AW M15x Throttling Issue Investigation - Stock clocks and overclocked.

hahahha my bad didn't even notice, thought ts would overwrite the old file. i did rise the tpd to 77 on the last run. i'll gave it another go.

 

When the TDP is at 77, what are you setting the TDC at? Having either one of these set too low can limit turbo boost. You usually have to raise both to allow full turbo boost even when the CPU is fully loaded.

TDP = TDC x Core Voltage

so if your core voltage is about 1.15V then something like 77W / 67A should be an appropriate setting. I haven't seen any data about measured core voltage on these CPUs at full load so 1.15V is just a wild guess.

 

i had the first run at 77 for both. but just did a new run at 85/80 and everything seems better now.

 

If the bios is no longer using either type of clock modulation throttling then there is no need to have either of those options checked in ThrottleStop. Un-check them and it might save a few CPU cycles for better things. If there is no throttling going on then you can use ThrottleStop to adjust the TDP/TDC and turbo multipliers and then exit ThrottleStop. These settings are stored in registers in the CPU. ThrottleStop does not consume a lot of resources when minimized to the system tray but every little bit helps when benching.

 

bios A08 is out which has solved the touchpad polling rate but i wonder if it has done anything for gtx 260m users who have had throttling.

 

thanks for the tip uncle webb, will try it out now. hehehehe

 

BIOS A08 was posted earlier today and it is supposed to improve the touchpad pooling rate and the throttling issue. Thanks, Alienware Quality

 

So i was running SC2 at 1080p with ultra settings except for shadows on medium and effects on high never dropped below 25 fps but after a good 3-4 hours of playing the graphics were looking artifacted with my clocks at 660/1100/1500.

 

bye bye for this thread am tired from checking it ... now i can ignore it and stop waiting and reading loool all along the pages

 

well this problem is not official over yet, the bios may help most people, but there are still throttling issues.

 

come on inap lets face it this bios is better than nothing ... :S am i right?

 

inap is still seeing chipset clock modulation readings of 50% while benching. I can understand why he is not 100% happy yet with this latest effort from Dell. If you don't have an Extreme CPU then this new bios is a step in the right direction but if you do, then you still need to run a third party app like ThrottleStop to get some performance out of your CPU. Dell slowing down the Extreme CPUs when they are fully loaded is hardly the fix everyone was looking for.

 

don't get me wrong, i think this bios is good. its a step in the right direction but is still far from perfect. dell should still focus on the power requirements of the M15x, as of right now its not cutting it. just to lower the multi on the cpu and call it a fix is lame. but i do enjoy finally being able to use the touchpad, hehehe.

 

hmmmm thats weired cuz i havent got extrem cpu so i dont blame inap for what he said but about 720 this bios is awesome as i can see and compare and for the extreme cpu i think they should stay at bios A07 :S but the poll rate would drop if the poll rate is important they should upgrade to A08 sorry to hear that about extreme cpu alienware users :S hope theyll do somthing

 

hehhe guess what i threw my mouse and start using touchpad spinning around with mouse refresh rate checker 60-80 thats amazing but for 1 year thought it would be greater than that but anyways its better than 20 lol

 

How can I recreate this? I need to recreate this and I need to speak with anyone that can also. Clearly based on the few tests done the system still is close to maxing out the psu. Imo this is not resolved untill that limit is not within reach, it's still too close.
I encourage testing... What if some future game hit pushes the system just that much further?

Thx

 

I have attached the results of some benchmarks on the new A08 bios with and without throttlestop. I had to double check TS after running the game benches to make sure that it was running properly, it looks like on my system that using TS to overclock the system with a 24x multiplier on all 4 cores only affects Cinebench and 3dmark06. It doesnt look as though the overclock has any affect on the games. I thought that Crysis would have really benefited from the extra cpu speed, but maybe the GPU is bottlenecking the CPU?

Stock clocks are at 24,23,17,17
TS overlock is 24,24,24,24

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions on my testing. Its almost 3am in the UK now so its time for me to go to sleep

 

here is the 3 wprime test i i did. 1 is at 25-24-18-18
the others are with 25-25-25-25 with and without ts enabled.

 

I used to agree with you there, but what those two programs do at the same time will never happen with a game. That combo on many many laptops causes problems, I tried many.

 

Hey Inap since you have a M17x psu can you check to see if this bio allow you go pass the 150watt. Thank!!

 

well im having a bit of trouble with starcraft 2 as whenever i play it after mission or two it downclocks and have to do a power drain to fix it. I think i need the 5850 as i might be plagued by throttling also btw i have bios A08 on here as well. I haven't yet been forced to use rivatuner or throttle stop yet but i may have to even play for the spans of playing i like to do 5-6 hours at a time.

 

As have I.

So, hmmmm, does the Alienware M17xr2 have any problems running Furmark+Prime95 8-thread max heat/power?

 

Yes indeed it does.

 

Well dell blessed us M17x-R2 users with the same gimped bios you guys got, thanks a lot M15x! But seriously, for some unknown reason, they decided to give us the shiny new turbo-decelerating bios. Why? I have no clue since the M17x-R2 had no throttling/power/heat issues. DeeX, this is the crap you were testing all this time? Who's side are you on anyway?

 

Run GPU-Z and see what your temps are. Mine isn't throttling anymore, but if the temps reach close to 100C the card will downclock itself to prevent damage. It's not a Dell thing, NVIDIA cards do this so that they wont die from the heat.

 

just a question for throttle stop, do we need to tick 'set multiplier' box ? Everyone is getting 17 while the highest i can go is 13

 

Your is i720 so the highest is 13.

 

13 when running on a Core i7-720QM tells the CPU to use the default 12 multiplier and the extra +1 tells the CPU to give you as much turbo boost as possible. That's why ThrottleStop only goes that high on your CPU. I might have to change that to say Give me full TURBO boost.

 

Now my cpu has a max multiplier of 16. So are the screenshots showing a 17 mulitplier of a different cpu?

 

940xm is 17x multi for full turbo
920xm is 16x multi
etc etc...

 

Hmm, this is news to me. Thanks
So to get better performance, it is recommended to tick the option right ?

 

just upgraded to A08 and disabled Rivatuner on my M15X 920XM 260GTX with 8GB RAM and run few games in COD MW2 multiplayer. no more GPU throttling for me - GPU-Z shows rock-stable 550/950/1350. also installed latest NVidia driver from Dell site and enabled "adaptive" power mode - when stopping gaming GPU goes into 200/115/400 mode. now thats how it should be working from the initial M15X release .
for now the fix seems to be really working.

 

its your fault. You started this thread

To me it looks like dell wants to play it safe so that our components last longer. We should ask Brian to ask the engineering team to get it back (or provide an option in the BIOS to enable this feature). In the mean time we can use TS to overclock the machine.

 

Interesting titbit:

The Extreme Edition i7's are no longer a selectable option on the UK dell website, when building a M15x.

Not that I could afford one in any case but you could certainly read something into this.

 

I agree they have to PTA it in case some applications do actually stress their systems to the max.

Could also be easier to have a consolidated codebase for BIOS updates and enhancements if the systems, outside of Xfire/SLI, are practically the same from a low level perspective. The consequences being that any limitations are shared and not differentiated between the two platforms (IE our sorrow is now your sorrow).

 

Haha i have just checked, they have actually removed the extreme 940xm option. What are they doing?

Have any other countries done this? Saying that, if i was buying another m15x i'd rather have the 740qm and just overclock it anyway. Its fast enough at stock for most people.

 

I tried to get a quote for a m15x with a 940xm through my dad's work last week, they told me that the CPU was "out of stock." Makes sense now...

 

dell were doing something fishy right now by removing XM series CPU..

 

Oh crap. I orderd my M15x couple of days ago, and now I wonder if Ill be able to get the 940XM. Ill be pretty mad if not

Also, the M17x cant be configured with a 940XM either.

 

its still on the US site. hope you get your 940 wattos.

 

yeah, I double checked on the US site. It also says Overclocked, did it always say that? Then the A08 Bios might not be fully legal as it removes functionality which was previously advertised.

 

Quick, do it the American Way! Sue 'um for a free laptop

 

nah, sueing is stupid. I just want to have some leverage so we can get the feature back in the next bios update

 

Essentially, Dell've made a serious screw up while building the m15x (and 17x if the XM has also been removed from it), panicked, and seriously screwed up again.
You're right, Wattos, it isn't strictly legal by an means. Very fishy.

 

Can you link or paste a photo of where it says that? I have no qualms about suing Dell.

 

i don't see the overclocked part, can you take a screeny.

edit joker beat me to it, hehheh

 

Here it is. Notice by the 940xm option it says Overclocked.

 

i see that part, but not the part that mentions overclocked.

 

so you dont see where it says:

Overclocked Quad Core Processors?

 

lol, inap is having a momentary brain hiccup.