Hello everyone!
I'm a long time reader of NoteBook Review and NoteBookTalk as they are a great ressource for laptop modding.
I recently managed to grab one of the PNY RTX3000 on ebay for 100€ (a bargain!) to replace my aging Quadro P4000.
The installation goes fine since i have the 5 pipes full copper gpu heatsink from Cicichen and i carefully cover with thermal pad every part necessary.
After having some trouble modding the nvdmwi.inf file i finally get it to install properly and now start the trouble.
My issue is the following :
- My GPU core won't boost higher than 945MHz (wich is base clock) and won't consume more than ~30W
- The PerfCap Reason is "PwrThm" while on battery (see the first image) and only "Pwr" when plugged in while doing the GPU-Z test (see second image)
- While gaming, the limit reason in MSI Afterburner is "No Load" and GPU-Z says the card is in "Idle" while reporting almost 100% utilisation.
I spend the last few days testing mutiple things :
- Revert the bios to default and revert my cpu overclocking --> no effect
- Tinker with the different driver parameter : prefer high performance, dedicate the graphic card to gpu intensive task etc --> no effect
- Activate/Deactivate GPU Hardware Scheduling --> no effect
- Windows 10 fresh install on another ssd --> strange results as the PerfCap Reason changed to "idle" everytime but same clock speed (~945MHz) and power consumption (30 to 40W)
- Plug out the graphic card, verifiy thermal pad placements, reseat the gpu in the MXM slot etc --> no effect
I carefully read all the other topic on this subject bt didn't find anything helpful for my case.
If anyone has any ideas i'm all ears, otherwise i might just put back my venerable Quadro P4000.
Thanks in advance!
Edit (25/02/2024):
After gathering the experiments from many people and making many test, the actual conclusion to this topic is :
- The PNY/Adlink Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 doesn't work with the Haswell generation Alienwares (17 R1 nor 18 Viking)
- The same card works flawlessly on previous generation Alienwares M17x R4 and M18x R2 (for more info on M17x R4 performance, look into this thread and for M18x R2 look into @ssj92 threads)
- The issue doesn't seem power related (even though 240W is the bare minimum to make this card run, see my experiment below) as some user reports having the same issue with either 240W or 330W power supply.
- The resistor mod was tried on the M18x R2 by @ssj92 and didn't help in any way stabilizing the Thermal+Power throttling issue
- As the HP variant of the Quadro RTX3000 (and above) are reported to work flawlessly on either Alienware generation an attempt to flash the HP vBios was made by @ssj92. The vBios flash was unsuccesfull as the vBios chip wasnt recognized by neither Nvflash nor the external programmer.
So far, the best easy upgrades (without chassis or heatsink modifications) are Nvidia Quadro P4000/P5000 or standard Gtx 1060.
I know there are some standard form factor Gtx 1070 but their reliability seems questionnable.
Once again, thanks a lot to all the people who took the time to look into my issue!
