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Apparently Dell released a new bios to fix the faulty GPU problem

post #1 of 8
7/29/08 at 6:42am
Thread Starter 
here's the link http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38611/135/


I've checked the bios upgrade page for 1710 and didn't find a new bios.

Does anyone have some more info about the issue ?
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post #2 of 8
7/29/08 at 7:18am
It supposedly is only the 8400GS and 8600 chips. And what the BIOS does - I think - is lower your clocks so the faulty thermal packaging doesn't fail (as fast) and kill the chip.

In short, fix the problem until the computer's off-warranty.
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post #3 of 8
7/29/08 at 12:28pm
Well it can't do that from what I understand. Its the actual system BIOS that Dell is offering. It is what controls the fan speeds so that the fans turn on sooner. The GPU BIOS would control typically the clockspeed and onboard GPU fans which we don't have. This issue is moot for those of us who use i8kfangui as we have been controlling our fan speed all along.
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post #4 of 8
7/29/08 at 12:45pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzpulp View Post
Well it can't do that from what I understand. Its the actual system BIOS that Dell is offering. It is what controls the fan speeds so that the fans turn on sooner. The GPU BIOS would control typically the clockspeed and onboard GPU fans which we don't have. This issue is moot for those of us who use i8kfangui as we have been controlling our fan speed all along.
Well not exactly, at least in m1710, using i8kfangui u can not get the GPU fan to rotate at it's full speed. The bios can get it higher.
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post #5 of 8
7/30/08 at 12:53pm
I've never seen my GPU fan RPM fluctuate much above 4100 RPM with or without i8k controlling the fans. I thought these fans could only operate on three discrete levels to be honest. I will however look back into this.
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post #6 of 8
7/30/08 at 1:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by zzpulp View Post
I've never seen my GPU fan RPM fluctuate much above 4100 RPM with or without i8k controlling the fans. I thought these fans could only operate on three discrete levels to be honest. I will however look back into this.

If you have m1710 you will see it for sure.

When the card is hot the bios pushes it to the high 4000's, with i8k when set to max it just gets to just under 4000.
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post #7 of 8
7/31/08 at 10:07pm
Just took delivery of a 1730 (T8300_single 8700 gpu) with the new A09 BIOS. I do not buy that new BIOS has slowed clock speeds.

3dmark06 produced same results (4973 vs 4980) whether using new A09 BIOS or former A08 BIOS.

FWIW....
New BIOS seems to improve HDD performance.
I enabled caching under___ Device Mgr-> Disk Drives->Policies->Optimize performance->Enable write caching on the disk___and time to rip a coml DVD using AnyDVD and to compress using Nero Recode 2__dropped by 50%! 15 min vs 30 min for each operation!

Not sure how much of this performance improvement is due to (a) A09 BIOS and (b) enabling write caching_which previously was greyed out.


Quote:
Originally Posted by destruya View Post
It supposedly is only the 8400GS and 8600 chips. And what the BIOS does - I think - is lower your clocks so the faulty thermal packaging doesn't fail (as fast) and kill the chip.

In short, fix the problem until the computer's off-warranty.
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post #8 of 8
8/1/08 at 5:23am
This might not be over with just the 8400 and 8600Ms:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/31/f...ive-its-a-lot/
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