[M17x R1] GTX 680M is a success!

They always said "fortune favors the bold". Many people have said the M17x R1 cannot go beyond a GTX 285M or Mobility 5870M Crossfire. Today I am here to prove these people are WRONG! I sourced a Dell GTX 680M from my good friend @maxslo and it arrived today. No BIOS mods or vBIOS mods were necessary, literally plug and play. I present to you the most powerful M17x R1 in existence! Breathing life into a machine that was once equipped with 285M SLI and making it a relevant rig again! Now I may need some @Prema magic on the vBIOS to eliminate any random throttling but still a massive improvement! Unfortunately native fan control is not functioning and it cannot be countered with HWinfo. My guess is something drastic changed in the vBIOS structure of later AMD cards (6970M and onwards) that made them incompatible with this old BIOS structure. Every nVidia card I have ever tried has POSTed, but the 780M/880M/980M all give varying degrees of artifact.

@Mr. Fox Still better than a BGA machine lol
@katalin_2003 I've seen you were once involved with the M17x R1 and 480M/580M not working. The 680M works

 

AMEN to that!!!!

If I have to put up with BGA feces, it will be something with a value south of $500 that I can toss into a dumpster when it craps out.

 

Nice one!
Gosh, i wish the current lineup wasnt bga...

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Very nice work. Been enjoying the performance boost the 680M gives on my R2, so its going to be a huge upgrade for the R1. I'd be interested in hearing from you after testing a few games/benchmarks to see how it performs compared to my R2 as we both have the same 2GB 680M.

 

Enjoy my pitiful 3dmark11 score, I couldn't get the 680M up to full speed since not even HWinfo can control the fans, I had to drop clocks and undervolt like crazy.
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/12764755

 

It has been too many years ago now for me to remember... Does Almico SpeedFan work with the M17xR1 or R2?

 

unfortunately doesn't work for the R1. I may have to cut the PWM signal cable to the GPU fan to force full speed all the time which would be annoying...maybe I can link it into the CPU PWM cable but who knows

 

That's a shame. HWInfo fan control works fine on the R2.

 

Yes you can thank Dell for using an nVidia chipset called the MCP79 that is full of wonderful quirks....glad they went Intel from the R2 onwards

 

It worked on most models of Alienware systems from the M17xR2 forward. And, that is unusual, because there is no such functionality using HWiNFO64 on most laptops or desktops. This HWiNFO64 feature was absent on all Clevos I have owned as well as my desktop.

 

I went ahead and cut the blue wire as I suspected that was for PWM, gpu fan stays on full blast now

 

Bench with slight overclock full speed:
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/12764797


Unfortunately sleep mode is broken with this GPU, probably for the same reasons it cannot control the fan. Half of me wants to give it a try with a clevo 680M or MSI 680M but on a computer this old it just may not be worth it in the end

 

Will other cheaper Kepler cards work as well? This might breathe some life into these machines as economy and future retro.

 

I've tried the 880M and that was a no go. Some other chap tried the 670MX and that didn't work either

 

Here is my result with no overclock on the CPU or GPU:



I'll have a play around with the clocks and do another to see what i get.

 

Well I am not surprised about that card as it gives some newer machines troubles but will cheap quadros of the same era of the 680m is what I am wondering. Sad though the 670mx didn't work.

 

780M and K3100M were also no gos. Interestingly enough there is a single report of the Quadro M1000M working, but there has been no verified account of this.

 

Quadro Mx00M series certainly would be a very nice upgrade, I know that Kx100M cards give some machines troubles despite having no issue at all ruining slightly older Kx000M cards without issue so maybe there is a chance there though I find it odd that it booted and ran the 680m just fine but won't run other cards of the same gpu. Is this 680M different from others by chance such as the bios rom or some other difference?

 

Not so much vBIOS differences as differences in the core and how the IRQs interact with the system BIOS.

 

Back in the good old days of DOS IRQs were easier to managed so there wouldn't be problems like that. Thanks for all the help it is really appreciated!

 

Wow, this thing is ancient. I would love to work on one of these. This thing predates first generation i7's that were put in M15xR1's. Now that is a little beast. Ive seen 980M's in those little guys.

 

Well looks like the Quadro K4000m works in this machine as someone is selling an R2 with one installed.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Alienware-...480703&hash=item33eae0beeb:g:448AAOSwUWpa~1B9

 

Not all cards that work in the R2 work in the R1. Example: 8970M works in R2, will not pass POST in R1

 

Which Nvidia drivers are you using currently?

I've a 680M on a M17xR3 running Windows 10 and none of the new drivers work properly for me. Currently using 397.64.

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Reading this post made me revisit my old laptops.

My wife has a m17x R2 that had xfire 5870's that both died 1 after the other. I got her an nvidia 765m and that sucked as I had to disable HD audio in the bios and she could only listen to sound with usb headphones. Also, she decided it was ok to do a windows update that basically stopped using the modded graphics drivers.

Sooo, I grabbed my m18x r2 with a 660m in it and proceeded to swap it in her laptop and immediately turned HD audio back on booted in safe mode and ran DDU and came back in and installed the latest modded gpu drivers. HD audio and graphics driver installed fine and failed on something or the other, but I was ok with that! The card is working great, but the fan doesn't spin up on its own. It requires using HWinfo to get it going right. Still on the search for something that'll make it more automated.

After I was done with that, putting the 765m in the m18x r2 was a breeze. I don't even need to control the fans on this one.

Out of all that the only bad thing was swapping the cross brackets. The bracket I put on the 660m from the 765m appears to not let the heatsink make as tight of a clamp down on the gpu die as i'd like and I think i am going to be looking for a copper shim.

 

Is the 680M "solution" for R1 cutting the blue wire and running a L adapter on 240W w/o center pin? I just found a R1 on CL and I have a 680M. Is it decent for gaming minus no suspend?

What about adjusting the power to the fan down to 3.3v via a regulator and cutting blue wire to get semi max fans? Or add own PWM generator chip to run at 80% or so.

 

Honestly, no. The qx9300 is a tired chip even overclocked. 680M at a minimum needs 920xm

 

crud, Ok ordering a R2 mobo to swap in.