P150HM 2920xm draw too much power?

I'm considering upgrading my laptop below to a 2920xm. But i'm using all the USB ports and have a monitor output too. Could this be drawing too much power? I do not have a kill a watt and my 2.5" external has been having issues which has me suspecting im drawing too much already. I'll copy over 350mb and it will copy over to my external, but if i copy over 700mb it disconnects and reconnects. Almost like it powered down. Then in BF3 my 7970m utilization does not max out however in Crysis 2 it runs fine.

This makes me think that if i get a more powerful CPU it might do better in BF3, or make the issue worse by drawing too much power.

What is occuying the usbs is:
mouse
keyboard
external 2.5"
usb charger for phone
Usb cooling pad

 

Which drivers are you using for the 7970M, the latest Beta Drivers seem to have fixed the underutilization issues AMD Catalyst.

You should be fine with all those USB's hooked in. Try unlplugging a few of those things that you dont need like the cooling pad and phone charger, try your transfers again and see if it changes anything.

 

I tried that suggestion last night with unplugging this to no avail.

I have 12.11 installed. Utilization goes to like 40% somtimes. Typically when i'm around a lot of buildings like on karkand maps.

 

Enduro, maybe? There are several issues with Enduro problems as of late. Have you tried different video/Enduro drivers yet?

 

I'm on a P150HM not EM Could you recommend any for an HM that would be better?

 

I'm not sure which driver you're currently running, but I would say go to AMD's support page. You can always try uninstalling via Revo or DriverSweeper, then re-installing the driver standalone through your Device Manager (right click > update driver software > browse my computer). Then you can install the utility over that if the driver works fine, so that you have your interface.

Enduro Driver (Win 7 and Win Vista): http://www2.ati.com/drivers/other/AMD_Catalyst_Enduro_9.01.exe

You can try reverting to a previous driver rather than the 12.11 performance one using the aforementioned install process also. Honestly though, as good as the 7970m is, AMD simply needs to work out some bugs.

 

The thing with the drivers is a tough situation. I have always thought that the HM series dont suffer from underutilization issues (cause Enduro is completely disabled there).
But yet, here is a HM owner who has these issues despite no Enduro being present.

If you can hold out with your current drivers, dont touch them. Wait for more stable releases, else you will waste a ton of time of re-installing drivers (or the whole OS, God forbid).
If it aint broke, dont fix it.

EDIT: forgot to post about the hard drive (external) that keeps disconnecting.

I had an external years ago that did the same thing, on my desktop PC.
Turns out, external USB hard drives WITHOUT a dedicated power supply (or without a 2-headed USB connector) can have these issues.
I ended up selling it and buying a USB 3.0 external enclosure 3.5" (Chronos) and Ive been running it ever since.
Got my 2TB WesternDigital Caviar Green inside and man....Ive never had any problems with it. Ive copied whole 250GB sessions of things to-and-from.
No problems whatsoever.

In general dont buy external HDDs without PSU connectors. They can have many issues, mostly power-related AND disconnects.
I already lost some archives because my first external got corrupted due to a disconnect (self-induced while I was copying stuff).

 

I know that a 180W brick is not enough for a seriously overclocked 680M + 3740qm @ 3.9ghz.

However usually it triggers shut off rather than throttle.

 

Guess i just thought the 7970m would work better in a p150hm than it is. Thanks

 

What brick are you using?

 

I'm using a 180W not sure of the brand. I'm not home for another 9 hours so won't know for a while.

 

Might be worth looking into modding a dell alienware brick like I did then.

 

I think its fine, I mean the issue has only been in BF3 and RAGE. In Crysis 2 it runs at 99% utilization all the time.


BF3 it will start at 40% then go up 2% at a time up to 99% then come down to 80% then float around.

RAGE is always at 25-29% its odd.

I am also on Windows 8. I might migrate back to W7.

 

I can't say for sure whether doing so would work or not, but I would not doubt that downgrading to 7 could potentially eliminate whatever is causing the problem. Perhaps after a Service Pack, Windows 8 will be better received.

 

99% utilisation can actually be different between titles, exactly how many units in the GPU are active at any moment can't really be desicribed easily and those games you mentioned are also CPU hungry IIRC so it may be GPU + CPU load that's taking you over the edge.

 

I went from a gtx 580m to the 7970m which from what i hear draws a LITTLE less power not much. But i had no issues with the 580m. I tried unplugging all the USB's that did nothing. I don't think this is a power issue. Mind you i am still on a 2670QM atm and getting a 2920XM later this week. I guess that will be the final thing to figure out. I mean i only lag on Karkand maps and RAGE. Has to be drivers.

EDIT: Apparently it was my weak CPU. I turned on throttlestop and my fps is much better. Noticed my CPU was at 2.2Ghz while playing. It wasn't even using Turbo.
Is there a bios that i can flash to control the fan speeds better or do i just have to fn+1 it when i game?

 

fn+1 is the only way to go so far.

good to know it was just the cpu not turbo boosting properly
thinking about upgrading to a 2960xm myself.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

I found the 2920XM for 300 USD. I thought it was a steal and jumped on it.


2.2Ghz would really Gimp BF3 I Believe. My lowest fps went from 30 to 50 after i went from 2.2ghz to 2.7ghz. With the extra 10 TDP on the 2920XM i should be able to get 3.0Ghz+ with throttlestop.

RAGE is still an unsolved beast. Its a shame too because it looks like a game i would love.

 

Have you looked at both CPU/GPU graphs while running it? IIRC it can be quite buggy anyway.