*** Official Clevo P37xSM-A/Sager NP9377 owner's lounge ***

I have noticed that Unity Engine games do not seem to support SLI. Endless legend, for example, looks good but does not look graphically demanding, however it utilizes considerable amount of one GPU. Will enabling SLI and setting it to force alternate frame rendering via nVidia control panel distribute this work load across both cards to reduce temperature/usage even if the game does not support SLI? Or must I run the game with SLI disabled as is?

 

Hi, I've a few games that only run on a single GPU. You have a few options if you think a game could benefit from it.

You can dedicate the second card to Physx. This lowers the workload for the primary GPU. You can also try the AFR 1 or 2 like you say. It might work fine or the game may be a mess? Totally a 'suck it and see' thing.

The biggest pain for dedicating is needing a restart every time you make a change to the Sli setup. There is a registry hack to allow on-the-fly setting but every time you install a driver it needs doing again .

TBH, I never bother, the primary card is not being stressed anyway so runs cool enough .

HTH.

 

Unity Engine does not support SLI or multi-threaded CPU workloads. It is a terrible engine for 3D rendering or anybody trying to make a game that both looks good and runs well.

You are stuck, sir.

Unreal Engine 4 and ID Tech 5 also will never support SLI in AFR modes and there is no guarantee of SFR modes coming back.

 

Thanks for the response. It's too bad because a few "indie" or kickstarted games I play appear to use the Unity Engine, including:
Pillars of Eternity
Wasteland 2
Endless Legend
Endless Space

Pillars and Wasteland 2 run well with little heat, but the Endless games tend to heat up the GPU despite vsync. It is still within operating range but those games are not so visually appealing to justify the high demand, although they look gorgeous in their own way.

 

It seems odd to me ID and Epic doing that with their engines meant for powering AAA games.

 

Maybe they thought the market share was too little to warrant the investement? Makes me sad obviously, as top end card rarely sufficient for ultra 120hz.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

Well Sager got my machine yesterday but now I see they have a backorder for 980Ms on new machines and they have discontinued the 9377... Ugh!

 

They typically will have reserve stock specifically for warranty issues. Hopefully that will be the case for you.

 

I hope so. Its incredibly infuriating that I've had to send it back yet again. Its obviously been defective since I got it but I thought it was the 880Ms that were the problem... Since the 980Ms hit the same escalating temperature and subsequent throttling, there's something seriously wrong with that machine...

 

Swapped my X8 now boys... so off to another thread. Thanks for the help and good luck with laptop gaming Peace

 

Hopefully this will be the last time it needs to be sent in.

 

Why was the 9377 discontinued?

 

It had a 4th generation processor, which is now old inventory basically. New processors are out, and they don't have any socketed versions that would work in that model.

 

Well I'm back in the camp with you guys. So far my thifav d try is going much better. I have a x8 with 120hz panel and it is simply beautiful especially compared to the stock screen offered by many others. So bright, clear without that grainy look of the stock screen and 120hz smooth.
Frame rates about the same with the 980m's as with my 780m's but of course seen much more fluid with the 120hz.. With the games I play.
Gotta repaste the 4940 though she gets a little warm.

 

The same O_O.

How O_O.

Unless your 780Ms were already hitting 120fps or you're CPU limited I can't see how XD

 

Yeah that's not possible... Someone is using vsync or frame limiting. Lol

 

Investigate your GPU/CPU usage and clocks to ensure nothing strange is going on along with checking SLI is enabled.

Unless of course you are playing games that just went to 120fps or beyond with the 780M all the time.

 

Do you know if there are any decent socketed M versions that could end up in new models?

 

Sockets are gone. Intel killed the M line. If you want a socketed CPU, you'll have to purchase a desktop model.

 

Oh, I saw a news item today about intel supporting overclocking on the skylake M CPU's. Guess it's only BGA. Is MXM going the same way do you know?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34117120 Check the 'cooled games' paragraph...

 

I doubt MXM is going to go away for high end GPUs. Who knows with Pascal though.

The mobile HQ chips have always been able to be overclocked - as long as they stayed in their TDP... We will see what happens with Skylake...

 

If you get a K series CPU and they turn out to be nicely tweakable there would be no reason to upgrade really anyway.

 

Sager called me yesterday afternoon to find out how to replicate my heat issues. They replaced the motherboard since Xotic requested they do so. Hopefully this will be my last RMA, they are being very thorough and I'm very happy about it. Hopefully it comes back soon and I don't have anymore issues with it. I have been wanting to game lately and no laptop

 

Great news, especially since it sounds like you can keep your awesome cherry picked GPUs...

 

Well that's provided that they aren't able to replicate the heat issue. I had wiped the machine so they were working on installing Windows back on it when we were talking at the end of the day but I told them the easiest way to replicate it was with Heaven using HWiNFO64 and RTSS to monitor temp and core and explained to him that the temps went from max of 78C with auto fans that never kicked up to 87C and throttle on auto and 83C with max fans. Maybe I'll get lucky and the new motherboard will fix the problem. Fingers crossed.

 

They do have a knack at putting the max fan point just at throttle which is really annoying for tweakers as you just want it to auto max fan a bit before throttle.

 

Actually Clevo completely messed up the fan tables with the 980M... Presumably because under normal conditions, the 980Ms shouldn't come near the throttle point. The system doesn't kick the fans up until 90C which the card will never reach because it throttles at 87C lol. It's like I told them yesterday... No, it doesn't throttle on max fans but why should I have to put up with the noise and still higher heat than when I got the cards when clearly something is damaging all of these cards? The 880Ms did the exact same thing... Raising temps as time went on... The fact that the 980Ms did the same thing really does point to the motherboard as the culprit. That or the A/C adapter which I sent in as well. I'm not going to be a happy camper if they say "oh... Well since max fans doesn't throttle we won't do anything" - those cards were not a free upgrade, I had to pay for the upgrade from the 880Ms. I'm not going to be stuck with a system that throttles under normal operating conditions. My machine is the only one that's been reported to have an issue.

 

That or the heatsinks I suppose if they are slowly getting hotter over time.

 

I would agree with that if it wasn't for the fact that when I sent the machine in for the 980M upgrade, they replaced all three heatsinks. And I guess this would indeed be my third RMA... One time for replacement 880Ms, last time for 980Ms, and now this one for the keyboard, motherboard, and my 980Ms... Geez......

 

Motherboard slowly spiking the cards and heating them up over a single run makes sense, over multiple runs would be very odd.

 

Odd but not impossible. Especially since the temperature increase came along with power limit throttling on both cards whereas neither card had any power limit throttling when I got them.

 

@Ethrem, been trying to figure out this fan profile crap from Clevo.. Not impressed with the auto fan profiles... Temps go to high before they come on it's not even enough power... I am forced to max fans in BF4... How can you set custom fan profile in hotkey?

Also what happened about your keyboard? I got my P771ZM and already had the Esc and F8 keys come out.. I'm a bit worried.. I pushed them back in they seem fine however do you think i should ask for a new keyboard?

 

I never got the custom profiles to work in Hotkey so I couldn't tell you. As for the keyboard, if you were able to snap them back on, I wouldn't worry about it. I tried for a good hour to put that right shift key back on and it would not go back on.

 

I hope your laptop works as it should when you get it back. I have had a great experience with mine with no issues what so ever except some of nvidia jacked up drivers. I can't even get my gpus to reach 87 with games maxed out. They are stock for now . I also use vsync to 60 hz.

I really love my np9377 . I also got the three year warranty with mine just in case .

I have my fingers crossed for you when you get yours back. Can't wait to hear how it goes.

 

Custom worked great for me, I just set the 2 temp values to low as possible and the fan speed to high as possible which basically results on my fans coming on until like less than 50c which results in my idle temps being only like 40c.

If you REALLY wanted to lower your temps, you could always undervolt by using hex editing or maxwell bios editor on your vBIOSes. If you do that, and limit your frame limit in games, and I doubt that you will be hitting over 60c in games.

 

Thanks. That's what I told them too - that nobody else with my machine has had temperatures that high. It seems like the median stock temperature is around 76C without forced max fans which is a far cry from what mine do.

See it would never do anything for me regardless of the BIOS and EC version.

You can not undervolt Maxwell last I heard... And my stock voltage was low anyway at 1.018v (I had very high ASIC quality cards) so I don't think it would be stable with lower voltage.

 

You can undervolt Maxwell, you just need to get your hands dirty with hex editing OR with using maxwell bios editor, then flash the modded vBIOS. Lowest voltage is 0.90v for 980m and 970m I believe, which can reduce temps drastically.

As for custom fan settings, well, I'm on the latest Prema EC+Bios and custom fan settings works fine with Hotkey 5.0.1111 (I believe that's the version number, it may be something else).

 

0.9v isn't going to be a big difference for me. Most Clevo cards are 1.062v stock but one of mine (the hottest one ironically) runs at 1.018v. I just want my machine fixed and sent back to me. The room is 20C, the laptop sits on a dinner tray propped up on the back by two pill bottle caps and has nothing but air around it so it should have been running much cooler than it was.

 

What? 1.062v (or 1.018v) to 0.90v is easily going to be 5-15c drop under load.

 

Ethrems board probably overvolted the MXM slots because of some failed component. He had the same thing with his old cards and even with new heatsinks...dropping voltage by 0.05v didn't do much in his case when we tried to lower the temps.

 

It's a pretty insidious failure condition.

 

You're telling me... That's 3 sets of video cards that motherboard torched. Two 880M pairs and now the 980M pair. Hopefully there wasn't actually any damage done to the cards and swapping motherboards fixes it. I guess I'll find out early next week.

 

Either way hopefully this gives you some trouble free time!

 

I hope so! I just want to be able to play some games without having to rely on my 780 Ti which just doesn't cut the mustard anymore.

 

Ethrem, once you get it back and can play around with it, please let me know how it is running for you. If you need anything at that point, just ask.

 

Thanks so much Pat, I have faith Sager will actually fix it this time. The fact that I was able to talk to Sager and explain that both pairs of 880Ms did the exact same thing shows that there is a link in the machine but they had already replaced the motherboard when he called me so they wouldn't be able to compare notes from the old board to the new one. Three RMAs should be a clue there is something majorly wrong. I'll let you know though. I'll put it through its paces the day I get it back.

 

What's the ETA to getting it? It kind of does make sense that the motherboard is the problem.. Hopefully your 980Ms are fine once it is replaced!

 

Hey guys does anybody knows if our laptops will be compatible with the new maxwel cards(990m)>?

 

@Prema oh Prema

 

That means yes...?
Oh Prema...GOD Prema!!!!