New M17x driver issue

ok so the new m17x is out and i see that there is a problem in updateing the gpu drivers. now i don't have the computer can i can't test it out but i would like to state my theory.

it is the first notebook with 3 gpus. two gpu are dedicated cards and one gpu is intograted for the powersaving.

now i don't think there is a driver to support hybrid tri sli. so i thought of these steps and i would like to get your feedback on this.

UPDATE kqmaverick says that he has sucessfully installed 186.18 on his system.

please try this method and let us know your results.

 

Toshiba Qosmio X305-708 was the first and from what I understand people are still using the same drivers that the laptop shipped with.

 

really so i wonder if a bios update or disabling the 9400m will fix it.

 

I don't know. I think M17x owner's tried disabling 9400M already but it didn't work.

My guess is the combo of the chipset and SLI requires a specific install package that is setup to install all the cards at once and the downloads from Nvidia aren't set up to do that.

 

this is what Dell was talking about with jumping through hoops to get ATI and Nvidia to install in ONE package....think about that ,,,,, wow

 

Heheh that's not what they meant.

The amount of work Dell would have to put into putting the ATI and Nvidia chipset drivers in one install would never be worth it. They wouldn't even offer ATI cards if they had to do that.

There will be two separate downloads for ATI drivers and Nvidia chipset/IGP drivers. There's already a separate driver download on the Dell site for just the MCP79 chipset.

 

ahh i see i didn't look into it ... i thought there was one package for both gpu's

seems the ati driver will still be unique i think(don't judge)

 

Deleted my previous post. Looked at it again and those ION drivers from Nvidia's site were for nettops not mobile platforms.

186.03 should be the newest.

Interesting note on the bottom of the Product Supported list for 186.03 drivers:

Both those Tosh's use Nvidia's chipset with 9800M GTS SLI.

 

What I really don't like is that the drivers from Dell's site are 179.85. That gets me nervous because from what I kept seeing 179 was the revision most Tosh X305 owners were stuck at.

I did find some say that these laptopvideo2go modded 185.85 drivers do work for the X305 though.

Worth trying for the M17x.

 

Ya that would be a bummer much like what happened on the W90 at the beginning . Hopefully this is not the case though because those 179's are pretty ancient by driver standards , much like the 8.12 were .

 

well we are waiting for someone to try these. i think i am going to the toshiba section and see what's up.

if you think that's sucks, the 3870's last driver to overclock was 8.10. everything over that would overclock for nothing. that's why you don't see so much benchmarks on overclocking with the m17/whitebook.

 

Well the good news in all this is atleast Nvidia is releasing official mobile drivers and im sure this machine is going to get enough attention that the up and coming drivers will have support from Nvidia (one would hope/think).

 

Clevo M980nu may be in the same boat if Nvidia doesn't support the M17x.

 

well if i had a m17x i wouldn't wait for a company. all there gonna say is download the one from there website. but that's why nbr is here

 

ok - just to get this right...
this thread is for the NEW M17x...not the OLD m17x...right?

 

What's up, people?

Anyone with their precious new toy gonna try this tonight??

 

Yeah Ryujin. There's been problems updating to the newest drivers. Only the 179.85 from Dell's site work right, and only on Vista.

 

ok...i will ask Chaz to change the title of the thread to reflect it as: M17x then.

the lower case 'm' in the title is reflective of the older unit.

i will also link this in the M17x sticky.

 

I understand that most of us would like to have the most recent drivers and stay current. However, the factory driver set is fairly sufficient. I've been running several modern games with good results. My theory has always been to update drivers when I start to see a degrade in performance, or I'm having an issue.

Gabe

 

then you just are not a benchmarker or tweaker

 

ok thanks alot. i will come up with other methods to try and fix this issue bur i need someone to test them out. i have two other ways of doing it but i am on my phone.

 

Screenshots of those results or they didn't happen.

 

yup. i guess you are not a benchmarker. for me, i want my components to be at 100 percent all the time. so i have to be up to date with my notebook. it must be perfect. if there something i'm not happy with, i will try my best to fix or correct.

 

If drivers come out that report performance increases then the drivers you have installed have degraded....you'd just be oblivious to that fact unless you test them and see the performance gain.

Ignorance being bliss and all.

 

I use to heavily benchmark all my gaming systems. Then I slowly lost the motivation. Playing a gaming machine is all about the experience, and it doesn't matter how high your benches are. What really matters is whether or not you can play what you want at the expected results that you want. I found that I get more satisfaction from playing a game than stacking up my benchmark scores.

Gabe

 

ok understandable. well as long as your happy it's all good. we have to wait for more people to try this then.

 

you always gotta grow that Epeen ....BOOM

 

what's epeen?????

 

i can't go into it ....

 

almost there is a tool released from 3dguru that will overclock any driver out there at the moment

Moo found it

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4891566

here you go try that

 

Thanks Moo was having a blank moment

 

The best scoring driver in benchmarks isnt always the best.. for example my m17 scored much higer with the stock aw drivers and the newest driver (9.4 at the time) than the 8.12 drivers, but the 8.12 drivers outdid the aw and 9.4 drivers in games.. crysis warhead ran almost twice as good with the 8.12 drivers as with the aw ones and around 25% better than with the 9.4 ones..
So trash those benchmarks when it comes to drivers.. do you have your lappy just to tell people how good it is by those numbers or to actually do something with it and have some fun? I only use benches for comparison..

 

there are people out there that believe drivers don't increase performance and if it does, it's by 10 percent max.

farcry2 8.10
i can't find my picture but it average 30fps.
8,12
http://i42.tinypic.com/2m7u23q.jpg
9.4
http://i41.tinypic.com/25gb341.jpg
9.5 heavily optimzed. cpu @3.2ghz stock gpu's
http://i44.tinypic.com/20usrqr.jpg

 

Thats a 20% increase what you just showed

 

the 9.6 ati drivers have a big increase on crysis for my m17 +30% or so

 

If you have a +30% increase in Crysis, then logically other (perhaps lower end or older games) are most likely taking a cut in performance somehow, its only logical, and it seems ATI simply maximized the 9.6 drivers for Crysis at the expense of other games.

 

i wish i had my whitebook to run fc2 on it and then ship it back.

 

other games i have played include

Prototype +5% ish
Call of duty 5 - about same (was maxed with 4xaa anyway)
Crysis +30%
WoW -- +10%
Fear 2 -- about same (was maxed with 4xaa anyway)
Red Alert 3 -- bout same -- i think this is software capped to 30

plus others i cant remember atm, dont think i have had any worse performance in anything, i have to say i think its the best driver for a while

 

Would be nice if someone with an M17x wanted to work out the driver issues that way this thread could get back on the track of being helpful and not turn into an epeen benchmark thread.

 

+100000

I asked that 3 pages ago! If I had mine this is def what would be my #1 priority.

 

not a case of being an epeen show as you put it

more a case of showing that gaming performance improves with driver devolpment, which is the point of the thread

If it is difficult to update the drivers on the m17x then there could be problems ahead

ESP as microsoft has said they will not be supporting these kind of setups with hybrid sli in windows 7 or future vista updates

 

The point of this thread is providing technical support in order to get newer drivers to work on the machine not to prove whether or not it's worth the endeavor to do so.

 

yes it is. we just got off topic because we are waiting for someone to try it.

we metioned how drivers improved performance because someone said they don't see the need to fix unless there computer is acting weird or a performance decrease.

 

What are we exactly trying to do here? Which driver, which OS? I have Vista Home Premium on my SSD and Windows 7 RC on a 500GB 7200RPM disk. I'm willing to try anything.

 

your M17x came in?????

 

I have had it since Thursday and already pulled the whole thing apart twice. lol.

 

lol nice. thanks. i will like you to try it in vista first because it only has a 'standard vga' driver.

i know most people use 7 now. but we have to start some where.

also if you have anothercomputer that will be assume so we know what's up.

can you try the steps on the first page. but use 186.08.


please keep us up to date so i can post other methods.

 

What do you mean that Vista only has a standard VGA driver?

While waiting for a response I actually put my Windows 7 hdd in and started installing the 185.85 dox drivers.

Edit: BTW I'm typing on my Thinkpad.

 

The 185.85 drivers didn't work but I didn't use driver sweep. I'll use the driver sweep, load the stock drivers then follow the instructions on page 1. I still have the Windows 7 disk in because I know the drivers are problematic with it. Vista is working fine.