How strange, indeed. Maybe the 660 in x51 requires the absolutely latest driver (which wouldn't really be a surprise, if you think about it), i.e. the card requires something set but older drivers/control panels just don't set it.

If so, the solution would be to mod the latest driver.

I can't see anything of the sort in NVIDIA Control Panel. How strange.

I don't have a Performance group at all actually. Just 3D Settings, Display, Stereoscopic 3D and Video.

Why aren't the breaks showing in the text?

This is good news. It could also be a driver settings issue, because the nvidia control panel can set fan speed, too, according to the following page. Could you check if your Nvidia Control Panel has these options and if so, whether playing with the fan speeds over there have the same curing effect of what you discovered with Afterburner?

www.nvidia.com/.../performance_group.html

"Dynamically adjustable voltages and fan speeds: Adjust motherboard voltage levels without a reboot, as well as dynamically control fan speeds. New option for temperature-based fan control."

I have the exact same problem on my X51 660. They had someone come out and replace the video card and heat sink. I thought it fixed it, but it just prolonged the inevitable and the framerate started to drop and eventually fell around 8 FPS. Hopefully they are working on another driver update because I really don't want to deal with this anymore. It's only been a week since I've had it, but I'm not able to play any games unless I play them at very low settings. I don't want to return this either and have to pay a 15% restocking fee. Why should I pay for a restocking fee When it's only a week old and not even my fault.

It seems like a driver & fan speed problem.

I managed to solve it.

1st. step:

Update driver. There is a modded 306.2 available from one of the community members here: en.community.dell.com/.../19464027.aspx

2nd. step:

Download MSI Afterburner or any other program allows you to set GPU-fan speed. Set up a different curve or increase it.

When set to constant 55-70% or increased all through the curve it can handle all games (I tried) in  ultra detail in 1080p without problems.

What software program do I need to run the driver update? Once I download the driver, my computer says it can't find the proper program to run it and gives me a prompt to find a program online.

Thanks for sharing this with the community. I'll share this with the folks inside the company to help this customers :)

All, We need this information to send to Nvidia. Send me the following via private message. Click my username and then Start a Conversation -
Computer Service Tag number:
System Bios revision:
Video card driver version:

Confirmed. This isn't a Dell issue.

Seems there's a bug in all the recent nVidia drivers, including 306 that's locking down the GPU fan speed at around 30% - I've used Afterburner on my 670 and have a user defined curve that allows the fan to speed up beyond and up to 80% depending on temps. So far so good - not that I had issues, but better safe than sorry.

To make it easier for our veiwing purposes, I am locking this thread and directing all further X51/GTX660 postings to this floated thread: http://dell.to/ScUNO3

Please use that thread going forward.