Alienware MI5X jerky video/gameplay and lowered WEI after updating video driver

Hi all,

First post on this forum. Problem with my Alienware MI5X. I was getting jerky video so decided to update the video driver as it's nearly a year old. At this point games such as Crysis 2 and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit were running fine at quite high specs, but did not foresee any problems with updating the video card driver.

Before installing the new driver, the WEI was 5.9 with '3D business and gaming graphics performance' and 'Desktop performance for Windows Aero' both at 6.4. Now I'm sitting at 4.9 and 4.0 respectively, with WEI at 4.0, and both those games cannot run at the spec I had before, in fact not really playable at all.

Now I know that the WEI is not a reliable benchmark, however it can a good source of information in individual cases.

Something is dragging it back, I don't what and I'm finding it very frustrating!!



Here are the specs of my laptop:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (Service Pack 1)

Intel Core i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz 8GB RAM

DirectX 11.0

GeForce GT 240M with following attributes:

Stream processors: 48

Graphics clock: 550MHz

Processor clock:1210 MHz

Memory clock: 790 MHz (1580 MHz data rate)

Memory interface 128-bit

Total available graphics memory: 4606 MB

Dedicated video memory: 1024 MB

System video memory: 0MB

Shared system memory 3582 MB

Video BIOS version 70.16.21.00.01



Have tried various drivers: 270.61, 270.73, 275.27, 258.96, currently have the old 186.47 installed to no effect. Drivers were downloaded from Dell or Nvidia and clean installed using the following process:

Uninstall current video driver using 'Programs and Features', restart

Deleted registry entries pertaining to nVidia in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" in "SOFTWARE" folder.

Deleted any folders, hidden or otherwise, with nVidia in the title i.e. in Appdata and Program Files

Deleted everything possible in Windows Temp and Prefetch folders.

Run DRIVER SWEEPER.

Emptied the recycle bin, restarted, then installed new driver.



Rolling back the driver or installing other drivers made little difference to the WEI or gampelay. Only thing I haven't tried is updating BIOS but little reluctant as had a bad experience in the past. Not that experienced in computers but what I lack in knowledge I make up for in persistence!

Would be grateful for any suggestions as I'm running out of ideas!! Thanks in advance........Paddy

 

gonna put it out there but check stealth mode?

 

Howdy Paddyraf,

Congratulations on your M15x! I love mine, and know you will too. As you mentioned WEI is not a good indicator of performance, but I agree that it is a good indicator of underlying issues. I had a similar problem with my M15x (I have a 260M in mine) and discovered three things. First, that upon initial boot, Windows 7 does a number of things in the background that can (and do) impact WEI performance if you run it immediately after boot. Secondly, the best drivers are not always the most recent drivers. The forum consensus seems to be on 267.76 drivers currently. Finally, the infamous 'Stealth Mode" quirks. Sometimes the M15x gets stuck in stealth mode, and there is no indication that it is on. I normally notice this when performance isn't where I would expect, and particularly when I start a 3D intensive application, and the fans do NOT spin up. The fix here is to toggle stealth mode on, and then off. That normally unsticks it. I have had this quirk happen across reboots, so that is not a reliable method of fixing it. The "power drain" trick might though. I normally just toggle stealth mode.

Good luck!
Rich S.

 

Check post #89 here.
It's a stealth mode indicator created by our very own forum member, Wattos!
Easy install and incredibly useful in figuring out if stealth mode is enabled or not.

 

Also be sure to use Dell drivers even for video, often their edit some code or the infs to cater to their cards.

 

Have you tried to clear WEI score first? After that you can run WEI test again to see if there is any improvement

 

Thanks for the ideas, guys. It hadn't even occurred to me to check if 'stealth mode' was enabled! It must have stuck in, as WEI is now back to 5.9, and games working great! Pressing the 'stealth mode' button didn't seem to do anything, so I uninstalled Command Centre, downloaded the AlienFXLite and Stealth Indicator, and as I said, all fine now. I think Command Centre will stay uninstalled as it seems to be superfluous now, unless you guys tell me otherwise? Thanks again.

 

Unless you want to take advantage of Aliensense and Alientouch, you should be alright without it.
Just remember, you must install a newer/same CC version if you ever do decide to put it back on your laptop. If you don't, you'll probably fry your MoBo.

 

So which driver is probably the most reliable and stable at the moment for gtx 260m? I had the 270.61 in mine but at times the screen suddenly goes blank and i had to press and hold the power button to reboot it. Is this issue caused by video driver too?