m11x r2 8k 3dmark tweak guide!

Hello,

A little about myself.

I make a living building and customizing computers. I have been doing so for almost 10 years. I am 26 years old and work as a network administrator in Pennsylvania. Now I build customized machines for locals on the side.

COMPUTER KNOWLEDGE LEVEL OF FOLLOWING ARTICLE = intermediate user

The following is what you need to do to reach 8k+ on 3dmark benchmark on an m11xr2 Alienware 11 inch beast notebook!


THESE SETTINGS ARE STABLE 24/7 WHILE GAMING!

Download all the drivers from dell. Every single last one of them.
Save them onto a external hard drive

This is my laptop configuration. Its no joke. ran me about 1700 USD. Not cheap but worth every penny.

Alienware M11x, Lunar Shadow
Overclockable Intel Core i7 640UM
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 800MHz
Alienware M11x 90W A/C Adapter
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M
256GB SSD - Samsung Solid State Drive

After you have all the drivers at hand.
Reformat computer.
Delete partition
Recreate partition
Secure erase data on SSD with GParted.
DO NOT CREATE PARTITION OR FORMAT SSD.
- Windows 7 will do this itself

Install windows.
Reinstall drivers.
-chipset
-video
-lan/wan
-everything else by choice

BIOS
KEEP SPEEDSTEP ENABLED
Enable overclock of CPU - and go as high as you can

Download latest nvidia drivers.
I did not use any hacked versions. just the most up to date without modding
- version 250.70

Download MSI afterburner
-install

MAKE SURE TO SET EVERYTHING TO HIGH PERFORMANCE!!!
- Open Alienware Command Center
- Set to high performance
- VERY IMPORTANT FOR Overclocking!
- Click advanced and go down the list setting everything to OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE!


Over clock your GPU
-safe settings = 450/790
-slowly work your way up until you reach freezing/artifacts point of no return.
- This means up yoru speeds by 5mhz and test. It is a slow process but necessary for optimum performance.
-500/1200/850 are my settings\
-IF YOU START OCing TO HIGH YOUR PERFORMANCE WILL DECREASE back it off

Now save your over-clock setting on MSI AFTERBURNER
- I saved to profile 1
- I did not choose apply at windows startup. I manually apply the profile

Nvidia control panel
- In the control panel set everything to the default settings
- I changed vertical sync to always OFF
- Make sure phys x is set to GPU and not CPU!!!


restart and enable your profile. AND TEST AWAY!

contrary to popular belief disabling speed-step will drastically hurt your performance. Test it and see.

I scored over 8k with these exact settings. I will post screenshots at request.

Any questions or comments? I am here to help.

This laptop is a beast. I scored 110fps on CSS stress test. and over 8K on 3dmark06.

Again you can get 24/7 stability in gaming with these settings

 

If you have an SSD. I highly recommend Disk-keeper 2010 with hyper-fast. It will keep your performance maxed out.

 

Nice thread, sure to help someone out. But Diskeeper, really?

Diskeeper?s Controversial SSD Defrager

 

That means nothing, of course the company doesn't want to disclose how their software works?? so its bad for your ssd? I dont think so. Thats 1 review with absolutely no factual basis, just opinions. I run It always, and I havent had any noticeable performance decrease. Any way you look at it, Its either going to help you or do nothing. In no case will it hurt performance or life of your drive. Most of use do not care or will ever notice a drop in read/write speed now a days with TRIM and all features SSD software and firmware offer now. It helps, and its great to be able to have it running always, and with 4tb of storage on my desktop PC, i can keep all my drives running at maximum performance without ever thinking about it. Ide call that must have software.

 

I would add to this that while you can get over 8k with 3DMark06 you may well find that your settings aren't stable for game playing and you have to back of the GPU OCing.

 

Yes you may be right Surf, Thats why the persons following this writeup will need to slowly increase the GPU and CPU settings to find that " sweet spot "

I play 24/7 with these settings. The 8k is just a performance benchmark.


These settings are stable ON AC power and Battery power. As long as high performance settings are applied while on Battery power.

Now your battery will die in about 2 hours while gaming. Thats the price you pay for performance. Then again I am always near and outlet.

 

There's no popular belief that disabling speedstep is helpful in any way. At least not here. People who recommend disabling it are usually having problems with a certain game and are grasping at straws trying to change something, anything to fix their specific issue.

 

Can I ask you what I should do if I have an HDD ? I'm a noob

 

HDD is no different from SSD when installing

they are different acronyms defined by how they run. HDD's have a spinning disk while the SSD's use memory based modules like RAM

basically no different installing software-wise

 

i scored 8102 on stock windows IMAGE and used power mizer manager to disable powermizer, OC cpu and GPU and updated to latest drivers, Cross my finger and said a prayer and BOOOM 8102. lol why go through all the trouble of reimaging and everything to get 8k scores. I think alienware images are good and have very little bloatware and you can uninstall and clean up the junk you do not want. I recommend clean install if you have the knowledge and time but it is not necessary to hit 8k scores.


Off topic but i think $1700 for a m11x with ssd is TOOO much i would say you could have built it for like $1400-$1500.

Crucial is selling 256gb ssd for $400 and call in and do some haggling or use EPP discounts and you should be able to get it for less.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/6483393-post662.html

new drivers 258.96 with CPU & GPU OC, TB enabled, Powermizer disabled

8102 3dMarks Score

 

Does anyobdy knows why when GPU is not OC, I hit 6666, when it's OC, I do only 4387 ?

 

make sure powermizer is not enabled download powermizer manager and back off on the OC a little what do you have your OC setting at

 

Alienware doesnt install the latest drivers. I say reinstall so your are fully aware of everything you are installing and to make sure you have the latest and greatest drivers. I dont trust some alienware tech to build my system right. Also reinstalling and isntalling the drivers on the dell page limits the variables people will face when trying to troubleshoot their problems OC'ing.

It was $1500 but after taxes and shipping it was $1700. I got all the EPP discounts.

 

ok i take that back i did not use the stock image i used the image that was on the computer and removed the video card drivers and installed the beta drivers as well as update intel drivers and lan driver and all that crap to make sure it was up to date and then overclock the GPU and CPU and run the test. I think people should first see how their system scores using the stock image but making sure all their drivers are upto date and that might involve totally removing them and cleaning them up using driver sweeper and ccleaner in safe mode.

 

/agree. There are other ways to go about Increasing performance on your m11xR2. This guide is just 1 of them. Its a sure fire way if completed successfully for your system to be running at optimum performance. And you can create an image on a fresh system, never have to reinstall again!

@faiz. Those are some crazy GPU numbers. Is that stable 24/7 gaming?

 

Still kinda expensive. Got my R2 i7 for $1000 shipped from Dell, and got the Samsung 256GB for $300 aftermarket.
But anyway, that's besides the point. I care more about battery life, so I always optimize it for maximum battery instead. Also, another good overclocking software that you can get is EVGA Precision.

 

I find that hard to believe. Do you have GOBI? bluetooth? 4gb ram? Razer orochi?

 

i have not done heavy testing with those clocks most of the games work fine for me with mild OC and i have no interest in pushing clocks that high in real world scenario. For now i plan to use mild OC and then start bump it up when i feel the need to and for most of my gaming i prefer my m15x and when on the go i use the m11x but like i said most games are fine with OC setting much lower.


550/1250/850

benching: 556/1334/920

 

Nice 8k! I remember reading about some that got to 8k but there was no confirmation that it was doable by everyone.

 

8k is around the max the m11xr2 is capable of. Everyone can do it with the right config.

 

I can't seem to get it over 7.7k with the OC settings listed here. Why don't you guys try Vantage and report some results?

 

Vantage needs to be run at 1280x1024 for a P score, so the M11x would need to be hooked up to an external monitor.

Also, lets see some screenshots with CPU-Z and GPU-Z in them! I want to see if the scores are boosted by the CPU alone. Also want to see the GPU scores. The GPU scores should scale with the CPU which explains the differance in scores from the R1 to the R2 since the GPU's are the same.

 

By setting the Physx to CPU, I just got a 8093 score on 3DMark2006. Woohoo?

 

Nice dude. can anyone comment on why switching it to gpu gave him a higher score? I will test gaming performance tonight with the 2 different settings.

 

No, I switched it to CPU, basically turning Physx OFF. I read in a forum somewhere that turning it off is better for games and applications that don't use Physx. I'm sure 3dMark 2006 does not use Physx.

What is your score with CPU instead of GPU?

 

Ya typo, I meant CPU

Glad to see I could help someone out

 

Ok, so I tried switching the Physx back to GPU, ran the 3dMark2006 again and I got 7800 like I was getting before. I thought, voila ! I think I found the problem. Then I switched back to CPU Physx and bam another 7800. Everything else is the same, the laptop was not even shut down since the 8k run. I'm basically letting this go atm, the system runs all my games with good settings near perfectly so I won't lose sleep over another 200 points on a synthetic benchmark

 

Hey, I wanted to know if anyone was getting 8k with their cpu not overclocked?

I know a bunch of people can't OC their cpu to 166 or 164; I can only oc mine stable to 154 I believe D:

 

And we have a winner in the who cares about synthetic benchmarks sweepstakes! Woooo!!

Welcome aboard. Nice to have you.

 

I Agree. gaming performance is what we are all after. but how can you measure it out without a benchmark around 8k?

 

I was able to stabilize my GPU @ 550/900 and got a score of 8312. Though after playing hardcore games for more than half hour, I guess the GPU gets so hot that my FPS drops substantially. Another minus for benchmarks I guess.

 

ya i noticed a drop in fps also after gaming for a little bit. whats up with that...

 

Search the forum for powermizer, what it does and how to disable it if you're inclined to do so.

 

Run HWmonitor or GPU-Z to monitor your temps in the games. Keep the application running while you game so it can monitor your temps. I recommend GPU-Z so that you can log your information. You can then go back and check to see if the GPU is infact overheating, and if not, then you can check the log to see if it is in fact throttling.

 

How would i go about fixing throttling. I dont believe its even possible for that to happen.

I dont think its overheating. who knows. I was running hacks in css. I tested it without the hacks. And bam no fps loss over time. Must have somthing to do with my cheats.

 

Search the forum for how to disable powermizer.

 

I already looked into powermize. I am familair with that. I do not think it has anything to do with powermizer. Well see. Ill post back

with my settings posted in this thread. Powermizer will be disabled by deault high performance mode. on battery and on ac power.

now, this is just in my case. Anyone else that does not have high performance enabled correctly for battery/ac power may have powermizer problems. As for me. The cheat i had enabled has reverse engineering security and has memory degradation over time. Its a streaming hack. It has somthing to do with that.

 

Powermizer is what controls throttling on the 335. It's what DR650SE was referring to and also what would cause what you were asking about earlier in this thread.

NVIDIA PowerMizer Technology

 

I could see why you would want to disable it. It should not make your GPU throttle... It is the same technology as the i core processors. Its not going to just randomly downclock? Its there to extend battery life and for performance on demand.

Unless it downclocks because of heat issues. In which case, that could be the issue.

 

There are people who have theorized powermizer has been throttling due to GPU temps and thus impacting FPS. I honestly haven't ever looked very far into it due to the fact that the limited number of games I've played on my system have performed very well. It's just something for you to try to see if it does help with your particular issue. Should be easy enough to re-enable it if it's not the culprit.

 

Ever since ive updated to the new nvidia 259 drivers. My system shut down2 times, im guessing from temps, Ive never had this happen before. I may restore back too the 250 drivers.

 

The 259 drivers are terrible with WoW for me so I switched back.

 

Im going to test Wow now. If i have problems tonight, im switching back

Yes, I rolled back my drivers. No more shutdowns, and better performance, do not use modded drivers. They are not good.

 

Hey, we have the same specs, got mine for $1592 + 127.52 = 1721.52

Can you please tell me how can I reformat and create new partition using Window 7? What key should I press to do clean install. thanks

 

Search for gparted, make a boot disc, and delte partition and secure erase using that boot program. then install windows with a thumb drive. You are going to have to do a good bit of reading to figure it out

search for

windows 7 usb boot
gparted secure erase ssd

 

So if you have an 8k plus score (i got 8099), what does it mean? Sorry if it is a really noobie question.

 

It means you have a larger than anyone with sub-8000 scores. It means roughly nothing.

 

Nope it really does mean nothing. Its quite fun though. I'm currently 20 points short of 8900.. I really want to break the 9k mark but dont think its gonna happen on my current drivers.

 

I have done everything you recommended and I still can't get passed 5.7K on 3DMark06 1.2.0. I guess I haven't tried to disable Powermizer yet, could that account for the 2.3K I am short?

Any tips?