svl7

Did you get your card directly from Dell? What's your vbios version (GPU-Z)?

Hey guys, there's a seller on a Chinese site that has ES versions of the 6970m which can be unlocked to have 1120 shaders instead of 960... Anyone needs more power for his M18x? Hope you can Chinese, lol, I can't. A M15x user at NBR just got his hands on such a card and after I've seen his vbios (it's from Sept. 2010) I realised that it must be an early sample... after flashing the M17x r3 vbios he had 1120 shaders instead of the 960, just like with Ichimes ES card.

Did you already repaste or call Dell?

I got my M15x with the 260m as well... it started to freeze regularly after a while. Then I got the card replaced by Dell, one week without freezes and then it started again... Dell didn't want to replace the card again without examinig my system. I didn't want to send my system to Dell since I needed it, so I just bought a 5850m. No problems anymore since then, also no random freezes with the 6970m... so I think the freezes weren't caused by the MXM connector/mobo, but by the 260m.

Good point Stam, didn't notice this. I have no idea, would be great to know more about this in case anyone has some information.

Ok, that's very interesting. It has been reported that you can't use 240W just because you plug a 240W PSU in the M15x, but I'd expect at least the same performance. Your config is very similar to my system, except for the 4GB additional RAM... how much power does a RAM stick need? Don't think this makes a huge difference...

I only have the stock M15x PSU, 19.5V; 7.7A -> 150W.

No word on the price so far, but I expect that it's not gonna be cheap, after all these aren't consumer drives. I don't know whether that's a typo in the leaked specs or not, but according to this russian retailer site the 400GB version of the 720 series has a lifetime of 36 Petabyte... (I can't really believe this)

Hey Strigae, nice to see you again! Hmmm, I haven't experienced such issues so far, but I haven't played a lot of games recently... ATM I have my 3d clocks at 0.95V and so far it seems to work. I've also done a lot of benching and never had a shutdown because of the power, only because of driver crashes. But I've really never experienced shutdowns while gaming so far... most testing I've done was just after I put the card in my system and I haven't noticed problems when testing the card with BO Zombie, some Crysis 2, Portal 2 and MoH. This was all on stock 3d voltage...

Probably some ms less latency... 6300 is a great card, don't think it's worth upgrading, but if anyone has some great numbers to show I'd like to see it. Anyway, a gamer will play with the ethernet plugged in (as long as possible)... and I don't think you'll notice the difference when browsing (probably not even when gaming). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

There's no information from Intel itself about these drives so far, but it seems that some of the specs were published on the website of a Russian computer retailer. The drives are (unlike the 320 series) enterprise level SSDs. The 710 series seems to be 2.5 inch, with SATA connection (only 3Gb/s). According to the source they come with the newer 25nm MLC (multi level cell) chips and are more endurable than the ones of the 320 series (since they're enterprise level) and should endure much more write/erase cycles. In numbers: The 100 GB drive should be able to endure 500TB or writes before the chips say farewell. (The 120 GB 320 series should last for 15TB... ) Sequential R/W should be 270/210 MB/s (sustained), 36k IOPS 4k random reads, 2.4k IOPS random writes. The 720 series is going to be much faster if the information is correct. It will be a PCI-Express high-performance SSD. Built with 34nm SLC chips, controlles is unknown, but it seems to have a 512 MB DRAM-cache. Sustained sequential will be up to 2.200 MB/s and 1.800 MB/s write, which should theoretically be possible with PCI-E and is much faster than SATA 3. Random 180k IOPS reads, 56k IOPS writes with real-time 256-bit AES encrypting. The chips should live even longer than those of the 710 series since they're using SLC chips. Samples of the 710 series should be shipped starting June 27, no dates for the 720 series. An older roadmap indicates Q3 2011. Source (translated from German by google, since I assume most of you don't speak German very well ) _____ ***UPDATE*** Apparently the 710 Series will be launched before the end of August. They're indeed enterprise level SSDs based on eMLC HET NAND flash and have therefore more write endurance than the usual MLC consumer SSDs. This comes naturally with a significantly higher cost/GB. The 100 GB version will be approximately $650, the 200 GB goes for ~ $1250 and the 300 GB will set you back ca. $1900. The drive comes with a 3-year warranty (or until the wear level reaches a certain limit). Source

Wow, absolutely great!! Man, I'd love such a setup... but I put all my money in upgrading my M15x, hahahaha.

Hahaha, nice!!! I'd like to see some numbers... wondering what your "minor update" is capable of Is this a 2500k? K-editions must be a hell of fun to bench, but keep your update cool

This really sucks, definitely a poor design by Acer. I don't have a lot of experience with their systems, but I was working with a 8943g a couple of times (first gen i7, on-board 5850m gddr3) and it run seriously hot while gaming or doing something similar, not only the thermal diodes, but also the surface of the system. According to these stories it seems to be a common issue with their laptops. Simply unbelievable... and I thought it shouldn't be a too big of problem to keep a SB chip cool enough to run without throttling.

Don't think this works, if I remember correctly the Clevo cable is much shorter.

Impressive! I still have to hit 16k vantage with my M15x, but I'm getting there

Tjunction is 100°C for the SB chips if I remember correctly. GTA4 is very CPU dependent... but it should throttle itself in case it gets too hot... I recommend making some log files during the next gaming session, GPU and CPU.

That's a nice benchmark, seems it doesn't make a difference at all! Thanks for posting this!

Some of your graphics errors and crashes could be a sign of a dying GPU. Like I said, I'd call them and let them take a look at the system. Otherwise reapplythe thermal paste on the GPU and CPU , chances are that this will solve a lot of the throttling issues. Also make sure that your system is free of dust, lifting the back of the notebook a bit helps keeping the temps down as well.

I think it probably works, but can't say this for sure of course. Since I'm almost always using the ethernet cable to get online I don't really have an use for this, but a bigfoot ethernet card would be awesome, some ms less ping, hehehehe lol

The problem is that you can't properly attach the copper shin to the heatsink, there is always some air between the copper and the heatsink, which is really insulating. Why did you remove the thermal pads? And which temps dropped? Usually the gap between the memory and the heatsink is about 0.5-1.0mm, and this too big for a proper use of thermal paste. Pads are the best way to go imo, you only have to be careful that the pads are compressible and not too thick, because this will increase the gap between the die and the heatsink.

Ok, cool! So you just have to clean this once in a while.

Wow, I really have to check out Epica, I heard about them a couple of times but never really listened to them, epic sound. Thanks for posting Stam!

Great, I'll exchange the link, thank you!!

Cool idea! Let us see some pictures of the mosquito net after a couple of weeks, I wanna see how much dust it holds back.