Hey guys. I managed to get my hands on this great little beast of a machine the other day. I must say that this is the first time I've ever had an Alienware machine and it's definatly a flashy little machine, even if it is a bit quirky.
The machine I have has a Nvidia Geforce 9800GT, 4 gigs of ram, a Core 2 Duo running at 2.4, and a 320gig HD. I have done a fresh install of Win 7 and managed to get everything up and running well.
Here is my issue/concern. First, the only graphic drivers I've been able to get to run properly on the machine are the ones from Alienwares website. When I'ved downloaded new ones direct from Nvidia they either have caused a blue screen on startup or for the system to default to an unknown graphics driver and put me at 800X600. Has anyone else had these problems with this machine? I'm in the process of working my way back through the Nvidia driver releases looking for a release that works that came out after the Alienware ones (190 release for alienware).
Another thing. When I use the original graphics drivers and run 3dmark 06 I get a score of ~8600. I understand that 3dmark isn't a true test of the systems abilities but I have 2 other machines with the same graphics card (Clevo w/ 8800GTX and an Asus w/ 260GTX) and I know that the card can reach a much higher score. As the Alienware has the slowest Processor of the 3 I'm guessing that that's what's holding it back. After doing a fresh coat of Artict Silver 5 and a full "burn" test to max out the processors temp it only gets to about 65c with 2 copies of Prime 95 running full on so I know I've got some thermal room to overclock the processor. Unfortunatly I can't seem to find a program to run on this thing to let me overclock it! Ntune didn't work (blue screened the moment I clicked the performance tab to overclock) and I've never had good luck with clockgen. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to overclock this guy some? It's mostly going to be used as a desktop and I plan on getting a cooling pad to help with the heat issue as well.
Thanks guys, I appreciate any help you can offer.
The machine I have has a Nvidia Geforce 9800GT, 4 gigs of ram, a Core 2 Duo running at 2.4, and a 320gig HD. I have done a fresh install of Win 7 and managed to get everything up and running well.
Here is my issue/concern. First, the only graphic drivers I've been able to get to run properly on the machine are the ones from Alienwares website. When I'ved downloaded new ones direct from Nvidia they either have caused a blue screen on startup or for the system to default to an unknown graphics driver and put me at 800X600. Has anyone else had these problems with this machine? I'm in the process of working my way back through the Nvidia driver releases looking for a release that works that came out after the Alienware ones (190 release for alienware).
Another thing. When I use the original graphics drivers and run 3dmark 06 I get a score of ~8600. I understand that 3dmark isn't a true test of the systems abilities but I have 2 other machines with the same graphics card (Clevo w/ 8800GTX and an Asus w/ 260GTX) and I know that the card can reach a much higher score. As the Alienware has the slowest Processor of the 3 I'm guessing that that's what's holding it back. After doing a fresh coat of Artict Silver 5 and a full "burn" test to max out the processors temp it only gets to about 65c with 2 copies of Prime 95 running full on so I know I've got some thermal room to overclock the processor. Unfortunatly I can't seem to find a program to run on this thing to let me overclock it! Ntune didn't work (blue screened the moment I clicked the performance tab to overclock) and I've never had good luck with clockgen. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to overclock this guy some? It's mostly going to be used as a desktop and I plan on getting a cooling pad to help with the heat issue as well.
Thanks guys, I appreciate any help you can offer.
