Hi everyone. I have had a bit of search around but I have not found anything yet pertaining to my issue. I have an Alienware 17 R1 (Late 2013 model). It originally came with an i7 4900, a GTX780m, 120hz 3D panel with intel graphics disabled. I have just got a Dell GTX980m 8GB (BIOS 84.04.2F.00.79 - Device ID 10DE 13D7-1028 05AE) and put it in and it works fine getting into windows and running 2D. However, when I run any decent 3D the graphics constantly hits power limiter and downclocks to around 800mhz. This is confirmed to be power limit in gpuz perfcap reason and this happens regardless of temperature. Running a Unigine benchmark has actually showed the card's performance to be just lower than the 780m I replaced. Using HWiNFO64 I have found that the GPU is being limited to 80 watts. It briefly goes up to over 100 watts but drops to 80.
Power Supply is 240 watt
This laptop always runs off mains power and the battery only lasts a few seconds regardless of apparent charge.
I should also mention that I have tried,
Setting nvidia control panel power management mode to prefer maximum performance.
Disabling Battery Boost in nvidia geforce experience
Setting windows power options to high performance
I have even installed a fresh windows 10 on a different hard drive and have observed the same result.
Has anyone else done this upgrade and had no issues, are there any known fixes, is this card faulty or just not going to work correctly.
Thanks
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Any different with no battery? Or borrow someone's good one? Adapter warning disabled in BIOS?
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But did you disable the adapter warning? Read a few folks recommended that.
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Did you install normal NVIDIA drivers or modded ones?
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Last edited: Dec 4, 2018 -
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6642 total in firestrike. Graphics score 7732 That is with the high performance setting in mobility centre
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/30937263 -
https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...vbios-mods-900m-series-overclocking-versions/ -
I'm not able to download from techinferno. That's what I meant to put above. I mistakenly typed techpowerup.
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OK. Flashed modded OC bios. NO POWER THROTTLING! It did however hard lock at the default clocks so I've had to lower the clocks back down to standard. This card card just may not be an overclocker.
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With the modded bios whenever I go above 48 - 50% power limit, or about 100 watts I am getting a black screen crash. The audio still runs though so it's like the video has just failed but doesn't it reset. Would this be VRM overheating?
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Alright, I'll try it, but i'll increase voltage slowly. At this point i'm just trying to get it to run at stock clocks.
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You might be right. Its been quite a while. I honestly don't remember anymore
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Just a heads up @michaelgqld , The 980M will blackscreen (most of them at-least), GPU board is lacking VRMs. Only way to mitigate this is get the extra VRMs soldered on the GPU or don't exceed the temperatures / power consumption. And get a vBIOS with 1.000V, Prema stock is made based off the numerous tests, and it will offer high performance but at the cost of high temperatures and high voltage.
Also you need a Notepal U3 modded with Triple Fans (thanks to brother @Papusan ) with an M17x R4 GPU fan (more CFM than the AW 17 R1 + an M17x R3 CPU fan both offer high performance than the stock R1 Ranger fans.
Make sure you check this BIOS thread and GPU 1070 MXM thread there is a lot of information in these threads regarding the 17 R1. So please go through them, It's been a long time since this machine came, they should help you out. By the way unless you want UWP store and DX12 gaming there's no reason to use Windows 10, I don't know whether you know or not the Win10 is an absolute disaster (Check out that subforum, Win10 threads). You can use 8.1 UEFI boot instead, well at-least until 2020, since past 2020 January, Win7 will be decommissioned Win8.1 is used by a fraction, so no one will care about this OS and M$ is pushing heavily for that SaaS Windows and UWP lockdown and UEFI Class III, unfortunate, But you can always maintain the same OS and Drivers and play the best games that are released before it anyways Gaming is also going GaaS (Games as a service) models.
Hope that helps.
Edit : Forgot the 980M blackscreen thread link.Last edited: Dec 9, 2018Papusan likes this. -
@Ashtrix Thanks so much for the info, this is the sort of thing I was looking for. So basically what you are saying is that the standard 980M just isn't designed to run in the AW 17 at the stock clock speeds without modification or heavy cooling?
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Ashtrix likes this.
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If there is anyone that can modify bios's in this way, or modify the one I have to be able to adjust the power target, I would be interested in having it done for a pre arranged donation.
I have new thermal pads and kryonaught arriving tomorrow so i'll see what happens then. -
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With slv7/prema, it gets into the 80's C, but the black screen thing happens before it peaks. With the 80 watt limit, it peaks at around 70C. I also live in Queensland Australia so ambient room temp is a problem here.
I have no issues with fan speed, at least to the point of them running and speeding up when things get hot. This is with the default vbios. Gpu fan turns off at 45 and on again at 50 and speeds up with temp. If I try to use hwinfo fan control, the GPU fan stops completely and won't restart until reboot.Last edited: Dec 11, 2018 -
@michaelgqld Where did you buy the card from ? Honestly It's a sad state that the miner thing took down everything from the used GPUs rammed 24/7 in miner farms sold on eBay etc to Nvidia going greedy and stopping Pascal production and selling overstock, to push for more of their failed RTX BS. The mining takes the cards down at GPU traces levels, from that I understand. It's really bad situation for the used GPU market, for BGA trash it's horrible.
The 980M card in my machine if cooled can reach to 130W-140W without Blackscreen but even so, high tessellation will eventually push it like for example - running that MassEffect - Andromeda, Galaxy Map for a long time. My GPU needs to be cooled then It won't crash but as soon as the VRMs heat up still unfortunately you don't know when, because the temperature monitoring doesn't exist for these components, rely on rough analysis, a temp rise on the GPU Core directly proportional to the heat around the surrounding area/components + more current at the specific voltage = more heat output.
Take a look at that 980M thread (last couple of pages, read them), a fellow Ranger brother has a modified vBIOS plus a Dell vBIOS, maybe you can try them, it's your choice. Also to note both Svl7/Johnksss and Prema vBIOSes run overclocked but Prema has higher clocks and more voltage as well which often tends to be pushing the "normal 980Ms" to limits without cooling, also the AW17 R1 GPU heatsink is not that efficient to push that high power consumption at 140-150W UNLESS you have a U3 modified. But 80W cap is unusual, never seen it, Plus you also mentioned the GPU behaves same in your friend's machine. I'm guessing the GPU is having some issue.
Another tip, use Gelid GC Extreme, have been using since like 4Years on both GPU and CPU. Solid TIM, Kryonaut iirc is not that viscous as Gelid, plus about those Phobya pads, make sure you get the proper dimensions, barely game nowadays, work eats away all my time sadly. So didn't happen to replace them. PLUS if you are seeing too high temps and playing a CPU intensive game or consuming more resources the PCH will also get heated up (PCH has higher endurance no worries there but just a thing to keep in mind), radiating more heat to the GPU and vice-versa. So it's a must to keep the system cool.
Another thing, maybe the you should also look at the 1070 upgrade thread since I had posted about the HWInfo manual controls, about the EC options to select in HWInfo, Embedded Controller - which has most of the low level HW control, like fans, when you flash the sBIOS this machine runs the fans at top RPM capacity, That's the only point when the AW17R1 runs it's fans to MAX. A shame this cannot be reproduced with any load you put on the system, that's Dell screwing up past privatization.
Finally, take good care of the machine, The last of the true Alienwares and the last of rPGA socket capable system without issues, can even upgrade to 4930MX processor, the last Mobile Extreme series, you have other options like Precision Haswell gen but AW17 R1 can be upgraded easily without issuesLast edited: Dec 12, 2018Papusan likes this. -
Bit of an update. @Ashtrix the card is an ebay purchase. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/nVidia-...m23b5d9a126:g:nWoAAOSwu7hbSFzV&frcectupt=true I cannot get the Gelid paste in Australia when I looked which is why I got the cryonaught. I bought the copper 5 pipe and 4 pipe ranger heat sink upgrades on ebay and got fans for both cpu and gpu replaced with high cfm models and also bought the Coolermaster U3 though it is not modded, I'm not sure I wont to go cutting holes in it just yet. I can now run the CPU at a higher wattage fine which it great, but I still have issues with the mosfet overheat black screen on the GPU. I am downloading Andromeda as I'm typing this to try things but at the moment I am just running the card with the stock VBIOS as it performs about the same as when I power limited the SVL7 but runs cooler. I want to get the fujipoly pads but I cannot order from Amazon USA and to buy them here is very expensive for some reason, even when converting for exchange rate and adding tax etc, they are more than double the price than if I would be able to get them from Amazon USA. I am having the very occasional gpu crash with the default BIOS when the card is hit and it clocks to 1127 or w/e mhz even with the voltage increased to max that the standard vbios will allow in MSI afterburner and I'm begining to wonder if one of the MOSFETs is damaged from the black screen overheating maybe causing a voltage delivery issue to the core. How do I go about adding the extra MOSFETs and does anyone know what part number etc to order, I should probably replace all of them if I get it done?
Last edited: Mar 29, 2019
Alienware 17 R1 (Late 2013) GTX980m Power Limiting
Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by michaelgqld, Dec 3, 2018.