Need some help with Drivers m17x-R1

[wbabt007]

Hi Guys this is my first thread so don't shoot me...yet.

As some of you know until recently I was able to use my m17x -R1 as a gaming machine thanks due to the A07 bios, so now comes the question what do you guys recommend I use as a driver for the video cards, should I use the long obsolete driver for download at dell or should I go to nVidia and download their current release?

I also know there is many groups on the net using experimental driver release with their machines so any Recommendation is welcome, I am just trying to get he best of this machine.

the laptop has 2 GeForce GTX 260M 1 gig of ram on SLI configuration and currently I am running the driver downloaded from the dell page which is the 257.38, A03.

Thank you in advance for your time and advice.

note

I just ran 3dmark vantage and this is what i got

P7746 3DMarks

and

Graphics driver is not approved

Edited April 9, 2011 by wbabt007
testing results

[Michael]

Hi there!

Welcome to T|I again

You should definitely try fresher drivers than the one Dell pushes.

I remember when i had a NVIDIA based lappy i was downloading my drivers from laptopvideo2go.com

Always trying the latest drivers (usually with a modified inf), and just comparing performance with the ones i had before. That way i always knew the best performing driver out there.

[StamatisX]

Yeah I would suggest the same, just do a proper clean installation (make sure you removed completely the previous drivers, use ccleaner and driver sweeper both in safe and normal mode) and then run benchmarks with the same settings in nVidia control panel to see the gain or the loss. Also try to download the latest profiles to ensure the best gaming experience.

[mw86]

Had a HP HDX18t with a gt130m and it only worked good with latest drivers from Nvidia

[wbabt007]

Ok I don't know if this amusing or frustrating, the higher i go in the forceware drivers, the lower my score gets, let's see i started a P7746 and i am currently at P7423 o.O.

What frustrates me further is that i compared a machine just like mine same cpu and sli cards and the other machine's score was on the 14 thousands, I wonder what I am doing wrong.

[StamatisX]

Do you by any chance have the stealth mode on? Another thought is to make sure that you are indeed using both cards (you can check with GPU-Z and have it log your clocks and temps on the second card) while playing a game or during the benchmark.

[wbabt007]

sorry for the noob question but how do I check for stealth mode? I know I downloaded an app to see if it was on but now I cant find it.

edit

I found the program is called stealth toggle and it indicates that stealth mode is off, by the way I really appreciate your patience, I usually not this noob when it comes to technology but I always thought that Buying a alienware meant not having to tweak with it because it came ready to obliterate, but after a week of reading I can see that it is not the case.

Edited April 10, 2011 by wbabt007

[StamatisX]

the easiest way to check is to press the touch button on the upper right corner above the keyboard (looks like a speedometer).A message will pop up and ask you to reboot probably. After the reboot check the performance, if the laptop feels slow then you have the stealth mode on (you can try to run a benchmark, the numbers should be really low), in this case press it again to deactivate it. If it wasn't the stealth mode then check the other recommendation on my previous post.

[mw86]

sorry for the noob question but how do I check for stealth mode? I know I downloaded an app to see if it was on but now I cant find it.

edit

I found the program is called stealth toggle and it indicates that stealth mode is off, by the way I really appreciate your patience, I usually not this noob when it comes to technology but I always thought that Buying a alienware meant not having to tweak with it because it came ready to obliterate, but after a week of reading I can see that it is not the case.

Hang in there owning an Alienware is actually great. You can find everything you need here at Tech|Inferno, some one here is bound to have an answer to your question or can point you in the right direction. You may need to tweak but its a given with gaming computers in general. Get all the tweaks in you'll be right up where you want to be. No question is too noob-ish, questions are the path to knowledge. I'm not familiar with the R1, I know the R2 is just as StamatisX described, stealth-mode can easily be tapped unknowingly and the notification could have been missed. Hang in there there's a reason Alienware has the reputation it has.

[Brian]

Wbabt007-

Are you using bios A07 for your R1? If you are, it's recommended that you disable PCI Gen 2 in the bios. You should be able to use the latest driver from nVidia or Dell.

[Michael]

also, check that SLI is enabled

[wbabt007]

I believe I have the A07 bios and SLi is set, here a couple of screen shots.

[mw86]

Maybe you should attempt the latest Nvidia Beta drivers and not the latest stable release, could be improvement there. Please excuse me if thats what you already are on.

[wbabt007]

MW86 I am running the latest beta drivers from nvidia, I believe they are the 270.51 procured form laptopvideo2go.com as Michael Recommended in previous post.

[mw86]

Ok I don't know if this amusing or frustrating, the higher i go in the forceware drivers, the lower my score gets, let's see i started a P7746 and i am currently at P7423 o.O.

What frustrates me further is that i compared a machine just like mine same cpu and sli cards and the other machine's score was on the 14 thousands, I wonder what I am doing wrong.

Hmmm, may I suggest latest directx update+ the directx 9 generation updates, Open AL update, VCredistributable. Perhaps ensure atleast for your bench purposes you"ve set as many nvidia options to performance or any setting that optimize the graphics to run different rendering faster. Phyx latest update is also crucial(even those that don't have a PhysX processing capable video card, you still need the latest PhysX update for any game that has PhysX in it wether you end up using it or not. I don't know if everyone will agree wth this next one but, I've found setting the desktop size to the same resolution your about to run your game or bench in that there sometimes is a small boost in performance not sure if thats because the desktop takes either more Vram or regular Ram at higher resolutions when running a bench or playing a game. Hopefully this is all sound advice. You mention that a similar setup had almost double your performance, if the sli is in fact working and u confirmed this with something like two instances of GPUZ each set to its own video card and you witness both video cards on the graphs get to full speed then maybe where you are comparing it to they have drivers that click better or something, maybe you can check what version they had that you are comparing to. Did you know if the cards were overclocked, the ones you are comparing? Or perhaps the comparitive system had a higher performance cpu and or overclocked cpu? I'm suprised there aren't many R1 owners here yet...