DELL M18X A03 BIOS THROTTLE REMOVAL GTX580M SLI

[AHMED HOSSAM]

This will be very interesting , do it and i will wait. For it

also , no way to do this in the 18X , as there is no bios that has ECFW which hasn`t got throttle .

there ECFW codes are heavily changed between the A04 A07 or A08 .......... when you see the huge difference , you can say its completely ne FW for these versions !

I trust Mumak doing this mission he has experience in all ECFW .

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i hasn`t modified ECFW in this bios , just integrate modified modules ( ECFW Is not existed to modify )

in worst case , the ECFW is never touched and you can use blind recovery .

Well if thats the case im going to ring dell now and get the original A00 bios which should have the ECFW try anyway!

[barcode]

We are walking in complete darkness. We don't even know what causes the throttle. I say it is temps. It cannot be power. It's always 870mV under heavy load and if the temps do not exceed 80*C the cards are not throttled.

Identify the cause first and then start your modifications. Furmark is no good. 5*0m line and the drivers are made so to downclock while a user is running particular applications like Furmark for example.

Barcode, make sure you properly identify when the throttle kicks in. Heat up the cards up to 80*C and see what happens. Do not run 3Dmarks. Run some demanding game (e.g. crysis 2) and force the GPU fans to spin slowly using hwinfo. You should be able to reach 80*C easily enough.

lol arn't you suffering the throttle as well from 80c, Dont know what other throttle it can be for me as the cpu doesnt pass 77c as well.

The M17x users all experienced this below 70c. Clevo branded 580m never experienced this, so its Dell doing it.

Frankly i have never experience throttle in gaming everything set to high crysis 2 metro temps only get to 65/68 in gaming - its only in benching i see throttle, which i'm ready to give up and deal with it as its not really effecting my gaming.

Tnx

[Angelknight010]

I am very sorry that my boss has sent me out to contact our customers,now I com back

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angelknight : can you tell me please from which post you have downloaded this A00 bios , as i want to remember is this modified or original one .

Also i just noticed his using a 2960xm cpu. I'm 100% sure A00 bios will not support this as well.
The only difference between A02 and A03 was cpu support and a few gpu fan control adjustments added according to dell support page

My m18x came with a02 bios from the factory and I replaced the 2720qm with 2960xm without updating the bios.this is interesting

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Barcode : try using this modified flash utility for flashing the original A00 ( posted by johnkss ) .
then try flashing the modified A00 bios attached with the modified utility :-

http://www.mediafire.com/?il8lurhiulblmf7

i will wait your reply now

I will have a try

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With a02 and a03 bios,when I am using Aida64 CPU stability test or any other stability test tool,no matter what the temp is,even at 55 degrees,the CPU throttle to under 4000mhz,and I tested my 2960xm on my friend's m18x with bios A00, the throttle always happen above 70 degree,and on his machine,the win 7 CPU score is 4.8,but on mine,the score downwarJd to 4.7,I test this for 10+ times and it can't be a mistake.a lot guys in the forum Dell.benyouhui.it168.com has confirmed this.
BTW. I am in China and I must work when you are in the time of relax,so my reply may be slow,I appreciate for this

[johnksss]

What's exactly modified there? I see the EC FW is untouched.

i made a test, if someone wants to test... i tried to remove throttle.

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I'm sorry too, but this can happen in the area of BIOS mods.. I said from the beginning that modifying the EC FW is not easy and should be made with care.
Do you really think this case won't be handled within warranty?
What if John would say that during BIOS reflash he lost power? would they handle it? for sure there's no need to replace the whole mobo, they just need to reflash it using hardware adapter (JTAG).

So now your computer is a brick and its not even covered by warranties etc. This has turned from having a healthy testing for the better of everyone to a result of a completely unusable motherboard for Johnkss. I feel like his motherboard was avoidably made unusable, I'm very sorry this happened John. How much will the motherboard cost to replace? No intended offence to anyone, I'm just disturbed it happened. Won't it cost hundreds?

in that case Mumak... Yes John should be able to claim he updated to the new Dell a03 and hand the power cut out. In that case they should cover it free. That's a bit better. Poor guy though is gonna be waiting for a little and now has to deal with the poorly computer educated whom Dell hires for their tech support (not all but definitely some bad nuts) to put the case through. In my experience it was very frustrating. I went through trouble on a complete exchange, thankfully John wont need that. John sorry you will have no system for awhile.

I simply meant dell wouldn't cover any bios modding. I have advanced warranty with accidental too. Thank god you can just say it was a bad flash with their stock bios.

Hi All ,

First , i`m sorry for John`s notebook as it was bricked by my modified bios but you should understand how the bios was modified :-

i have extracted the EC FW then read the Data sheet and found this page :-



This is clearly visible that i should modify these values to change fan speeds ( page 84 in the data sheet )
i had modified these values in the given example ( i didn`t make any calculations and the mod was in a given example , just read p84 and you will find what i mean ) then said that i need someone to test .
i knew that ECFW mod is dangerous but when John said that he will try it , i didn`t worry as he had mentioned in previous replies in NBR that he has got full warranty for his notebook..............and i knew that full warranty covers all accidental problems . so , i didn`t say to him not to try the bios as he can easily change the mobo .

This means that i only modified the values written in the example in the Datasheet however , it bricked your notebook ............ so i think i haven`t made anything wrong deliberate............. i just followed the steps written in the datasheet .

-Mumak has got far more information than me and he told me ( after John flashed the bios ) that this was wrong as i shouldn`t have modified these values and i should have disassembled the EC FW to find the correct registers .................. Mumak has disassembled many fw before and sure he is the right one who will do this ............... i will watch you Mumak to learn

-Camilo , i think that modifying DSDT will not fix this.................this DSDT hasn`t got enough values and info. to edit.............it doesn`t contain any THERMAL ZONE codes ,, doesn`t have the pnp0b0c device identified inside DSDT ( fan device ) ,, doesn`t contain any fan speeds configurations ,, thermal options are only for cpu ,, ECRAM region has got information about if the fans are on or off and other options will not help ( i have checked it before and read some sections in the ACPI datasheet and i can confirm that this DSDT has no options to edit for fan speed or thermal zones ).................... you should read the ECFW datasheet and watch Mumak with me to learn from him

-John , i think after you read this post , you will knew that it`s 100% sure that i didn`t deliberate bricking your notebook and i just followed steps in the datasheet.............and i`m sorry that your notebook was bricked .......... i`m sure warranty will replace it for free as i read in previous posts in NBR that you have full warranty and i faced this problem before with DELL ( replacing mobo because of bricked bioschip ) and they have no problem replacing it...........just tell them you have flashed their stock bios then power was cut .
also , you shouldn`t flash any modified EC FW after this but i trust Mumak as he is the correct one to do this


Now , i have done all my best in this and i will just watch Mumak and learn from him

We are walking in complete darkness. We don't even know what causes the throttle. I say it is temps. It cannot be power. It's always 870mV under heavy load and if the temps do not exceed 80*C the cards are not throttled.

Identify the cause first and then start your modifications. Furmark is no good. 5*0m line and the drivers are made so to downclock while a user is running particular applications like Furmark for example.

Barcode, make sure you properly identify when the throttle kicks in. Heat up the cards up to 80*C and see what happens. Do not run 3Dmarks. Run some demanding game (e.g. crysis 2) and force the GPU fans to spin slowly using hwinfo. You should be able to reach 80*C easily enough.

lol arn't you suffering the throttle as well from 80c, Dont know what other throttle it can be for me as the cpu doesnt pass 77c as well.

The M17x users all experienced this below 70c. Clevo branded 580m never experienced this, so its Dell doing it.

Frankly i have never experience throttle in gaming everything set to high crysis 2 metro temps only get to 65/68 in gaming - its only in benching i see throttle, which i'm ready to give up and deal with it as its not really effecting my gaming.

Tnx

not tripping, it's getting replaced. and i didn't have to tell a bunch of stories to do it. i flashed a a03 bios and it bricked my laptop. but now im on the fence about upgrading at the moment. might upgrade to an oem 2920xm or the 2960xm (which they don't have - haha)


as to this throttle issue...one of you needs to take the laptop apart and run dry ice on top of the gpu. then bench it. this will drop the temps well below 20C to 30C with it just sitting on the gpu heat sinks. this should have the gpus running full speed. you using high speed fans isn't going to cut it..sorry. you need to keep them below 45C on a full run. if they throttle...then you can forget about it being just temps. but if it doesn't.....

[Mumak]

Hmm.. In the latest build of HWiNFO64 I integrated what a Compal doc was saying - commands to enable/disable GPU throttling.
Ahmed, see CMD 0x45 + 0x10/0x11. I checked the EC FW and those commands really toggle a variable in the FW which I hoped would disable the throttling.
It's disappointing to see that it doesn't work Anyone else to confirm it ?

0x29a: could you please run the RW-Everything tool and create 2 EC dumps while not throttling and throttling ? I'll analyse it and check further....

One thing is what's triggering the throttle - if temperature or power cunsumption. But more important is how can the EC tell the GPU to throttle, because it has no access to PCI or host memory space so it could interact with the GPU.. Do you think there's a dedicated pin routed from EC to GPU which triggers it? If we would find how it's controlled, it would be easier for me to locate this inside the EC FW...

[Angelknight010]

Well guys,I have tried the modified insydeflash to flash the original a00 bios,and nothing happened,the throttling issue still exist and at the other hand,the a00 bios can suppot 6990m and 2920xm well.so I think the conclusion is that the problem is the EC firmware,hopefully to find a bios a00 including proper EC firmware !
Again,thanks to all guys,thanks,

[barcode]

   

Ooookay.. I made a test build of HWiNFO64 and added new controls to switch GPU throttling on/off in the Fan Control dialog of sensors. I don't know if it will work...
barcode - please get this beta build:
www.hwinfo.com/beta/hw64_385_1365.zip
Run, open sensors, then go to Fan Control, switch the new GPU Throttling options, test it and let me know if/how it works !

Thanks Mumak! the fans functions works perfect! max 5200rpm
Throttling function didnt work tho!

As you can see from my screen attached with fans full bolt and the card overclocked to 800MHZ throttle was experience pretty much 5sec after running 3dmark vantage and as you can see the temps didnt pass 54c /52c

So this to me now confirms its not temp related its more like a power related protection. From who! This still remains to be answered.
Nvidia or Dell!

Nvidia same cards 580m on different branded notebooks are seeing no throttle for example clevo and a few others.

Dell m17x experienced it after A04 BIOS and then was fixed, so im totally leaning towards DELL.

I will go try a few different gpu tests now not 3dvantage maybe its vantage as per nvidia's statement

[Mumak]

I see.. Please create the requested RW-Everything so I can analyse it.

[barcode]

I see.. Please create the requested RW-Everything so I can analyse it.

No problem how do i do this! So i can get it right!
Both throttled and non throttled

[Mumak]

Download the tool from http://rweverything.phpnet.us
Run, click the EC button and save one dump before you start the test. Then run the test and when you experience throttle switch to RW-Tool and create new dump