880m Sli Weird Issue

Hello,

I bought an Alienware with 880m sli, I had a good deal for that laptop despite all the warnings and negative feedback on 880m.

Anyways, I keep getting a low 3dmark Fire Strike 1.1 score, the score varries from 8400 to 8700! I flashed both cards with a custom vbios ( SV17 & Jhon) and got even a lower score...

I turned off cpu overclocking, hooked the laptop to an exteral monitor, and the score was still low meaning I dont have power isssues.

I used MSI Afterburn to monitor both GPU activities and in fact they managed to run constantly at 995 Mhz @ 79~82 C max temperature!

Something is wrong here and I cant figure it out. I used a different driver 337X but stills, same problems.

My single GPU test results in a score of 5500, I should be getting the double of that when running both GPUs.

Thanks all and sorry for my ****ty English.

Please advise!

 

What's your graphics score? When I had those cards, stock vbios got me 11666 with a total of 9136 with a 4940MX.

Graphics score with the modded vbios was 12428 with a total score of 9533.

Make sure your power settings are on high performance or you will get lower scores even though it says you are at 993MHz core.

If you can, post up a GPU-Z log of each GPU (you will have to open GPU-Z, start logging, open up a second GPU-Z, change the GPU selection in the drop down box to the second one, start logging that one, run through the benchmark and then click stop on each one and upload them here) so I can see if anything looks odd. Also include a log from a 30 minute heavy gaming session if you can, you can run them back to back without starting a new log if you want. It's not difficult to filter out the time the GPU wasn't being used.

 

This is my score:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6728870

 

Nvidia Driver 350.12, CPU @ 4ghz.

 

Going to flash my gpu with the vbios, clock the cpu to 4GHz and try again.

Thanks.

Here is my score with the modified vbios:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6728980

Note: I didnt change Power limit % and GPUs voltages.

Overclocked GPUs by 100Mhz, and got this score:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6729575

Max Temp of GPU 1 , GPU 2 are 81, 79 C respectively! I cant believe that!

 

Your GPUs are throttling for some reason with the modded vbios. Can you try the 337.88 drivers and see? Since I don't have the cards anymore I can only go based on the driver I used with them.

 

Did you OC your cards?

I will try anyways.

 

Not in those benchmarks. But yes, I managed to get a hefty overclock out of them... 14681 graphics, 10670 overall but that was the highest i could go with a single power adapter and I had to disable the turbo on my CPU so it actually would have been higher... That was the absolute highest core I could get without thermal throttling.

 

Devilhunter, the fact you got lower scores with the modded bios which was probably designed to go a little faster and a little hotter, suggest that the cooling solution in your laptop is not that great. Your gpu is probably throttling itself because it is getting too hot. You don't need to be overclocking either to get throttle temps. That is why turbo speeds is never guaranteed.

 

He says in his post that the max temp was 82C. Those cards don't throttle until 95C with the mod.

 

Tried with 377.88 with no luck !


I removed nvidia driver using display driver uninstaller. Installed 377.8 and I even got lower score, 8000 pts to be specific.
Why ?

Edit:

I was using the wrong command to flash my second card..... Silly me.

This is my result after flashing it, nvidia driver 377

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6737699

9000 pts.

Results with nvidia driver 350.12
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6737897

 

Looks good now. Glad you figured out the issue. I always flash with "nvflash -6 romname.rom" instead of using -i, it flashes both GPUs at the same time. Wouldn't really be a problem on a system that has just the two nVidia cards and it asks for confirmation before flashing anyway.

 

Thank you, but why on earth nvidia would do that? this is probably why the previous owner sold it for cheap.

I could oc that volt for extra points, didnt even have to touch voltage. Max temperature on heavy gaming for GPU 1,2 are 84,82 C respectively.

At last, do I have "good" chips or ****ty one?

 

Why on earth did nVidia do what?

And yeah if you are using bios mod and not hitting 90C in games then you have a good card. Congrats!