Hammerhead's m9700... - Page 7

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=2207214


I would not advise anyone to overclock their laptops. I took several precautions before doing any overclocking from using AS5 thermal compound, to controlling the air temperature around the machine, and constantly monitoring the temperatures of the gpus and cpu. I very slowly and methodically increased speeds incrementally, and I have some experience overclocking so I knew what to look out for.

I ended up pushing the hardware very hard to get this score, but I was after 11k from my stock test that came in at 9880 out of the box.

I'm not going to tell anyone how I did it, or the final clocks I used to get this score because if you have to ask, you shouldn't be taking these kinds of risks with your hardware. I voided my warranty to do this, and I don't want to be responsible in any way for anyone else that tries this, voids their warranty and blows up their systems...

Overclocking notebooks is seriously stupid, so understand that before you try anything.

I did this to prove to myself the system could beat 11k with AS5 modified stock cooling, so there's no need for anyone else to risk their hardware to do it again...

That's a good question...

Alienware's policy is pretty clear, overclocking voids your warranty. They tolerated minor overclocks of the video cards with AlienAdrenaline in the desktops, but the laptops are locked down on purpose. Without modification, the AW systems only operate correctly with AW certified drivers, and they make sure through the software that you can't overclock. AW has always had a very strict policy on overclocking the processors. If AW didn't OC the processor from the factory, any overclock voids your warranty. Period.

I'm absolutely sure since the warranty was voided, that AW wouldn't do the repairs free of charge. If they would do the work, I'm sure they'd charge hardware, labor and shipping costs so it would be very expensive. They may refuse to do the work at all as heat from overclocked parts, especially in a laptop can damage hardware near the component, or even the motherboard and peripheral components. If you bump the fsb, you essentially are overclocking everything in the system.

This is why I'm putting up disclaimers on this post. It is clear in the warranty that overclocking voids it, so if you're stupid enough to overclock your laptop AW should refuse to deal with the machine further.

Alienware has had a problem with some customers overclocking and burning up their hardware, then trying to make a claim under the warranty, but I know the people in charge of investigating these situations, and they're very good at what they do. You likely won't be able to get it by them, they have several ways of checking if the system has been overclocked. In fact, trying to claim under warranty though you've voided it blatently could be fraud.

I've been arguing with myself whether I should post the score I achieved as I'm sure it will concern some people at Alienware as there is absolutely no reason to overclock a system like this, and if done improperly can only lead to problems both for AW and the customer. I know they work very hard to squeeze the best performance they can out of these systems while maintaining a safety factor for safe use and longevity to protect themselves and the customers, but 11K+, WOWZA!!!

I did this out of personal curiosity. It's a personality flaw that's bit me in the past. But with all the overclocking done by other groups here and elsewhere, and the nature of the low clocked for efficiency and battery life hardware in this platform, I really wanted to know if I could reach 11k. Now that I have, nobody else has to risk their hardware trying...

Clearly the m9700 was designed with quiet fans and a heatsink setup that was efficient and very safe for the stock equipment set at stock clocks. The performance at stock settings keep the machine running at very reasonable temps and gives a very high yield so there is no justification for doing this to your machine.

As I said, I did it for myself, but I wouldn't encourage anyone else doing the same as every piece of hardware is different, and is only warranted to the stock specifications. Some cards will tolerate overclocking, others won't or will fail reasonably fast, so it's just not worth it.

Again, I argued with myself about posting this, as I'm sure it will upset some at AW that work so hard to make sure the machine is stable and performs well at stock settings. I don't want anyone else to try this, especially if you have no experience with this process, or if you can't afford to replace the machine yourself if you blow it up. If I ran into issues during the process, I would have told AW what I did, and hopefully they would sell me the hardware or do the repairs at my cost, but there are no guarantees.

Then again, once you've purchased it, it's yours, so if you want to risk it it's up to you I suppose. It only becomes an issue if you damage your hardware then lie to Alienware to try to get them to foot the bill on the repairs...

BTW, I'd also advise anybody buying a laptop to buy an extended warranty and not to void it. We've seen that laptop repairs can be very expensive...

Unfortunately, I haven't found one that is big enough for the m9700 to sit on properly, so I'm building my own out of acrylic sheet. I'll be posting a string on it if it works out, with plans...

I dunno... I thought about making a few or putting kits together. If you had the acrylic part built and bent into shape, you could add fans yourself...

I'll be making mine able to plug into the wall, or plug into the usb port if there's no plug available.

I have to make one first though, it might not work out.

I did consider one of these, they're cheap and they'd work with the m9700 as it props up the back of the laptop and blows air underneath where the intakes are...

Only problem I see is the vents in the back would serve up warm air that would mix with room air and get blown back under the case... Probably not a big issue though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834996501

Nope, the thing has been rock solid. I did have one error in Oblivion, but it was a game error and it warned me then kicked to the desktop, no restart or anything like that.

I've read of very few issues with the m9700, it seems to be a very solid platform.

Actually, I just remembered a big scare I had.

After doing everything, I was pasting screen shots into paint, resizing them, then putting them on my Alienware flash drive to transfer to my desktop to upload to the net. I left the usb flash drive in the port and rebooted the machine, and the screen just read "unable to find operating system"...!!!

I figured I'd screwed the pooch...

But I guess the boot priority is set for an external floppy first, so the machine was looking at the usb ports for first boot device and couldn't find an OS on the flash drive. Unplugged it, and it booted right up.

Oh how I laughed...

BTW, I've played Oblivion for long periods with the m9700 sitting flat on a table. Obivion really heated up my desktop vid card, but the m9700 was fine. I checked the gpu temps a couple times and they were in the mid seventies or lower even at 1920 x 1200 and ultra high settings. The CPU actually has an intake on the side and exhausts out the back so it doesn't see much air from under the unit...

I have yet to load BF2 on the thing, just loaded CSS last night and dealt with Steam... Takes a long time...

I'll be in strafeRights CSS office server today to check out it's performance.

I'm going to compare performance between the single card, and the two modes of SLI with the game. I remember seeing Dave post that he had issues with SLI and CSS on his desktop, and actually had slower performance with SLI in one of the rendering modes...

I didn't know it until I got the m9700, but there are two modes with SLI. One just splits the duties of the cards every other frame, so one card projects frame 1, the other handles frame 2, back and forth... The other mode splits the screen in half so one card renders the top, the other renders the bottom. That method uses scaling so if there's lots of detail in the bottom of the picture, it lets the other card pick up more area. That's good because the top of the screen is usually sky in CSS so it would make sense for the card doing the sky to take on more real estate...

I'll be loading BF2 today also.

Hehe... Good luck. I got pretty nervous so I don't think I'll be trying to better that score.