AW M15x Throttling Issue Investigation - Stock clocks and overclocked.

go here and download:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

run gpu-z when playing a game and check out the clocks, how did you know that you got throttling when you didn't check with gpu-z?

 

Do you have throttling?

 

nope, i only see the throttling when doing the synthetic test but haven't seen it in actual game play.

 

When I was playing the game, the system suddenly just went dead without any herald, and i had to press the button to turn it off, and then re-open it. This problem always exists no matter the system is VISTA or WIN7, the driver is latest or oldest. So I think it is throttling

 

core clock 575. memory clock 450,shader clock1150

 

GPU CLOCK default clock 550/950/1350. I suppose my computer is underclocking?

 

those are your default clock, so they seem right. i think it is a different issue and not throttling. does all your games cause the problem or only a certain game?

 

So far only WOW, I don't play much high-demanding games

 

could be just a game setting, can't help much because don't play wow at all. i suggest searching the forum for wow related topics.

 

OK, and thank you very much for the advice. I really wanna sort this problem out

 

no problem, yeah i really think its a game setting. maybe google wow with i7.

 

Hi i havent posted much here but i have been reading this forum for a while I had applied the throttle fix and everything worked fine along with riva tuner. However I realized that now no matter what i do to stealth mode on/off Im stuck wit my gpu clocks at 383/767/301. I uninstalled rivatuner still im stuck at the same clocks. Before when I pressed the stealth button it used to downclock the card to 200/400/120 or goto stock speeds when i disable stealth. Iv been frustrated with this problem and have read two posts by thrope on page 71 regarding this. He talked about restarting to fix it but I dont understand I restarted it several times do i need to riva tunner installed? and odly after applying throttle fix my cpuz show two diffrent 2d clock for gpu along with 1 3d desktop clock and 1 default clock. I would apreciate any help thank you in advance.

 

you want to do a hard reset where you remove the battery and bios battery and hold down the power button for about 15-20 secs and then restart the system should fix you problem.
if this is wrong someone correct me lol

 

I have very little experience with working with laptops internals, I do know how to access hard drive and clean the fans however I dont know where the bios battery is located or the method to remove it? do i need to open the upper body as well to find the bios battery and do the clock reset to normal?

 

well for a simple one just remove the battery from the laptop and then hold down the power button for 15-20 secs then turn it back on and see if that helps

 

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/M15x/en/index.html

download the service manual, everything you ever need to know.

 

Thanks alot tuenkamen (rep added), I did what you said now it seems normal now the clocks change based on mode.However for some reason cpuz still show 2 2d desktop clocks I think Im pretty sure there was only one clock for 2d and one for 3d. Is this normal? I have one last question, my gpu temp always averages around 50-56 degrees when browsing. during playing crysis it goes upto 76-80.the Vents are clear fans working although i can hear them they dont seem to go full on. The room is air conditioned I use a Q820 with a 260m.

 

That is a little bit high for the 260m, but nothing to be worried about. Are you OCing?

 

No i never Oc but while playing crysis it goes to 90's. My comp is raised a bit due to battery..actually i think joker or sleesy0 or i cud be wrong but a member had a video on how use the thermal paste and open M15x but I cant find it anywhere.

 

I installed crysis warhead and have been playing it for a few days now

I played with stock clocks, and then OC to 660/950/1650

There is a noticeable performance increase, and plus running the newest drive has probably also helped. I'm playing it native 1920x1080, all enthusiast except for postprocessing which is set to Gamer, as well as shaders is set to Gamer.
running 4xAA
I haven't measuring it with FRAPS, but the game is playable no problem with those settings and overclocked.
My highest temperature was 69C, which is prefectly fine, basically like stock, and the gpu gets rammed up to 99%, memory is also 100% using the full 1 gig
It's funny how the laptop can play crysis better than my desktop with Quad SLI with 2 9800GX2, 790i nvdivia motherboard, 6gigs of ram and Core 2 duo OC at 4.2 from 3.0...and my latop is just using that little 260m with only 112 shaders. It also loads the game faster....the i7 chips is sweet stuff.

my specs are 820qm, 4 gigs, SSD drive, bluray combo, LED 1920x1080, 260m

 

Oh and by the way, while I starting following this thread back where it only had 40 pages, I tried the stress tests, and did get the throttle.
But up to date, have never had throttling in any game, and I always check with gpuz. Whether I use throttlestop or not.

 

Is there any way to monitor the gpu clocks besides gpu-z?

The 5870 doesn't like gpu-z (or vice versa) and doesn't show any clocks or temps.

 

you can also try HWMonitor Pro

 

thanks, but hwmonitor only does temps and not clocks.

 

I think I notice something strange too maybe Im wrong but after using throttle stop with riva tunner for a few days and uninstalling both . I never seem to have the throttling issue. Crysis used to throttle about 15 to 20 mins into gameplay but now it never does even though Im not using throttle fix anymore. On the negative side my gpu temp easily hits 90 degrees and and stays in the 90 to 92 during gameplay. still I dont know its strange how I dont have throttleing issue anymore.

 

90？ woah, put an ice bucket under your computer or something nielo, haha. It's not even summer yet in India!

 

yea im clueless why its happening , the fans seem to work fine, idle temp is around 52. From what Iv read on this forum the gpu temp can be affected by processor and since I have a 820 maybe idle around 50 to 52 in high performance/balance mode is normal?

 

Sounds normal enough

I've got mine to hit 90c once before using furmark. I guess in India it's a good few degrees warmer unless you live in the mountains!

 

quick question i checked my gpu and says its a second revision of the card im wondering whos getting the throttling if they have the 1 first version of the card?

this was using cpu id on the graphics tab saying A2 wondering who or maybe might have the A1 with the possible throttling?

 

I have A2 and it throttles each time I play WoW and UT3.

Gets worse when I put on the A05 bios.

 

I would like to just add thoughts... I have recently been dealing with tech support on this as it has gotten worse for me with A05.
The Alienware support themselves have been able to recreate this on multiple systems with games. However they say that have found no solution.
It blows my mind that this isnt getting a priority.

I personally would encourage everyone that experiencing this problem to call tech support. Not to get tech support but to basically report this problem. Time and time again when I call they say they never have heard of it. That seems hard to believe with all of these views of this thread.

So please call! Maybe its not going to do a thing... maybe it will.
No loss to try.

Anyways, just some thoughts.

 

its quite clear that dell is aware of this problem. There used to be an Employee (JohnBatDell) on the forums who was active in this very thread but disappeared after the first reports of this happening during a game.

Dell has to be aware of this problem but most likely tries to keep this under carpet as it might be too expensive for them to fix.

I jumped on the ATI bandwagon, and will not be looking back at the 260M. Especially once Ill write my little program to change clocks dynamically for me

 

So whats the deal with the ATI does that not throttle as well? Dont you need to run a program to prevent this from happening?
Since they will not find a resolution to this I wonder if they will send me a ATI lol.. its worth a shot... I will try but traditionally I dont like ATI cards, so I am quite disappointed that I have to do that.

 

The ATI card isnt officially supported by dell atm, and might never be. Thus Dell might never send you the upgrade.

 

Someone on these forums said they don't plan to support it either, despite the bios update. Having to replace all of the 260's with a 5870 would cost them an awful lot. Conspiracy?! Haha.

 

Hey guys thanks for providing all these infos. Got my M15x today. Tried 2 games with it with different results. BFBC2 ran perfect, but OMG L4D2 randomly throttles. Really loving the built quality of this machine, but the throttle issue is a big turn off. So I'm deciding to return it. Just email a Dell Rep Manager hopefully I can get a RMA number back soon.

 

It's not the GPU's fault, it's Dell's BIOS. A different GPU might cause different behavior simply because it's drawing power differently and whatnot, but it's not anything to do with a GPU problem.

This is just nuts of Dell. They needed to fix it back at the beginning of January. I would think that just a few returns or lost sales would make up for the cost of putting some engineers on it. I never heard that they fixed the USB issues either (that are fixed on the M17x).

 

Just curious - what driver (display of course) are you running?

Now, I want to make it very clear I am not saying there is or is not an issue here (with throttling)... I know from my own system that depending on the driver version installed I have encountered some serious performance issues with L4D2 and other Source engine games.

 

If you like the machine, then just use RivaTuner and forget about the problem. Youll only have to set it up once, and then only really update when you change drivers. See the first page on how to use it.


I still loved my M15x even with the 260m

 

The latest Nvidia driver 197.16. Display at 1600x900. i5-540m with GTX 260M.

 

I totally understand you, but for a laptop being so pricey and Dell not taking care of it bothers me. Maybe I'll try a M17x next.

 

Im using the desktop modified 197.25 and so far havent had throttleing issues since the change.As I posted previously I did install the throttle fix and uninstalled evrything.

 

There's lots of stuff that a manufacture has to look at. In this case they've said that they won't because it's a synthetic problem and nobody really experiences it that much in real use.

To an extent I can agree with them. They are adressing much more serious problems (like DPC latency issues) and maybe they will look back at this issue. But for me, I never had the problem even under full stress (furmark etc) and for the majority of people they only get the problem when they run these programs which are designed to fully max out both GPU and CPU.

Maybe if enough customers have problems using it with real games then they will address it as a whole. For the moment I get the impression that it's not a real problem.

I have heard different stories about the reason for the throttling but everything points to the 150W power drain. It even mentions it in Throttlestop saying that forcing it might allow the hardware to run over the rated 150W from the power supply.

As far as I can tell, very few people are affected by throttling issues and they have plenty of M15x machines to test it with. I'm quite sure it's not as big of a problem as people are making out. Especially considering that there is a fix for those few who have been affected.

Just my opinion..

 

I'm having an odd issue. I got rid of throttling, but RivaTuner and GPU-z are both showing me different clocks for my card. Which one should I trust?

Also, I can't seem to get the RivaTuner clocks to take. No matter what I set them too (even just 10mhz over stock), they just revert back to default as soon as I start any 3D application. Nividia system tools OC's just fine, but then I get the throttling issue. Any ideas?

 

first shut down your comp, take out your battery, hold the power button for 20-30 secs then, put the battery back and start it up again if that doesn't work.

uninstall all oc tools, nvidia drivers, performance tools etc.

then after restart run cc cleaner then shut down

then install nvidia drivers, and whatever you use for overclocking the gpu

 

I've already posted couple of games where my M15x kept throttling regularly. So have other users. So it is definitely not a synthetic case.

This is actually a pretty major issue, as this is a gaming laptop, where you expect persistent performance during the time you game. Its like having a Mercedes SLR which shuts down 6 cylinders on the highway for two or three seconds. The main problem is that odds are that you will need the horsepower at that particular moment.

When I played Borderlands without the throttle fix, i actually died couple of times because I was in a firefight and the FPS went to 4-5.

 

lol dude same here in underdome was sooo angry cause it was last round boss wave and i died in under 5 secs i was like ?!?!? but then again fighting one eyed jack with weapon mastery is horrible at level 56 cause super ownage pistol ftl

 

As far as I can tell it's throttling to avoid Power problems (as described in the Throttlestop Help file)..

Wouldn't the M17x powersupply fix it?
DELL Power Supply+Power Cord : UK/Irish 210W Slim AC Adapter with UK/Irish Power Cord (Kit) : Laptop Accessories - Accessories | Dell UK

That's an extra 60W of power, assuming the socket fits.. I guess it's so obvious, someone must have tried it..

 

Yes, they've tried it (last year even), and no, it doesn't help. It's a BIOS problem, and Dell would have to fix it, but refuses to.