970m problems

Hi All,

I had an m17x r4 built for me and received it two days ago with the 970m in.

I was told, that strangely enough the Windows Updates downloaded and installed nvidia drivers with no modifications (just thought I'd throw that out there)

So I received the laptop and windows updates installed some Intel HD 4000 drivers, upon restart I had big screen (low resolution) so I thought I'd download and install the stock nvidia drivers again (given it didn't need modifying before I thought there no reason it won't work now) but the nvidia install threw up the typical error when it doesn't detect compatible hardware, so to try and solve this issue I used FN F7 to disable optimus and use the 970m alone but when the laptop turned itself on I got the dreaded 8 beeps.

Long story short I had to remove the 970m power it on go into BIOS settings, disable legacy and use pure UEFI. Powered off, installed 970m and of course being in UEFI mode windows wouldn't boot so I formatted and installed Windows 8.1 it had Windows 7 previously.

Installed modified 359.06 for PEG and in firestrike I get like 6018.. Any score for other people ranges from 6400+ in far cry 4 ultra settings I got 28FPS average, a 780m gets 48fps with the same settings.

Power mode is set to high performance so what am I missing?

I was going to install SVL7s vbios up you have to be running in optimus and I dread using FN F7 in case I get those 8 beeps again.

Specs: Windows 8.1 pro, modified nvidia 359.06 for PEG, 970m 6GB, High Performance mode, 240w slim psu, i7 3610qm.

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I'd recommend you to check the machine's (GPU specially) temperatures.

 

Sorry I should have stated I've already checked those things out. The 970m is doing great in terms of temperatures, I'm getting 66 degrees on benches and games.

Now a little progress I made was reverting back to some old drivers and importing the newest profiles through nvidia inspecter. With that my score shot up and I got around 6500+ vs the 6118 or so before, so it seems drivers played a huge role.

One thing I'm not clear of however is there's a YouTube video of someone playing Far Cry 4 with a 780m and getting around 40+ fps, I get less with the same settings and thats before and after the driver change. So I'll have to have a look into that.

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Let us know your findings

 

perhaps he got and OC'd and unlocked 780m?

 

Good thought, the only reason I never assumed that is because there was no mention but having looked a little further into it, other videos of the 780m running that game was lower so that does really sum it up.

Good news as well, my 970m in everything else is doing great. With stock vbios (well modified to work with my alienware) I bumped the core to 135 and 100 on the mem and got 7016 in firestrike also the rise of the tomb raider maxed I'm getting between 31 to 40 so yeah I'd say it's all sorted now. I'm just waiting on a response from Tom and I'm going to look at using SVL7 vbios for some better overclocking. Would be great to achieve stock 980m speeds without any voltage increase

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what can of modification have you made to the vbios?

 

As posted above, today I tried a few games and the likelihood is he may have had an overclocked 780m because other videos did have a lower frame rate. Using nvidia inspector I done the max core overclock of +135 and 100 on memory and got just over 7k in firestrike

So I'd conclude that initially my problem lied with drivers, my second problem was watching a video of what looks to be very much like an overclocked 780m so was never going to make sense

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None, nvidia inspector says it already has a modified vbios which I'm assuming is just to make it work with the Alienware.

The vbios I'm looking to flash though from SVL7 will allow me to push the core well past 135 and also increase the power limit

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interesting... who have modified it then? i hav installed 970m in m17x r4 before and it works out of the box with stock Clevo vbios.

can you dump you vbios and send it to me so i can look what kind of modification does it have?

 

I purchased it from I guy I met on eBay, when I opened Nvidia Inspector the program showed that the vbios was a modified version, I flash SVL7's vbios today and made a backup of the vbios that was on there. I've attatched it with this message. Let me know what you find out

 

first of all it is an MSI vbios. i don't see power tables or clocks been moddified though

 

Hmm that's odd.. Is there not a Dell vbios for the Alienwares? The MSI vbios did allow me to do a 135 increase on the core, but power target was disabled.

SVL7 Vbios is great at the moment though, with the same overclock as what I had with the MSI VBIOS I got a slightly higher score.

I've just got to work out how to overclock it properly as if I try say +145 on the core clock (which is 10 more more than the last one with stock voltage and power target) it crashes, I increased voltage by. 12.5 but still crashed, I also increased power limit to 130% but still it crashed. I'm quite hesitant to bump the voltage up because I know above anything else that can kill the card.

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it seems the card has not so high ASIC quality. what is the voltage at the boost right now?