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    8970m vBios tweaking for M17x R2 (Crossfire?)

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by CountPrinky, Apr 1, 2016.

  1. CountPrinky

    CountPrinky Notebook Enthusiast

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    I've been playing around with the 8970m for a while now and its a fantastic upgrade for the R2.
    The Clevo vBios seems to work and in a single card setup is pretty much flawless and never really even gets warm. Running two in crossfire the computer would run it about 20% of the time and crash or lock up.

    Had trouble turning it on a few times, would get the flashing lights as if no video card was detected, but then if i took out the battery, unplugged it and then tried to start it on just the battery and then putting the cord in while it was turning on it would post correctly but then freeze at all different points during the post. I was able to run fallout 4 windowed for a while before freezing after quitting the game.

    With how the computer behaved with the two cards in crossfire I'm thinking that some tweaking could get this to work but I believe is just out of my skill level now. I'm only using the OEM 240w PSU

    (from all the reading I've done it didn't seem like modding the PSU did anything , could be wrong tho.)

    I'm getting a "UEFI will be disabled" when i go to open the bios to mod and this is where I'm over my head.

    [​IMG]

    Thanks for looking! Thanks for any help at all!

    *edit* added vbios tool that seems be the only one that opens it.
    (still not sure what settings I'm looking at tho)
     

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    Last edited: Apr 6, 2016
    CountPrinky, Apr 1, 2016
    #1
  2. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox BGA Filth-Hating Elitist

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    It is possible the "UEFI will be disabled" is a good thing since the M17xR2 does not support UEFI. There is a possibility that having it disabled might cure some of the things you are experiencing with CrossFire versus single GPU. I am not an expert on this. It may be something that @Prema might know the answer to.
     
    Mr. Fox, Apr 1, 2016
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  3. CountPrinky

    CountPrinky Notebook Enthusiast

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    bump

    I'll take anything for tools that will let me mod the bios.
    Should I be worried about the 4gb since its a tool designed for a 2gb card? If I just open the vbios with the tool above and save the disabled UEFI bios would that be all I need to do? or would I really need to get into the voltages and clock speeds? I have my blind flash usb on standby so if I could just know what to look out for and what are the chances of permanently bricking?
     
    CountPrinky, Apr 9, 2016
    #3