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1 Rookie
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5 Posts
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371240
August 29th, 2013 12:00
Alienware 18 CPU Throttling
I've had my AW 18 for a month now and it became clear shortly after I started using it that performance was not where it should be. Making a long story short, the entire throttling issue is neatly chronicled in this forum post.
Bottom line, all the throttling and heat/fan issues occurring can be resolved with an updated BIOS so please Dell and Alienware, help us out.
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gqman69
25 Posts
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January 23rd, 2014 13:00
Mr. Chris
Can you at least tell us if my 4930 will one day (after 6 months) be able to run at 4.3Ghz?
89fordprobee
1.2K Posts
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January 23rd, 2014 14:00
b0mbsquad
2 Posts
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January 24th, 2014 13:00
Dell advertises a certain price for their flagSHIP model. Along with that they advertise you will be able to reach speeds UPTO 4.3ghz. According to Dell even if you only run at .3ghz on all 4 cores that is acceptable. As long as you hit 4.3ghz at one point for a silly validation on CPU-Z that is acceptable according to Dell. In any other scenario you could hit .1ghz and that would be acceptable as long as you hit 4.3ghz in bios with no load. Thank you dell for making this wonderful flagSHIP model. I guess this means time to jump SHIP for all you other common folks who expect to receive what they actually paid for.
89fordprobee
1.2K Posts
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January 24th, 2014 14:00
DELL-Chris M
Community Manager
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56.9K Posts
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232.1K Points
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January 25th, 2014 10:00
That Liquid Ultra looks cool! No pun intended.
Anonymous User
7 Posts
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December 21st, 2014 10:00
Hi Chris,
I know that the question was meant for Mr Fox, but I could not let it pass my desk without giving you a comment about the issue.
I am now testing my fifth Alienware 18 with 4940mx and dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880m cards, and I am still stuck with the fact that overclocking all cores like 44:44:44:44 is not possible, not even with the latest bios A10.
Dell Customer Care will call me after christmas to receive a new technical report on the issue, where I most probably will make use of the already approved RMAs for overclocking deviation -- not overclockable to 4.4GHZ according to the way the systems have been marketed and sold.
I really love the Alienware 18 but the performance is not wher it is supposed to be. I have been following all overclocking threads created by Mr Fox and the user papusan, confirming these issues with overclocking.
I am not an extreme gamer, on the contrary, I am using the system for heavy development, thus in need of the highest performance available for CPUs. The 880 cards performance is enough for my usage profile, but the laptop core, i.e. CPU must perform at its peak during development and graphics applications.
I do not know if you are based in Texas close to the Alienware 18 support team, but if you are sitting close you could get my technical reports from them. If not I would be glad to provide them to you, if it could help getting the BIOS developers and hardware designers on the right track.
Just let me know.
With kind regards,
Bring2Mind Consulting AB
Gunnar Snellman
CEO
BJFox
2 Intern
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763 Posts
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December 22nd, 2014 13:00
Hello, Mr. Snellman. I meant to reach out to you the other day about this issue and got sidetracked. I am able to overclock the 4930MX in the Alienware 18 to 50x4 for CPU-Z validation, and 48x4 stable. The challenge is cooling and it's not possible to cool the CPU well enough unless you are using Coollaboratories Liquid Ultra thermal paste. Haswell CPUs are like a mini blast furnace, especially when overclocked. (Haswell is a truly horrible product from Intel. Intel is batting 1000 now with all of the low-TDP BGA jokebook CPU filth they are producing.)
This screen shot may help you. Be sure you use XTU to disable the Package Turbo Power Lock garbage. If that is enabled in the BIOS your system will not overclock and will perform poorly. The only way you can disable this is with XTU. The BIOS has important settings on menus that are hidden and XTU is the best workaround we have at this point in time. In addition to the screen shot below, my other images in this Imgur album may be useful.
Anonymous User
7 Posts
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December 23rd, 2014 00:00
Goodmorning Mr Fox, thank you for the advice. It is appreciated. Now, I have been trying the latest ver of XTU, 5.something and it always crashes when I click on settings in the top right corner of the window.
Which version of XTU are you using doing this?
With Kind Regards,
Gunnar
Anonymous User
7 Posts
1
December 26th, 2014 08:00
Dear Mr Fox, I just installed XTY latest version and performed a first benchmark using dell stock OC LV 3 in Bios A10.
This is what came out:
Intel Core i7-4940MX CPU @ 4600.0MHz - 846 XTU marks on HWBOT
Rgds
Gunnar
BJFox
2 Intern
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763 Posts
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January 14th, 2015 20:00
All of these power settings are too low for your CPU to work correctly. It will power throttle with these settings.
Processor Current Limit: 94.0 A - change to 130.0 A to match Core Current Limit
Turbo Boost Power Max: 71.0 W - change to 120.0 W
Turbo Boost Short Power Max: 85.0 W - change to 120.0 W
Package Turbo Power Lock: Enabled - needs to be disabled... do this first, reboot then change the above.
Your XM CPU will never achieve great performance with the Package Turbo Power Lock enabled.
Anonymous User
7 Posts
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January 15th, 2015 01:00
Dear Mr Fox,
Proposed Changes worked like a charm for approx. 5 minutes.
The XTU Benchmark could be performed with the results below. CPU temps running up to 95-100 degrees, but also severe CPU multiplier throttling.
After that --- Bang -- BSD WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR -- and reboot.
Changed back the values to 4.0GHz, now running stable. Not stable during overclocking to 4.4GHz even with one core only.
This is what came out:
Intel Core i7-4940MX CPU @ 4600.0MHz - 922 XTU marks on HWBOT
Rgds
Gunnar