Possible m17x SLI issue

Tonight i noticed while playing World of Warcraft that my video cards were making a clicking noise when under stress and the game would randomly lock up for a second. Anyone else having any issues trying to figure out if this is software or hardware.

 

I've heard screeching noises when under stress but nothing clicking or locking up.

 

sounds like it just the right 280M anyone know a way to turn off SLI and just use one of the 280M?

 

The one on the right is the slave so go ahead and turn it off via nvidia control panel (disable sli)

 

I'd think even the integrated card could run WOW with no problems.

Buying an M17x (Or even an M17) for WoW is like buying a shotgun to kill an ant.

 

...yeah you make sure you don't miss, lol.

I doubt he bought it for just one game.

 

well come on...
anyone able to recall the series of gpu when WoW even came out?

 

6800 Ultra??

 

Isn't it true that the latest version actually stresses even the 9800m gtx?

 

So what could be causing clicking/lock-ups?

Not enough power getting to the card?

 

i was thinking before that, but you may be correct.

 

Yes there is parts of WOW now that will bring even the beefiest desktops crawling when everything is maxxed out , ask Electrosoft he is a WOW nut .

 

So am I. Two things:
(1) WoW doesn't do well with SLI, or at least it didn't work with mine on my mALX. So when playing, disable SLI.
(2) WoW has gotten more video intensive since it's inception in late 2004. At that time you could play it with most integrated vid cards. However with the two expansions and multiple patches that not only fixed bugs but added new content WoW is no longer playable on basic vid cards. Well you can play it with everything turned down but it will still lag quite a bit.

I sold my mALX laptop because it was no longer able to play WoW without a tremendous amount of lag in Raids and Wintergrasp, as well as in Dalaran. Now I am waiting on my new M17x which is now in the boxing stage

 

this is good to know then. i did not know they updated the game enough to take advantage of the new cards.
how do you think the 8800m gtx would fare then?
i ask as friends have been pushing me to try WoW...

 

you would EAT WoW for breakfast

not bad you would run on high setting except shadows ..... unless you do 25 man raid then you need to turn it down

 

Agreed Give it a try, but prepared to lose many ours/days/months or as in my case years to the dang addiction that is World of Warcraft

 

MMORPG's ruined my life once so i stay away from WoW

 

lol - look at my sig...i am an avid L2 junky, been playing for 5 years (when i am not out of the states)...so i know what your talking about...
besides, i own a copy of the south park homage to MMO players....

i am just not sold on the more cartoon like features...

 

I played the original Everquest for about 5 or more years (dont even care to remember ugg) and i have tried WOW and a whole slew of others but i just cant get back into the whole MMO thing(thank god) . Star Wars the old republic is coming out and when it does i know ill be getting it day 1 and hopefully(by the grace of god) ill be quitting when my 30 days are up .

 

break one for another Moo....lol ??

 

Like Quadzilla said, the newer expansions of WoW are way different than the old WoW we all know. It can and will take high end systems to there knees.

Its a shame as the vast majority of players probably do not have the computer power to keep up. turn off the shadows is the first thing to do. After than turn down the glow setting.

I think we lost like 2 or 3 W90 owners because the W90 was not playing WoW very well and they bought it just to play that game.

Oh wow this was post #9000

 

No my freaking 8800 GTX handles WOW full settings at like 60 fps so that isn't the case... Yeah once a year I give in and get a 2 month card of wow and play... now I'll just wait for Blizzards new MMO project or Bethseda's Knight of the Old republic online

 

Me thinks you have not been to the new areas in question from the newest expansion. The old parts of the game remain unchanged.

 

no I have, I had burning crusade and the Lich king, and maybe 60 is exaggerating but really almost never dips below 40... but also remember It all depends on where you are and how many people are there , theres nothing you can do when you go into a city with 700 people doing stupid dances and lagging your comp

 

The main issue with WoW is not when flying around or killing mobs/leveling.

The fps problem starts in raids. The people that actually buy a notebook in order to play WoW, it means they been playing the game a while, which means that they already hit level 80 and they probably started raiding.

In a raid environment with max settings you will probably end at minimum of 10 fps (with my system), mainly because there are 25 people casting spells all the time, boss animations and so on. And lets face it, rendering full shadows for all of that is just overkill.

ps. Im not even going to mention Wintergrasp lol, you get the point

 

Simple tests:

Turn everything to max @ native resolution (assuming 1920x1200 or higher here), shadows to OFF.

Go PvP in Wintergarde.

Go raid Ulduar

Go fight Sapphiron

Go sit in Dalaran by the bank. It isn't a "toon congestion," issue, as you can go sit in Ironforge with equal amount of toons and stay at max fps. If you dial down your details, your fps will immediately improve in Dalaran. Like I said, it isn't a toon congestion issue, but a graphics engine "Double You-Tee-Ef" moment

Go outside of Dalaran in Crystalsong forest and fly up and face long vistas.

If you say your card handles that with 60fps, you are full of crap.

and a lot of it.

If you say Wintergarde runs smooth as silk, again, you are full of it. All the AoE effects will bring your system to your knees.

I run the rig in the sig, and there are many spots in WoW that my fps will drop.

Of course I can dial back the details, but that's not the point now, is it?

I've gone back through those same areas and dialed down my settings and if you want, you can get by on a 4500HD IGP chipset if you set everything to low and want 20-25 fps everywhere. The engine does scale, but when you crank everything up (shadows to off) at higher native resolutions in WotlK, it will crush your system.

Like one poster said, my M-ALX used to play WoW beautifully (7950 SLI, 2.4ghz), but then WotlK just destroyed it and it was time to upgrade or dial down the effects.

And Cool gets it. Raiding is where your system just gets wrecked, badly.

But man Ulduar is purdy.

 

DUDE just FACE it your DESKTOP SUCKS

 

Well that's probably it lol, my screen sucks... I have a 1024x780 old school lcd...

 

Yea, I would of mentioned that in the last post...

 

Could also be micro stuttering caused by sli.. try turning sli off..

(from pcgameshardware.de)
The phenomenon

Here the disclosed problem starts: multi-GPU systems often do not succeed in displaying regular distributed frames; it comes to large time intervals between individual images - "micro stuttering" - despite supposedly fluid frame rates. One example: frame 1 is followed by frame 2 after 10 milliseconds, which corresponds to a cadence of 100 Fps. Frame 3, however, is to be seen only 40 milliseconds afterwards, followed by frame 4 after 10 ms.

The result is disastrous: The subjective frame rate of a multi-GPU system is in this extreme case below a single card, although the displayed Fps are higher. This behavior is primarily critical at low frame rates, such as the aforementioned 30 Fps. The less Fps, the greater the possible intervals between them and a regular distribution gets even more important."

 

I've run it both ways, actually (To the point I was running a single 280 GTX for a week to test then put the other back in for a week, then toggled SLI on/off over the course of many days). WoW still puts the smackdown on it with details to max, shadows to low/off. I'm not saying that's in all locations. There are many places where your fps will stay at 60, but then you hit those areas where it plummets.

The new Xpac with real resolutions (1920x1080 or greater) and details pumped up taxes modern hardware in many situations, period.

I use to run the original WoW back in 2005 on this same 30" screen with a 6800GTX on my G5 PowerMac and 7800GTX eVGA on my AMD FX-55 no problem. TBC xPac came along and I upgraded to a 8800GTX and that ran it no problem, same screen. I could have even got by on the 7800GTX probably. Then WotlK came along and said, "Oh yeah?" Blizzard talked about how much work they put into the new engine and graphics and warned about the need for better hardware for all the eye candy.

Ah well.

 

Whoa....2001 called. They want their screen back man.

 

Hey it works perfectly for me... I had a better one buy I gave it to my mom for school, this one has built in speakers so I can hook up my consoles or PC too it as well, I have the adapters

 

WOW, must of been top of the LINE my friend in 2001

i use my 32 inch Samsung

 

Wow lol, well I do sometimes use my 50 inch 1080p Samsung downstairs lol

 

Wow that's awesome man, no I was just saying I'm not completely out of the loop lol... It just has always worked well for me, I really like having the built in speakers and it's 4:3 15" so it looks good when I play games... I used the extra money to buy a PS3, 360, Les paul, and build a Gaming Desktop sometimes you gotta decide whats more important to you... lol "sometimes"

 

If you've seen and liked Lord of the Rings, I would definetely advise you to try Lord of the Rings Online (or LoTRO) as well as WoW. LoTRO is now one of WoW's main competitors (not to mention 3 million people moved from WoW to LoTRO ) (Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start a fan war here, I think both games are great)

But looking at LoTRO, I can play it on my desktop's 8800GT completely maxed out (ultra high graphics, max AA and AF) and LoTRO is more graphically intensive than WoW so you should fare extremely well with an 8800GTX.

Oh and if you do go into the MMORPG area, be warned, they do get very addicting...

 

I had no problem dual boxing wow with 9800gt desktop at highest settings for both screens.

I always thought it was fun 2 raid with 2 of your chars and no one knowing lol. Oh and if your wondering about why I would do that for $30 a month, well... lets just say it was free.

 

Exactly

I am a wow nut.. Please no flames.. lol

They have done major overhauls to the game in means of upgrading the graphics, shadows, spell detail, ect.... When you have 25 ppl casting (especially tons of AOE spells) it can bring a system to its knees...

I love raiding and at max settings in a raid it can be rough on a system.. So far, I have all settings maxed except for shadows and I am doing ok.. about 20-35 fps in dal and in 10 man raids been ok... This weekend will be the first 25 man test.. Missed out on the 25 man during the week.. darn work.. lol

Now since wow isnt that good with SLI, that is probably my bottle neck.. if they ever get that straightened out, it will even be better.

When not playing wow, i really enjoy First person shooters.. I bounce around alot..

Really waiting for the new Starcraft...

 

What server do all the wow players here play on? Rexxar ftw. And yeah end game content in Wotlk requires a much better graphics card then end game in the original

 

Lol same. When im not on wow im on crysis or halo and yeah the new starcraft is gonna be amazing i've seen some games played on the site there are tons of new features. Hopefully they'll give us the release date at blizcon

 

I can only hope..

I play on muradin

 

So is everyone with the M17x experiencing problems playing WOW using SLI? :'<

 

Wow runs fine for me.. No issues..

I dont think i am getting much of a benefit from sli as wow is not properly built for it.

Other than that, I have played for hours with no issues.

 

Thread has kinda degressed but anyway, Last night was the first time i played anything other then crysis (which i expect to stress my system fully). With world of warcraft i was hearing the same buzzing/noise comming from my right video card that i heard while playing Crysis. what i noticed with World of Warcraft though when i was in a loading screen, the buzzing sound would go away immediately and if I ALT+TAB out of WoW it will also immediately go away, but as soon as im back in the game it is back.

With the lockups i was talking about every few minutes or so id be moving or something and for a second the game would stop moving and then it would be fine like nothing happend for another 5 or so minutes. This was also happening in Crysis but i assumed the m17x was just hicupping and trying to catch up to the demand of the game.

If noone else is having the lockup issue it may be a Win7/driver issue since most are still running Vista. I am confused how a video card could make any noise while under stress, its not he fan because it wouldnt immediately turn off upon entering a loading screen since they are thermal driven.

 

This sounds like driver issues, IMO.

Give it time - Dell is usually good about releasing fixes/updates/etc.

 

Well i now seem to have had some sort of failure. Today i tried to play Crysis and it was completely unplayable, i decided to run the Crysis benchmark again. On monday i got 32.82FPS on 1900x1200 AA=No on Quality High. Today i got 3.84FPS on the same settings. I started up 3DMark06 (unable to post results as PC is currently not on internet) and stopped it mid way through the first test when i saw i was getting arround 17FPS on it. I have not changed any drivers since Monday so i have no clue what could cause this. I would think a Hardware failure of one of the 280M's would cause the SLI mode to become INOP or unstable. Any ideas of things i can check?

 

This may be obvious but did you check that you are actually in SLI mode. Some people don't know once you unplug your system you run on the 9400M until you switch it back.

 

Yea one of the first things i checked, i tried turning it off and back on and made sure it was turned on in the BIOS.

 

i noticed when viewing my video card properties that only 1024MB are listed as Dedicated Memory and i have another 1663MB listed as Shared, is this normal?