Ranking

Took my little g73jh to PC Pitstop: Free PC Scans and Tune-up Utilities run by pc magazine and ran the overdrive battery of tests, this little beast hit as ranked top 3% of portables in the world.

 

I'm not surprised. It's a solid-design, with good hardware. I've emailed Gary about why the PCI-E bus isn't using 2.0 mode, and he said he'll get back on that. If that gets updated, then we'll get a decent little bump.

 

Hi Chas, my HWinfo is clearly showing PCI-E v2.0
Is yours not ??

 

That would be a GREAT upgrade!

 

Yep, you are right Chastity. That is what GPU-Z is showing on mine as well. Hmm..........interesting. Good you mentioned it to Gary and weird that HWInfo is saying v2.0 huh
Maybe Gary can inform us more on this one.

 

The GPU card reports compliance with PCI Express v2.0, however the maximum supported speed is 2.5Gbps only which is the max for PCIe v1.x. You can check more details about the PCIe capabilites if you follow the tree under "Bus" in the main HWiNFO32 window.

 

Found a thread dating back to March relating to PCIe v1.1 speeds on HD5870 to HD4850. This has issue with AMD drivers working with Intel's chipset. Might be of interest, looks they found a solution for Linux and Windows x86, but not for Windows x64, 7 or Vista.
AMD Developer Forums - PCIe Performance Problem with HD5870

I looked at screenshots for Nvidia GTX 460M, this is how 2.0 would look. PCI-E 2.0 x16@16

I noticed with some images on the MSI GX660 thread, their GPUz also says PCI-E 2.0 x16@16

Checked the Alienware m17x, theirs say PCI-E 2.0 x16@16

 

same thing here.. nver noticed but how does this impact performance? This is a joke.. i buy a $2500 notebook and it doesn't work to full capacity.. brb.. but doesn't ours say the same thing as GTX460M? Its just that GPU-Z doesn't... but its more for NVIDIA cards always and not ATI.

 

same here just says pci-e x16 not 2.0

 

any updates chasity?

 

I'll know more Monday

 

Same here. My one is running at v1.1.

Seems to be a driver problem since was resolved for some linux distributions. Any idea about real performance differences between v1.1 and v2.0???

 

Good I like updates. How is the sound driver and lic. for creative coming along? EAX?

 

seems to be, from tomshardware:

PCIe 2.0 8X = PCIe 1.1 16X

and the performance differences between 8x and 4x are marginal. Probably an upcoming update won't be a worth performance boost.

 

Mine on 1.1 as well.

Does this happen with the stock vbios? or it's the new vbios thing? has anyone checked?

BTW, what causes GSOD anyway?

 

Found this on another thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/490517-mobility-radeon-hd-5870-a.html seems it's a I7 intel chip problem. That the way I am reading it anyone with a differant opinion?

 

His Alienware seems to be running alright. It's PCI-E 2.0 X16@8 times 2. He has Cross-Fire. But if you look at the Alienware benchmark thread, you can see they post their score with GPU-Z, with the new vBios, it does show correctly PCI-E 2.0 x16@16. The problem Chastity found is that while the G73's does support PCI-E 2.0, the actual speed bandwidth is v1.1. That's why GPU-z shows it as v1.1, even though HWInfo32 will say it's PCI-E 2.0. v1.1 transfer rate 2.5 gb/s and PCI-E 2.0 maximum is 16 gb/s. That's where the problem is. v1.1 data rate is 250 mb/s and 2.0 is 500 mb/s. I found this information on wikipedia and google. If you look at the HWinfo32's screenshot from Chastity, it says PCI-E 2.0 @ 2.5 gb/s, which is v1.1 standard.

When I saw Chastity's findings, I also thought maybe it's a driver problem. But after, I have looked at the screenshots from MSI and Alienware users and even the G73jw with 460M, on GPU-z and HWinfo32, all of them do say it's proper PCI-E 2.0. Seems to me, this problem maybe has to do with Asus, not ATi's drivers.

I'm looking for a new notebook and interested in the 5870M, G73 initially caught my interest, but this is a problem. The new GPU lineup has GPGPU capability, but the v1.1 cuts the 5870M stream capability in half.

 

Thought of a way to find out for sure what the effects of v1.1 vs 2.0 could be. I'll ask someone from MSI forum to run the same benchmark. This will test the PCI-E.

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/ATISTREAMPOWERTOY/Pages/default.aspx

 

Nice tool. I tested at night at home. So far, anyone does tried this tool to compare Win7x64 and ubuntu 9.10, os in which the problem seems to be resolved with catalyst 10.7.

Hey Chastity, any answer from Gary??

(and where in the world is his daily report???)

 

Carmen Sandiego prolly has it.

 

Jeez, Give the guy a break . . .
i'm sure they're working out the issues

 

What exactly are you looking for?
As per requested I will run the test later on tonight.

 

Maximum transfer CPU -> GPU and maximum GPU - > CPU so hopefully G73 users can compare and see if PCI-E 2.0 limited to 2.5gb/s makes a difference compared to PCI-E 2.0 done right.

Thanks for running the benchmark.

 

I ran the test and yep, we are/I am limited to 2.1 gb/s CPU -> GPU and 2.1 gb/s GPU -> CPU

IEMIE

 

so is that good or bad? What is actual speed of PCI EXpress 2.0?

 

Well, iemie made a mistake with his "2.1 gb/s" both ways. It is Transfers the wee program measures. So it is 2.1 GT/s, which is close to PCI -Express 1.1

Here’s a summary of the key parameters of the various PCI Express interfaces:
Base Clock Speed: PCIe 3.0 = 8.0GHz, PCIe 2.0= 5.0GHz, PCIe 1.1= 2.5GHz
Data Rate (per lane & per direction): PCIe 3.0 = 1000MB/s, PCIe 2.0= 500MB/s, PCIe 1.1= 250MB/s
Total Bandwidth (x16 link): PCIe 3.0 = 32GB/s, PCIe 2.0= 16GB/s, PCIe 1.1= 8GB/s
Data Transfer Rate: PCIe 3.0 = 8.0GT/s, PCIe 2.0= 5.0GT/s, PCIe 1.1= 2.5GT/s
And that is what this wee program measures.

iemie

 

So if the benchmark is to be trusted, we are running close to 8X PCI-E 1.1 speeds? (if the GPU > CPU and CPU > GPU speed is run at the same time = 4.2GB/s or is it one way at a time test = 2.1GB/s which would be what? 4X?

 

If you run that benchmark, v1.1 should be around 2.5 gb/s. If it was v2.0, it should be around 5-6 gb/s I believe.

The reason why I am asking G73 users and another MSI user to run this is that the G73's 5870M is identified as v2.0 by HWinfo32 but limited to v1.1 speeds. I think this would be good to verify in comparison to a MSI that may have true v2.0 implementation. Also will help myself and others make a buying decision, a 5870M in G73 that is crippled in half the performance GPGPU vs MSI/Alienware with proper v2.0.

 

I really do not see the performance difference being that much different since we get similar Vantage scores to the other laptops.

 

This would be more affecting GPGPU, not just 3D graphics. So if people are interested in using OpenCL, Stream or other GPGPU applications, performance would be half of what it should be. At least my understanding.

 

not good... i hope gary has an answer and solution soon... this shouldn't be happening and i'm doing CAD soon...

 

I just did the test/bench... my max moving around 600 mb reach 3G/s on both cpu->gpu and vice versa...over the 2.5 stated for pci-e 1.1 but under the theoretic 5 g/s.

when the test tried 1 g files the laptop suffered a nice bsod :/

 

OK ran the test( sorry its late was watching the Patriots crush the Dolphins )It got buggy after a bit so.....GPU-Z does say it supports PCI-Express x 16 v.2.0 but is currently running at PCI-Express x 16 v.1.1. Not sure if a BIOS update or ATI driver upgrade will enable support for v2.0 to get the thing working.
I still don't know what I'm looking at !
MSI GX660:Results

 

GPU-Z shows this when it's running at full 2.0 speeds:

 

Ok i got hwinfo32 open and in the drop down tree go to pci bus #0 drop tree open to intel lynnfield/clarksfield IIO- PCI Express root port 1 (x16/x8) it shows max. link speed 5.0 GB/S and current is 2.5 GB/s drop down more in same tree to ati mobility radeon hd 5870 [asus] it shows max link speed 2.5 GB/s and current as 2.5 GB/s so is it hardware limited or software?