Phoenix

Why dont you add a single 980m GTX?

because it throttles like heck on anything but the new Alienwares

Just curious what the resolution is at? This is my score with my 7970M Crossfire at the default resolution.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14306[/ATTACH]

my default resolution dawg which is 1920x1080

Thanks guys, that's what I was thinking as well. For my R1, I'm assuming I can get a 780m card from a Clevo, MSI or other brand and just re-flash the VBIOS with ones provided by @svl7. (thanks in advance for that mate) Does this sound about right? or is there something else I'm missing here. I was looking at some second hand parts on ebay and might pull the trigger on this pretty soon.

berryracer, I assume your rig is a newer M18. Did the 780m's you have with that come with it or were they an upgrade? How are they working out for 2014 titles (Far Cry 4, Assassins Creed Unity, etc)

Thanks again,

My laptop originally came with the Radeon shitfire 8970 which to me were worse both in gaming and when watching my movies using SVP (smooth video project) because of the lack of CUDA so videos never looked as good using DXVA only

anyway, the Radeon drivers suck so bad and they don't do DPI scaling well. I use a 125% scaling on my 18.4" screen

Alienware replaced my laptop due to a diff. problem I had with the CPU and gave me this Alienware 18 you see in my sig, it came with the 780M GTX SLI out of the box

I can play any game I throw at it at max specs.

For a comparison, I recently got an ASUS G751JY laptop which had a GeForce 980M GTX (single not SLI) and the 780M GTX in SLI`s score were about 5% higher so I think it is pretty amazing that a 2 generation old card even though in SLI, still beats the latest and greatest 980M

GeForce GTX 980M with 347.25 [W8] [ASUS G751JY] =

GeForce GTX 780M SLI (344.75) [W8] [Alienware 18] =

780M is much better

Cpu-z is stupid. Your memory is just fine.

The SPD tab is showing the timings (somewhat wrong) that should be programmed into the SPD chip. They do not indicate the frequency/timings the memory is actually running at (that can be seen in memory tab).

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I see, thanks a lot man I was very worried

- - - Updated - - -

Cpu-z is stupid. Your memory is just fine.

The SPD tab is showing the timings (somewhat wrong) that should be programmed into the SPD chip. They do not indicate the frequency/timings the memory is actually running at (that can be seen in memory tab).

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I see, thanks a lot man I was very worried

I just checked with HWinfo and it actually gave the correct reading!

how the heck can CPU-Z be so stupid! along with SPECCY, and AlienAutopsy! They all reported my RAM running @ 1777 MHz. and alarmed me!

Most memory clock reading programs do that. It really is running 933.

This is what I mean...why does it show 935 MHz. for DRAM frequency but it shows 888 MHz. for the SPD frequency and showing PC14200??

I bought 8x4 Kingston HyperX 1866MHz DDR3 PC3-14900 RAM but it shows as PC3-14200 in CPU-Z and the speed is 1777MHz. instead of 1866 MHz.

I tried to set the clock speed manually to 1866 in the BIOS overclocking options but it doesn't change anything when I actually boot into Windows.

Why is it showing my RAM slower than what it should be?

I am on BIOS A08 if that matters, then I tried flashing back to A05, same result

I wonder, does DELL ever offer updated vBIOS along with new BIOS updates for the motherboard? I had an ASUS G750JX before this Alienware 18 you now see in my sig, sand occasionally, ASUS would incorporate a vBIOS update within the BIOS update. IS it the same for DELL?

I've had nothing but horrible performance both from my WD My Passport 2 TB External Drive and My Book 3TB external HDD. The problem is, when you buy them, they're great with the original firmware, I made a mistake TWICE by upgrading the firmware, then the performance went down from 400 MB/S to 100 MB/s and there is no way in heck for you to downgrade the firmware! their support sucks. If you read the posts on the WD forums you will be shocked by the horror stories. Get Seagate, much more reliable and super fast

Stick to AHCI and NO RAId. I tried RAID on my two 1 TB Samsung 840 EVOs, yeah good benchmarks, but usage wise, you will not notice on bit of a difference, only the added hassle in updating firmware and managing your drive:

[h=1]Samsung 840 Evo 1TB RAID vs. RAPID Benchmarks[/h]

So here are benchmarks of my two 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO SSDs, both in RAID 0 and in RAPID. The 4K speeds are horrible in RAID 0

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.9.0.1001 in RAID 0 (W8.1)

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 in RAID 0 (W8.1)

Not very happy to be honest. those 4K speeds are horrible

Previous benchmarks with RAPID, 4K is way better:

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.9.0.1001 (W8.1):

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 (W8.1)

==========================================

Windows 7 Benchmarks:

AS SSD Benchmark with Intel Chipset Drivers 9.4.0.1027 (W7) [RAPID]

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.0.7.1002 (W7) [RAPID]

I went back to A05 as from what I read from Mr. Fox's post all over the web, it is the most stable and the fans do kick in properly.

Hi, I have never flashed a custom BIOS before. I have the G75VW which comes with the GTX 670M as you can see from my sig below

Anything specific I should do after flashing the BIOS ? like to what clocks shall I overclock to safely and how?

Please advice

thanks