Alienware Alpha - Stuttering

Intervein · April 2015

So, I recently picked up an Alienware Alpha (lowest end model with the i3) for the wife. The only games that she has installed on it right now are ESO and Sims 4. Sims 4 plays without any hitches and she is entirely happy with that game; however, ESO is another story. Just for preliminary purposes, yes I have updated drivers, cleaned booted (despite this being brand new, removed Alien Ui) and so forth. At first, I thought the issue was simple. This mini PC comes with a 5400 rpm hard drive that I thought was causing my stutters. Well, I was stubborn and decided to have MSI afterburner/RivaTuner watch my temps/gpu usage/cpu usage, etc. I've noticed that gpu is reaching its power limit at times and this seems to be what is causing a sudden frame drop. So, I activated adaptive vsync via Nvidia settings, which forces the game to play at a paltry 30 fps. The Gtx 860m chip inside of the alpha presets to ultra-high and was nearly capable of keeping up with my desktops Gtx 760 in terms fps, albeit the frame drops were more frequent. I'm going to attempt to get a few good hours are gaming in with it today: dungeons, farming, etc and make some notes about cpu usage and gpu usage, temps (although it was staying at 69C at 99 percent gpu usage).

I've tinkered with the idea of raising the power limit slightly via Afterburner. Any thoughts/ideas? Constructive responses will be appreciated. Thanks.

(I will post some screenshots of Afterburner/Rivatuner later on if any fellow nerds wish to help me figure this out.)

Flynch · April 2015

Have you tried running it in fullscreen-windowed mode rather than fullscreen? May do absolutely nothing, but worth a shot.

LameoveR · April 2015

Intervein wrote: »

(although it was staying at 69C at 99 percent gpu usage).

I've tinkered with the idea of raising the power limit slightly via Afterburner. Any thoughts/ideas? Constructive responses will be appreciated. Thanks.

(I will post some screenshots of Afterburner/Rivatuner later on if any fellow nerds wish to help me figure this out.)

You better not raise the power limit. It really can damage your whole notebook's motherboard.
69C and 99% gpu load is OK for D3D11 driver.
Better try next steps:
open %userprofile%\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live(or liveeu for EU server)
open usersettings.txt
find strings

SET RequestedNumJobThreads "-1"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "-1"
and change it to
SET RequestedNumJobThreads "0"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "0"

find string contains "D3D11"
change D3D11 to D3D9 and take a look.

Apokh · April 2015

Is setting the presets to a lower level than ultra no option?

Rune_Relic · April 2015

Hvae you tried the invidia game profiles and the optimise option for ESO ?

I have a gtx 770 and never have an issue with graphics performance ...just pvp lag.
I unparked all processors a while back.

Intervein · April 2015

Thanks for all of the responses. I've actually tried all of the above to little or no effect. Occasionally the gpu hits its power limit still and drops frames. I imagine this is just because the Alpha runs a 130W supply and just cannot supply more juice to stabilize the components--lest they overheat the internals. It is possible this darn thing could be defective; however, I think I will just return it and proceed in not being lazy and build myself a cheap m-itx that will be a bit better overall.

Once again, I appreciate the responses.

SapphireThunder · April 2015

For the price of Alienware, that's probably best.

i5-4440, Asus mITX LGA1150 board and Gigabyte GTX960 ITX edition and 8GB RAM and you're set.
Also of course mITX case and some 300W psu. And some 240-256GB SSD.

Total price being somewhere around 500-600$.

Belrim · April 2015

Instead of using the nVidia driver's adaptive v-sync or any other sync, try downloading nVidia Inspector, and set the game profiles (accessible via the screwdriver/wrench button in the program UI) framerate limiter to 30-40 fps. Worth a shot. Do remember to disable the vsync in driver + ingame settings so they dont interfere.

I play on mobile hardware quite often too, with i7 + gt750m gpu, and have limited the frames to 40 with inspector, disabled ingame shadows, ambient occlusion and anti-aliasing.. Keeps the lappy relatively cool and runs smooth. Gpu load usually around 40-60%.

LameoveR · April 2015

@Belrim thank you very much for Inspector!

Intervein · April 2015

I use Inspector actually on my main machine. I did not think of using the Inspector on the Alienware, but I just opted on taking it back. I watched the voltages via Hwmonitor during a stress test set to 768p so I could easily watch everything. Putting the GPU usage ~60% causes the T-model of the i3 to become unstable due to lack of voltage. Utilizing the gpu more than 60 percent, say around 90 percent has the same effect but just happens more often. So I just decided to take the thing back and build another system myself.

I do appreciate all of the replies and solutions given! Perhaps another person will see them and the information will be enough to fix their hardware issue. Good day fellows!