Alienware m9750 SLi 3dMarks

[Guest trias10]

I've been doing a lot of benchmarking in 3dMark06 for the AW m9750 with dual GeForce Go 7950 GTX running in SLi. I've also been getting some "strange" behavior, and I'm really curious if any other m9750 users are experiencing the same. I use no laptop cooler.

I have the 2.33 Ghz T7600 and 2 gigs system ram.

My Benchmarks look something like this (all benchmarking done using the Alienware 94.23 drivers):

Fresh install of Windows XP and just the chipset, nvidia, and sound card drivers: 8747 (highest I could ever reach)

Now, after installing the rest of the drivers, as well as my other software, what I tend to do is shutdown the machine completely, power it up in the morning, and run several 3dMark06 runs back-to-back:

1st run: 8608

2nd run: 8534

3rd run: 8357

4th run: 8213

5th run: 8187

6th - infinity: averages to about 8200 give or take a few points up or down

It looks like a heat curve to me. It makes sense it benchs its best right in the morning after a start up, and then gets progressively slower as the system warms up, and then finally stabilizes at some number (about 8200 in my case).

I'm really interested to know if any other m9750 SLi users are getting numbers in this range. If possible, try running 3dMark06 after playing some intense 3d games for a while in order to bring the system up to full running heat, because that's where your long term baseline average is. I'm really curious about other's results because I think for a system of this caliber should be scoring higher in consecutive 3dMark06 runs.