SLi Guide (Installing, Troubleshooting + Increasing Performance)

Yep, and follow the guide when you install them or you are going to have SLi problems in XP.

 

Ok, I'm noticing an increase in stabiliity overall when I tried some drivers from that site, but I'm having trouble finding one that doesn't crash when I play games like Half Life 2. Any suggestions on which forceware version would go good on an M9750 with dual 8700M GTs?

 

Try the drivers I suggested, including the 167.43 ones.

 

I've tried dozens of these drivers... I'm still getting problems. Like when I try to play 3D games, it starts out fine, but as time goes on it becomes more unstable (flickering and such increases) and eventually it crashes my computer, and sometimes gives a BSOD. What could be causing this? This happens on every driver I download and install..

 

Have you tried using an external program like ntune or rivatuner to monitor your GPU temps as you game? It really sounds like you're system is overheating.

 

Uhmmm not yet.. I don't think it would be a temperature problem since it's a brand new machine, but it's worth a shot. Which do you suggest, and where can I get them? :S

 

You can grab either ntune or rivatuner. ntune is really easy to use and can be found on nvidia's sight with a quick search. Rivatuner can give more information. There's a good guide on how to use rivatuner on these forums but I'm too lazy at the moment to link to them. Just do a search and you should be able to find what you need.

Don't be surprised if this actually IS a heat issue. We had one user here who had his system for all of one week before sending it back for repairs with the same symptoms you're currently having.

 

Ugh that doesn't sound too good, I hope that's not the case! Well I did what you said and I got RivaTuner. Right now I'm running off the most stable forceware I've tried so far, 167.26. I'm playing Crysis at 1280x1024 with Medium settings. Runs very smooth while I'm playing, perfect fraps.... However as I said before, a few minutes into playing I start getting weird glitchy stuff on screen. I am running RivaTuner in the background and monitoring temps, and it says that my GPU is at around 91 C when I start seeing the first symptoms. Is that bad? >.<

 

Try propping up the back of the laptop. I have mine propped up at the back by about half an inch.

Not only does it make the keyboard nicer to use, it helps with cooling since the intake fans can get more air into the system. Its made a difference for me, and my GPU fans dont kick in as often as they used to....

They really should have then pull out clips to prop the back of laptops up for gaming machines that run hot - like the clips you get on keyboards.....

 

So does that mean 91-92 C for my GPU temp is overheating? >.< I'll try propping it up and see if that helps..

 

Perhap's tou must try use the Zalmann NB2000C when you're playing...

http://www.materiel.net/ctl/Accessoires2/35139-NoteBook_Cooler_ZM_NC2000B_noir_.html

 

What exactly are the goal GPU temperatures I should be getting? What is the maximum it should be?

 

My 7950gtx does peak out in the low to mid 90s when playing high end games like Crysis or BioShock but it doesn't seem to affect performance. It shouldn't be causing your computer to shut down or the game to crash. The gpu temp should never reach or exceed 100C which is the warning temp for this part. Also, the gpu should only peak in the 90+ range-the average game temp should be less than that.

 

Well yeah, when I'm playing intense games straight up like Crysis, it gets to be about 91 C. If I prop the laptop up about a half inch off the desk, it gets to be around 86-87 C. So if it's not overheating... what could be the problem?

 

Just a shot in the dark, but how much ram do you have? You may be choking there. Shutdown background apps and and increase your virtual memory.

 

For those with Vista, is it true that i won't get any benefits from sli? I specifically asked alienware technicians about this and they said all those issues were fixed. I was willing to pay the extra money for xp but they said it wasn't neccessary. I dont see their incentive to tell me otherwise because they had a chance to make more money off the sale, unless installing xp is more work but i cant see that being the issue.

Also i didnt mean to quote you. This has nothing to do with your post

 

At one time it may have been true. I have read those posts from June and July also, but everything seems to work fine now.

I just ran a Benchmark test for Crysis at 1920 x 1200 DX9 7950 with SLI disabled and enabled. There is definitely a difference. Not XP numbers but playable.

No SLI - Avg FPS 7.44, Min FPS 4.46, Max FPS 11.40

SLI - Avg FPS 22.32, Min FPS 17.53, Max FPS 34.23

Vista SP1 is suppose to bring Vista up to a speed comparable to XP sp2, I'll believe it when I see it. Take a look at it this.

http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72298

I recommend it you are a gamer, go with XP but if you're migrating from another vista machine like me stick with vista.

BTW, I'm writing an app, that will temporary disable about 32 or so services that will help gaming performance, a little, should be done in a week. I will include other tweaks as requested, registry hacks, etc. Also ability to set System Restore points.

 

My good sir, it's a brand new Alienware M9750 with everything on top. It definitely has enough RAM. :S

 

Ah no, on windows based machines memory can affect almost all apps, especially games. Any machine with 2-2.5 gigs of ram running ITunes, Trillian, Outlook, and Crysis will fall. If you look at your logs, you will see that Crysis can use 1.5 gigs in a matter of seconds which would probably bring your available memory down to about 200 - 400 MB.

In short windows needs room to swap data, fast. If windows cannot swap that Data in and out of memory fast enough YOU WILL CRASH. And this has nothing to do with "top of the line". Crysis has major memory leaks which doesn't help.

Believe me I deal with issues like this all day. There is a method to my madness.

 

Also on top of that if you have bad memory modules, which you may have, games will crash. Normal apps will work fine but Games and Large File copies will lock up and Blue screen your machine. Due to the amount of Data swapping in and out, there is a bigger chance of data being written to bad memory addresses.

Running a memory test can verify this.

 

How do I run a memory test?

 

You can use Memtest. Haven't used it in a few years but it did a good job at the time.

http://www.memtest.org/

or
Windows Memory Diagnostic
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

 

I think you can alo press F10 at system startup and enter the Dell Diagnostics to perform tests on all hardware, including memory......

 

Ok, I thoroughly tested my memory, and I think it's safe to say that there's nothing wrong with it.. Does anyone else have an idea of why this is happening to me? Once again, here are the symptoms:

-System runs perfectly fine on boot and regular programs
-When running 3D games of any kind, it loads just fine and plays normally
-During gameplay, it is possible to see visible tiny graphical glitches (flickers) in the polygons every few seconds or so
-After several minutes of play, the game will freeze, both graphically and sound as well
-At this point, it's possible for me to prevent the game, and ultimately the computer, from crashing by minimizing the application and then maximizing it again in Windows
-However, eventually this will not work, and windows will throw me an error message, something to the effect of "one of your devices have stopped working, please save all your work and restart windows to restore functionality"
-At this point, I can still keep playing sometimes, other times the video drivers stop working completely and I have to reboot
-If I did NOT minimize the game and prevent it from freezing, the game will crash and the computer will crash, and sometimes it will give me a BSOD

I am seeing these symptoms when I play ANY 3D game. Half-Life, AvP2, Crysis, anything. I even see these symptoms when I run other 3D software, such as Winamp's AVS mode. So far, these are the things I have tried:

-Reformatting the drive and reinstalling Windows, MANY times
-Reinstalling all official alienware drivers
-Flashing BIOS to XP supported version
-Reinstalling video drivers MANY times (different forceware versions). Among those I have tried are:
169.28
169.21
169.09
169.01
167.43
167.26
156.83
And all of them do the exact same thing. Although some offer some better stability, they ultimately all fail.
-Doing a memory test, my memory passed many times and is just fine.
-Checking to see if the GPU is overheating. When propped up on my desk it reaches about 86-87 C which is just fine.

I've seriously run out of ideas guys, any help would be greatly appreciated..

 

Not knowing your system's specs I'm sure you're using SLI. Have you tried to disable SLI and see if you still get the crash or artifacts? If not you may have a bad parent card.

Next guess disable Quicktime's autostart, and your Antivirus see if that helps. Maybe conflicts.

Next disable/stop as many background apps/processes as you can and test. If this works, one by one enable them to see what app may be causing the issue.

 

All my tests have been done on a fresh system boot: no background apps at all except the essentials. And yes, I've tried using SLI enabled and disabled... How do I know if I have a bad parent card? :/

 

For me, before I replaced mine, if I enabled SLI in Crysis and other games only half the screen would render. The other half would stay black. Sounds a little different then your problem.

Does anyone know if SSJMetroid removes the Daughter board will the display still work?

Also, are you using Antialiasing in your games and Nvidia settings? I remember reading that Vista had an issue with it, causing similar failures. I don't know if that is also a problem in XP.

 

I hear turning of AA in games really brings the FPS up. It certainly did for me with COD4.

 

No... I'm not having the half screen problem. I'm not using antialiasing btw. :S

 

Oh I forgot.. this is the error message I'm getting when I restart after a 3D application crashes the computer:

 

That really looks like a hardware issue, maybe driver, I know you tried them all.

Any 8700 users out there, experiencing these issues?

Have you attempted to reseat the graphics cards and apply Arctic Silver 5? You never know 87deg maybe too hot for a 8700 in XP, the Arctic Silver will help.

Arctic Silver Tutorial
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=205224

Card Reseating
http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/...XJjaF90ZXh0PXJlc2VhdCA5NzUw&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

This is true about the temperature, but I noticed it also crashed at around 84 C as well. :/

 

I'd say it's time to call Alienware for support and have it tested. =/ Maybe one or more of your video cards are not functioning correctly and it's beyond our scope at this point to troubleshoot.

Send it in for a diagnostic.

 

*sigh*... you're probably right...

 

I just got my m9750 yesterday and i checked my driver version and it says 7.15.11.5663. I have the dual 7950 gtx in sli and windows vista, which driver do u guys recommend that i download and could you provide the link?

When i tried the Witcher last night, i got wierd graphical glitches (both pixalization and slow down on fast motion) on cut scenes, it was really strange, as if it was lagging. In game, i had to turn off antialiasing in order to get rid of the lag. I think the problem is the driver but i am not very good with this sort of stuff. What are the proper steps i need to take to install the new drivers once i find them.

Can i also use my external monitor by connecting it with DVI or VGA and still use sli? I just want to use it as my display instead of the laptop display but i dont won't to lose graphical performance.

On another note: when i checked my experience rating on vista my ram appears to be the weakest link (i figured 2gig was enough).
Processor 5.0
Memory operations per second 4.5
graphics 5.9
gaming graphics 5.9
Disk Data Transfer Rate 4.9

Is the low memory operation rating gonna cause me some problems? All my other ratings are respectable.

One thing about vista i dont like is how long it takes for us to log on and log off, jesus.

 

You should use 169.28 You'll get slight more speed than the 167.45 AW drivers. Use the link below.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2825771#post2825771

 

The Witcher is EXTREMELY slow during cutscenes and I typically get 15-17fps during them, however, the rest of the game is pretty smooth with max settings 1920x1200 I don't use Aliasing at all though. This is a game issue more-so than a driver issue.

 

I was wondering if that was the case. It just crashed on me and froze up my laptop just a second ago (I had to do are hard shutdown ). I also had problems playing PoTC: At Worlds end blur ray for some reason. That one was really playing choppy so i stopped it, i tried a few other disks and they played good. I know that disk works though because i have 2 other players that it plays flawlessly on. I tried to update CyberLink power dvd (bd edition) but could not find one. Is there a better program for blu ray playback? I am going to pick up another game tonight or tomorrow, hopefully i dont have the same problems with that one. If so i will be calling technical support.

* how can u check you fps in this game (what button)?

 

I tried changing the virtual memory per the suggestion on the first page. I set the initial size to 200 and the maximum to 10000, however it says its only currently allocating 200mb whereas before it was like 2135 or something. How do i set it back to the default? when i click automatically manage paging file size for all drives i cannot apply changes.

On another note: My m9750 and the witcher don't get along at all. I cannot play the game without it crashing ever since i got past the training part of the game. I am using the alienware beta driver right now (had the best results) because i had problems downloading the other recommended driver (169.25). Do i have to unzip the nv_disp file before the driver file????
i kept getting a message saying incompatible driver or driver software not found. I also could not get driver sweeper to work, it kept saying access denied or access failed whenever i clicked the broom. I will try to download the other driver again tomorrow if i get some feedback. I gave up with witcher, not sure what the deal is but it crashes way too much, and i get message saying the witcher stopped playing windows is searching for the problem this may take several minutes. Then my pc somewhat locks up and i have to control alt delete and restart, it also takes a while for that process to complete. The interesting thing is the first driver i was using crashed everytime at the same spot, right when i left some cavern or inn (i will get the exact location in game tomorrow if it helps). With the beta driver i was able to load past the dreaded spot but then it crashed on me about 15minutes later. I am installing WoW now to see if i have the same problems with this game, atleast then i will know if its a game issue or a driver/hardware issue.

 

Ahh, Unzip the driver first, then Copy and paste the modified nv_disp.inf file over top of the one that was in the zipped driver folder. and your set

 

Well i called alienware today after another game i bought had the same issues. I also cannot play blu rays without watching them in slow motion or freeze frames. After going thru a bunch of trouble shooting it turns out that my cpu's are overheating. Now i have to wait for some thermal gel or whatever, because they think this will solve the problem. I dont have high hopes on this because he told that it should have already been applied before the pc left the factory. How can it disolve after such a short period of time? Kind of upset that they are making me do this instead of letting me send it back to them to fix it. Now i have to wait until next week before gel arives then i have to figure out how to apply it. They reassured me that if anything goes wrong with them on the phone they will cover it- i really hope this is the case. If the gel don't fix the problem then i will really be screwed because they just made waste another week, instead of taking the thing back to repair it properly. What you guys think the odds are of the gel fixing the problem with overheating?

 

I tried the Demo version of Witcher yesterday out of curiosity and I had the same problems as you described and I am using nVidia's 163.69 driver. All of my other games run fine. Did you check your GPU temps during game play? If the GPU is overheating, the temps would show this. Don't always trust AW support to differentiate between a hardware problem and a driver or software problem. Replacing heatsink compound is somewhat of a hastle and I would be sure that would be the cause of the problem before going to the trouble of doing this if I were you.

 

ya my cpu temps are 79 degrees C when using CPUID monitor playing WoW and gets that hot when playing any blu ray (these play in slow motion- atleast 9 out of 10 movies i tried including all the good ones lol).

With speed fan its always showing the flames and got as hot as 72C not sure why this one is lower but when the tech ran a load test he saw the issue right away

He said with gpu's its ok if they run at this temp but cpu's cannot it hit much past 80. He said to keep monitoring it and stop what i am doing if it goes past 83 degrees. My cpu's are usually running 10 degrees hotter then my gpu's (these stay relatively cool for whatever reason). Another interesting fact is that my CPU 0 is always running hotter then my CPU 1 according to the meter.

This sucks its only 4 days old and it has problems and freakin these guys are telling me i have to fix it. They made it sound like applying the thermal gel was easy (saying "even a kid can do it"). I think i may be calling back tomorrow and asking about other options i will be quoting their "100% satisfaction guarentee" they have posted in this nice binder they gave me. My keyboard also gets extremely hot up near the base of the monitor, but i dont know if this is a sympton of the cpu's overheating or if this is normal.

 

My T7600 rarely hits 80C if ever with normal use. I don't know what temperature it reaches during game play since I don't monitor the CPU temp just the GPU temperature. So yes it does sound like your CPU is running too hot. Make sure your fans are kicking in and responding properly though. The CPU fan should be running at max rpms with those temperatures. I believe the warning temp for my CPU is 85C.
This is a problem that needs immediate attention so in this case it is worth the effort to go in and apply heatsink compound to the CPU. There is an excellent guide on this forum that explains step by step how to do this (with pictures) so you can look that over first before you have the AW support person walk you through the process.
Many people on this forum have recommended Arctic Silver 5 as the most effective heatsink compound.

Link to heatsink guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=205224

 

thanks for the feedback. What do u think the odds are that applying the thermal gel will fix the overheating problems. I dont mind doing this if it will work but i dont want to waste the time if it wont' likely resolve the issue.

Called them back today and started complaining- make a long story short they are sending a technician out to apply the thermal lube. lol.. The way i look at it, my time is money and for me to spend the time doing this adds to the cost of the pc. I wanted them to pay for thier mistake so they have incentive to test systems properly before sending them out. I told the manager "how would u like paying for a brand new paint job on your car only to find that the autoshop missed a dent" you call them up and they tell you " hey its easy we will send you the bondo and paint just call us when u get it and we will walk u thru it" . I dont think so, its their responsibility to make sure thier product works as advertised, not my responsibility to fix their faulty or defective products caused by the negligence of their employees.

 

Well it's good that AW is having a tech do the task for you. I fully agree that it is AW's responsibility to do these kind of fixes, not the customer's. Unfortunately, AW has a tendency to have the customer do a lot of fixes that involve hardware and opening up the computer to perform these tasks.

Hopefully, the thermal compound will resolve your heat problem.

 

Attn: Crysis Players the new 169.32 driver seems to increase FPS rates for lower resolutions. The drawback is that people are reporting speed drops in all other games and 3dMark06. If you want to try it out, I added a link to it on the m9750 Download Thread.

Here is some benchmarks someone posted on laptopvideo2go.

 

Love your guide Stone

I've got a question though, http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17348 is a new driver but on their main page it says the following : Dell Mobile driver not sure which models as the INF I've never seen before from Dell, but INF supports the go7900GS, go7900GTX and go7950GTX.

I don't get it, they say it's for those 3 7-series cards but when you click on the link and look at the code on the download page it says : [DEV_0409&SUBSYS_019B1028] NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
[DEV_0409&SUBSYS_019C1028] NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT
[DEV_0409&SUBSYS_2052161F] NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT

so it seems to be for the 8700M GT, do you have any idea which it's for?

Also i'd like to ask if you think the latest driver (clevo driver) would do good on our alienwares? Here's the link : http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17357


I'm a total noob when it comes to laptop gpu drivers so bear with me if i'm coming off as a tard.

 

Take a look at the heading above that box "Original INF only supports". The driver seems to be created for the 8700 and someone is modifying the inf so it works with the 7 series cards.

On the 17x series drivers, I've heard nothing but bad things. They are suppose to be optimized for Vista but I gues nvidia hasn't gotten to that point yet.

 

Thanks for the reply eightd, so are the 169.25 Vista 32bit still considered the most stable/balanced ones for the 8700MGT sli?



*edit* Maybe the last 3 posts in this thread could be moved to eightd his thread : http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=203797

Sorry if this wasn't the right spot to ask about drivers.