Stevenxowens792

I just want to say... this thread is epic. just sayin

Do you have the usb 3.0 driver installed? Are you using any usb 3.0 products? This may be causing the issue. For some reason my 3.0 driver is FLAKY! It caused my external blu-ray to HORK completely. Keep up the good work. StevenX

Congrats! Outstanding scores! Over 2000 is freaking amazing.

dude.. my k/d ration went to shit last night as I hit 3 clan servers that were spawn camping like kids. i went like 3-10 4-11 and i forgot the last match and just left and said to hell with it. Im done with clan boxes. Sticking to public boxes and will have to deal with hackers. (ive seen a couple of players) that were damn suspicious. I killed one dude. died right in front of me. Then he just popped right back up with no revive like i never shot him and headshot me. WTF??????? (and nobody was behind him to revive him either). It even registered the kill for me too. it was WEIRD. It was not a spawn in either, same guy, same place, it was like he never died. So I went form a 1.17 k/d to a .88 in one night. F' those spawn camping bitches.

@Gamba - That's true. I have seen others use it as well. I can't find ANY numbers on the oem 545 ddr3 card. Its an almost exact replica of our card (without the emphasis on power savings/voltage) due to the higher stock clocks . If we clock our 555 at 720/900 we "should" be almost the same. The 450 is previous generation and even though others always say the nvidia cards are just "restamps" or whatever i don't believe that is true. Outside of this website I work for a Fortune 50 company and we deal with some of the largest hardware and software vendors on the market. I have been here for almost 14 years now. I would not consider myself an "expert" but I have a good knowledge of hardware for the most part. I think each revision of GPU has changes on multiple levels. Im sure some tech is salvaged from the last revision but saying they are exactly the same is not accurate. (I have seen many on NBR make this mistake and cut and paste bad info a lot) Example lets say an Nvidia 450 has 96 pixel pipeline and the 545 has 96. However they change the algorithm on the new card in which it processes textures then it's not the same card as the previous. Even though the hardware looks the same its not. But again.. i learn new things every day. The difference is we will listen to your arguments here if you think something isn't correct or isn't true. We don't just cut and paste a bunch of mess we have saved and say "there you go.. you fail" like other sites. Thanks for posting and take care. StevenX

Cheers Gamba. Nice to see you posting here rather than at NBR. 1. The Bios flashing over-writes what you have so you can go either forward or backward or modified. The flashing software usually has an option to (force over-write or allow previous version). In this case it just does it and doesn't even fight you on it. 2. You can flash older bios or newer. Again its just up to you as to which bios works best for you. 3. Stock A05 seems to run a little hotter due to the fans having more RPM stages . But again, its just what fits your lifestyle best. A05 might be better for classroom but A01 (a01 modified) might be better for all out performance. 4. Flashing the bios always comes with inherent risk. No way around it. The good news is.. A. your covered by alienware warranty. B. If you can't boot up they are not going to know that your bios was flashed. C. Other members have recovered their own machines from bad flashes. (key is to take your time and make sure power is NOT removed during flash). 5. Voltage mod allows you to increase the clocks on the GPU even higher than whats allowable at normal levels. This also increases heat. Most of us can get to 800/1050+/- for gaming. However for me I stay around 752/1002 as I dont get much more increased performance vs the heat that's generated by the card. (the law of diminishing returns). I can explain further if needed. Last - I noticed on the other site you are interested in I5 vs I7 performance. For most games, we have really not noticed much of a difference. We have benched quite a few games so far (Thanks Ninja!!!!!) and the difference is from 1FPS to 3FPS. Games like BFBC2 and BF3 will show little difference in single player missions because they are scripted responses. (example you get to this stage in mission, 10 enemies pop out, they always attack and flank, etc.. then mission is over and move to next mission). In MP which most of us play for, the higher the number of enemies on the map, the more EVERYTHING has to push to constantly refresh your screen. Increased network traffic for 64 players, vehicles, damage, environment changes, etc... This means increased CPU utilization as well. When benchmarking BFBC2 or BF3, I want to see real in game performance while playing. To do this we use FRAPS and enable the logging (which is started by hitting F11 <--default). It records your min max avg framerate. Its not perfect but done over time can show definitive results between systems. Many things can and probably should be done to every system to optimize for gameplay. Network throttling in the registry should be disabled as well as operating system tweaks to get the most out of your performance. I hope this has helped a bit. I too am looking forward to performance feedback from I5 users. My "gut" tells me that Bf3 is much more optimized than beta and the cpu utilization is actually really good. My guess is that on 64 player maps (full server) on a map like caspian border we may see 3-5 fps difference from the I5 to the I7. But again I may be wrong. The challenge when looking at benchmarks on websites is to determine HOW the benchmark was completed and the testing methodology. To me a scripted SP mission will not show the MP stresses that are placed on the machine. Good luck and thanks for posting!

Still waiting on some I5 numbers from the FRAPS logging (F11). Remember to hit a 64 player server (full if possible) and then set the video options to vanilla medium to get the best comparison. I already have an Idea of performance difference between the I5 and I7 on this game. Thanks, StevenX

Just as a reminder, in case your out and about on the net looking for benchmarks for BF3 or whatever here is our desktop counterpart. Its an OEM card so be aware of that. GeForce GT 545 DDR3 - Specifications - GeForce Its pretty much the same card except with higher default GPU clock at 720. Most of us here play at 750 so we are a little above that. Memory is stock at 900. Same number of pipelines, etc... Thanks, StevenX

@All - please be sure to tag INAPNBR on the maps while we play as I am going to follow him around and constantly shoot him with a f'ing name like that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! shame on you! Resume Boobs now...

Seriously.. I think you made the right choice by contacting techs. Let us know what they do and i am very sorry you experienced this right from the "get go". Good Luck and thanks for posting.

Thumbs up from me Eric! Not bad performance either!

@Gamba - The GPU they use is NOT our GPU. Its the 540m. We use the Nvidia 555mGT which is more powerful. This is a the problem when quoting other peoples work and not doing the testing on your own. StevenX

Gears, go with the SSD. It noticeably faster by a lot. I've got 2 and I wish i could afford to get just 1 big one they are still worth it. Best Wishes, StevenX

@Ninja - Can you give us some performance number in MP from fraps logging, from an I5 perspective? I am going to log today as well. Just screenshot your settings (that's what I am doing). On my I7 ALL cores are being used HEAVILY and I re-enabled turbo at default settings (temps at 96c on cpu) but the game uses it.

Some feedback.. The rush maps are complete fail without smoke grenades. Very painful for the rushing team. At this point Im disconnecting from any server that cycles to them.

This game is phenominal. As always with DICE their is some netcode issues which can't be denied. This impacts hit detection which really makes me angry on some maps but the game is so much fun. Loving it so far. I don't care about my crap K/D ratio. Just having fun. Look me up on Origin XcessiveForce33

***Optimization*** ~ To bring up console in game Render.drawfps true Renderdevice.forcerenderaheadlimit 0 Renderdevice.triplebufferingenable false _____________________________________________________________ ***Performance*** System M14x I7-2630qm, Nvidia 555mGT 1.5, 4GB ram, 60 GB SSD, 1366x768 native, Driver 285.62 WHQL Fraps Logs from 64 man full servers. 4 different sessions (Game Settings are vanilla medium to make it easy) GPU at 752/1002 2011-10-26 12:55:39 - bf3 Frames: 21822 - Time: 448160ms - Avg: 48.692 - Min: 31 - Max: 106 2011-10-26 13:03:09 - bf3 Frames: 9362 - Time: 192802ms - Avg: 48.558 - Min: 31 - Max: 119 2011-10-26 13:39:49 - bf3 Frames: 39081 - Time: 767323ms - Avg: 50.932 - Min: 28 - Max: 107 2011-10-26 13:53:36 - bf3 Frames: 14582 - Time: 293251ms - Avg: 49.725 - Min: 33 - Max: 108 Settings Ultra (All) With SSAO/HBAO, AA and AF disabled. 2011-10-26 17:56:34 - bf3 Frames: 25196 - Time: 512651ms - Avg: 49.148 - Min: 23 - Max: 119 ____________________________________________________________ ***Other*** Step 1. Hit ~ to bring up console Step 2. Type Render.PerfOverlayEnable True Step 3. Type Render.PerfOverlayVisible True Step 4. Hit ~ to close console This will bring up a graph that shows performance. The graph shows 60 fps at the bottom (not top as you would think). The higher the mark on the graph the lower the performance. It shows the CPU and GPU performance in Milliseconds and the higher the MS means the worse the performance for that component. So you can tell whether the GPU or CPU is causing the bottleneck. Now for lower systems I understand that both will probably not be able to push the 60fps mark. But, its a cool little graph to try. ___________________________________________________________ BF3 Settings Menu and Performance Impact GRAPHICS QUALITY TEXTURE QUALITY SHADOW QUALITY EFFECTS QUALITY MESH QUALITY TERRAIN QUALITY TERRAIN DECORATION ANTIALIASING DEFERRED ANTIALIASING POST MOTION BLUR ANTISTROPHIC FILTER AMBIENT OCCLUSION Methodology - I ported in an empty server. At vanilla low settings my FPS was 61. So I used this as my marker. Please understand this is NOT to show what your performance should or will be, it just shows the performance HIT for each menu item. Your performance WILL fluctuate in MP due to server population and environmental activities. Each setting was tested individually rather than all together to calculate the impact on FPS. Last, Please understand these were taken WHILE BEING STATIONARY. Initial 61 FPS <+/- 2 fps margin of error> GRAPHICS QUALITY TEXTURE QUALITY = Medium - 2 High - 2 Ultra - 2 SHADOW QUALITY = Medium - 5 High - 8 Ultra - 10 EFFECTS QUALITY = Medium - 2 High - 2 Ultra - 3 MESH QUALITY = Medium - 5 High - 5 Ultra - 7 TERRAIN QUALITY = Medium - 3 High - 3 Ultra - 3 TERRAIN DECORATION = Medium - 2 High - 2 Ultra - 2 ANTIALIASING DEFERRED = 2xMSAA - 12 4xMSAA - 19 ANTIALIASING POST = Medium - 3 High - 4 <no ultra on this setting> MOTION BLUR = On - 9 ANTISTROPHIC FILTER = 2x - 0 4x - 0 8x - 0 16x - 1 AMBIENT OCCLUSION = SSAO - 4 HBAO - 12 Overall Settings (comparison) Vanilla Preset settings Low = 60 FPS Medium = 50 FPS High = 37 FPS Ultra = 26 FPS (Notes: I understand the numbers of individual settings may not exactly add up to the vanilla Preset results. I am posting what I found, rather than changing the numbers to fit the findings from the Preset results)

@Lucid - Need more info to really troubleshoot. Here are some questions and things to think about. 1. What customizations have you made (software and/or hardware)? 2. Has it always done this from the date of receipt? 3. Have you completely format the hard drive and installed win7 fresh? 4. Sometimes i have issues with sleep mode in win764bit, its just not very nice sometimes but it is what it is. 5. Any other errors within windows itself? 6. Do you have a SSD? If so do you have the intel RST installed? Good luck, StevenX

You can also go into device manager and disable it as well. I did on mine

and in case anyone asks.. I still run stock bios A01. (not voltage modified) as I have been connecting to RIFT at work during lunch via wifi tether. So A01 it is for me. With my power setting adjustments it runs for over an hour and plays fine.

@Richard - I would leave it at default setting then and understand your performance on battery is going to be very minimal. Sorry, StevenX

@Richard - sorry ... with the newer bios its one or the other. You can try to revert back to an older bios. Please see this thread http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m14x/481-i-have-fixed-gaming-battery-please-do-not-repost-other-forums.html Understand that using flashing a bios, or using an older bios has risks. Using the older bios means you have to manually adjust your power settings otherwise your machine will crash on battery. Please read the thread and let us know what questions you have. Best Wishes, StevenX

I use my alienware tactx for gaming (raid tonight as example). Microphone is great, speakers are ok and quality is good. For general listening I use the IPOD in ear (not the crap ones that come with ipods) but the ones that cost 70 bucks and they have a tweet and driver in each bud (seals in ear). The quality is great for music. Good Luck, StevenX

Ixel, great post. The challenge that I have (can't speak for anyone else) is that the temps soar during gaming since both the gpu and cpu are on the same cooling source. I wish they would have separated them. Literally i just leave turbo disabled in my bios now for gaming. Most game (minus witcher 2 and bfbc2) dont push the cpu very hard anyway. So lately I just leave turbo disabled. Thanks for this outstanding post. If /when I get time for a repaste I may give this a try. Best Wishes, Steven X

Just to think.. if this was china the front page news would read "6000 PROTESTERS DEAD AFTER MARCH ON TRADING CENTER WAS DISBANDED". It could be much worse folks.. I agree with our rights to organize. Just a thin line to walk. StevenX