Just bought an M17X, how to get started ?

Ive always wanted to get an Alienware, so i finally decided to get me one and join the club , right now I'm in Africa on a military base.

Here are the specs:

2.0GHz Intel Core2 Quad Q9000 Processor, 4GB System Memory, 320GB+640GB Hard Drives; Dual Layer DVD Burner, 17.0" Display(1080p); Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M - SLI Enabled, Windows 7 Home Premium Operating System (64-bit)

Now my questions:

How much can i overclock the CPU? GPU's? (and a how to please)
What do i need to download? e.g. gpu drivers etc..
How much 3dmark 06 can i expect post-OC?


Thank you guys

 

If you will be using the laptop as it is, factory OS install and all the other software, you should just upgrade bios to version A03 and gpu drivers to NV beta drivers - both available in the drivers section at dell.com .

Regarding CPU oc - you have the option directly in the BIOS, just do it in small increments and always test the system's stability (occt, prime95, orthos)
Regarding GPU oc - someone else will have to take this over, since I have no clue about it nor do I wish to do it on my M17x..

 

Thanks myxcon

Anybody know how to OC the gpu's and wheather to use the 9400m to increase performance?

 

Usage of the 9400m is recommended only when on battery. Having the laptop plugged in most of the times, the 9400m is just producing extra heat. Now with the beta driver out and hopefully the whql coming soon, you can have hybrid SLI enabled in the bios because it works as it should in like 99% of the cases.

It's up to you to leave it enabled or not.

 

what is hybrid sli? which combination give the highest performance?

 

Hybrid SLI : http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli.html

Basicly you have both the integrated GPU (9400m) and the discrete GPU (gpus in your case) enabled and based on your powerplan/other settings you can switch to any of them. Example: switch to 9400m if u wanna browse late at night while your wife/children are sleeping in the room and not have the loud noise of the discrete gpus running and then in the morning switch back to discrete gpus for some wild gaming.
Running on the integrated gpu increases your battery autonomy, should you decide not to plug the laptop at a certain time.

Highest performance is highly dependant on the machine and can vary from one to other. Some say they have highest scores with hybrid sli off (integrated gpu disabled also, running only on discrete cards) and others say they feel no extra performance boost or loss by having hybrid sli enabled.

Try a few scenarios by yourself and see what suits your needs the most.

 

and whql?

Thanks

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing

Google can answer most of the 2 worded questions with great succes.

 

yeah thanks

GPU overclocking? Anybody?

How do i do a driver swipe just like uninstall a program?

I know i sound literally stupid but its because the last time i had a gaming computer was when the Inspiron XPS 9100 with radeon 9800 (lol) and after that till now i have a macbook pro... Please be considerate

 

Taking in consideration your background, maybe you should do some light reading about notebook GPU overclocking (do some google searches) to see whther it's worth or not, to see the possible benefits and dissadvantages.

I don't quite understand the other question with the driver swipe, if you can rephrase.

 

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread230731.html

this is so far the best I've found.

And the driver swipe, i read that I"m supposed to remove my gpu drivers and reinstall the new ones... etc

Thx

 

i would stay away from overclocking the GPU, its shady business, especially with the inexperienced..

 

To overclock the GPU's download nvidia system tools. Install the Performance tool, and then open it and go to device settings. You can adjust the core clock, memory and shaders. There is also a benchmarking thread that deals a lot with overclocking. Check it out. Lot of knowledgeable people there

*OFFICIAL* M17x Benchmark Thread - Part 3

 

thanks
for you help guys

 

Oh and the best drivers are from the dell site?

 

I second Nvidia system tools. I've used other programs, but this is a little easier to use. It's also convenient that it can be accessed from right clicking the desktop and going to the Nvidia control panel.

The biggest things to worry about are heat and instability. For monitoring temperatures I recommend hwmonitor. If it's still stable at clocks that bring it to these temperatures, try to keep it around 75 Celsius. Lower is always better, and higher may be okay, but try this for the time being.

Use furmark and occt to stress the gpu at each of the new clocks to see if it's either unstable or creating excessive heat. Change the frequencies in small increments such as 10-20MHz. The shader clock always has to be at least double what the core clock is, and the memory is independent of these.

Good luck.

 

thanks again

And what temperature am i looking for with the CPU?

 

75 Celsius was a rather conservative thing to say for the gpu. I had my 8600m GT running at 89 for long periods of time and nothing happened. It definitely wasn't doing it any good though.

Under 80 Celsius should be okay on the gpu, and under 75 on the cpu. Just make sure to always be monitoring it.

 

and what cpu monitoring tool do you use?

 

Skarloc, To monitor CPU Freq use CPU-Z. HWMonitor will work for temps. Also if your going to be doing some benchmarking, keeping it cool is key. It allows you to OC farther. If your just OCing for gaming, then you probably don't need to worry as long as you have it at stable settings. If your get the blue screen or your computer freezes, they your OCing too high. You can use Intel Burn test or OCCT (Something like that) to stress test your CPU.

EDIT: As far as drivers are concerned, I've never had Nvidia cards. Just had ATI's in my M17x, but that would be a question for the benchmarking thread. Now for OCing, as far as how much and how far, thats a question you need to answer. Every chip is differant, even if they are both Q9000's. It varies from chip to chip. Some can OC further then others. Trial and Error.

 

dell site only gave you the oem driver, for latest drivers go to nvida's site, they have a beta 196.81 that is working pretty well.

and you can download the latest nvidia system tools there too.

 

Thank you guys, much appreciated!

Oh and is there no way of putting in a second drive?? Like the interposer are not included?

 

If you just bought it call dell and let them know you did not get the 2nd HDD Caddy and interposer as well as the screws. They should ship it free of charge next day shipping and you'll get asap. You can have two HDD's RAID0, RAID 1, or just use them as seperate disks. I perfer a faster drive for the Operating System and Programs, and any documents, music, movies, files go into my second, slower, larger capacity 2nd drive.

 

Also get a good laptop cooler. I working on making my laptop cooler so the cpu and gpu get the most air. I have a Nexus Laptop cooler which work good. But I heard there better. Even in High end gaming My laptop cooler is Cool to the Touch.

 

And i have a unibody macbook pro with a 320gb hard drive should i even put it in the second bay of the m17x? Because i want to transfer all my files, will windows recognize a mac drive?

 

and should i get the beta drivers, are they faster? and how do i find out if my bios is up to date?

 

When it loads it will tell you if you have A01, A02 or A03 BIOS. A03 is the latest. If you have anything else, click me

As far as the drive, I think it would recognize the files. You can put it in an external enclosure and hook it up via USB. If you don't have one then you can hook it up to the second enclosure. This would allow you to pull your files such as music, pics ect off. Whats it going to hurt to try? The way I run my dual HDD set ups is HHD0 is my faster drive (SSD or 7200RPM) and HHD1 is where I put my biggest capacity HDD. It's like having great partitioning. All music, documents, picture, program setup.exe files in well orgainized folders in my HHD1 or D:\. All applications run off C:\ for faster booting. Works out well.

 

Great thx!!! And should i bother with upgrading to 280m sli if so where can i buy them?

 

or the 4870 for that matter

 

Upgrading the gpus probably isn't worth it unless you are willing to spend quite a bit of money, how much I'm not exactly sure. Getting them used may be a good idea when the 5870s come out and people are selling 280s/4870s.

As far as using the HDD from the Mac, that should be fine. I believe that OSX uses FAT, FAT16, or more likely FAT32, and FAT32 is fine for using with Windows, just not for running Windows off of. I use a flash drive to go between OSX and Windows with things and it's never been a problem.

 

All those saying you can just put the mac drive in and it will be fine are wrong. Mac OS X uses the HFS+ File system which is not natively supported in windows. If you wish to do such a thing then you will need a driver to enable windows to access the drive. Such a driver is known as MacDrive which you will find through googling.

 

thanks... cant wait...

 

How can i check if i have SLI ??

 

nvidia control panel

 

Here is an Apple article regarding ways of transferring Data From PC to Mac. Now the same information applies when transferring from Mac to PC pretty much so that article should provide some decent insight in transferring data. If you do use an external HD then your going to have to format the external Disk to FAT32 so that the Mac and PC can write to it. Apple formats to HSF+ ( Mac OS Extended Journaled ) so having a PC read & write directly to that drive is a no go.

 

thank you very much for the information

 

any idea if nvidia system tools work on win 7?

 

It does. 10char.

 

luckily i googled what 10char is before asking...

Where can i find one that is compatible (yes i know i should use google but u guys have it tested)

Thanks

 

I just got the latest one from Nvidia's site last time. I'll go get it on this machine just to be sure.

Edit: I just tested Nvidia System Tools 6.05 on Windows 7 x64. I changed some clocks and they showed up as changed in the GPU-Z monitoring page when I opened a game. It all seems good.

 

great ! thanks for your help

 

ok i have a minor issue i have finally recieved my m17x however i ran a 3dark 06 test with sli enabled and i got 11579pts then i turned off sli i got 11162 and 3dmark 06 doesnt recognize that i have 2 260m gtx's (and i'm sure i have sli because in advanced mode in the overclocking options i do have 3gpu's )

and now i have tested with crysis and without i have 31fps and with i have 30.... why?????

 

I simply expected higher performance...

 

Ask elsewhere about getting SLi working, I've never owned a dual gpu laptop, so I'm no help here.

Plenty of other M17x owners would know this though.

Another thing to think about is how cpu bound 3dmark06 scores are (the difference between Intel Extreme cpus and regular ones make a bigger difference than a second gpu, even though real gaming would be better with another gpu). Compare a 3dmark Vantage score to get a better idea of how good your M17x is in relation to other systems.

 

thanks im downloading