M15X + Nvidia GTX 580m

First off i will start by stating that this is my first tackle with an nvidia card. And man was it a learning experience. if it works on the m17x r2 it should work on the m15x
I bought this card from the nbr marketplace and its an m17x r3 card, placed the 580m backplate on it along with some extra fujipoly .5mm pads. i used 1mm on front, i used the heatsink screws for the m17x r3, and hardware install went very well. 580m and 6990m side-by-side

After i turned on the power everything seemed fine, the card was detected as a vga display, so i tried to install the dell display drivers as well as the current drivers with no success. I then tried a pre-modified .inf which go me a step further but failed to install anything(it went as far as to select express or custom and that gave me an error). Then i manually modded the dell drivers as it has been done by the m15x and 560m users, and that worked. Here is gpu-z and speccy pic

After some testing i realized that i was getting full clock speeds, but im also unsure if the voltage needs to reach .87v(guess i should asked the m17x r3 owner). so it was running at half clocks @ .85 on the voltage. I used nvidia inspector to force the full clock @.85v. To test things out i ran 3d mark 11, which is kinda low but considering i was on the dell drivers it wasnt to bad.

Now after modding the latest nvidia drivers to get them to work, my 3d mark 11 scores are better (i will also add the gpu-z log for the run other then the dips while switching test the last combine tests throttled a bit) View attachment 76356 , ( 6990m). Im not sure but the m17x r3 owner didnt have this much trouble with the drivers, i think my device id is different, beat me don't really care now since i got it working.

The 580m video bios support 4 P-states(p12,p8,p1 and p0), the m15x only recognizes the first 3 p-states and ignores p0 which is 3d clock(this is probably m15x bios related). so i overvolted and overclocked p1 to .87 and 620/750/1240(3d-clocks). thanks to widezu69 who had a vbios for the 580m for these setting. this works pretty stable for the most part 3d mark tests still showed about the same results as with .85volts. but when playing an intense game like bf3 i would still get about a 3 second throttle every few minutes, i tried various setting in throttlestop to try and stabilize the 580m but all failed. So finally with the help of Pau1ow i tried different overvolts to p8 and p1 states so that when the gpu throttles for p1 to p8 for the few seconds the throttle would go unnoticed just like the m17x r3 user do with p0 to p1 states. that failed too as p8 does not seem to recognize the overvolt and it doesnt overclock either it starts throwing a driver crash party. i also tried .92v to p1 which caused and end less throttle sequence. And as far as temps the highest it ever hit was 82c and it usually sat at about 74c-76c at full load.

but if i underclock the 580m to 575/700/[email protected] than everything runs smooth, of course with a sacrifice to a true 580m performance. Overall i couldnt get the card with the m15x as i would have liked to, if it would of read p0 than this card would have been excellent. Everything works fine fans, stealth mode, yes gpu-z does detect it as pci-express 2.0, the temps are actually better than the 6990m, but my 6990m just works better with the system so i will be switching back to that after mess around a bit more with it, than i will sell the card off....lol


--------------------- Nvidia GTX 580M ------ ATI 6990m
------------------- @620/750/1240/.87v----- @715/900/1.1v

3d Mark Vantage------------ P12528------------ P13494

3d Mark 11------------------ P3398------------- P3416

3d Mark 06----------------- P14777------------- P15596

 

Omg, awesome bro. Keep it up.
How about the temperature and the PCI Express 2.0? Did it work?
I saw PCI Ex 1.1 on the picture, did stealth mode available for this card?

 

Great job? What are your temps like at stock clocks? Better than 6990M? Native fan control? Other comparisons with your old 6990M? Good to see someone pushing the limits. I ain't far behind lol but I have no need for 16GB.. yet nor a more powerful GPU!

Excellent work!

 

That's amazing if it's stable then it will lengthen the life of the m15x even longer

 

temps are actually really good idles @40c and i have yet to see anything over 74c. well it is a dell card so dp audio and fan controls work fine. i did do 3d mark benches on stock 6990m before switching over to the 580m so i will update the 1st post to compare

 

If this doesn't throttle, that will call into question the power draw issues we've seen with other cards and whether it can/should be bypassed.

 

No it throttled on the last test of 3d mark 11 and it also had some throttle issues on bf3, but none on me3. as far as total power draw it was about the same as the 6990m the highest i saw on the 580 was 161watts

 

Have you tried furmark? I find my 6990M gets into the late 80s C after just 5 mins!!

The 580M at full load is supposedly a hotter card.. the idle temps on nvidia cards are better due to amd's wierd overvolting techniques. If the 6990M ran at 0.7V at 100/150 temps would be really good.

 

Well done Mexic00ls !

I actually got someone who tried that already and with his PSU (150w), the 580M was throttling too much and no room to overclock or even play @ stock settings...

It seems you get 3dmark11 all right with your PSU (150w ?), have you tried Vantage which is slightly more stressful?

Also, something interesting is that we benched all the GPU mobile cards with the new Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3.0 with some high presets (Full HD, AA 4x, Tesslation Normal, Anisotropy 8x) and found out that the stock 6990M was actually getting slightly more FPS than the 580M stock.

FYI
SCORES
Medion X6801 GTX580M (822/1644/1870) - 295.73 - Max GPU temp: 82°C - Score: 898 (PAU1ow)

Medion X6801 GTX580M (stock 620/1240/1500) - 295.73 - Max GPU temp: 70°C - Score: 694 (PAU1ow)

MSI GT780DX GTX570M (stock 575/1150/1500) - 295.51 - Max GPU temp: 72°C - Score: 526 (Edryr)

MSI GT780DX GTX570M (810/1620/1950) - 295.51 - Max GPU temp: 80°C - Score: 786 (Edryr)

Clevo P150HM AMD HD6990M (803/1050) - Catalyst 11.1 - Max GPU temp: 85°C - Score: 798 (Tiraflo)

Clevo P150HM AMD HD6990M (stock 715/900) - Catalyst 11.1 - Max GPU temp: 80.5°C - Score: 711 (Tiraflo)

Desktop GTX 580 (800/1600/2048) - 295.73 - Max GPU temp: 72°C - Score: 1360 (yannupx)

Alienware M18xR1 XFIRE AMD HD6990M (stock 715/900) - Catalyst ?? - Max GPU temp: 74 et 73°C - Score: 1392 (nofxhery)

Alienware M18xR1 XFIRE AMD HD6990M (800/1100) - Catalyst ?? - Max GPU temp: 77 et 78°C - Score: 1585 (nofxhery)

Alienware M18xR1 SLI GTX580M (740/1480/1700) - 295.73 - Max GPU temp: 73°C - Score: 1517 (K4toN)

Desktop GTX 590 (stock 636/854) - 295.73 - Max GPU temp: 62°C - Score: 2118 (Riri-Fifi)

Alienware M17xR2 XFIRE AMD HD6970M (stock 680/900) - Catalyst 12.2 - Max GPU temp: 75°C - Score: 1298 (Laban)

Alienware M17xR2 AMD HD6970M (stock 680/900) - Catalyst 12.2 - Max GPU temp: 75°C - Score: 635 (Laban)


I think this benchmark is slightly better than 3dmark's due to the adjustable presets so it gives you a better idea!

 

@ pau1ow
i havent used the 150psu since i upgraded to 6990m, i have the m17x r3 240w psu. the card only goes to p1 so i overclocked the p1 to stock max clocks

 

Oh okay sry didnt know that

Is the 240w psu useful/fully working then ? Have you seen higher power peaks than 161W?

My 580M stays constantly @ 190-205w while playing BF3, I think it was slightly less when using 750/1800 0.87V

 

That's quite an important piece of information... This actually had to be expected, the 470m shows the same behavior when running in the M15x.

You only changed the clocks but didn't touch the voltage? This could cause throttling issues since the voltage of the lower 3d profile won't necessarily be enough for full 3d clocks.

 

yeah slv7 i was looking at your 470m thread yesterday, looks like i cant mess with the voltage unless i flash the bvios, technically the card has been proven to run full clock undervolt to .85 so it should work. im trying to gather more info before flash as i am pretty new with nvidia card.

psu is working fine, i have seen high power consumption with the 6990m while over clocked. i will do some more benching later, i going to read up some more on how to tweak this card first

 

good luck then, this 580M is a true beast after unlocking his power

 

well since the card can only run on p12,p8 and p1 i have no room to overclock which is fine with me as i only overclock for benching. i have don more 3d mark tests and will update OP.

pau1ow i have fould a stable clock for furmark(trying to run this the least i can) and bf3, if i overclock the p1 state to 574/700/1150 everything runs good, i have gotten a 3 second dip in clocks once on bf3 playing for 1hr and the max temp on it was 78c, fps @33+ on mostly high setting with mid shadow, no motion blur and aa 2x. so things are working pretty good now trying to make it better

 

Do you have any issue in terms of power? If not, I advise you to overvolt P1 state to 0.87v to start with as 0.85v is not very advisable.
Actually, why did you have to lower P1 clocks ? Were they not stable during gaming?

If you need a modded vbios, let me know, I can make one for you.

 

i dont believe i have any power issues at the moment(im still semi unsure) nor thermal. i have been thinking of 2 types of overvolts:
1) p1 to .87 might help me keep a stable 3d clocks
2) p8 to .85 or maybe .83(i could use inspector to overclock this to full clock when gaming or benching) and leave [email protected], as i understand p1 volts at .85 should be able to hold full stock clocks this would be similar to widezu69 throttle fix

this might be a power issues as i use p0 clock @ p1 volts this causes in game throttling and is very annoying, happens about every other minute, but its stable at 574/700/1150, but i only do this for bf3.

and yeah i will shoot you a pm in a minute thanks pau1ow

 

Mexic00ls I shot you a PM. As it just so happens, I have a vbios in my possession that has p1 values @0.87v and full stock performance clocks. Should work like a dream.

 

Are the GTX 580m/6990m similar performance-wise or are you able to notice a difference?

 

They are very similar performance-wise unless the 580m is overvolted and overclocked to clocks over 750mhz

 

Nvidia should be about 5% better or so

 

Excellent news it works! Welcome to the club

 

Any updates on this?

 

Sure, the 580m video bios support 4 P-states(p12,p8,p1 and p0), the m15x only recognizes the first 3 p-states and ignores p0 which is 3d clock(this is probably m15x bios related). so i overvolted and overclocked p1 to .87 and 620/750/1240(3d-clocks). thanks to widezu69 who had a vbios for the 580m for these setting. this works pretty stable for the most part 3d mark tests still showed about the same results as with .85volts. but when playing an intense game like bf3 i would still get about a 3 second throttle every few minutes, i tried various setting in throttlestop to try and stabilize the 580m but all failed. So finally with the help of Pau1ow i tried different overvolts to p8 and p1 states so that when the gpu throttles for p1 to p8 for the few seconds the throttle would go unnoticed just like the m17x r3 user do with p0 to p1 states. that failed too as p8 does not seem to recognize the overvolt and it doesnt overclock either it starts throwing a driver crash party. i also tried .92v to p1 which caused and end less throttle sequence. And as far as temps the highest it ever hit was 82c and it usually sat at about 74c-76c at full load.

but if i underclock the 580m to 575/700/[email protected] than everything runs smooth, of course with a sacrifice to a true 580m performance. Overall i couldnt get the card with the m15x as i would have liked to, if it would of read p0 than this card would have been excellent. Everything works fine fans, stealth mode, yes gpu-z does detect it as pci-express 2.0, the temps are actually better than the 6990m, but my 6990m just works better with the system so i will be switching back to that after mess around a bit more with it, than i will sell the card off....lol

 

Makes sense, the board is clearly in control of the issues we're all having. It just wasn't made for high power parts, considering even a 260m makes it throttle. Better throttle than die though, my W870CU went with no warnings.

 

it was still a pretty good experience as it was my first mobile nvidia, and at idle i liked how this card performed so much better than the ati. but alas i get to play more with another project and my aurora r4 now

 

Noooo That's really a shame the M15x bios can't read the P0 state...you got the power behind but this bloody throttle with the 580M is really killing the action.

Anyway, nice try Mexi we can now say the best card for the M15x is the 6990M

 

yup until i get the itch to try the ati 7xxxm series

 

Ok so since the radeon 6990m disables my display-port. Will this card enable my display-port to work. If that is the case then this card is something I will definitely be picking up. Also if this is the case then I will be selling my radeon 6990m for $400ish maybe less on the marketplace. I am also falling in love with these low temps , and no shutdowns.

Thanks

 

6990m DP on my card works fine so i would say try other monitors/hdtvs or your card is just faulty as far as the DP connection

 

?? what do you mean... I plug my monitor into the display-port while using my 5730m, and wallah it works, but when I try with my 6990m the monitor receives no input. I am using the 6990m sold by table21

I am using bios AO9 could this be the problem. I could also quite possibly flash my vbios, if that would help.

 

I doubt A09 is the problem; I believe most everyone here is on that BIOS. You should test your card with a different monitor if you have, and if it doesn't work then it's most likely your card that is the problem.

 

I don't have another monitor, any software that can simulate a monitor?

 

well let me put it this way i have used ati 5850m, 6990m(from table21 aswell), and the nvidia 580m. THEY HAVE ALL WORKED WITH EXTERNAL DISPLAYS...... same bios, same cable, and even different monitors, they are also all dell cards. so how about posting a screen shot of gpu-z, that should tell you if yours is a dell or not..... but more than likely its your gpu being non-functional thru the DP

 

My card said dell(1028) under subvendor.

 

Hey Mexic00ls, I heard that there is a new beast in town, I'd like to see how the GTX 660m fares and whether it can be tamed to fit the m15x.

 

i may have to look into that.....

 

Wild Prediction: It's going to throttle.

 

Idk looking at the tdp in the specs it might fall in the same or lower range of the 560 so who knows might be doable. I'd like to see someone try. lol!

 

The 560m throttles as well.

 

Yeah its an nvidia it goes without saying

But you could find a way round the throttle

 

My monitor still doesn't work, and table21 hasn't responded to me PM... its been 5 days now...

I am getting ready to auction off my m15x for 1500ish.

 

^^^ Good luck with that, hope it sells

 

sad to see my beloved M15x go

I won't be quite as sad when it's replaced with one of these with full watercooling.
http://www.caselabs-store.com/magnum-tx10-v/

 

wow $$$ and thats just the case...... your shouldn't blow half your budget in just the case

 

I am getting sponsored and the extra money is for things that I cannot get sponsored on.

 

Is the 6990 any good?

 

^^^ yes currently ati's best mobile gpu, and works great on the m15x

 

Hello and welcome to NBR!

You can find lots of info concerning the M15x and that card here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...u-need-know-upgrading-problems-solutions.html