Nvidia clockblock: vBIOS (unblocked in 353.00)

I don't know. I've never used a stock BIOS. I bought it with Prema's V5 BIOS already applied. I thought this was a feature that @Prema enabled, but maybe not.

 

Yikes, turning this into a driver feedback thread wasn't what I had in mind when I updated the OP and thread title about 353.00. Oh well, I guess it's too late now to hit the reset button.

 

Mine supports it out of box and i have same laptop as ethrem. I have stock bios.

 

Well for what its worth... Clevo is working on implementing fan control.

Spoiler

Problem is... it doesn't work at this time.

FN+1 will still be needed for 100% as well. It wouldn't bother me so much if the CPU fan didn't have that annoying screech.

 

Wow, that version of Control Center looks much nicer than the UI for the one available for download for the P570WM. I wonder if this is model specific, or if installing that one you have would mess things up?

My P570WM fans are extraordinarily quiet even when running full blast, to the point that it actually bothers me sometimes. If there is any kind of background fan noise in the same room, I have to put my ear down by the keyboard to even tell if FN+1 took effect.

I have to give them credit for trying. Seems Alienware is only trying to figure out ways to block us from having anything awesome.

 

How fast is your guys Internet connection .lol.
By the time I read a post and try to comment on it and push send you guys are already on another topic .lol

 

Yeah I think that's the updated control center for the SM-A series. I don't think it works on the P570WM or the older SM laptops per Prema.

Also, what the hell is going on with nVidia's drivers lately? First the block-unblock-reblock-re-unblock mess, then Kepler starts tanking in recent games, and now this.

 

This the latest one for P570WM: http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/e-services/download/ftpout_download.asp?sno=6970&no=2

Mine required an EC update to work which is why I'm running stock. I didn't want to have issues with mixing the 1.03.02 system bios Prema built the mod off of with the 1.03.08 EC so I just went full stock.

Here's the one I'm using: http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/e-services/download/ftpout_download.asp?sno=7250&no=2

 

What bios version do you have on your laptop if you don't mind me asking ethrem.

 

Yeah, biggest mess I have seen in a long time. If AMD mobile GPUs didn't suck so bad, I'd ditch NVIDIA right now without batting an eye. I'm so pissed at them for their stupid shenanigans. Having to tolerate the lesser of two evils is never a good thing.

 

1.03.08

 

Man...what a confusing clusterfack Nvidia seems to have created with their drivers. They might even be confusing themselves at this point. I almost want to stand up and applaud them. Keep on testing and voicing out people, hopefully I can join in the fight when I inevitably have an Nvidia-laden system in the near future. Don't get me wrong, fortunate to even be able to afford a system, but Nvidia...*slow clap* Will the real (or any) AMD please stand up?

 

Sadly yes AMD hasn't released a good mobile GPU in a long time now. If I had to guess, I suspect they're waiting for 14/16nm process to mature and get their efficiency from there (supposedly 2x pert/watt according to their slides), and hopefully we'll finally see something worthwhile in the mobile space.

On the desktop side though they actually seem to be gaining ground against Kepler recently, but it seems most of their driver team resources are dedicated to optimizing for Win10 at the moment. Hopefully it trickles down to "legacy" OS's so everyone can benefit. Anyway I'm getting OT.

 

I reverted back to driver 350.12 because the 352.86 or whatever the last one nvidia released was causing my laptop to freeze inadvertently right after boot on a regular basis. Curser would lock up and apps wouldn't load and then things would all off sudden start working on everything I clicked on. What the f nvidia.
350.12 had been working great for me without issues before and is again. I don't need to overclock just yet. I only game and dual 980ms at stock are plenty for now. But when they do start to show there age I will definately be over clocking to make another year or so out of them before upgrading if nvidia don't lock me out somehow.

It could just be a crazy coisidence that my laptop started acting funny at the same time I installed the new nvidia driver. But I doubt it.

 

Did you do a full clean install with DDU?

 

No but I used the clean install under custom installation when I installed the 350.12 driver. I've only booted it 2 times since and played a little gta5 and it seams to be back to normal. I know it's not as good ddu.
But to be honest I'm scared to use ddu. I tried it one time back with my alienware 17 and somehow managed to jack my system up so bad I had to do a factory restore to get it to function again. Lol.
So I'm kinda scared to use it again.

 

Ah right, so you had the same problem I had with Chrome then. It seems ok this morning so far for me (last night it wasn't). If it happens again I'll reinstall the previous whql, and I'll report back here if the Chrome hanging happens again.

EDIT: Had another weird Chrome Browser hang, also checked DPC Latency and was getting a red spike every 15 sec. I didn't have this latency issue before, well I occasionally every 20mins or so get a red latency spike, but this is now every 15 sec. Reinstalling 352.86 whql now, will update this post soon with results.

EDIT #2: 352.86 now reinstalled, and no red DPC Latency Spikes, even the green bars are lower than they were than on 353.00. I'm thinking that the weird problems myself & other people are having could be due to a DPC Latency issue with 353.00. (On a side note, just noticed that 352.86 has an Ambient Occlusion option for F1 2012, might have been recently added - tried it on Performance level and F1 2012 benchmark reduced fps from 86 to 79 fps, and the lighting looked softer and more natural - that's a keeper setting for me.)

 

Well we have basically the same machine and it has been so far totally stable at stock settings. Might be worth DDU. I've never had a problem with it and I just used the newest version today. Just open it, it will prompt to reboot to safe mode, select yes then when safe mode comes up make sure it says nVidia and hit remove and reboot.

If you had an Alienware that had an nVidia chipset like my M17xR1 did, then yeah you could potentially have issues lol.

 

For what it's worth that fan UI is stock on the ZM. Auto fan is wonky though, really need fn+1 for gaming.

I'm glad overclocking is re-enabled and DSR sounds promising. All the issues are disappointing though. Kurt Russell comes to mind: They keep coming up with new and amazing ways to f*ck up. System freezes, really? Let's just hope this is ironed out in the next WHQL (with oc still enabled.. )

 

Yeah, Clevo was more about ease of access, modularity and making sure what was there worked. The EM series was honestly a pretty low point for them in terms of heatsink quality and various other things I've seen people speak about, but they've gone back to their amazing quality that was there around the D900 and HM series. Fan control has never been a real thing, except with later SM-A models. FN + 1 is always max fans though, my 2009 D900F which was bone stock from Sager (I didn't even know there were mods at the time, far less about CPU tweaking) had the capability, as does my friend's P150HM.

This is why I look funnily at people who say Clevo's auto fans are too loud. As long as *ANYTHING* else is making noise in a room, you don't hear em. If it's all dead quiet though I can understand.

I'm glad to see it too, but all this annoying stuff is probably proving it's a good thing that I didn't install it to check XD. That being said, they DID say it was a hotfix driver and that it's not expected to work perfectly. They did actually churn it out quite fast. I'm hoping as you are that the next releases will be much better, once they've had time. The fact that DSR was tossed in means one of two things:
They intentionally added it in for us by taking their time looking at what we didn't have, or...
They grabbed a random desktop driver, didn't bother to leave the limitations for mobile GPUs in, added the ignore code for the vBIOS lock bits and then tossed it at us FAST.

I'm inclined to believe the second part, and I'm also inclined to tell people to check for desktop recording via Shadowplay™ is available to us.

 

353.00 seems to work OK with my 980M SLI. This run pulled 675W on my UPS digital meter.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9849353

 

FN+1 was a Sager exclusive. Other Clevo branded laptops for the most part did not include it. Prema included this in his BIOS mod. Clevo Control Center over the last year or so has improved somewhat and includes fan control (to an extent) and the keyboard lighting is highly configurable now too.

 

It was not, my friend in Canada has an iBuyPower P150HM and fn+1 works for him. He didn't even know he had a Clevo until I told him he did about a year ago, even. He was so surprised his fans kicked up XD.

Unless, of course, iBuyPower buys from Sager and uses a Sager BIOS, but I don't know about that. Eurocom also says their machines all use fn+1 for max fans

 

This is not entirely true. Max fans as a requirement depends on your configuration, and it has not been a necessity on mine.

 

I know not about you sir, but without Max Fans I can't be all

 

That's because you live in the Bahamas or somewhere on the Equator right (if I remember rightly!)??! (And air conditioning is a rude word!).

 

Fair enough. My auto fans seem to not always ramp up properly and I'm sometimes 10-15 C lower with fn+1. Not required but definitely more comfortable. I just can't trust the auto fans, sometimes they'd rather just sit back and have a smoke.

 

It's under my Avatar lol. Trinidad and Tobago. And feel free to send my an AC I need one XD

 

Mr. Fox - Do you think 353.00 driver will work fine with my MSI GT80 Titan (980m SLI)? Current have the latest driver (352.86) installed from Nvidia and noticed performance drop in couple of games. I am also using Prema VBIOS (Bios Version - 84.04.22.00.F1) But I didn't find 353.00 driver in NVIDIA site, if its the better driver, Could you please provide me the link to download the same? Any help will be really appreciated.

 

Link in post 1 http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/nvidia-clockblock-vbios-unblocked-in-353-00.771900/

 

the warranty on my AW17 has expired so i may as well go into getting that GPU upgrade

 

And 330w

 

for sure but the GPU first.

 

Remember winnie-the-pooh. Take 2

 

2 PSUs or 2 GPUs?

 

Gpu and 330w =2

 

looking for places in canada that sell the 330w psu for a reasonable price.

EDIT: bought a new 330W PSU off ebay user wondercity3, ended up being $175.51 CAD and that includes shipping and customs fees. if i had bought it off Dell Canada directly it would be $214 CAD after tax.

 

I guess I shouldn't say Sager exclusive, but Sager featured it and isn't a given with Clevo models. Some third party Clevo builders may have opted to enable in their BIOS but I know stock Clevo EC/BIOS does not include it.

 

If stock clevo EC/BIOS doesn't include it, we can ask @Ethrem then. He's using stock Clevo BIOS/EC in his P377SM-A right now, as far as I remember. If he can FN+1 for max fans, then Clevo made it a standard at least a little while ago.

 

Stock Clevo BIOS has it. All SM and SM-A models have it as far as I know.

 

edit wrong thread post sorry

 

It may. It seems to work fine for me with 980M.

 

Yes I have a single 780m and the thorttle was worst than ever.

 

i can't tell if i am getting throttled because witcher 3 is pretty much running at the max OC I can do with a 240 watt PSU (1006MHz).

 

I've been thinking. I HAD TO use UEFI without CSM for when I was testing 980M SLI. I switched from MBR to GPT, Windows Boot Manager versus BCD/bootsector... basically and went lock, stock and barrel into this crappy UEFI realm to try to accommodate 980M. Before that I ALWAYS used Legacy BIOS. When I went back to 780M I did not do a clean install of Windows. It still has the pure UEFI installation, only with Legacy Option ROM enabled. I did the same thing to the Alienware 18, thinking I might try 980M SLI in that machine also, but I gave up before I got that far along.

Question: Are you running Windows 8 in Legacy BIOS, or with UEFI? I'm wondering now if I shouldn't just wipe out everything and reinstall Windows the old school way, with Legacy BIOS and the OS on MBR disks, that has ALWAYS worked right if you're not using hardware with screwed up firmware like Maxwell. I'm thinking there is a chance that might make my 780M cards simply ignore NVIDIA's cancerous vBIOS/driver power management controls like they should, and as my Clevo with Legacy BIOS does. Windows 7 and 8 both work flawlessly without any UEFI support.

 

No, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate. Best bench scores OS

 

i am using UEFI and i don't have any noticable issues (or maybe i just don't know what they look like) + win 8.1. i've also gotten the svl7 unlocked vbios too and i haven't been clockblocked.

 

As a data point: no UEFI boot here, no fast boot, nothing. Configuring legacy boot was one of the first things I did because I'm dual-booting Windows 7 and Debian 8, and I might be adding PC-BSD to the list. UEFI boot is nothing but stupid and pain for me.

 

i can't remember if you need UEFI to get a 900m card to work? i remember the initial tests said it would work on both legacy and UEFI so long as it's win 8.1.

 

You cannot use Legacy BIOS or UEFI with Legacy Option ROM on Alienware Ivy Bridge or first generation Haswell systems with 980M (and I am assuming 970M) unless you enable Optimus and boot from Intel HD Graphics. This is because of something with the InsydeH20 BIOS VGA boot not being compatible with Maxwell. Only GOP boot works in these machines with Maxwell GPUs. If you only have one GPU and don't mind Optimus, then you don't need to run in a pure UEFI environment. If you have SLI or hate Optimus, then you cannot run Windows 7 because you can only use Windows 8 or newer without any Legacy/CSM support. If you have an Alienware 17 or M17xR4 with 120Hz display, I believe you are in the same boat as SLI users, since the Intel HD Graphics cannot be used for booting. Maxwell will not work at all with the Sandy Bridge (M17xR3 and M18xR1) systems because they do not have proper UEFI functionality. The older Alienware systems with a Phoenix BIOS (e.g. M15x and M17xR2) do not have this problem.