Alienware 18.4" Benchmark Thread

ssj92 · January 24, 2022

Any 18.4" AW benches can go here. M18xR1/R2/18

Here's my M18xR2 Firestrike: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/26323934/fs/25466379/fs/16862474/fs/19775399/fs/4002945

18 Firestrike: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/26958332/fs/26616944/fs/4087150

TruenoG7 · March 9, 2022

On 1/24/2022 at 1:15 AM, ssj92 said:

Any 18.4" AW benches can go here. M18xR1/R2/18

Here's my M18xR2 Firestrike: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/26323934/fs/25466379/fs/16862474/fs/19775399/fs/4002945

18 Firestrike: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/26958332/fs/26616944/fs/4087150

I have been looking for information about the alienware 18, and I would like to know what types of screens it officially supports, and what problems or limitations it has, I have an alienware 17 r1 and I am more interested in large laptops.

Jerryzago · September 25, 2022

Now that I have my SLI back again, here is my benchmark

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/79898071

That is with the throttle off method and the dual PSU mod. Power draw was 550Watts, reading it from my mod display.

And a second one,with the CPU overclocked to 3,9GHz, using the overclock settings from here

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/79924811

GMP · September 25, 2022

My best so far for the M18x R2:

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/28345537

I think there's still room for improvement when I get my new RAM and do my planned mods for better cooling.

Expresstyle · September 28, 2022

this is with an gtx 1070 msi on AW18, it can rise a lot still, just waiting to flash an 150 tdp bios.

but the cpu 4940mx is throttling with almost every game

GMP · September 28, 2022

5 hours ago, Expresstyle said:

this is with an gtx 1070 msi on AW18, it can rise a lot still, just waiting to flash an 150 tdp bios.

but the cpu 4940mx is throttling with almost every game

What are your GPU settings here when you check your firestrike results?

image.png.264dd85f6d783f7742450163423bebf0.png

I can't go any higher than this before 3D mark starts terminating in error.

My average clock frequency is 1649MHz, but of course this is based on the card being clocked lower because of temperatures I guess (Nvidia boost 3.0).

And max voltage is 1.06V, but that is by design and can't be altered afaik.

I think I should be able to do better in graphics score somehow, maybe I should check the thermal pads and paste, but temps seem acceptable.

Your graphics score is quite a bit higher, done at normal room temperature?

What exact msi version do you have? The version 2.1 card?

And g-sync (hardware ID 1BE1) or non gsync version (hardware ID 1BA1)?

I'm hesitant to flash any other bios, wouldn't know which one anyway. And I'm not sure if the heatsink and fan (mine is 5.5CFM now) will be able to handle the heat dissipation.

I've ordered a couple of other fans also, to see if I can do a custom job and get a >10CFM fan running.

Expresstyle · September 28, 2022

54 minutes ago, GMP said:

What are your GPU settings here when you check your firestrike results?

I can't go any higher than this before 3D mark starts terminating in error.

My average clock frequency is 1649MHz, but of course this is based on the card being clocked lower because of temperatures I guess (Nvidia boost 3.0).

And max voltage is 1.06V, but that is by design and can't be altered afaik.

I think I should be able to do better in graphics score somehow, maybe I should check the thermal pads and paste, but temps seem acceptable.

Your graphics score is quite a bit higher, done at normal room temperature?

What exact msi version do you have? The version 2.1 card?

And g-sync (hardware ID 1BE1) or non gsync version (hardware ID 1BA1)?

I'm hesitant to flash any other bios, wouldn't know which one anyway. And I'm not sure if the heatsink and fan (mine is 5.5CFM now) will be able to handle the heat dissipation.

I've ordered a couple of other fans also, to see if I can do a custom job and get a >10CFM fan running.

I am using the stock heatsink, but the second mxm slot, It fits well the GPU. I get decent results because i flashed an 125w vbios ( 115w stock) i have the non gsync variant. The clock esentially its an +200mhz on core clock and +600 on vram. Temps at the Moment arent that good in gaming After a while 88 degrees Celsius but in where i live we have like 26 degrees so, but i Will put some liquid metal instead and It should to fix the thing. Try to rise the tdp. 1650mhz are pretty slow. It u Need some advice glad to help

GMP · September 28, 2022

46 minutes ago, Expresstyle said:

I am using the stock heatsink, but the second mxm slot, It fits well the GPU. I get decent results because i flashed an 125w vbios ( 115w stock) i have the non gsync variant. The clock esentially its an +200mhz on core clock and +600 on vram. Temps at the Moment arent that good in gaming After a while 88 degrees Celsius but in where i live we have like 26 degrees so, but i Will put some liquid metal instead and It should to fix the thing. Try to rise the tdp. 1650mhz are pretty slow. It u Need some advice glad to help

Yeah, from what I can tell, the card just doesn't seem to want to clock much higher than what it was designed for at the moment.

Standard clocks:

image.png.28b3adaf3cbdd02654d226ccf9e0ee77.png

When running benches, the card hoovers around the boost clock of 1645MHz constantly, with max GPU power consumption around the design TDP of 115W. So that's all normal.

But when I add 200MHz on the clock like this:

image.png.40cbb49b2dc4795b886edfc20aca0762.png

Then it still doesn't want to go any higher than the clocks before while benching. It still hoovers mostly around the 1645MHz and TDP of max around 115W.

My scores do increase marginally with a few 100 points though.

But it doesn't seem to want to go above the 1645MHz much, besides a spike of a fraction of a second that I can see to like 1750MHz. But 99.9% of the time it stays around the 1600-1690MHz mark while benching, as far as I can tell.

At +250MHz it crashes, always.

Am I running into the 115W TDP limit and that's the reason it doesn't clock higher? Do you get higher clock speeds than 1645MHz?

I also have the non g-sync version (Rev. 1.2), vbios on mine is 86.04.2F.00.3A

Is that the same as your original vbios?

Where did you get the 125W TDP bios version? I've been looking through some MSI forums, but couldn't really find anything much helpfull.

Expresstyle · September 28, 2022

24 minutes ago, GMP said:

Yeah, from what I can tell, the card just doesn't seem to want to clock much higher than what it was designed for at the moment.

Standard clocks:

When running benches, the card hoovers around the boost clock of 1645MHz constantly, with max GPU power consumption around the design TDP of 115W. So that's all normal.

But when I add 200MHz on the clock like this:

Then it still doesn't want to go any higher than the clocks before while benching. It still hoovers mostly around the 1645MHz and TDP of max around 115W.

My scores do increase marginally with a few 100 points though.

But it doesn't seem to want to go above the 1645MHz much, besides a spike of a fraction of a second that I can see to like 1750MHz. But 99.9% of the time it stays around the 1600-1690MHz mark while benching, as far as I can tell.

At +250MHz it crashes, always.

Am I running into the 115W TDP limit and that's the reason it doesn't clock higher? Do you get higher clock speeds than 1645MHz?

I also have the non g-sync version (Rev. 1.2), vbios on mine is 86.04.2F.00.3A

Is that the same as your original vbios?

Where did you get the 125W TDP bios version? I've been looking through some MSI forums, but couldn't really find anything much helpfull.

Thats normal that during benchmarks clock goes slower due that scenes are heavy and needs more Power and to keep the TDP limit It Will keep slow clocks, in firestrike i stay at 1797/ 1810 MHz. The vbios i c'è flashed its an clevo One , i tried every 125w msi vbios none of them worked Just error 44 and didnt run drivers at all.
https://easyupload.io/p3yfhh
here u got just flash it normally though nvflash.

it will give u a little boost, after that undervolt though msi afterburner +200mhz and go higher with vram. let me know dude

make a backup of ur vbios with gpuz

.download nvlash64

.put it on c:\

put vbios on c:\

open prompt command (administrator mode)

type: cd c:\

type nvflash64 -protectoff

type nvflash64 -6 nameofthebios.rom

then yes yes and so on

GMP · September 29, 2022

New Firestrike highscore.

Huge thanks to @Expresstyle for helping with a new vbios! Card can now consume up to 125W power and runs almost 10°C cooler under full load! What a crappy stock vbios that was.

With my configuration of 3940XM + single GTX 1070 I'm now in 10th place worldwide.

And I'm sure I'll be able to do better with some tweaking and extra cooling mods.

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/28453134