my 8800 is downclocking too

looks like my gpu is downclocking when i hit around 84 to 85c (see rivatuner chart). this is after a spirited romp in crysis.

not happy.

do you think this is happening to everyone (with an m15x) and only a few people have tested their systems? is everyone's downclocking at around the same temp?

i suggest everyone test this w/ riva tuner to get to the bottom of this.

 

Yes, I am thinking it is happening to everyone. Everyone who has stressed their video card has gotten the downclock. Check out Chaz's post in the owners lounge. He has some very good information about his test unit that you would find very valuable.

 

Link please? That lounge is just getting too big :|

 

My internet isn't very good at the moment... girlfriend's brother is downloading a lot of files from the inet. Try to focus on the last 5-7 pages of the owners lounge. You'll see chaz's post and a few others.

 

you guys think future drivers will address this problem?

 

I don't think a driver could solve the problem. The dell m1730 with Two 8800gtx's peaks at 80 degrees in Crysis (From what i've been reading in the dell owners lounge). The dell uses the same drivers as the alienware m15x. I don't see why two 8800gtx's in SLI would run colder then the m15x's one 8800gtx.

Honestly it's just a poor cooling setup in the m15x. It's unfortunate because the idea behind the system is so great.

 

I think im about to cancle my m15x. I paid 4grand for this and overheating is not acceptable, along with the other features that varies depending on how good of a lemon it is... thats bull****. I expect top notch quality and all the features the system boast with no problems.

 

I am going to try and send my m15x back tomorrow. I have had it with this piece of crap, from lousy perfomrance in most of my games, horrible speakers, heavier and fatter than advertised, a case that already has fatigue crack in less than a month, buttons that no longer work when coming out of standby mode and video drivers that are not up to date with what the rest of the gaming world is using are my main reasons. I am mega pissed off with Alienware right now.

 

I've said it so many times in may of the previous threads, and I'll say it again. Alienware is a horrible company. I am never going to buy anything off them ever again. I am also having second thoughts about the M15x.

Who give a flying F*ck if it has 8800m GTX if its just going to down clock itself. And I also don't think the driver update will do much to improve the performance of the games, and it certainly will not fix the heating issues, because its a physical problem, not a driver or software related problem.

Edit: for the price of M15x, I can buy two laptops which will offer the same game performance or exceed it, at this point

 

Now it seems like those who pissed off with Alienware are real customers (not like 2-3 years ago people faking owning an Alienware). I don't own one, but it will be good if any of us could collect all these real customers complaints weblinks and shoot an email to Alienware. If they are not concerned about their customers, make them be.

Chaz assistant would be more helpful but hey, honestly i see alot more complaints than compliments.

Just my opinion.

 

To be honest I really wanted to love my ALienware. I was bragging about in on all my linkshells guilds forums etc in the gaming world. I had read the hype and what the 8800m GTX card was capable of. All of this in a mobile portable platform was enough to make me drool. SUre it was more money than I ever paid for a laptop but it was gonna be worth it.

THen the laptop arrived. It ins sleek cool Black box with a sleek cloth skin and a sleek leather binder with all the goodies in it. I was very impressed.

THen I opened it up and found out that it was about 20% thicker than advertised. My heart sunk a little. I decided to weigh it and my heart sunk a little more when it came in at 7.8 lbs vs the advertised 7 lbs. Again this was in a stock condition - no extra batteries or hard drives installed.

I thought about returning it right then and ther because I travel a lot and was really counting on the thinner size and lighter weight. But something about this machine intrigued me and it still was the fastest notebook out thre for its size with an 8800 card. OK so I got over that and decided I couls live with Alienwares lies, but that left me suspicious of the rest of this machine.

I loaded in Crysis next. Whoohoo... sorta. had to get some patches and make some tweaks and then crysis was running. no biggie is like that with almost everygame I play. It was running not too bad in very high mode, acceptable framerates but it did start to get warm after playing for over an hour and then things seemed to slow down. I didnt really take much notice until I saw others talking about the heat given off and then the card actually downclocking to reduce heat. I also noticed playing Crysis that even with these speakers turned to max I could barely hear them. I mean if anyone else is in the room or you have any ambient noise in the room forget hearing your speakers. These are possible the worst notebook speakers I have ever evere used, and I have gone through a lot of notebooks. Even my lenova x61 tablet has better speakers and its a fraction the size. Then I started to notice my SD card slot, and touch sensitive buttons would no longer respond if the system went into standby. Alienwares answer to this is "dont go into standby." They have no permanent fix for this nor are they working on one I was told. ok well can I live with that. I dont want to but I want to love this new $3200 machine. I want to! Ok lets try my No. 1 MMPORG "FFXI" OMG the worlds least graphically demanding game will not run. This is an NVIDIA issue and vista issue not necesarilly Alienwares fault, but Nvidia has posted new updated drivers to resolve this and we all at Alienware as users are stuck with drivers 4 months old. This is a gaming computer they should be faster with their driver updates. We can not install the ones floating around the internet because ares need to be specifically modified to co-exist with the stealth mode and the intel internal graphics. So we must wait for ALienware to update their drivers.

Then last week sometime I notice a small hairline fatigue crack start to occur near the left hand side grill. It seems the top panel of this laptop was maybe not installed correctly and there is too much pressure at this point and so it has cracked.

Am I expecting too much, am I just a whiner? I have never returned cameras, TV's, DVD players, or other hardware items, I am pretty easy going, but this has got me totally worked up. Do I need to chill ? Have I over re-acted? COmments? Should I be trying to send this back?

One frustrated Customer

 

You guys should really ***** your head off at Alienware... they have lied to you and withheld information..

your 8800m GTX is running slower than a 8600 most of the time while gaming for over a hour... Horrible stuff

they have tricked u into thinking a 8800m GTX will run at the speeds it should when it doesn't


who wants a GPU running undownclocked at 90+ nvidia should step in and bust alienware they have damaged the name of their new laptop card and conned customers.

 

Quick question, would grabbing some new drivers and a modded inf from lp2v then set an extreme profile via ntune with your desired clocks, then setting a specific rule for when Crysis is run, load extreme profile. I notice that with my modded inf + drivers, the clocks reflect how demanding the game is. CS1.6 run at 50% whlie NFS:C bounce around, I have found this with a bunch of drivers I have tried. I can confirm the rules work on the 167 series as I have set a rule to limit clocks when screen saver runs so it doesn't get too hot when it does not need to.

 

So how big is the laptop? REAL MEASUREMENTS. I asked this b4 and got people quoting me the home page. Now I see westcoastgeeks says its bigger (or is it just heavier)?

85c isn't too hot, the 880GTX should handle close to 90c easy. Not that the AW case or other chips might like that kind of heat. I hope they fix that soon. I so wanted to get this laptop before june.

 

I'd return it, what's the point of having a 15-inch notebook with an 8800m GTX if it weighs 7.8 pounds and downclocks the graphics card?

 

Maybe this is why they are stalling on the release of the m17x. Maybe they know that all these are problems, but don't want to do a recall so they are doing what they can to prevent it from happening in the future. I agree though, Alienware does seem to have lost its touch recently. I am sorry for your misfortune.

 

thats ashame that so many people are having problems if it were me i would return it, they have lied about it which is bad enough but the card downclocking sucks they should have tested betetr to make sure it worked correctly before releasing it

@westcoastgeek

if it has got cracks appearing i would return it right away.

 

Return it. Who would want a gaming laptop that downclocks to make games unplayable when reaching 90*C. Return it, and let them fix it! Their problem not yours, you should not suffer from their issues with the overheat problem, and stuff. Really they should really hurry up and fix it so they can keep on the go and get our money. all they want is money, we won't give them money if they don't fix this problem soon. They must hurry up to get money. Lovely money isn't going to leave my parents pockets untill they fix this. (my parents buying me this machine before july $3230 CAD with TAX

 

yep return it

but also, there's a whole lot more discussion going on in the owner's lounge .. you guys may want to head over there... as stated by Rebmik, just check the last 5 or so pages and that's enough.

Keeping it all in one thread makes it easier for everyone to be on the same page

 

+1 to carnyl

The lounge is the place to go for these problems


EDIT: We should call it the m15x hospital or something.

 

hi m15x fans and owners,

This is a pretty serious topic about the heating of the 8800M GTX. I decided to start new post scince the lounge is getting to big.

The question is does the 8800M GTX only Get to 90*C while playing high demanding games like COD4, Crysis etc? Can it get to 90*C on any game? Can it get to 90*C on FS2004?

Discuss all your gaming lags caused by the downclocking of the GPU because of Overheating here.

 

Being that it is monday I am hoping Chaz and AW have some kind of answer more in depth than "well if it goes above 90 that is bad but it isn't too bad"

 

isnt too bad? Nvidia quoted that it dies at 105*C thats 15*C of total Death. I just hope when I run This laptop and play fs2004 (i do long flights 20 horus tops) it doesnt burn up. I am planning to do long flight as said in the () and i really do not want my laptop to shrivle up. If this problem persists i am sadly moving to Clevo. I am not as excited getting an m15x now.

 

Nice...m15x hospital waiting room...

 

Guys lets just wait and see what answer Chaz and Alienware come up with.

 

Starstreak the laptop dimensions are correct except for the thickness which is 1.6 inches not 1.3 as was advertised.

Sorry this thread got a bit off topic - my appologies, its just that the overheating/downclocking was the hair that broke this camels back.

 

2 Chaz: when that review will come out?

 

Yes i hope that review comes soon chaz, im really excited. I am also thinking of getting a sager or clevo isntead of alienware. but my descision is still not made. Have to see Sager reviews

 

he said it'll take him 2 weeks to finish the review..

 

well perhaps he will release the review when he and AW have tried several things to solve the problem. So it could still last some time...

 

ok then

I decided alienware. I dont know UPS much in Canada

 

Hey guys. The M15x is starting to sound like the M5550, which is what thought would happen.

I purchased a M5550 with the 7600go in August of 2006. After playing games for an hour or two, the GPU would downclock and I would have to stop playing games for a bit before it calmed down. The temperatures rose to 96 degrees which is pretty damn hot.

It took me 14 months of replacing the video card/gpu/heatsinks before they gave me a credit for the laptop. I'm sorry all of the M15x users have to go through this now, because it is going to suck for you guys. Hopefully since there are more of you, you guys can all ***** enough so that this makes engadget news or something big. This is turning into a m5550 problem.

 

Sorry, I have to repeat myself:

Now it seems like those who pissed off with Alienware are real customers (not like 2-3 years ago people faking owning an Alienware). I don't own one, but it will be good if any of us could collect all these real customers complaints weblinks and shoot an email to Alienware. If they are not concerned about their customers, make them be.

Chaz assistant would be more helpful but hey, honestly i see alot more complaints than compliments.

Just my opinion.

ps: Maybe it's time we let them know. Expressing frustration among each other won't do anything. We have to let Alienware knows.

 

I'm going through the exact same thing with my m5550 right now Stone!!! I bought my m5550 last May! I've sent it in twice already and right now it's at the depot for the third and final time (which the critical agent told me) So you never got it fixed ? is that right Stone? I really need to know. I am promised credit towards a new system this time if they don't fix it right.

Another thought, you are right this m15x issue is turning into the m5550 issue!

 

i saw 2 fedex trucks today!!

 

@Dhoang417 - Yes that is correct. I never had my laptop fixed. I was running with a laptop that never worked 100% for 14 months, which was very dissapointing. Lets hope that AW faces a class action suit for the poor build quality of the M15x (in terms of cooling) because they got away easy on the M5550.

 

I play FFXI too and i got mine to run just fine. Downloaded the vista app from play online. uploaded the game from my discs. waited for the FOREVER updates and bam! it ran nicely too... As far as downclocking i havent experienced it yet that will be my next test with Rivatuner as suggested by fro....

 

Well it's official. Without my notebook cooler my GPU reaches 85-90c and it downclocks. Funny thing is I can never replicate the downclcoking on the exact same temperature. It will only heppens between 85-90c. Where it happens is like playing russian roulette you never know.

WOW now I am completly dissapointed. I was hoping my system was going to hold up. Hopefully they will come out with something to fix these issues. And I hope it's fast.

 

I have a feeling that I'll get my m5550 back with the same problems next week. I'll keep you updated on it.

Yeah, I hope that Alienware does something about these m15x's. It's sad to see people spend so much money on cutting-edge tech and not have it work.

 

You too? This is really disappointing. I wonder if this only happens to 8800mGTX owners only...what about the 8700 owners?

 

Tell me about it dhoang417. I am heading away ona business trip and then this thing is going back to AW. If they can't fix it, i will ask for a refund. And wait for the sager to release thier 15.4 model.

This is my first AW are so far it has been one love hate relationship.
Concept is absolutely brilliant. Execution is severly FUBAR.

 

If you want to find the temperature yours downclocks at, download ATI Tool and run the renderer while watching the temperature; make sure you have GPU-Z up to do that.

I am waiting for a response from Alienware about this.

 

Hey Chaz, that is exactly how I did it. For giggles I placed my hand over the exhaust an dlet the temperature climb. It whent to 90 and then downclocked. The time before that it was 85, 89 and 87. Maybe they just don't refresh fast enough. I was hoping they would get back to you by now.

I left a post over on the AW forums pointing them here regarding the heat issues. Hopefully they can get a proper fix released.

So far:
My webcam doesn't work.
My CPU over heats and downclocks
My GPU now downclocks.
I continually get the COm Surrogat error.
And recent games hate the 167.55 driver set.

Do you actually think AW will correct these issues poeple are having with the M15x. I mean this will surely cost them a siginificant amount of money to repair all these systems. Not to mention I am pretty confident alot of people have these units and they don't even realize they might have the same issues we are all having here.

I totally agree that we need to get some sort of petition going to voice our concerns over the issues we are having. I strongly feel AW needs to release a press statement to it's M15x Customers of what they are doing to correct these issues.

 

Gunna run extensive tests again when i get home. gunna use GPU-Z an still have ATI tool in there

 

Well, After all this and a month of waiting, I have cancelled my m15x order and have ordered the 1530 with Penryn...decided to take the money I saved and upgrade my desktop to play the few games that don't work well on the 1530.

N

 

Congrats Nyceis, I am sure you will enjoy the 1530. I have been looking at one for my wife as her HP is slowly giving up the ghost.

Edit808 yes please run some test and let us know how it unfolds.

 

Ford could have fixed the ford pinto for 10$ a car. They felt it wasn't smart to fix the car because they would lose more money fixing the car then getting sued in court. It took various deaths and lawsuits for Ford to fix the issue.

Who knows what alienware will do. Our society is filled with white collar crime. For all we know Alienware might have already known about the heat issue - but felt they would make more money issuing returns then fixing the notebook.

Who knows!

 

Guys . please write emails to Gizmodo and Engagdet complaining about these problems and AW didn't fix or address the problem. this will push Nvidia and AW to move and work it out.

 

Yea guys. It is up to you to ***** about the system as much as possible and get this news on engadget or something of the like. I really hope that you guys can get a class action lawsuit against Alienware or at least make them have a recall and issue complete refunds.

After how us M5550 users got ****ed over, I don't want to see that happen again to the M15x users. RUN THEM INTO THE GROUND!

@Absinthe - If you still come here you should make a big deal too because you get **** done when you complain

 

Never looked at it that way. I just can't see a fairly reputable company going that low.

I just wish they would at least let us know what the heck is going on.

I sure hope Chaz can get something from them.