MSI GT70 ONC - GTX 675M replaced with GTX 880M

[monsti]

Dear people,

 

I am facing a strange issue. I have an MSi GT70 ONC (i7 3610QM, 12GB RAM, with GTX 675M)

The VGA card burned out due to an unknown failure during a rather long gaming session of Dungeon Siege 3, and after having it checked thoroughly at my local repair shop, I was relieved to know that the rest of the system was OK and only the VGA card had burned out.

 

I decided to upgrade the card to a GTX 880M (snapshot attached)

After determining that the GTX 880M would fit into the MXM slot, and was only 3 Watts more in TDP, I decided to buy it.

 

It fit fine, I pasted it taped it and set it in myself. Installed everything fresh, but when I ran benchmarks of the 880M, I was a bit disappointed because I was getting anywhere from 20-25fps less in most cases as compared to given benchmarks for the card for various games and benchmarks on various websites with the same settings (Tomb Raider 2013, Unigine Heaven 3.0, Metro LL).

 

As far as I have been able to understand, the card is not getting enough VDDC. I have seen people unlock the bios and reach a VDDC of 1.01V and in some cases even more.

 

On this page, it says that the max VDDC is meant to be  1.137V

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/my-nvidia-gtx-880m-test-run-review.746259/

 

My card maxes out at a VDDC of 0.9870/0.9810 (snapshot attached)

 

I have also attached the 4 perfomance state snapshots from nvidia inspector. If you see the first three screens, it shows the VDDC range from 0.600V to 1.137V (greyed out). On the last one it shows the voltage offset.

I have also attached a unigine heaven bench result. It shows 60.6 fps. According to NotebookCheck it should be 80!!

I have also attached the gpuz perf cap pwr snapshots too. Note: I am in a very hot country, ambient temperature is ~35. CPUs and GPUs often go to around 85 degrees or so, we know it is normal here. That aside, if you see the snapshots, everytime the card gets near full load (>95% or so), gpuz shows perf cap pwr, and VDDC lingers around 0.9370. You can see that throughout the benchmark the whole bar is green almost all the way throughout!

 

Please help, this is making me go absolutely crazy. I spent $600 on this card (about 6 months back), and I've just been using the laptop off and on because I just feel so upset and turned off knowing my card is performing NOWHERE near its full potential.

 

Plz note, I do not know what many of these terms mean (VDDC (the gpuz tooltip says it's the voltage the card is getting, thus I guessed that that's what the card isn't getting enough of), Voltage Offset), and I had the urge to change the voltage offset, but didn't before I understood what it was so I didn't burn my card out of dumb trial and error.

In addition, quite oddly, the unigine bench shows the GPU model as the built in Intel HD 4000 :S:S:S

[Guest]

Hello, and welcome to the community. 

 

Looks like you are getting some power throttling and possibly thermal throttling as well. The temps are higher than ideal, and the stock 880M vBIOS always sucks. No 880M will work well with stock vBIOS IMHO. Erratic behavior an throttling has been a problem for 880M since day one, and a stock vBIOS really exacerbates its shortcoming. NVIDIA screwed it up very bad and that is why you have a Pwr PerfCap reason. However, with the right vBIOS mod you can get it to perform quite nicely... much better than your old GPU. You're going to need to try to get those temperatures down because they are contributing to the issue. That may have been why the original GPU expired. Heat will shorted GPU life and can kill them if left unchecked.

 

Grab the modded vBIOS for 880M in the Kepler vBIOS mods thread and give that a go once you earn the download priviledges. Or, you can do a T|I Elite membership if you are in a hurry.

[monsti]

Dear Mr. Fox, thank you for your warm welcome.

 

I also wanted to ask..could it be my powersupply? I have a stock 180W PSU that came with the MSi. The 675M ran fantastic, no issues, no throttling at all, (although you are probably right about overheating leading to a burnout, makes sense) and the 880M is just 3W over that, so is my PSU still sufficient?

 

I read on other forums (particularly Nvidia and Alienware owners forums), that many manufacturers provide an unrealistically low power PSU, which is in many cases insufficient for the GPUs that they put in the laptops, especially the x80M series cards.

 

Also, I am in no hurry after ALL this time to get the file, although, would you please guide me in the right direction in order to be able to flash the vbios correctly (i.e. all the extra software needed, plus a step by step walkthrough on how to do it), it would be a massive help.