Robbo

As Ethrem says, you can damage your battery if the cards aren't downclocking when gaming on battery - I think you should check this like I suggested in my prior response to you. If you want to game on battery you should lower your clocks - probably below the stock frequency of the cards. Have a google around to see what other sli notebooks clock down to on battery for a reference (765M sli). 1.1V should be OK & safe for you, the stock voltage for those cards is 1V, and some 750M's operate at up to 1.156V, but I wouldn't go above 1.1V if I was you - make sure temperatures are below 90 degC, hopefully below 80 degC though for some extra feeling of safety. Regarding your crashing, you'll just have to run your cards at a voltage & Mhz that is stable for the slowest card (worst overclocker). (Even at 1.1V I don't think you'll overload your 330W adapter as those 765M cards are little chips and 'only' have 768 cores per card, but you might be close to overloading your adapter if you run an unlocked high performance CPU with a heavy overclock (a chip like Ethrem's 4940MX for example)).

The crashing happening on battery might be due to the cards overloading the battery - the battery can't supply the necessary current. I'm not entirely sure, but I think svl7's vBIOS doesn't allow for the GPU's to throttle to lower clocks when gaming on battery - this would overload your battery & could cause it to shut down. To test my theory you can use GPUz or other GPU monitoring tool to monitor your GPU clocks when gaming on battery to see what's going on. Gaming on battery is not really feasible anyway, with the stock Dell vBIOS the cards will be throttled & performance will be awful, as will battery life, gaming on outlet is really the only way to go with serious gaming laptops. Referring to your 1st point, about system instability with your overclock on your second GPU - I just think your overclock is unstable, either more voltage required or less Mhz. If it's your memory overclock that's proving it to be unstable, then increasing the voltage won't help - the adjustable voltage only applies to the core. (I think a 330W adapter is enough for 765M sli, even when heavily overclocked.)

You just need 5 posts and then you can download. You should be able to download now, considering you've got 7 posts, perhaps the admins have to approve all of your 1st 5 posts before you can download. You'll probably be able to download the next time you log in.

Congrats on the new machine! I don't know about your BIOS question, there's a specific A17 owners lounge over on NBR forums where there might be some info. AS for benchmarking programs or similar for checking to make sure temperatures are good & also to check you aren't getting any throttling then I would recommend the following: 1) GPUz for GPU temperature & clock monitoring: when in the 'Sensor' tab you can increase the size of the window to see a large history of temperature measurements (change monitoring interval to 2sec too, which allows for a greater time frame of info to be displayed too). 2) Run Unigine Heaven Benchmark. It provides a 100% GPU load, but a realistic gaming type load, and it runs on a loop too which is great for temperature & stability testing. Run that for 20mins while having GPUz running in the background. After the 20min run is complete, exit the Heaven program & go look at your sensor graphs in GPUz - you should see a stable temperature, and a stable Mhz clock on both your Core & Memory. Check that the core & memory frequency that you see in the graph is the correct advertised figure for that card - ie not dropping clocks & throttling.

Yeah, don't get suckered into overclocking those 880M's now you've finally got a working pair! If it ain't broke, don't fix it! sli 880M is gonna chew through pretty much everything at stock clocks. Even if you do manage to get a gameable overclock, you're gonna get probably less than 10% improvement in game performance - not really worth the hassle.

You should be able to download them fine now, as you have at least 5 posts. (possible that maybe the admins have to 'verify' your posts though before you're able to download) - - - Updated - - - @Ethrem, looks like you're sorted now with your 880M's, looks like they're finally working as they should - you've had a load of problems with them, but seems fine now, with pretty good temperatures too. Looks like you'll finally be able to enjoy them, and not have any buyer's regret! One thing I would say is be careful with your overclocking efforts - I think I read that if your cards crash a certain number of times during your testing to establish a maximum overclock it can then hamstring your cards to a lower performance (like some kind of flag is set - a weird quirk of the 880M) - so maybe best not to try any overclocking with them.

To get more performance from your GPU you would need to overclock - all the modded vBIOS on here run at stock clocks (although some of them run at max boost clocks as default). Either way, the overclocking limits of +135Mhz on the core have been removed, so you can overclock further with these vBIOS if stability allows. I recommend NVidia Inspector for your overclocking efforts. Yes, you can revert back to stock vBIOS, just make sure you do a backup of your existing stock vBIOS. Instructions on how to do this & how to flash a modified vBIOS are listed in a link in the first post of this thread.

If I was you I'd use this one: Dell 680m - 80.04.5B.00.02_'OCedition'_revised_00.zip. That's listed on the first page of this thread, it's the same vBIOS code as yours. You can use stock NVidia drivers from their website.

Is it not a limitation of the motherboard, there might be a cap to the maximum current that can be drawn through the motherboard. If that's the case, then perhaps the 330W adapter allows extra overhead to allow a quick spike of current that overloads the motherboard and results in your immediate shutdown - which you might not see with the 240W adapter (as that might not provide high enough peak current spikes to trip the motherboard).

Ah, there lies the comparitively low score in the combined test then, praps the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU's in that particular test.

That's interesting Mr Fox, I watched the video to compare frame rates with you. Of course you stomped all over mine in all the tests, all apart from the 'Combined' test. You were getting in the region of 80fps there. When I run that test I get 55-65fps I'm surprised you didn't get higher than your 80 fps in that particular test - what do you reckon is the cause of that? Here's my scores for the sky diver run, for a laugh! NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2630QM Processor,Alienware M17xR3

pebcak (overclock unstable: more volts or lower core Mhz, or lower memory Mhz, voltage setting does not affect memory stability but just affects the core).

All I can add that it's not JUST a problem with the latest drivers. I use a custom refresh rate on my monitor using 'create custom resolution' in the NVidia control panel (on my laptop internal panel), and don't have any issues with the latest drivers. So, it's something specific with your machine, maybe combined with the latest drivers too. It's a confusing one!

There is a vBIOS that's been made directly from your vBIOS for the 770M's in the A18. Here's the link to it: http://forum.techinferno.com/attachments/general-notebook-discussions/9662d1385260004-dell-770m-80.06.60.00.01_oc-edition-rev02.zip It happens to be located in post #81 of this thread: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/4635-bios-vbios-modification-request-thread-svl7-9.html I was only able to find it for you because I remembered the user who had initially requested the mod, that file is not listed on the first page of this thread (unless svl7 moved it up there recently). You need 3 more posts before you're able to download (5 post minimum)

That's pretty cool then, having the 330W adapter. A lot of manufacturers skimp on the power supply - hello MSI and their ridiculous NOS system!

Good result deadsmiley, what was your limited score with the 240W?

svl7 hasn't done the 1.1V mod that I requested in the post that you quoted, but I am using his 1.05V version. Now being summer in the UK at my max overclock for gaming & benchmarking of 1124Mhz at 1.05V (1150Mhz on the VRAM), 26 degC room temperature and 69 degC GPU core temperature max. I think your temperatures are good, under 80 degC is good in my opinion.

Not sure why these questions keep popping up, it's just 'overvolting & overclocking' - look that up with Google to learn about it.

There's so many to choose from! There's the plethora of 680M vBIOS and then there's the 880M, and the 860M too, but for maximum compatibility I would recommend the sole 780M vBIOS! You might want to google if there's been any incompatibilities using the 780M vBIOS with your particular laptop model though, but I don't think you need to google for compatibility for the other vBiOS's! ;-) - - - Updated - - - Yeah, for your 880M that might be limited by heat development (in some laptops), then possible you can get better gains by just overclocking the memory & not running a maximal core overclock - especially if the game is bandwidth limited. For the 680M though (the card the OP has), I reckon you'd get maximum return from maximising your core overclock.

That sounds like good advice to me! Although, once you've found your max stable core clock, then I'd personally leave the core clock at max stable overclock when working out your max stable memory overclock. Possible that a high core overclock might limit the memory clock, and because you probably want to maximise your core overclock to maximise performance then you may as well have core overclock present went determining your memory overclock. I'll also add that any voltage increases you apply in software are only applicable to the core, it will not change the voltage of the memory modules, therefore increasing voltage will only increase your core overclock & won't increase the highest stable memory overclock.

Ah, I see, others have experienced the Clevo heatsink to be not flat. Well, it looks like you did a good job of making it flat - what with your gaming temperatures dropping from the 80's to the 60's (in that thread you linked)! That's one bendy heatsink (or was)!

Deadsmiley, you asked about the surface finish of Alienware GPU heatsinks. The one on mine is a matt surface (but free from any big grooves), so it's not a mirror finish, but I don't think any laptop heatsinks have a mirror finish. When you say you were just trying to make your heatsink 'flat' by polishing it, you mean smoother rather than flat don't you? I guess your heatsink was sitting 'flat' on your GPU core before the polishing, and the polishing was just to get a smoother surface with less minute imperfections right?

@deadsmiley, that's a good result! So, how much did your heatsink smoothing & mx4 paste lower temperatures by? If you've done a like for like comparison at the same overclock or at stock - what are the temperature differences before & after? Would be interesting to know just how much difference the heatsink smoothing/spring bending/mx4 made. (Although can't ascertain which one of those 3 things made the most difference, might just have been a bad paste job before).

Cool, or try using a 3rd party tool to set up custom fan profiles, like HWInfo64 for instance. That way you might be able to keep below the 87 degC throttling point. Just be careful & certain that your applied profiles are working properly because I've heard of stories where fans have been accidentally disabled using HWInfo and then GPUs burning out etc.

Hi, that's ok, that's right, and someone else also mentioned a soldering option, but that seems risky unless you know what you're doing & have the tools. If I was you I would have investigated the cost & effort of Point #2 you listed, and then if that proved too expensive/unworkable then I would have pursued Point #1. Don't tell them you flashed a modified vBIOS though - not the Dell guys! But...if they ask you if you flashed a modified vBIOS, then that's your call what you tell them.