*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17x-R2 Edition Owners Lounge!

How depressing.

 

Couldn't come at a better time, my M17x-r2 will be here in 5 minutes Fedex up the block.

 

Eh??! What u mean?

 

I thought I'd share with you guys my experiperence opening up my M17x-R2.

Earlier I told the forums I had a problem with my Crossfire cable. Well I used Moo's GPU Guide and was in and out of my laptop in 15 minutes. Here's what I found.


In this photo you guys can see the Crossfire cable ((the blue cable)) going from the main card to the slave card. ((Main on the left and the slave on the right.))


This is a close up of the slave card. The cable is kept in place by...tape. I kid you not tape! A $3000 laptop is held together by tape.


This last one is the connector of the Crossfire cable going to the main GPU. If you look closely you can see it's not even plugged in. All I did was pop and done.

The laptop works in Crossfire now. I wonder why?

I'm loading some games on it as we speak so by the end of the week I'll write a review for you guys.

 

Now that the issue seems to have been solved, I am going to redouble my efforts to get this system, will be calling some sales reps tomorrow.

 

i want benches of Crysis and empire total war STAT!!!! get to work!

 

Wow man. That was easy to fix at least. Hope it wasn't unplugged due to getting tossed around in shipment.

 

I'll do some tested on Crysis then. Once I get the chance. I don't have Empire Total War so...don't shoot me?

 

I don't think that was the case because once I put the cable back in I gave it a small tug to make sure it was in. And the SOB was not moving! It was never plugged in and I'm sure of that.

I should get the techs paycheck for this.

 

And now time to find what is the problem with the windows freezing with the unplung

 

Steam is still having a 66% off sale on all Total War games. Only $10.19 for empire and Rome Total War is a mere $3.39

 

id link that along with a driver issue plus the already discoverd power problem

 

Hmm...maybe I'll give them a try. I prefer action games and rpg's but, for $10 I can't go wrong.

 

Thnx mate, +1 rep for u, BTW, guys do you always get sleepless the night before your delivery?

 

Ahhh yes, I sense a much more positive vibe in this thread now
That is great news Joker, glad you guys with the top end CPU will get your R2s working as they should...
There is a bunch of new awesome games to go through!
Later in the year will be discussing the new vid cards here I hope and fitting them to the R2s

 

My M17x-r2 comes today and it already shows 13 driver updates needed you would think it would have been built at the factory with the latest drivers. and I am sure we will see the Bios update real soon.

 

I think they should throw a set of 5870's in Joker's rig for his cooperation.

 

Well and those that "Disabling turbo mode" doesn't make any difference at all?

I disable turbo mode all I get is lower fps, but still flickers.

 

You sure that wasn't 13 Windows updates and not drivers? Because that's the same exact amount I had to download today.

 

Im sure I go to Dell support put in my TAG I hit driver downloads I get 13 new driver downloads most dated 1/15 1/20 1/19 my machine was built this week?

 

I don't have the system and I get all those. That is just because those are the available drivers, I bet if you go into device manager and look up the driver versions, they are the same as the ones on the website.

 

I think Joker posted a temp fix for that several pages before on this thread, I think you can try setting the maximum CPU load to 80% on power management, can some one confirm this?

 

Oh you mean the ones listed on the Dell Driver web site. Those are more than likely already on your laptop. That lists all the latest drivers whether you have them loaded or not. It doesn't mean you need them when you see them on that web page.

 

The thing is I put in my service tag and it says these are the new drivers for your system It should know what I have and what I need you would think. My system comes today maybe in a few minutes I'm still waiting for Fedex I know it is on the truck

 

Does anybody know what needs to be done to fix this?

I just did the 80% power management thing and didn't change, still flickers.

 

try playing with only 1 card

 

On this whole driver question, my impression (someone correct me if this is wrong) that the factories become aware of the system specs and a full suite of *tested* drivers... in effect a golden image. They don't seem to update immediately as new drivers are released one by one, they seem to build up before the whole image is changed and "frozen" for another cycle.

 

with a single card it doesn't flicker...
but they were saying that there is a fix to play with the crossfire enabled, but reducing the processor power.

 

Some say Urgent, some Recommended, and others Optional

 

Have you tried checking if the xfire cable is hooked up properly? If not, that might be the case. Otherwise one of the GPUs is damaged or the xfire cable is bad. Call AW tech support tomorrow to see if they can overnight the parts to you.

 

When mine awakes from sleep mode the fan makes a growling/groaning noise as it starts up then just sound normal. Is this normal on these machines?I know pretty lame problem compared to all thats going on.

 

It's not the cable. Alot of M17x-R2 users have this problem. AW is working on a solution so lets hope it doesn't take too long.

 

with turbo mode disabled and playing l4d2 I don't seem to have any flicker. but we will see what the real fix is.

 

Now that's just weird. Do you experience it when turbo mode is enabled only? I personally haven't gamed on my M17x yet so I don't know if I have the problem yet.

 

Well dan that seems like its better already. It could be a new BIOS next week sometime. Im sure its now been fixed and confirmed, awaiting a bit more testing from AW for sure.

 

The thing is just disabling turbo mode on the BIOS?

I do that and it doesn't change.... Still get the same flickering.

 

Seems tho its working for some and some it isnt. We will know more from AW intime, just sit it out people.

 

The flickering issue has been identified and a BIOS update is already under way. It will take some time for the normal process to get the BIOS web posted so I cannot provide an exact ETA at this time. In the meantime, disabling turbo mode in the BIOS should alleviate the symptom.

The issue is that the firmware algorithm that monitors power spikes was too conservative and artificially throttling the AC adapter.

Edit: The issue is most specific to systems with 920 processors with dual ATI cards that are running demanding applications/games. Systems with lower power requirements, particularly single card configurations, should never seee this issue.

 

I have the 820 processor and my flickering is constant and disabling the turbo mode isn't changing anything. Still flickers a lot.
The only way for me to play without flickering is disabling the Crossfire.

 

Do you think that my problem is worst than the others? Considering that my processor is a 820.

Also is it possible to get this BIOS update before it get posted to the website?

 

Thank you for the update.
I was waiting for a fix/solution to come up before purchasing the M11x but seems like it's green lights now.

 

While ur here nags any inside info on the 5870 release

 

SpinalGT, do you get flickering on battery? does it occur if you disable xfire?

It's possible there's some other explanation for your flickering. Flickering is a broad symptom. Is your flickering the entire panel or is it specific objects within a game? If it's the former, those kind of issues are usually game specific and can require playing with the game settings for optimization.

 

are you trying to get me fired?

 

lol im trying to get sum free 5870`s sent out so we can bed them in for us crazy benchers lol

 

Just thinking about dual 5870's in an M17x makes me giddy. Can't wait, hope we see those soon, I'll be first in line.

 

Nags, I dunno if you're still here, but some people were also saying their laptops lock up when the power cable is yanked. Any ideas? They say they have to remove the battery and force a shutdown to get it back up.

 

Hey nags, did you guys checked about the problem with unplugging the psu makes the m17x freeze? Is that bios change will fix that issue at the same time??

 

Here is how my flickering is.
It flicker the entire screen, and the flickering happens a lot before starting a game on the menus, and when I start the games the flickering persists but not as frequent as on the menus, on the menus is like always flickering, in-game is like every 5 seconds.

If disabling Xfire flickering is gone.
If using battery flickering is gone but with a great drop on the fps.
If disabling turbo mode on bios nothing change, still flickers.

My flickering is happening in every game I've tested so far.

 

Best thing is to probably PM it, just incase hes gone AWOL, he will get a email telling him hes got a PM all being well.