Question, i just recieved a M17x with a single gtx260 graphics card and i have to say for one gpu the gaming is amazing as far as frame rates are concerned and the game Medal of Honor " AIRBORNE " plays the best i have ever seen it on a notebook but the PCIE bus speed being 8x instead of 16x bothers me.. using GPU-Z the pcie bus says 16x @ 8x.. my 1730 ran at 16x.. i dont understand why dell or alienware has cut the bus speed down to 8x.. this action caused alot of xps 630 desktop owners to become frustrated at dell for this.. does anybody know why the bus speed is 8x???? is there anyway to change this???

I believe it's slows down to 8x save battery. The M17x has PCI-E 2.0 BTW.

Make sure it´s not set to Stealth Mode or battery saving mode.

where do you change this stealth mode ???

i went into the bios and disabled hybrid graphics and even disabled integrated graphics because i dont use on battery anyway but while medal of honor airborne is running in the background GPU-Z states the pcie bus is 16x 2.0@8x 2.0. does any body else with the gtx260 have the same reported speed or is my mobo or gpu screwed up???

I have dual 280's and it says the same thing for me.

Also, the Nvidia drivers says this aswell for me.

my alienware m17x with 280m sli also say the same thing. it is weird but it is the motherboard limitation and there is nothing you can really do about it.

i had many notebooks but they are all sold.
here's my sager np9262 with a single 9800m gtx notice how it is a pci-e 16 @16

my old ocz whitebook with 3870 crossfire with one card has pci-e 16@ 16 but when you crossfire it. it becomes 8x
this picture is with crossfire enabled.


now this is the weird part but this is my m17x with 280m sli and it is pci 16x 2.0 @ 8x 2.0. that's weird

i hope this helps.

My old M1730 with SLI 8700's ran at 16x PCI-E though.

BTW Mine just says PCI-E x16 @ x8. But when I turn power savings on it says PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x8 2.0, but after a few minutes it goes back to just PCI-E. I'm confuzzled

Although it shouldnt directly apply to the M17x all P55 (i7) chipsets run at 16x with a single PCIe card and 8x with 2 cards as a means save power amongst other things.

So if I run SLI it's only running at 8x?

per card

but i have a single gtx 260 no sli and it runs at 8x all the time.. i know once i read in the xps 630i desktop forums that the reason dell lowered the bandwith to 8x was to maintain system stability.. maybe this is why pcie is set to 8x

So the Nvidia MCP79 mother board in the M17x is 16x in single card mode and 8x in dual card mode. This is a limitation of the chipset.


Zyb