M17 Underperformance issues

Could we get your exact configuration.
3D Mark Vantage CPU and GPU scores please? That will determine a lot.

 

yeah ill do that in the meantime.

EDIT: downloading futuremark 3dmark vantage going to be a 20 min download =/

 

Ok this test did nothing but make me cry lol

i dont think that lady ever ran faster than like 10 Frames /sec >.<

3DMark Score: P5281 3DMarks

CPU Score: 7407

GPU Score: 4820

 

Your GPU score should be in the 6,000-6,500 range on stock clocks. So you've got a problem there. And don't forget to run the tests a few times. Some runs come in really low, and others really high. You'll soon get a 'feel' for what you should be scoring.

Do you have the latest GPU drivers? I get mine directly from ATI.com. Are you POSITIVE you're running in CrossFire? Go to the ATI control panel by right clicking anywhere on the desktop. Make sure all of the '3D' settings are at default by hitting the default button. As usual, if you've got a million processes running in the background (Task Manager), that can lower your score. Check that your CPU usage is hovering around 0% at idle. It's OK for System Idle Process to use a very high percentage of CPU. And unless you're hitting ~100C, you're not throttling, and temps aren't an issue.

I'm guessing you're running a Q9000 and 3870s?

Get back to us after checking that stuff and running another bench. Good luck.

 

ya Q9000 and 3870's, i could only run it once because of the trial version >.> the 3870's ARE linked, because in the ATI settings theres "primary adabater" and "linked adapter" there wasnt many processes running besides the main windows processes.

so i kinda cant run another bench mark test but all i can say is 3/4 tests it was lagging a lot.

 

That would suck if you're quad is stuttering. There is no known fix for that. Hence my signature. If your trial is up on Vantage, another good way to find out how things are going is with the game Crysis. Do you have that?

 

nope.

Mass Effect
Left 4 dead 2
Aion
are 3 i have

now, replacing it with a dual core. that -WILL- fix the stutter? if i where to replace it? as a last option

 

Your CPU score is right on par I think. I just clocked my quad down to 2Ghz and got 8,300. I really think you got a bad run in Vantage honestly. It sucks that was your only one. How many times can you run 3DMark '06 in trial mode?

If your quad is stuttering in-game, you'll know it. The frame rate will drop, and the sound will slow down and sound very digitized and robotic.

As far as the dual core stopping the stuttering, yes it will. Some folks complain of stuttering issues with even the dual core, but I think that is another issue. Let's not pursue the 'replace the CPU' option yet. I think you just had a garbage run on Vantage. That happens to everyone.

 

yeah its stuttering in every game i play and the sound is distorting. that run on 3dmark just further reinforced my issue, as how 3dmark ran was basically what happens when i start up a game. even a low stress game not HDD related like runescape when my little brother got on it lagged up and the comp froze for like 30 seconds >.< cmon a computer 20 years old could handle that game. we had to restart the system after that happened. lol :3

 

Yeah, that's quad stutter. You've done EVERYTHING Fusion said to do in post #36? And did you flash the B14 BIOS? That gave me a lot of relief from the stutter, but didn't eliminate it. Have you done a clean reformat?

 

ya me and the AW agent did the B14 and keyboard flash yesterday. i heard zfactors bios has a quad patch. im not about to void my warranty on a couple month old laptop just quite yet is all.

may just buy a dual core and some AS5 from newegg though. still waiting on Randall to call me back :<

and yes i would say basically everything fusionsenses told me to do. ill go over it again.

 

omg, I just found out that after 1 hour of left 4 dead 2, my NB and CPU could go up to 92C ! is that too hot ? what's your highest temperature ?

 

my higheest and lowest temps are in a jpeg http://img521.imageshack.us/i/highg.jpg/ if u wanna check em out i think CPU was like 70C and GPU was like 85C but ya 92 seems mad hot u getting the stuuter?

not to mention 85 on my gpu is too :<

 

surprisingly, I do not get any stutter. everything went smooth.... This is after I upgrade my CPU to qx9300 and I overclocked it to 2.8GHZ. now it's only the temperature problem im having. this is weird. I would prefer my CPU to be cooler eventhough there's no stutter..

may i know what's your CPU speed ?

 

Q9000 @ 2.0ghz its at stock speeds

i did notice though theres threads to cool down the m17 here. such as using AS5 over stock thermal pastes etc if your concerned that may work, idk

 

Hi alexk7, i had this underperformance issue on my new alienware M15x. What i did to resolve the problem was to Disable alien fusion and use windows power management, perfomance increased for me 10 fold.

To do this go to your start menu or what is now the windows button, in the search bit type in services and run the executable.
in here search for fusion and set its start up value to manual.
Now reboot and try playing your games.
It sounds trivial but i was suprised, i went from only being able to play everything on low and still having problems to everything on max and no lag ever.
Hope this helps.

 

Thanks Simon ill try that when I get home. I'm also thinking of trying zfactors bios with quad core volt tweaks. Still waiting on agent to call back. He did say after 12.. But its now 4:30...

 

Jeez, they take ages to reply . Dell have been a royal pain in the butt to deal with for me too. I have had a cruddy experience which is part of why i have an alienware now, i got a lil compensation money and went for an upgrade. I was at your giving up stage too, when this one arrived i thought it was under performing too and was about to give up with the company completely but it's strange, such a simple thing fixed it for me, i hope it works for you too. Gimme a post to tell me if it works, check running processes too, just to make sure it has stopped. good luck.

 

You don't need to worry. If you have to send the laptop back to Alienware, you can flash the B14 before you ship. AND, Z's BIOS will let you overclock that CPU.

 

Ok well my onlty issue is I have no ush drive. I have DVD-r discs tho if only zfactor made them ISOs heh unless I can make the DVD-r bootable and boot his bios from that

 

Well, the README in the contents of Z's BIOS actually mention the use of a CD. I've tried a few things. I turned the contents into .ISO format and burned to a CD-R. That was a no-go. I tried burning the contents directly to the disk as loose files. That was a no-go. I've only gotten the Alienware B14 BIOS to burn to a disk and work properly because it came in .ISO format. As for Z's BIOS, you're gonna have to score a USB stick, even if it's a cheap 32 megger or something. That is the only way I've gotten Z's to flash. He may be able to give you some insight. All I can tell you is to get a USB stick and follow the guide in Z's sig to make it bootable. After that you just drop the files on it, reboot, hammer the F-10 button, and boot from the stick. It will prompt you from there. Real easy. If it's gonna be a piece of crap, you might as well be able to overclock it until you get a new one. And you will be overclocking via multiplier in the BIOS, so no dealing with the FSB stuff.

 

Ok thanks ill pick up a flash drive Otw homew. Even if I dont use. Irr with this there always useful

 

Ok at home, and have the drive, when i open up the little usb tool it doesnt find any DOS files, i did download the bootme files :<

ps - waiting for AW rep to answer gonna call em a 5th time. hopefully persistance will pay off in some compensatiuon

also just ordered AS5 and purifier from newegg to apply regardless

simon - well no luck on my end, i forgot i did a clean install of Win7 and alien fusion isnt installed to begin with

 

When I first got my M17 it did not perform right well either. I reinstalled Windows following the correct boot sequence with Chipset first and my performance increased noticeably.
Then I bought a x9100(just sold the T9600) fast dual-core and installed a SSD as well as Windows 7, cant fault it now. Its a totally different machine from the one I received from Alienware.
I cant help noticing how high your GPUs temps seem...mine barely get above 70c and rarely over 80c with stock paste!....your not the only one with high GPU temps but something must be the cause of the stuttering...why do some GPUs get so much hotter than others? I game intensely also!
Always follow this thread for latest drivers and correct Windows installation;
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=426562

And definitely get a notebook cooler...the M17 needs one for sure.
I use this;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antec-NOTEBOOK-COOLER-200-Notebook/dp/B001GMR6T4
I dont believe Alienware support will fix your problem at all....unless you push for a refund or return.
Good luck though!

 

Ah ok sorry to hear that alex, good luck with the other solutions.

 

ok just got off the phone with an AW rep. it went awful.. the guy thought the ATI HDMI audio driver was the video card. couldnt find the video cards under computer management and refused to accept terms and conditions for some things he tried for some reason like some furmark benchmark or something and ended up just downloading some useless pdf file with the terms and agreement thinking that was the furmark program that was available with a link before terms and agreements. >.> the guy wanted me to take the secondary video card out to test if the first one was working properly for some odd reason and wanted to disable crossfire and tried doing so by looking under system info. all i did was sit by in aw at this rep's total lack of knowledge. i had a family emergency come about so i hung up with him. honestly why do they put these people as tech support when they have no idea what to do in their field?

 

AW tech was a joke, man.
When I first got my M17, the graphic card was at 100 degree all the time, the tech from AW waste 6 hrs of my time and many calling just to test 3DMarks with them on the phone.

One day, I couldn't take it anymore, I opened up the case find out the problem I suspected myself. The infamous sticker left between heatsink and GPU core was discovered first in this forum. Then I called AW again about this crap, and luckily, I got in contact with Kevin from roswell group, and asked if the warranty is voided by opening up the laptop myself. He answered no if I didn't break anything. Then I said Ok, I opened it up and told him the story. Kevin was cool and willing to exchange the M17 for me after many times of calling around. The reason for me to request a replacement is BECAUSE the previous reps (5+) all told me to keep testing it and burning the GPUs at 100 degree for 24/7 and thought that will either kill the GPUs or solve the problem. Not to mention all other components near the GPUs were damaged by the heat as well.

The moral of this story is that the normal tech from AW can be very very ridiculous, and you just have to play with them until you are fed up, and hopefully find some higher tech (who knows what's a M17) that understand there is a problem.

Back to your problem:
I know I asked before, make sure you checked every single point of my post#36, because each single point I listed there are known to cause stutter of M17.
The temp that you post for your system is not too hot to cause stutter if you check it correctly. (just run the hwmonitor, and play games, then you will see the max temp, that's the one we care about)
Disable crossfire, as suggested by the rep, does make sense, although it seems it's the last resort to check. Easy way to disable it is go to Device manager and right click the second Graphic card and click disable. Or you can disable in driver by right click the ATI icon in your taskbar and find 3D settings and Catalyst AI, -> disable. These 2 ways have different effect though.

If I were you, I would further prove the issue by downloading GPU-Z, and play around with it to figure out how to keep/read log of your GPU usage and temp while you play game. Once you encounter the stutter while in game, Alt-Tab out and look at the log to see if there is any sudden decrease in GPU usage and temp. If it does, that mean there is likely some kind of throttling of GPU or CPU.

Report back, then we can discuss further.

 

ok cool thanks - im trying 1 thing atm. using zfactors bios. but when i get the the prompts "refresh" or "phlash16" (without ") dont work =/ i ordered AS5 and some sanitizer. gonna fix this myself hoopefully.

 

OK - installed zfactors bios. played for about 15 minutes. no stutter. gonna run a 3dmark under a different email to get another trial code and will update it in like 20-30

EDIT:

ok well...

3DMark Score: P5236 3DMarks
CPU: 7094
GPU: 4816

well didnt do much diff in 3d mark =/

 

well, maybe at least no more stutter? Btw, after removing the cloth of the vent holes at the bottom, how long do you need to clean the fan? and how do you clean it?

 

Once a month is a good interval, especially since it takes 30 seconds to remove the bottom cover.

And Alex, I'm quite confused at this point as to what your problem could be. Your GPU score is off compared to mine, but I have a 9300, and ATI cards are VERY CPU dependent. For all we know, your score is on par. You need to find someone with a similar system.

 

Just get some canned air to clean it with.

And yeah,possibly im gonna game with it more, if there no stutter i personally dont care what my score is

and ya those films over the vents are awful. blow through one side and put your hand on the other, youll probably feel nothing at all like me =/

EDIT: got good audio drivers continue to test

 

By the way, will removing the vent films/filters void any warranties? =/

 

Not sure when you bought it, but warrenties aren't being extended anyways...so up to you .

 

Yeah, AW extend warranty policy owns.

I will keep ranting about it, because I felt they tricked me and throw my investment down the drain.

Sorry, I needed to rant.

 

No, it's good to rant for your rights !

 

you can use imgburn and a win xp disc to create a boot image and burn the disc as bootable ive done it and it works

 

zfactor, you're here. I'm using your OCZ BIOS and the readme file says that I can't overclock it to 3.20 ? is that true ? it says that the voltage is not right yet. Can you tell me what actually did you modified ?

 

Ok so, so far no stutter, thanks zfactor for creating the bois! also bought this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834991042 may remove films for increased airflow for laptop cooler, and for laptop altogether. still kinda need to know if it voids warranty though.. maybe i need to just call uhm up on that one..

Seems almost everything is fixed. mouse is just jittery now. is there a patch for this?

 

its just because the max voltage i could apply usually will not be stable over that limit that does not mean you cant its just a suggestion more than anything you may see bsod over that since the voltage cant go higher due to mobo limitations and bios limitations. you can go to 3.2 if your chip is stable its perfectly fine to do. use prime95 or orthos forget occt. this notebook has had issues running occt that i have seen even at stock speeds sometimes. use prime95 and 32 or 64 bit according to your os to test stability

 

Zfactor just a little question. What is the difference between the OCZ 0.28 and your bios?

 

Z, are you aware of the Intel Extreme Tuning program that has surfaced? With it, everything can be manipulated. CPU voltage and multiplier, as well as RAM voltage and timing, etc. It then saves the information directly to the BIOS. I had my QX9300 running at 3.33Ghz, and now I've got this X9100 running at 3.46Ghz. Not saying it's the greatest idea in the world, obviously. Just saying it can be done.

 

Does it work with any bios or just zfactor's bios?

 

I believe you must have an extreme processor, as well as the OCZ or Z's BIOS. This is because the multipliers are unlocked in those BIOSs.

 

turbo yes i have had the intel program for a long time now i was not and still can not post it up anywhere though. it does indeed do some of what you say. but the mobo IS LIMITED doesnt matter if you set 2v in intel the mobo WILL NOT go that high. this mobo is limited to just a hair over 1.34 no more after this you will start to see random bsod and possibly not boot at all. i dealt with ocz directly while working on the bios about this and their engineer also confirmed this as well as did flextronics directly. doesnt matter what you set intel to it will default to the highest the hardware will allow. yes it will read wrong in cpuz as well. so dont go by that either. be careful also as if the design was limited then its VERY possible the mobo cannot simply handle passing more voltage through it. as some of the cheaper ones do such as asrock and ecs low end stuff. if the intel allowed even a small step above what the mobo was designed for you may find the mobo starting to degrade or even shudder to think melt down due to the traces not being able to handle that. these flex mobo's are made very cheap imo i have had them in hand and worked and repaired them physically. they are for sure not built as well as most desktop mobo's i handle

you can not simply add as much voltage as you want to with any mobo there are limitations i can go into the bios and change the voltage setting to allow for 5v lol but it will simply not allow that hardware wise it will try then default back down. my bios i left fully unlocked there is no types of protections used as the aw version is. the intel utility also has issues working with these types of encrypted insyde bios' which are locked down tight as was the ocz before we unlocked it to allow to be modded though i believe the intel program did work with the initial ocz version but i dont remember. there are also a few other things changed here and there and a surprise hidden inside lol..... if you know where to look for things i cant say more about that though

 

I realize the voltage limitation. I'm nowhere near the 1.3 range. Still not even to 1.25.

 

ahh okay just making sure. my bios will automatically allow up to 1.34v if needed by the cpu ocz limit was 1.28 default. if you are not seeing that then the utility really doesnt need to be used to change the voltage imo. but thats just me. there is not enough room for me to add extra settings as the bios is bordering on the max size allowed by phoenix as is.. or i could add extra overclock settings. this bios is just very large to start with and i have tried removing some things with usually the same issue of one thing not working the way it should then. like the audio or similar.

 

We appreciate what you're doing, Z. I wish there were a sure fire way to stop the quad stuttering. Anything else would just be icing on the cake.

 

With the AS5 and the laptop cooler what's a safe speed to OC the q9000 2ghz? And what software is needed?

 

setfsb is the software

and ocing is what ever you can get generally you can reach around 2.3-2.4ghz

go by step run soome bench while monitoring your temp if temps are good and the systeme remain stable up a little more and so and so til you reach your max

since you can,t up the voltage you should not damage your cpu
(of course doubling your fsb speed could damage somthing but doing so would just be plain stupid)