue is holding them back but thats not a gamble I would want to take on Dell or NV doing anything to remove the throttle thats obviously been installed to stop returns of VERY expensive cards....

Im sure one of you guys will find a workaround for the problem but I want my warranty on my cards as I paid a good amount for 3 yrs.....I can enjoy 6990 performance (which is on par with 580m currently) and save £600 AND have them fully warrantied for my 3 yrs as they dont need to be tinkered with too much...(unless you wanna!)

 

I totally agree with both of your statements. I was hoping to receive 580M SLi in my replacement system so I could participate with troubleshooting on the throttling issue. That didn't happen, so my participation will have to be limited to observation, moral support and advocacy.

That's unfortunate in some ways and a good thing in other ways. AMD and NVIDIA both have their pros and cons. Obviously, the absurd price of the 580M SLi is the biggest con notwithstanding the throttling problem. I trust that will be fixed and when it is I expect the 580M to walk away with the performance crown between the two by a narrow margin. I still have not completely forgiven NVIDIA for the debacle with their defective GPUs a few years ago. They left me high and dry (and countless other customers) with 3 defective systems and no assistance with resolution whatsoever from NVIDIA. With the Dell systems, Dell had my back even though NVIDIA didn't. With the HP system I was just screwed... no help from HP either. I still remember the stench of freshly baked NVIDIA chips like it was yesterday. Geforce pot pie anyone?

With AMD, the hardware quality control (inconsistent performance) between identical models of GPU modules and crappy drivers are the biggest cons.

At the end of the day, with the M18x we all have system that exceed in appearance, build quality, pricing and performance compared other mobile gaming platforms with similar components. With this new OSD release, we all have a lot to be thankful for with these beasts. I've never owned a finer computer.

Side note - now that I've done it about 4 times in just over 60 days, I've got the M18x teardown memorized. Not counting the time to re-paste CPU and GPU heatsinks, I tore down and reassembled 2 M18x and swapped BD-RE into my new M18x in less than 1 hour... with no leftover screws.

 

I'm going to start a "580M throttling/DPC latency" thread, devoted to fixing the throttling issue on the M18x once I receive my M18x with 580M SLI. Hopefully Batboy or Charles can help gather relevant posts from this thread and other threads and possibly provide a sticky. I'd do it now but I'd rather have material(pics, benches, in-game stats) to backup my claim. Even though there is a ton of info out there.

I really don't want to take anymore away from this thread devoted to AW OSD & Windows Aero. But for now, this thread will just have to make do.
The new thread's OP needs to be professional and free of grammatical errors to show that we mean business.

 

Just for the funny of it I'm gonna jump in here and say I have had ZERO Aero flakes since the new OSD install. Doing good.

 

Massey, how dare you post something on-topic?!

I am very glad to hear your system is fixed, too. So is mine.

Happy for you, too, Aiki.

 

Same here!

 

Like wise no more aero problems since new osd.

 

I believe it is fixed. That is not to say there could be another application that needs to investigated. I would say that the ticket for OSD causing Aero crash can be closed.

 

Well it has been some time now since I installed the new OSD and since doing so, I havent had a single Aero "flake-out" - looking good for a 100% fix 100% of the time.

Because I am sceptical of most things (force of habit) I will always leave the "door open" to re-visit problems if the arise again but I am a happy camper thus far.....hope it stays that way! - again, well done Dell for the fix.

 

Since I just got mine I only saw it do it a few times before I applied the fix. I have not seen it come back at all so appears 100% fixed for me as well.

 

No issues here as well so far on the new OSD version A02

 

Hi Mr fox, for me it wasn't a link. It was in my windows 7 updates. I'll try to post a picture.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24035001/hd update.jpg

 

Thanks, Nigel! I appreciate it, buddy.

I have not used the IGP at all on this new system and had not for almost a month on the previous M18x. I'll have to switch over and run Windows Update. Now that I think of it, I am not even sure I switched over long enough to install the HD 3000 drivers after my clean OS installation yet, LOL.

 

I can confirm that the aero bug just happened to me on the new version of OSD.

There is one important difference however!

After logging in, aero was disabed. I decided to login to NBR and tell you guys about it. After reaching this page, my screen refreshed and aero got turned back on automatically.

So it appears their fix for the aero issue is that, if it ever happens, they are initiating some script that turns aero back on...

A CHEAP FIX IF YOU ASK ME. Actually, not a fix at all.

Whatever part of their code that is disabling aero in the first place, should have been completely re-written. AMIRIGHT?

I'll be taking this complaint to alienware technical support if either of these two things happens:

1. someone else reports the aero bug occuring on the new osd, even if it gets fixed automatically after about 2 minutes

2. the aero bug happens to me again, even if it gets fixed automatically after about 2 minutes

 

Personally, I wouldn't jump the gun by calling it a "cheap fix" just because Aero balked on you today. And, I don't understand why the fact the the problem corrected itself is an issue. That actually seems like a good thing because no user intervention was required for Aero to restart.

There are numerous things that can cause Aero to fail, but it seems obvious to me that the issue where OSD was the underlying cause of frequent (if not daily) Aero failures on our machines has been fixed.

You may have noticed that skygunner27 is still having Aero issues with the new OSD that is related to PowerDVD 11. You would need to confirm that it is, in fact, still OSD that is causing this to happen on your machine on a frequent basis before declaring the updated OSD to be a failure on your machine.

 

I agree. And may I just add that your words are always more elegant/eloquent than the ones I would use. You must be in Human Resources or Personnel somewhere.

OT-Still no Aero issues here. But, I do have a gaming issue that is probably unrelated. I have several games-Madden 08, FIFA 11, Virtual Tennis-that seem to flash when I try to play them. My other games-Plants vs. Zombies (No laughing), MLB 2K10, C&C Generals, Tiger Woods 08-All run fine. I know it's of topic, but any ideas???

 

Thank you for the compliments, pmassey. You're too kind.

This is off-topic, so if there are extended suggestions from others it might be worth starting a new thread for the benefit of the community. I'm sure there are others who have run into the same issue.

As a quick suggestion, I would try adjusting the video options in game and within CCC. As an example, on my systems Crysis has such horrible flickering it is almost unplayable because it is so terribly annoying. If I set 2XAA in the game options it all but eliminates the flickering.

 

Magically fixed now. Sooooooooooo............

 

Are you a moderator now? If so, congrats!!!!!! You deserve it.

 

@ Mr Fox: Yes sir, my congratulations too! ( just be 'foxy'!)

 

UPDATE:
After spending some time with my replacement, I can safely agree that AW OSD has been fixed by Dell. Our M18x with 6990M CF, continues to have Aero flake outs with PowerDVD 11 Ultra(latest build). My SLI replacement, does not have any issues with OSD causing Aero flake outs. Even with PowerDVD 11 Ultra.

Thanks again Bill, Chris/Everyone involved.

 

I notice when I run wei score , the Aero flake outs , I know its normal but it still flake outs after the wei score test is completed. is it just me or...?

 

That's great news! Thanks for letting us know.

I can only speak for myself, but I have not experienced even one example of Aero flaking out with the new OSD. It is normal for Aero to turn off during WEI, but it has restarted 100% of the time for me after the WEI test completes.

 

It doesn't happen to me. You did download the new OSD program from Dell?

No problem, Thanks. I've been trying for days to rep you. It says I need to pass some around first.

 

I also take credit card.

 

Me 2. Just ask $ony......j/k.

 

Just letting you guys know, seems this problem on my M11xR3 solved after the lastest update of alien respawn to 9.4.60

 

Guys, along with few other issues I have (fans, touchpad, etc.) I also have an issue with the windows aero. I have the 6990m CFX and windows aero would only sometimes work. I tried the single gpu solution, and that still doesn't help. Any solutions I should try out guys? Thanks in advance

 

Make sure you are running the latest OSD from Dell. If you are, and its still suffering with Aero flake out, you could try uninstalling and reinstalling it. Dell released a new version recently to resolve this very problem.