The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Losing my mind with A51M 9900K RTX2080

    Discussion in '2015+ Alienware 13 / 15 / 17' started by DrChips, Jun 4, 2020.

  1. DrChips

    DrChips Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    28
    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    16
    OK so I bought the dream system but it's driving me nuts for the majority of my ownership.

    I'm on the 190W bios (I think?)
    NVidia generic drivers (not dell)

    Pretty clean install..

    When I boot up, my graphics performance (all I play is overwatch) is superb. On my chosen middle detail level, it just sits pegged on 299fps (the game's cap) and GPU about 74 deg.

    But whenever I put the computer to sleep, go to another location and plug it in and wake it up... suddenly it refuses to do anything worthwhile. ~140fps, GPU around 47deg, sitting at an average 1.0ghz and ~40% usage according to HWmonitor. WHY!?

    No matter how many times I sleep and wake up, just like this all the time.

    Shut down, reboot, back up to 299fps again.

    Something just does not wake up when I resume from sleep and its crippling me back to GTX980M performance.

    I don't want to have to reboot my PC twice a day to get good performance... any clues??
     
    Rengsey R. H. Jr. likes this.
  2. Spartan@HIDevolution

    Spartan@HIDevolution Company Representative

    Reputations:
    39,619
    Messages:
    23,562
    Likes Received:
    36,879
    Trophy Points:
    931
    In the nVIDIA Control Panel, click on Manage 3D Settings and tell me what is your Power Management Set to? If it's set to Optimized, then that's your issue.
     
    Rengsey R. H. Jr. likes this.
  3. MogRules

    MogRules Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    1,228
    Messages:
    1,649
    Likes Received:
    973
    Trophy Points:
    131
    Why not just shut it down?

    I have read about nothing but problem with laptops and sleeping. There always seems to be something that does not shut down properly or screws up when using sleep.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2020
    Vasudev, jclausius, Papusan and 2 others like this.
  4. Virale

    Virale Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    312
    Messages:
    529
    Likes Received:
    775
    Trophy Points:
    106
    Something I’ve noticed too is that for whatever reason, it doesn’t detect that it has the full power available from the PSUs, disconnect them and reconnect them, and it gets back to regular clocks. This has happened to me a couple of times, but not frequent/like you describe. Sounds like it happens often.
     
  5. DrChips

    DrChips Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    28
    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Thanks for the suggestion! I'll give it a go!
     
  6. DrChips

    DrChips Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    28
    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Its on "Optimal power"
    As opposed to Adaptive and Prefer maximum performance.

    Is that what you mean?

    And which is the best setting?
     
  7. Spartan@HIDevolution

    Spartan@HIDevolution Company Representative

    Reputations:
    39,619
    Messages:
    23,562
    Likes Received:
    36,879
    Trophy Points:
    931
    Right click on your desktop then choose nVIDIA Control Panel. Go to Manage 3D Settings from the left pane, then scroll down a bit until you see power management. If you see it's set to OPTIMAL which is the default setting when you install a driver. That's your issue.

    Optimal Power means when there is no draw on the screen, the GPU clock speeds is set 0 MHz to save power and then ramps up once it needs to. Sounds great on paper, works like crap. This is the number one reason why anyone might experience crappy performance from their nVIDIA GPU. What's worse, is that's the default setting in the nVIDIA Control Panel after you install a new driver often leading people to blame the driver for bad performance when it's just the fault of nVIDIA's clowns.

    Set the power management to Adaptive which puts the GPU at lower clock speeds when no GPU intensive apps are in use and it would ramp the clocks up when needed. That actually works. It's the best balance between getting lower heat from the GPU and good performance in games.

    When benchmarking, for the optimal results, it's best to set the power management to High Performance.

    Mind you, after you change the power management to whatever you set it to, a reboot is mandatory for the new clock speeds to take effect.

    Classical nVIDIA Swiss Cheese
     
    0lok, Fire Tiger, Vasudev and 2 others like this.
  8. G46VW

    G46VW Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    142
    Messages:
    286
    Likes Received:
    217
    Trophy Points:
    56
    I put my Area51m to sleep after every gaming session but it stays plugged in. If I was going to move it I would shut windows down and restart at the new location. Using sleep in windows AFAIK holds your previous session you used, its not ment to be power off when you use sleep I would imagine. I have never had any issues with sleep but as I said I dont unplug it after I put it to sleep. I also have two NVMe drives installed so restarting takes like 10 seconds, and sleep takes about 5 seconds. Theres really no reason to not shut it down if your going to be unpluging the system for transport unless your are using a slow drive to restart the system.
     
  9. ijozic

    ijozic Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    122
    Messages:
    877
    Likes Received:
    186
    Trophy Points:
    56
    It's not the unplugging that's the problem. Putting a computer to sleep is not a given as some drivers (or some driver versions) can get messed up on awaking.
     
  10. Papusan

    Papusan Jokebook's Sucks! Dont waste your $$$ on Filthy

    Reputations:
    42,727
    Messages:
    29,855
    Likes Received:
    59,689
    Trophy Points:
    931
    Fake shutdown ain't real cold boot.

    Windows 10’s Fast Startup works similarly to the hybrid sleep mode of previous versions of Windows.

    Why You Might Want to Disable Fast Startup
    Sounds awesome, right? Well, it is. But Fast Startup also has its problems, so you should take the following caveats into consideration before enabling it:

    • When Fast Startup is enabled, your computer doesn’t perform a regular shut down. Since applying new system updates often requires a shutdown, you may not be able to apply updates and turn your computer off. Restart is unaffected, though, so it still performs a full cold shutdown and restart of your system. If a shutdown doesn’t apply your updates, a restart still will.
    • Fast Startup can interfere slightly with encrypted disk images. Users of encryption programs like TrueCrypt have reported that encrypted drives they had mounted before shutting down their system were automatically remounted when starting back up. The solution for this is just to manually dismount your encrypted drives before shutting down, but it is something to be aware of. (This doesn’t affect the full disk encryption feature of TrueCrypt, just disk images. And BitLocker users shouldn’t be affected.)
    • When you shut down a computer with Fast Startup enabled, Windows locks down the Windows hard disk. You won’t be able to access it from other operating systems if you have your computer configured to dual-boot. Even worse, if you boot into another OS and then access or change anything on the hard disk (or partition) that the hibernating Windows installation uses, it can cause corruption. If you’re dual booting, it’s best not to use Fast Startup or Hibernation at all.[​IMG]
     
    etern4l likes this.
  11. DrChips

    DrChips Notebook Guru

    Reputations:
    28
    Messages:
    55
    Likes Received:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Thanks for the replies everyone. I have tried EVERYTHING suggested and none of those things have helped but I do believe I've tracked down the issue. It seems to be heavily tied in to AW command center... even if all the overclocking and custom profiles are turned off within it, as soon as I run it, my system turns to ass.

    I noticed a jump back up in speed when I was gaming and AW command center was going through an update (and obviously turning its services off to do so).

    That said, I never had this problem when I first got the laptop. Has anyone else had problems with AWCC? At one point, we had to do something tricky with it because it refused to work (corrupted maybe?) and also refused to update.

    I think what I need to do when I have time is try and totally eliminate AWCC from the system. OR if no one else is having trouble with it, maybe do a fresh windows restore.
     
    Virale likes this.
  12. Virale

    Virale Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    312
    Messages:
    529
    Likes Received:
    775
    Trophy Points:
    106
    Sorry to hear you’re still having issues with your system. Pain in the ass!

    All depends on whether you use AWCC for anything.

    For example, I only use it to set auto profiles of high performance mode and performance fans when I open my games. All other OC/UV I do with Throttlestop and Afterburner.

    If I were in the situation you are in and find no solution, I’d just uninstall it and use another software to manage my fans. That’s my opinion though!

    I suppose you could try to do a fresh install? But I always stay as far away as I can from nuking my entire set-up until it is absolutely necessary.
     
  13. etern4l

    etern4l Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    2,931
    Messages:
    3,535
    Likes Received:
    3,506
    Trophy Points:
    331
    I had, probably still have, a sleep issue whereby the CPU would no longer do the short turbo after wakeup. Since I prefer not to have to start all apps every time I open the laptop up, I disabled sleep, and started using hibernate instead. Problem solved. With a fast SSD wakeup from hibernation is about as quick as wakeup from sleep.
     
    Papusan and Spartan@HIDevolution like this.