E1705 + 7900 GTX issues - Page 2

I may be doing those few amperage tests but i will keep you in mind. send me an email at sludgemonster86@yahoo.com so i have some contact information for you if i decide to sell it.

Although forcing the CPU to run at 2.0ghz all the time makes the game run well, it now idles at 32 as opposed to 25. Not that that is a problem, but it didnt used to be like that. I wonder if it has something to do with the CPU being starved of power causing the throttle down during gaming. I dont suppose you have the links to the two other issues do you? I would really like to read them.

Well if that is the case that the cpu is losing power than the 7900gs should make the pc run normal so we will see when i get that card.

Alright ive made some headway here. I setup the second monitor to monitor temperature and CPU speed with CPUz. So far, the problem is that the CPU is not staying throttled correctly during gaming. I set up my brothers 9300 for a minute, and his CPU stays 100% throttled in gaming all the time. Mine (ours?) floats around between 998, 1333, 1667, and 1998. If someone else can verify with the e1705 how there CPU acts when gaming, i would appreciate it. This may not be a graphics problem at all.

My first thought is yes, the CPU may be throttling down due to the GPU sucking up the power, however when i force the ALWAYS ON in power management, everything works like it used to with no ill effects or symptoms of power starvation, although i have done it for a very extended period of time. Speedstepping is enabled in BIOS. when it is disabled, it runs it at the lowest setting all the time no matter what is set in windows (or so im told), so i just left speedstepping on. I think i need to compare it to an E1705 with 7900gs, E1705 with 7900gtx, and m1710 with 7900gs, and m1710 with 7900gtx, along with the amperage draws for complete data, however i dont have any resources available for an m1710. Hopefully though the 7900gs will be here sometime this week, although im worried the 7900gtx caused some type of permanent change and iw ill see the same results with the 7900gs that werent there before.

The only other thing i can think of is some sort of glitch or error in the speedstepping software, but even then i think it would have presented itself much earlier. If it were a component on the motherboard being overstressed from either an under or over voltage due to the bios not drawing enough power, i wouldnt expect it to sitll work when using another application to throttle the CPU.

One thing i am certain of, it was working fine one day, and the next day it was acting funny.

Used Notebook Hardware Controll and it works fine now, althought im still worried about a power starvation issue.

Your issue is/was much worse than mine. Ive seen two cases like this with in an e1705 performing that poorly, one ended up being drivers with the 7900gtx (might have actually been said in this thread), the other i beleive was actually on a 7900gs, which ended up being the card. Sounds like you have a bum card, since id be willing to bet youve tried a few different drivers. Email Bal, he was more than willing to help with an exchange for me, but it was not needed. Im sure he'll get you fixed up.

Some things to check, keep in mind i dont know your skill with pc tech and whatnot, so i apoligize if you find these suggestions elementary.

Make sure bios is recognizing the 130 watt brick, make sure you have A01+ bios, make sure the card is seated properly, check the clock speeds. If all that checks out ok, i suggest you get some sort of monitoring program that can read out data for a few minutes or set up a second monitor to watch your temperatures and CPU speed. Watching my temperatures was a huge clue for me to fix my issue.

All in all, to be honest it sounds like the other guy who had a bad card.

As for it not belonging in an E1705, i cant, for one second think of a reason why, considering the motherboards are the same. From what i gather, the only difference is the bios.

Are the guys selling them on ebay labeling them as a e1705/m1710 board full of **** then?

Aside from those differences, would you happen to know if they are identical? I can see from pictures they are very similar, or is that the extent of it? Either way i think that if the 7900 GTX was not meant to be in the e1705, then the stock Dell bios wouldnt support it.

Thats not a terrible 3dmark05 score for a stock GTX with a 1.66 CPU. The GTX shines much more at high resolutions with AA and AF. I hate 3dmark for benchtesting, its too inaccurate at the default settings to compare cards with different amounts of memory and pixel pipe lines.