*OFFICIAL* Alienware M18x Benchmark Thread - Part 2

[Mr. Fox]

Fox do you ever get crashes at those clocks or can you play all games fine with those? Referring to your 33k vantage ones.

With Vantage, I get driver crashes way too often at those clock speeds. For every awesome Vantage run like those killer scores I have posted, there are probably 20 or more failed runs due to driver crashes. I also find that I have to change the NVIDIA profile after a few runs or the FPS start dropping. If I use a custom profile, switch to "Use my preference emphasizing: Performance" make a run, switch to a custom profile again, the FPS go back up. As soon as Jane Nash starts running, if my FPS are not around 122, and around 100 when the jet ski goes into the tunnel by the boat, I simply escape out because there is no point in letting Vantage continue to run. The end score will be no better than average.

It's funny how much more stable 3DMark11 is than Vantage. I always had the exact same issues with Vantage running AMD CrossFire. "Display driver [amdkmdap/nvlddmkm] stopped responding and has successfully recovered." Vantage is simply not as stable a benchmark program for overclocking as 3DMark11 under Windows 7 based on my user experience. (See attached thumbnail.) I think part of it is TDR issues with both AMD and NVIDIA drivers when running Vantage... not 100% sure of that. The Vantage CPU tests last so long that controlling overclocked CPU temps also requires a lot more effort than 3DMark11's shorter tests.

I can run game benchmarks at the same clock speeds (Crysis, Crysis 2, Metro2033 and Alien vs. Predator) without driver crashes and no CPU/GPU temp impediments. Now and then Crysis benchmark will hang if I have my CPU or GPU overclocked too far. I always play games at stock clock speeds. I find the GTX 580M SLI and XM CPU have more than ample horsepower for gaming and personally find no need for overclocking to play games.

[littleone562]

Appreciate that info Fox bro.

[Mr. Fox]

Finally got the Vertex 3 SSD in RAID0 and my data drive moved to the optical drive bay.



Only thing left to do now is get the eSATA external enclosure for my slot-load BD-RE drive.

[DanXbix]

Nice Fox those speeds are amazing! are you noticing speed bump? did you raid 0 vertex3 with your crucial?

[Mr. Fox]

Yes, it is noticeable. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere snap open almost instantly.

No, I replaced the 128GB M4 with 2 Vertex 3 240GB SSD that I got on sale for about $200 each. They are not quite a fast as the M4, but close enough that it would never be noticeable, especially in RAID0.

I think I might get another optical bay caddy from the same place (it was dirt cheap) and use the M4 SSD in the optical bay of my work laptop for a dual boot setup switching boot priority during post. (It has a hot-swappable bay with an eject feature.)

[ahmadmud]

amazing results with those two ssds in raid0, but is there a trim support for raid0 at the moment?

[Mr. Fox]

Not yet... should be before too long. But, I can use CCleaner to maintain it manually until the new RST is released. Only need to wipe the free space now and then.

[ahmadmud]

do you mean the Drive Wiper function? if so does it perform the same job as trim?

[Mr. Fox]

New 3DMark11 record for moi (and the leaderboard)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P8516 3DMarks

[BorntoPumpGas]

Congrats Fox great numbers!!! +1 for you !!!