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Marker01's m9700 review - Page 4

post #61 of 231
7/10/06 at 11:48pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
I had a few questions regarding the notebook. You say it gets hot to the human touch. Is this something that is bearable? I would imagine it gets the hottest while playing games. What if you were just surfing the Internet or watching a movie, is the heat a problem then? I don't know if i missed it or not, but can the SLI be disabled to save battery power and reduce heat if need be?

It is a “bearable” heat, even during intensive gaming. But I suggest a cool pad regardless, it helps keep your laptop, and lap healthy.

Yes you can disable SLI to save battery power. You can disable this from the Nvidia control panel

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post #62 of 231
7/10/06 at 11:49pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
marker01 tried, and the card just defaulted back to stock settings. AW has installed a bios version that is locked, so you can't overclock.

That is why I asked if you'd be willing to use nibitor to put your bios into a file we could get so we could also overclock by flashing the bios for your card to ours.

It won't affect your card at all, it will just let us load up your bios that will allow us to overclock.


Please post your BIOS version? that would really help us out
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post #63 of 231
7/11/06 at 12:35am
Locked down BIOS huh, guess the dell ownership finally rears its ugly head
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post #64 of 231
7/11/06 at 12:47am
Yes, indeed. Is the GPU/SLi BIOS totally seperate from the BIOS on the MOBO? Is there any significant risk to the rest of the system by switching the BIOS out with the non-AW version? I think we need somebody to bite the bullet and be the poison tester. That is, once we get a Nibitor image for it.
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post #65 of 231
7/11/06 at 12:49am
congrats on the system. I am not a big fan of 3dmark05. Can you run cs:s stress test at 1900 by 1200 max everything max AF but no aa? Also can you run the FEAR stress test at 1600 by 1200 max everything but soft shadows turned off? I am interested in some gaming benchmarks. Again, congrats and enjoy!
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post #66 of 231
7/11/06 at 2:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhead
marker01 tried, and the card just defaulted back to stock settings. AW has installed a bios version that is locked, so you can't overclock.

That is why I asked if you'd be willing to use nibitor to put your bios into a file we could get so we could also overclock by flashing the bios for your card to ours.

It won't affect your card at all, it will just let us load up your bios that will allow us to overclock.
I will try in the afternoon (its 8 o clock in the morning here).

edit
Ok, try this, hope i did it right. Otherwise, i ll try again later.
http://briefcase.pathfinder.gr/file/...n/45672/536128
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post #67 of 231
7/11/06 at 9:40am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Locked down BIOS huh, guess the dell ownership finally rears its ugly head

nope, i beleive the dell owners are in the same boat, but they have already flashed their vid card bios. We can do the same but i have never "flashed" an sli system. I mean, how do you flash the second card anyway?

from what i read, the Dell owners are just flashing the bios with higher clock settings too, then flashing it back to original BIOS.
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post #68 of 231
7/11/06 at 10:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by marker01
I mean, how do you flash the second card anyway?

I read reference to that elsewhere - I seem to remember the poster saying you had to disable the second card, flash the remaining one, then swap them round, flash the second card, then finally enable both..

The implication was that if you couldn't disable the cards in the BIOS, you'd have to physically pull a card in order to flash the remaining card Doesn't sound like a great option, to me!
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post #69 of 231
7/11/06 at 11:29am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
I read reference to that elsewhere - I seem to remember the poster saying you had to disable the second card, flash the remaining one, then swap them round, flash the second card, then finally enable both..

The implication was that if you couldn't disable the cards in the BIOS, you'd have to physically pull a card in order to flash the remaining card Doesn't sound like a great option, to me!

thats what i thought....
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post #70 of 231
7/11/06 at 3:29pm
So aaronjb - HH noticed the memory in the Evesham Nemesis is 333MHz rather than the 400MHz in the AW9700, do you reckon it will make much of a difference?

Can't wait until you get yours to post some benchmarks, also I'd like to know if Evesham also loaded the wrong CPU driver!!!

The reason I'm on this thread is that it's basically the same machine.

UKB
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post #71 of 231
7/11/06 at 3:40pm
Theoretically it'll make a difference for sure - in fact it made me wonder about the FSB on this machine, but given it's running the same processor..

When it arrives I'm definitely going to run some general system benchmarks as well as 3Dmark05 and try to get some good performance metrics from the system that we can use to compare to it's Alien cousin

If the RAM makes a big difference then I'll swap it out for Corsair RAM - no biggie really, considering the saving over the price of the Alienware, though if you were planning on doing that I'd not spec it up to 2Gb at point of order..

I can't wait.. itching to get my hands on this thing
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post #72 of 231
7/11/06 at 5:49pm
The m5700 also has a locked bios on the vid card, so I don't think this is necessarily a Dell policy. When you get into the sales numbers that Alienware is nowadays, it's in their best interest to eliminate any support issues, especially warranty claims on burned out hardware due to overclocking.

Everyone here should understand that flashing system bios' or any hardware bios' without Alienware's assistance will void your warranty. I don't think Alienware will assist you in flashing a non-AW bios to an AW system obviously.

I've rarely overclocked anything, but the 7900gs is so underclocked as shipped it's almost criminal not to stretch it out a bit IMO. Remember though that the increased heat by improperly cooled overclocking can affect other components as well.
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post #73 of 231
7/11/06 at 5:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by marker01
nope, i beleive the dell owners are in the same boat, but they have already flashed their vid card bios. We can do the same but i have never "flashed" an sli system. I mean, how do you flash the second card anyway?

from what i read, the Dell owners are just flashing the bios with higher clock settings too, then flashing it back to original BIOS.

If I understand this correctly, the Dell guys are altering their card bios' for benchmarks. Once you reboot, the bios returns the cards to standard settings. This is because nobody apparently has an alternative bios for the Dell cards that would let them use standard drivers or things like coolbits to alter the clock settings.

In this case, the Evesham systems are shipping with standard bios' from Nvidia, so the cards can be altered with software like coolbits, and they'll hold the settings whether you reboot or not. If you can get the Nvidia standard bios and flash it to the cards in the AW, you will then in essence have a stock Nvidia card rather than a card with an AW bios. You then should be able to use standard drivers from Nvidia instead of AW only versions.

I'm not sure any of this will work, but if I can get ahold of the bios for the Evesham cards I'm willing to give it a try. I guess it's possible the system bios will only recognize the AW bios for the vid cards, so that bios might need attention as well.
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post #74 of 231
7/11/06 at 6:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhead
If I understand this correctly, the Dell guys are altering their card bios' for benchmarks. Once you reboot, the bios returns the cards to standard settings. This is because nobody apparently has an alternative bios for the Dell cards that would let them use standard drivers or things like coolbits to alter the clock settings.

Incorrect. The cards stay at the clock forever unless you flash the bios back to a lower speed. Most of us that were benchmarking just pushed our cards to the limit to see how far they'd go and then settled on a clock that was a bit below the top limit.

Quote:
In this case, the Evesham systems are shipping with standard bios' from Nvidia, so the cards can be altered with software like coolbits, and they'll hold the settings whether you reboot or not. If you can get the Nvidia standard bios and flash it to the cards in the AW, you will then in essence have a stock Nvidia card rather than a card with an AW bios. You then should be able to use standard drivers from Nvidia instead of AW only versions.

I'm not sure any of this will work, but if I can get ahold of the bios for the Evesham cards I'm willing to give it a try. I guess it's possible the system bios will only recognize the AW bios for the vid cards, so that bios might need attention as well.


Just as a word of warning, some of us in the Dell section tried using a Sager bios awhile back to unlock the Dell 6800 Ultra cards and it resulted in a dead video card. If the company designed the cards to work only with a specific system bios, you will end up having a nice expensive m9700 brick.
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post #75 of 231
7/12/06 at 12:51pm
Yesterday I discovered 5 dead pixels (4 hot pixel and 1 stuck, blue). I am getting the new device tomorrow. My previous presario 2715 had none! Do you guys have any dead pixels?
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post #76 of 231
7/12/06 at 1:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 5150 Joker
Incorrect. The cards stay at the clock forever unless you flash the bios back to a lower speed. Most of us that were benchmarking just pushed our cards to the limit to see how far they'd go and then settled on a clock that was a bit below the top limit.

Cool, I didn't know that method would stay. Seems then we should be able to overclock with this method without replacing the card bios.

When raising the clocks, did you just watch temps, or just go slowly until you saw artifacts?




Quote:
Just as a word of warning, some of us in the Dell section tried using a Sager bios awhile back to unlock the Dell 6800 Ultra cards and it resulted in a dead video card. If the company designed the cards to work only with a specific system bios, you will end up having a nice expensive m9700 brick.

Noted... Unlike Dell though, I doubt Alienware has specific hardware. The Evesham system is based on the Arima platform as is the Alienware, so it's not mixing hardware and bios' from different manufacturers.

Thanks for the warning though...
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post #77 of 231
7/12/06 at 1:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirileman
Yesterday I discovered 5 dead pixels (4 hot pixel and 1 stuck, blue). I am getting the new device tomorrow. My previous presario 2715 had none! Do you guys have any dead pixels?

was this one your m9700? I have one that is stuck blue, it will not change no matter what... No dead pixels however...
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post #78 of 231
7/12/06 at 4:24pm
Yes. I hope the next one will be ok. I am going to check it at the store before i take it home. However, dead pixels are not such a serious problem any more, they are really small, so small that u have to put your face on the screen to see them, even in black backround. From the distance i work, i cant really see them. Thats why i had 5 and thought i had just 1.
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post #79 of 231
7/12/06 at 5:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirileman
Yes. I hope the next one will be ok. I am going to check it at the store before i take it home. However, dead pixels are not such a serious problem any more, they are really small, so small that u have to put your face on the screen to see them, even in black backround. From the distance i work, i cant really see them. Thats why i had 5 and thought i had just 1.


Yep I bet most people that think they have no dead pixels or only one don't take the time to really get up close to the screen and check it on a black background. The Sharp I have in my first XPS M1710 had a total of 5 stuck pixels even though just 2 of them were visible (because they were next to each other) from sitting back. This new M1710 I got with an LG screen seems to have no dead/stuck pixels at first glance but when you put your eyes about 1" away from the screen, there is a faint blue stuck pixel in the bottom corner - nothing I need to worry about though. Personally I think light leakage is something far more troubling than a single faint stuck pixel that you normally would never see.
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post #80 of 231
7/12/06 at 5:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirileman
Yesterday I discovered 5 dead pixels (4 hot pixel and 1 stuck, blue). I am getting the new device tomorrow. My previous presario 2715 had none! Do you guys have any dead pixels?

In a m9700????
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