M17x Benchmarks thread !!!

My next question is how'd you oc??

 

System tool 6.03. Dox 182.46 drivers. 9400m disabled in BIOS.

 

You can't overclock only 1 vga in SLI as far i know...

 

what specs? are you still running vista?

 

Yes, running vista. QX9300, SLI 280M. Well GPU-Z says GPU one takes the OC and GPU 0 at stock. Anything pass 1040 on the memory stoppes the driver tough. himmmm

 

ok nice...

 

So the 9400M is actually running when it shouldn't be.

 

At least in desktop the faster card will slow down to match the slower card clock when in sli...

 

he disabled it in bios and he has 2 discrete 1gb GTX 280m's in sli...

 

He was getting worse performance in his earlier benchmarks when the 9400M wasn't disabled. The 9400M shouldn't have been running when the GTX 280M were in SLI at all so there shouldn't have been a need to manually disable the IGP in the BIOS.

If the performance increased after Ali disabled the 9400M that means it was running when the discrete cards were. It's possible the 9400M was even taking the place of one of the GTX 280Ms.

 

o ok i see what u r sayin now...

 

3D Mark Vantage Stock GPU, CPU @2.8GHZ

Temps are all below 72C. GPU score is 10358.

 

Nice! Seems like you guys are getting somewhere.

Now OCing both GPUs to 600/1500/1000 should get you close to 11k in GPU score. You might need to adjust voltage to get higher overclocks, and I think GPUtool allows you to play with the voltage, that's if you're brave enough and have enough info/experience as to what values to use.

 

did you do a run with 8xMSAA yet ali?

 

Thats good, its almost 100% in line with the W90 @ stock on the GPU. I get like 10340ish now we need overclocked results.

My max is just over 11,000

 

DMC4 8XAA CPU @2.8GHZ GPU @stock

128.01 89.51 142.84 97.33

With stock GPU we caught 4870x2 with 8xAA.

 

not quite, but getting there....

dmc4 demo benchmark at 1920x1080, everything set to super high, AA 8x, dx10, and got these results:



Scene1: 136.52 fps

Scene2: 95.75 fps

Scene3: 158.01 fps

Scene4: 100.31 fps

that was from an alleged working or not working w90 a while back.

where my manners...nice dammn run ali!!

 

I almost killed it while trying to OC the CPU. It wouldn't show the pos screen. Anyways it is fine now. Bios just reseted everything.

 

Thank god for warrantys . Its going to be really hard to kill it via overclocking and if you did it then it would be over a long period of time not just upping the multiplier and then rebooting . if its not posting after upping the multi its just telling "nope not going there" .

 

My proc does not allow me to go above 3.06 and even at that I get bsod. 2.93 has been pretty solid but when I tried to oc the gpu I started getting bsods again. Also I have a feeling that I did something wrong when I got the dox drivers installed. I basically removed the nvidia drivers first. Than from bios disabled both hybrid and ibtegrated graphics. Rebooted. Turned on the power boost. Rebooted into safe mode. Used driver sweeper to clean up the drivers totally. Installed Dox drivers. Rebooted to regular mode. At this point on of the cards showed Dox driver and the other had VGA driver. So I reran the Dox driver and rebooted. It looked like everything was working. Went to system tools 6.03 and enabled SLI. But when ever I go to the adjust settings screen in system tools it has one clock settings, so no GPU selecting to OC. When I overclock GPU-Z shows the new clocks for one card and stock clocks for the other one.

 

atitunay can you do me a favor when you get a chance. if you can open up your unit and take a picture of the mxm socket.

as you know there is 2 280m out. the ones in the 15in sdager that fits the np9262 but has no sli connector, and the new one that is on the sager but it does.
i know the new sager is using a new one.but i was wondering whats the alinware and if it has a sli connector.

 

sorry but i think they are the exact same using mxm 3.0b...
edit: sorry to confuse you when i said the exact same i was talking about the 9850 and m17x not 9262.... the reason why is said that is because i know he was also looking at the 9850 gpu's thats all...

 

The AW GPU's are MXM 3.0b the Sager is 2.1 they will NOT fit

 

In limited testing I like the Dox 182.46 drivers the best so far. Thanks for the updates!

Edit: Nice just went over 15K in 3dmark06 for the first time with those drivers....CPU @3.33, GPU stock w/182.46 drivers and 9400M disabled.

 

that's nice to know...once you over clock the gpus...you will be around 16k to 17k

 

Mandrake 3.3 is the maximum you can go ? is it till stable? how did you get that mhz's, only multiplier or some fsb also ?

BTW: you laptop really needs a gpu flash with some nice clock's XD

btw2: in therms os best drivers for "x" aplication after testing nearly all drivers out there xD i ended up with this personal opinion

best for:

3dmark vantage: 186.03 (nvidia original, modded inf only)
3dmark 2006: 182.05 (Dox optimised)
3dmark 2005:182.05 (Dox optimised)
3dmark 2003: (Dox optimised)
Games (in general) : 186.03 (nvidia original, modded inf only)

 

SLI and Xfire seem to be more trouble than they are worth. If you ever finally get this machine performing correctly your next worry is going to be stuttering and games that dont properly support multi GPU. PM me when they get this technology working good.

 

there is a way around the w90 driver issues, its problem was due to it's master/slave setup, fix was to flash the slave gpu as master so it was now master/master and then upgrade with ATI official drivers.

M17x gpu driver issue has already been taken care of too, atleast with win7 which should work the same in vista.

but in terms of talking about official drivers from asus with the w90 and dellienware for the m17x then yes if fails just like every other laptop. very rarely have i seen a manufacture update their drivers with any kind of reliability. It is much easier to just mod the official gpu drivers and go from there.

 

I had a W90, you cannot install official drivers after the flash, your only option is the 9.4 Drivers in Vic's Limit Breaker guide, and ultimately Im not reffering to official drivers, Im refering to the headache involved in multi GPU compatabiliy with games. Man just look it up there are thousands of people having this or that issue with Multi GPU. Single GPU not so much. I am simply saying this technology is not perfected and has no excuse because it has been around for years. Honestly explain to me why SFR dosent nearly double your performance, or howabout AFR? On a hardware level it dosent make sense. If you are given twice the power you should get nearly twice the performance. But for some reason or another they cannot make SLI or Xfire work completely on a hardware level while using the same driver as a single GPU. Anyone agree?

 

They do have the 9.6 now working with one card but I am not sure if they got xfire working yet but it shouldn't be long

 

Yes, BSOD on anything higher. According to Everest it is stable. According to OCCT 3.2Ghz is stable and 3.33 comes up with an error. I don't notice the instability OCCT claims but I did have to sync my FSB with my RAM speed. It was unstable without it.

 

Im pretty sure they only have the 9.6 CCC and are still using the 9.4 Drivers

 

Anyone else benching with the new drivers?

 

Impossible for me to install any other drivers than the stock ones from the Dell CD which is pretty old. It's like 179 or something like that.

All the drivers from Nvidia and Laptop2go create the same error: "no compatible nvidia components found"

I am so tired already of this crap. The notebook is absolutely amazing though.

Also, on Farcry 2 and GTA IV my pc turns off the game automatically after about 5 to 10 minutes of gameplay. I've spent 6,5 hours on the phone with Alienware technical assistance and they have not solved the problem. They mentionned it might be an issue with the 9400M which was always around 90 degrees celcius. They turned off the 9400M and we tested again all the games but same thing even with the 9400M turned off in the BIOS, its temp was around 85 degrees with peaks at 96 degrees. The two 280M cards were around 58 degrees.

Anyways, after about 6 hours of testing and installing tons of programs and drivers they asked me to wait a few days for an update on their behalf but I find this horrible as I spent $4,200 on a pc where no games run for more than 10 minutes.

...............................

 

Your not using the modified inf with the drivers, so be mad at yourself - NOT AW/Dell....

 

@Joe: Follow these instructions to update the drivers:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4985798&postcount=85

and then force install the coprocessor in device manager

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4991204&postcount=112

 

Did you even read my post??? Alienware technical support tried for more than 6 hours to resolve the issue and they tried to install the INF modified drivers.

I guess my pc came with a defect. That's just bad luck. Remember my 9400M card never gets below 82 degrees celcius.

 

Thank you for your help but this is one of the first thing that Alienware technical assistance did on my pc to try to resolve the issue. No luck there.

I guess I had the 1 in a million that comes with a defective graphic card.

 

Not sure what your doing wrong because everyone else in this thread was able to install multiple drivers.....

Sorry about the IGP heating up. Just ask for a replacement

 

or.... you had one of the ones where they forgot to remove the plastic covers off the gpu dies....

 

Does that actually happen? Would it be smelling like plastic as the GPU heats up?

 

yes, it actually happens and no it doesn't smell. if they build the machines them selves...some times the mobile gpu's come with that super thin plastic sheef cover over the die. not sure how that works though....

 

I'm assuming tech support had you disable the 9400M during testing.

 

Yes they did but they actually did everything themselves through remote diagnostic. It lasted about 6 hours before the guy gave up.

Anyways, they got tired of trying and they just asked me to return the PC. A Fedex truc came to pick it up this evening.

Now my question is should I wait to order a new one. I am thinking an RGB LED screen is not far away...

 

I've heard people wanting the RGB LED screens but nothing about them coming. From what I understand from Zfactor it would require a design change so I wouldn't expect it.

 

But it would definitely be a plus...as the design would be slimmer and more efficient, I would've thought it'd be a no brainer. Not to mention Dell is well experienced with LED laptops, with their Studio line.

What reason would they possibly have not to include LED? that's what boggles my mind

 

I totally agree with you but Dell and Alienware always made amazing gaming laptop. I want to believe there is a good reason behind this choice of theirs.

 

Yeah but their Studio line is not a gaming line. How are the response times with them? Would the be adequate for gaming?

 

The LED screens aren't any different from CCFL ones - just the backlight (the panel is going to give the same response times).

Anyway, Dell's LED screens would be just as good as the CCFL ones for gaming.

And, no there has not been even a hint from anyone at Dell/AW about offering an LED screen.

If your thinking of waiting - wait for the ATI cards and not a different LCD.

 

Would the LCD be an easy upgrade? You say wait for the ATI card but how much time are we talking about?

I ordered mine already and my brother is willing to wait no more than two to three weeks.