m178x not performing well

I recently bought an alienware m17x laptop... and it's been great so far. I do have one... huge problem though!!! I can't seem to make it run at top performance. There used to be a icon in the bottom left with the NVIDIA logo thing where I could pick "Boost Performance" or "Power Saver"... but that's not there anymore. Last night I was running Fallout 3 at full specs... but today I ran it and it was lagging like no tomorrow. Please help!!!

 

Hmm, maybe reinstall display driver, check the windows power plan settings themselves? (Right click battery icon and power options), i know 7 for me displays 2 not 3 plans.

 

Yeah, sounds like you have some throttle issues. Go to Power Options under the Control Panel and change the profile to something other than "Low Power" or what have you. Should fix everything as far as Im concerned. Also, have you tried just restarting the PC? Might reset something you've changed...

 

The Battery Usage is set to "High Performance" I reinstalled the driver... at least i think its the right driver... Video: Nvidia Geforce GTX260/280M

 

Yeah, that should work...also, are you using it plugged in to the wall or on the battery? If on battery I think it always throttles...not quite sure. Also, check out NVIDIA & Laptop News | Latest NVIDIA drivers and related news | laptopvideo2go.com and get the latest Nvidia drivers as well.

 

I should have the latest driver considering I only got the computer Saturday... and it is plugged into the wall.

 

I HATE it when I type something then hit the "back" button on my mouse...PITA!!!

OK...CLIFF NOTES:

Plugged in with performance profile. Newest drivers. Have you checked to see what GPU-Z and CPU-Z say about your clock speeds on everything? Have you checked for viruses and or spy-ware, etc?

 

how would I check to see what GPU-Z and CPU-Z say about my clock speeds... (if you couldnt tell, I'm extremely new to the PC gaming community)

 

CPU-Z:
http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpuz/cpuz64_154.zip

GPU-Z:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1798i/GPU-Z.0.4.3.exe

Tell us what you video card and CPU are and what speeds they are currently running. I think GPU tells you the "stock" speed and the actual speed the video card is currently running. Give us the actual speed. It sounds to me like something is severely throttled here, which is when the speeds are slowed down to conserve power and produce less heat in case you didnt know.

 

Throttling was never an issue with the M17x R1 which is what he has (ALTHOUGH stealth mode is a self-induced throttle though ). It could be something as simple as he enabled stealth mode on accident, or as something as complicated as the overnight DPC latency plague of problems because of the faulty Nvidia motherboard.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/463382-stealth-mode-indicator.html

That would be the easiest thing to check for first, but I am not going to lead you on a goose chase when there are plenty of other M17x R1 owners who experienced this and know the correct solutions, might wanna post in the Alienware section.

 

so yeah, i just put the respawn disk in and did that and that fixed everything. Thanks for all the ideas!

 

Well there ya go! Format or restore was going to be my next suggestion

 

Oh and never assume you have the latest driver just cause you got it last weekend lol. Chances are that rig sat in a warehouse for a bit and a release may have come. Always check for new drivers out the gate.

But also make sure they increase performance rather then gimp them first, newer isnt always better.