Alienware Aurora R4 GTX 690 Problems

The 690 is a single slot GPU that actually is made up of 2x680's slapped together. As a result it runs cooler, uses less power, and less space than actually having 2x680's seperately.

When he is disabling SLI he is basically getting half the performance he should be ( i think)

It really sounds like the card is faulty with all that flickering and such. I would contact tech support, you need a replacement

You are correct in that the 690 is a dual processor card, but it only uses one PCI slot thus not a true SLI config. I agree that tech support should be called but I would also try a clean install of the current drivers (not beta). Nvidia has an option in the advanced tab of the install to complete a clean install. Of course I have been wrong before in my thought process LOL. Good luck  

I just got a refurbished Aurora R4 with a GTX 690 and the symptoms sound just like mine.

Using a tool like EVGA Precision X, I see my second GPU is stuck at 324 MHz at all times, in or out of games, multi-gpu on or off.  So with multi-gpu mode turned on, GPU1 will sit around 30% utilization, and GPU2 will peg at 99%, dragging everything down.

With multi-gpu off, the one good GPU will run at full speed, 915 Mhz or whatever it is and get better performance. 

The stock drivers performed horrible, probably because of this problem, but I didn't discover the GPU frequency thing until after trying the latest beta drivers (306.02).  Since then I've installed the latest WHQL driver (301.42) and still have this issue.  My BIOS is at A02 though, but it sounds like the original poster has tried everything else I haven't, this really sucks.  Has anyone else checked their GPU frequency?

This is not what I expected for a $1000 video card.

Hi  Toastermonkey, I got a replacement card from Dell and the machine screams along fine, the difference is night and day,mthe card itself is certainly the root cause, rather than a driver issue, the core speeds you had we exactly the same as I had , down to the running better on a single core. All in all I am happy with the new card and performance is great, however  a good portions of the cards seem to be defective.

Sound's like driver issue's to me I had the same nightmare you guys are having when I got my r3 with gtx590 I did everything finally tech guy came out replaced the card and it as been working great since the extra warranty with dell is very worth it I never have to wait

I'm having similar problems with my Alienware Aurora R4 with the GTX-690.

In crysis2 specifically the the screen will go black and the fps will suddenly drop in half i.e 60fps to 30.  Seems like a GPU core is crashing.  and I've had a bluescreen error code 0x116, and eventlogs show multiple video driver crashes usually error code 14.  Word for windows 2010 seems to also trigger the video crash, and skyrim will ocassionally crash the same way.

There is something seriously wrong with the machine setup.   I did the following.   1) Cleaned out all legacy NVidia drivers and reinstalled current drivers.   2) Updated bios from A02 to  A05   3) Tried a different drive running windows 8 with fresh NVidia drivers   4) Altered pretty much all the nvcs setting that may be relevant.   5) Tried the new Nvidia Beta Drivers

looks like i bought your system. and i mean YOUR SYSTEM. you returned yours in sept/oct, i bought mine end of oct!

got my R4 with i7-3820 32gb ram 1tb hd and gtx 690 on 10/30. having the EXACT SAME problems. card sucks bad... 3dMark11 4000 score on graphics. should be 11k-17k. Even a GTX 580 benches faster.

Both cores are running per GPU-Z it just sucks. Looks like Dell did a rebox - no real refurbishing. Got a replacement card on order but its been a week already "in production" with no ETA

I haven't had my system replaced.  Dell hasn't contacted me to come replace the card and last i checked the case isn't resolved and is still open.  TWO MONTHS and they haven't done anything.  TWO MONTHS.

In Call od Duty Spec Ops 2 I crash in several interesting ways including an actual memory error black screen, the speckled screen crash, and the computer just flat out not responding.  I purchased the computer specifically for gaming and I can't use it to game.  

It's an incredible waste.  And it's probably the last DeLL purchase I'll ever make.

Still haven't done anything on a re-iniation off the support call.

Service Call:161162987

Status:In Progress

Call Type:Next Business Day

Initiation date: 11/29/2012 12:00 AM

Description:Not Available

Last Updated: 11/29/2012 3:10 PM

Shipping Information:

Note : There is no shipping information associated with this Service Call at this time.

System Information

Service Tag: <ADMIN NOTE: Service tag removed per privacy policy>

Model: Alienware Aurora R4

Ship Date: 7/31/2012

Country: United States

Still nothing done on the second call I was promised next day service on, so it's over two weeks and they haven't even shipped a part.

what really sucks is not only did I buy the alienware system, but seperately I purchased a 30" dell IPS monitor and 1TB of SSD storage so I have a $5k system which isn't even usable for the purpose I originally purchased it for.

The tech finally showed up-----with a broken repair part. THREE WEEKS after the SECOND CALL for NEXT BUSINESS DAY SUPPORT.   THREE MONTHS with no resolution of the original call.

i got a replacement card and it was bad too. took 2 weeks to get the card. forget about it they are having issues with the gtx 690 at dell. call customer care tell them you want a replacement system or a refund. tell them to check the tech logs. you have to escalate it up customer care. i know its a real pain talking to those people but trust me if you are persistent they will take care of you. i ended up sending mine back and got a full refund but in the past i had trouble with my alienware laptop and they sent me a brand new replacement because they couldnt fix it. tell them they could not fix it so you want a return or replacement, they have to do it. good luck. your best bet is to buy an alienware with a crappy video card and guy an evga gtx 690, one that has a warranty too. i hear the kepler gpu has high DOA

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