[Solved] M17x-R1 Performance Issues

[he_iz_legend]

I've been running around in circles trying to figure out why I have been having performance issues. Things that used to run full settings with absolutely no problem now get hitches and lower framerates. I've installed latest drivers, I even did a windows reinstall, but I'm still have the same problems.

During gaming mostly, for example Tf2 and DoW II I used to run flawlessly, now the framerates are noticeably less and I get lag hitches. I do feel like I might notice it also in regular window functions, like a random quick little hitch and things arent opening, minimizing, expanding as smoothly as they once were. I am not as sure about this as I am as in games though.

My system temps seem to be stable as far as I can tell. Gpu never gets above 80 and CPU never gets above 50.

I ran crystal disk and says health status "good", also ran crystal disk mark and got this

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.110622-1503)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: Alienware

System Model: M17x

BIOS: Ver A07 1.00PARTTBLZ

Processor: Intel® Core2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz

Memory: 4096MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 3838MB RAM

Page File: 1912MB used, 5762MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

What's the best way to go about diagnosing the problem?

thanks

[unreal25]

Hey, welcome to T|I!

Few questions:

- Did you try latest drivers from the Dell website?

- What are the GPU(s) you have?

- Did you make sure you're on High Performance / Balanced and not on some power savings power plan?

- Can you show us the for example HWInfo64 screenshot (or whatever where you can see GPU clocks) when you run a game?

Thanks!

[Michael]

Welcome to T|I [MENTION=2817]he_iz_legend[/MENTION]!

[MENTION=115]unreal25[/MENTION] here summed it up pretty good, not much i can add except - i saw a similar behavior on my wife's M1730.

Periodically when turning the laptop on, the BIOS would complain about the charger not being genuine, when that happened performance was seriously degraded probably due to bios throttling the CPU/GPU because it thought the charger can't cope with full power performance.

Have you seen such messages ? / Do you have adapter warning disabled in BIOS ?

[StamatisX]

Also make sure you are not running in stealth mode (accidentally pressed the touch button on the right)

[mw86]

Welcome to T|I @he_iz_legend !

@unreal25 here summed it up pretty good, not much i can add except - i saw a similar behavior on my wife's M1730.

Periodically when turning the laptop on, the BIOS would complain about the charger not being genuine, when that happened performance was seriously degraded probably due to bios throttling the CPU/GPU because it thought the charger can't cope with full power performance.

Have you seen such messages ? / Do you have adapter warning disabled in BIOS ?

similar happened to a Dell Inspiron and worked itself out... seemed wall outlet specifically was acting weird... and an HP HDX 18t just before the adapter actually died.

a core 2 duo P

8600-2.40 -> [email protected] can do that via dual IDA... so you could run both cores at that if setup right and bios allows you to set eist and ida off in the bios one in windows it would just require Throttle Stop to force max turbo and select dual ida with cstates unchecked and Eist checked... right click and hit Dual IDA if option is there and bios can turn those off then you can be using it at 2.53Ghz on both cores... i have t7700 2.4ghz set to dual ida giving 2.6ghz then using RMclock or Throttle Stop you can undervolt most likely with one of those...

go to bios unselect EIST and IDA then in windows set the processor minimum to 100% in power plan and into advanced settings. power icon-more power options . Download and open the extracted throttle stop go to options select dual IDA, check set multiplier and use up arrow to select maximum multiplier... uncheck cstates and eist then hit run on right click make sure you started dual ida... go to options select start dual ida on start.

to undervolt be sure you test for stability then hit arrow down on the voltage next to set multiplier... make sure Throttle Stop is turned on...

Before doing this to improve performance go about making sure temps have been staying in check. showing us a screenshot of Hwinfo sensors tab as mentioned above will help.

Thanks Michael and Unreal.

Welcome to Tech Inferno he_iz_legend

also checking 100% clock modulation and chip modulation settings will help force the cpu to use normal speed if something is throttling cpu wise and for no real reason like if your temps are in check and its throttle thats what Throttle Stop was made for in first place.

Edited February 10, 2012 by mw86

[he_iz_legend]

Hey, welcome to T|I!

Few questions:

- Did you try latest drivers from the Dell website?

- What are the GPU(s) you have?

- Did you make sure you're on High Performance / Balanced and not on some power savings power plan?

- Can you show us the for example HWInfo64 screenshot (or whatever where you can see GPU clocks) when you run a game?

Thanks!

Thanks for the fast responses fellas, I had to take a quick nap, sorry taking so long to respond.

-No, I have the latest Nvidia drivers.

-Geforce GTX 260m

-Yes it is on Performace setting

-Not getting adapter message

-Not running in stealth mode

I'm working on getting the HWinfo for you

[he_iz_legend]

Here is the HWinfo

[he_iz_legend]

go to bios unselect EIST and IDA then in windows set the processor minimum to 100% in power plan and into advanced settings. power icon-more power options . Download and open the extracted throttle stop go to options select dual IDA, check set multiplier and use up arrow to select maximum multiplier... uncheck cstates and eist then hit run on right click make sure you started dual ida... go to options select start dual ida on start.

I couldn't find those options in my Bios. What am I missing?

[unreal25]

Hm, well my guess is that GPU drivers are still not working (properly). Mainly because you wrote "I do feel like I might notice it also in regular window functions, like a random quick little hitch and things arent opening, minimizing, expanding as smoothly as they once were.". I remember this happening typically when you use windows generic "Standard VGA adapter" drivers.

Drivers from the Dell website might not be the newest, but pretty much always they work fine (I am guessing they test them) so I'd try those.

[mw86]

I couldn't find those options in my Bios. What am I missing?

we need to see the sensors tab to see how things were running do as normal in gaming and have hwinfo going then take a pic of the sensors to show max temps speeds and much more...

The settings for eist or enhanced speed step... Or just speed step is what to look for if you cant disable it this wont work. If eist and cstates can both be disabled by the throttle stop check box and they arent greyed out that will suffice to. If no such option in bios it isnt going to work. I only know dual ida works on your cpu but not sure if its usable for the Alienware.

Download throttle stop here Downloads | Tech|Inferno

But i would check the temps gaming with hwinfo sensors showing

Basic hwinfo guide

http://forum.techinferno.com/t%7Ci-member-product-reviews/1416-hwinfo.html#post17375

Edited February 11, 2012 by mw86

[he_iz_legend]

Updated mwinfo

[mw86]

cool temps are just fine accross the board i suggest trying Unreal's suggestion of driver version... Perhaps try latest beta direct from Nvidia for mobile? If not the Dell official one. The dual ida is like you max speed shown was just about to that 2.53ghz... Just under 2.5 and on mostly one core... With the trick it forces both to 2.53 and isnt allowed to drop... So you would have higher temps cpu... But temps now are fine. Perhaps another Tech Inferno M17x R1 could elaborate if the bios has the proper options to enable dual IDA mode.

[he_iz_legend]

I've run a wide variety of drivers in the past, the dell, the nvidia, and the laptopvideo2go drivers. Haven't had this problem when I ran those in the past so I don't think its the driver in all honesty.

Yeah that'd be great if I could get some help, I didn't see any of those options under my bios.

Edited February 11, 2012 by he_iz_legend

[he_iz_legend]

Would I need to download some kind of modified BIOS or something?

[mw86]

If there is even an unlocked bios for it. Not sure. Okay no drivers... Could be latency dlp dlc something like that. TI please post link to dlc latency test.

[he_iz_legend]

How do i go about doing that?

[unreal25]

I've run a wide variety of drivers in the past, the dell, the nvidia, and the laptopvideo2go drivers. Haven't had this problem when I ran those in the past so I don't think its the driver in all honesty.

Yeah that'd be great if I could get some help, I didn't see any of those options under my bios.

Well my point is, there might be something buggy with the CURRENT version of the driver. What makes you think this is not the case? (It happened to me few times last few months with AMD drivers.)

To figure out whether it is the CPU or GPU that is throttling you could run a CPU-based test such as wPrime and compare the result with someone else with a similar CPU (I'm sure Googling it you can find someone else's score with that CPU). For GPU, you can run any of the GPU benchmarks such as 3DMark06 or 3DMark Vantage and compare them with the scores here: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M - Notebookcheck.net Tech , they should be about the same.

[StamatisX]

I suspect the nvidia chipset drivers... I would unistall them and make sure the default Windows ones are up and check again

[Brian]

M17x-r1 had dpc latency issues. I'm not sure if that is what's causing the OP issues or something else. The Dell drivers for the notebook would be the first place to start. If that doesn't work, check for throttling.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[mw86]

M17x-r1 had dpc latency issues. I'm not sure if that is what's causing the OP issues or something else. The Dell drivers for the notebook would be the first place to start. If that doesn't work, check for throttling.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

thanks Brian thats the one i meant. Stock Dell Drivers is a good idea to rule out issues.

[he_iz_legend]

Using stock dell drivers now, also ran the latency checker and it didn't show any problems with the latency. Still underperforming. Not sure which item in device manager is my chipset to try the suggestion of uninstalling and installing a regular windows update driver.

Also, if this can give anybody some kind of clue. I think i've noticed every now and then It seems to work like it should, this isn't often, but I can tell when it does. For example, I run the performance test for shogun 2. It usually gets around 22 FPS results but during one of these times when it was working better it randomly got 37 FPS after the test.

Edited February 12, 2012 by he_iz_legend

[Brian]

Do you have the latest vbios for your video cards?

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[he_iz_legend]

Do you have the latest vbios for your video cards?

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

Where do you find that at?

[mw86]

I would of thought Dells website should have an official one

[Brian]

Well the M15x version of 260M had throttling built in until Dell released an updated system bios that fixed it. I'm not sure if the M17x-R1 ever had this problem or not. However, you can try my old method of fixing throttling for the M15x and see if it improves your situation: http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m15x/26-alienware-m15x-nvidia-260m-throttling-investigation-solution.html