Alienware M17x power glitch throttles CPU to 316MHz
The Alienware M17x laptop can be configured with two GeForce 280M GPUs, but struggles to cope, it seems.
The claims, which are being investigated by Alienware owner Dell, affect those who purchased an Alienware M17x with the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 CPU and dual Nvidia GeForce 280M SLI options, expecting the best portable gaming experience at the time.
Sadly, that's not what they appear to have received. Disgruntled owners have taken to the Notebook Review Forums to gather information about the flaw, which has not yet been officially confirmed by Dell, complaining about poor in-game performance.
The majority of users are finding that the flaw only affects certain games, with Dragon Age: Origins, Just Cause 2, and Mass Effect 2 named among the culprits. The games apparently cause the two GPUs to draw more than the expected amount of power, making the CPU clock speeds drop. Forum user Elkay noted that the clock speed on all four of his cores dropped to just 316MHz, which is 12.5 per cent of the CPU's 2.53GHz stock speed.
The flaw occurs when the laptop's power draw, measured at the plug, reaches more than 225W. This has led many sufferers to worry that the only solution in sight involves changing the hardware, with Dell either providing beefier power supplies or more energy-efficient GPUs.
The first complaints about the issue surfaced a few months ago, but Dell is reportedly still investigating the issue and the forum thread is now well over a hundred pages long. As such, it looks as though owners of Alienware M17x GeForce 280M SLI rigs will have a while to wait before a permanent solution to the flaw is found.
Are you disappointed with Dell's silence on the M17x throttling issue, or just amazed that the flaw made it through product testing? What do you think is Dell's best bet for sorting the problem to the satisfaction of its customers? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyClearly they don't graphically stress the machines as standard.
As for sorting the problem in a satisfactory way.. Not gonna happen. Some owners, somewhere, are going to remain pissy.
- though having said that my XPS is now charging again 'yay'
Surely downclocking the GPU's slightly would solve the problem. Just drop the 280Ms by about 50Mhz each or something. It's not ideal but with that much graphics power, I doubt you'd notice any difference in most games.
The ones at uni have been nothing but trouble.
The fan control software seems to have a mind of its own, and some machines are just stuck at 100%, which makes them literally sound like a jet, its louder than the big AC unit in the room.
Random BSODs plague them too.
Yeah, the Alienware laptop range make other laptops look like crap. I love their stylish matte look and aggresive angles and futuristic design compared to the common weak 'soft' look.
who would want to carry around a brick that can hardly play any game now, and the same brick that can't play any games 6 month down the line?
3rded here. The only line of "gaming laptops" that every really appealed to me were the old Dell XPS M1710s from 2006, and a couple of their models before that. A gaming laptop that was actually that, a laptop. Sure, it wasn't 100% portable, but you could occasionally move it, certainly nothing like the portly machines we are seeing today.
And even those, I wouldn't go near.
A stupid fault finds it way to people who are stupid enough to buy an Alienware/Dell.....
Karma sucks.
this one might do it
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0045XGHWI/ref=asc_df_B0045XGHWI1361839?tag=thefind0021657-20&creative=395261&creativeASIN=B0045XGHWI&linkCode=asn
Anyone else think, "so it cant run crysis" from the title of this article?
my old alienware, P4 + Radeon 9700M, ran about 70 degrees.
That said, 240w for a laptop is pretty absurd, and they are about 15 pounds.
Bugger, My M11x didn't get that message.....
Oh well I must tell it to stop playing ME2, L4D 1&2, JC2, Arcania, Fallout3 (New Vegas), Metro 2033, Crysis & BFBC2.
All the while it uses a massive 25-30w of power.... (65Whr battery lasts 2.5 hours whilst gaming).
I was never intrested in their trashy specs... what with all that "AlienFX" LED lights...
The same issue appears in Dragon Age, etc. on my M17X.
What I found is that as long as have Taskmgr.exe open when I run the game, I then immediately select the process that appears for Dragon Age and limit it to only one CPU....all stuttering issues immediately disappear. It seems more likely to me that the code is not optimised for multi-core CPUS... either way, you can also do it after the game is open, but, I found that the intro movie also stuttered if I didn't get to it straight away... seems to work for other games as well. Not ideal, but, might help some other people out.