M17x SLI Questions

Well, I've been enjoying my M17x for the most part. However, as I'm new to SLI overal (I'v got the 280s)l, I've been having some issues here and there with it. For the most part, I've just left Force Alternate Frame Rendering 2 on in the nVidia control panel and everything has worked in games like Aion for the most part. Occasionally I do have some trouble with the graphics in these games and I'll suddenly the AC Adapter Unplugged and/or the Battery indicator appear in the middle of the screen (it's kind of like a transluscent green indicator) and things start to get stuttery. With no SLI this doesn't happen.

However, in games like Champions Online, I have not gotten forced alternate frame rendering to work. I'm not sure how to get SLI to work with the game as I don't think there is any profile for the game in the 186.12 hybrid drivers I downloaded from Dell.

Given everything, and as I really only use the computer when it is plugged in, I'm considering whether or not I should just "disable" the hybrid mode and go with drivers that are a bit more tested and that have more SLI configurations for games. Anyone have any suggestions?

Should I just disable the hybrid mode and use drivers like v191.07 so that I can download SLI profiles for more games? I don't think nVidia supports any of our hybrid drivers with profiles.

 

You're being forced into stealth mode. Once the system thinks the plug is pulled it switches.

 

Officially SLI/Crossfire mode is not supported by Champions Online as of yet.

Source

 

Strange. Any thoughts on why this might be happening, or how to fix it? The same thing happens in Aion when I die. For some reason the particular death scene graphics cause this same thing to happen. I really like using SLI as it reduces overall heat that a single GPU would experience.

 

When it comes to battery issue try the power drain trick. Just unplug the system battery, AC adapter and hold the power for 20 seconds. Plug everything back in and test. Also a reinstall of command center w/fusion might help. If nothing works you might want to try booting off the Dell resource DVD to get to the Dell diagnostics.

 

Well, this is only happening occasionally when in SLI mode in games, so maybe it relates to the issues some others were having with the Alienware Fusion software. Not sure.

In any case, I'm still trying to figure out what drivers to use at this point.

 

191.07 drivers (with modified .inf from laptopvideo2go.com) work fine for me, even with Hybrid mode enabled. Just make sure to install them in Hybrid mode, when you reboot, get into the bios and turn off Hybrid Graphics and the integrated graphics (boot with only the discrete SLI graphics). In Windows, go into the Nvidia Control Panel and Enable SLI. Reboot your laptop, get back into the BIOS, re-enable Hybrid graphics and you should be good to go. If you get a black screen with only the mouse cursor visible when you get into Windows, hit FN+F7 to switch to the integrated graphics and then FN+F7 again to get back on your SLI graphics. This should make it work properly.

 

THanks Gizmo. Just went to that site and when I tried to look at the drivers it said they were unavailable due to a fix pending or something similar.

 

laptopvideo2go 191.07 Drivers Windows 7/Vista 64-Bit