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    Alienware 17 R1 (Late 2013) GTX980m Power Limiting

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by michaelgqld, Dec 3, 2018.

  1. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    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
     
  2. 2CPU

    2CPU Notebook Evangelist

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    Any different with no battery? Or borrow someone's good one? Adapter warning disabled in BIOS?
     
  3. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    No different without battery and I don't know anyone who has the same laptop. Adapter shows that it is 240 watt in BIOS.
     
  4. 2CPU

    2CPU Notebook Evangelist

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    But did you disable the adapter warning? Read a few folks recommended that.
     
  5. Danishblunt

    Danishblunt Guest

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    Did you install normal NVIDIA drivers or modded ones?
     
  6. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yes I tried disabling adapter warning to no avail.

    I did try a modded 417.01 driver and that made no difference but at the moment it's using normal Nvidia.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2018
  7. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    I don't know if you are using windows 10 but there is something called windows mobility center. Go to the search bar and type that in and select it. Set your power options for max performance from there. Now if everything is like it is supposed to be then your 980m should be around 10.5k graphics score in firestrike. It may be that the bios you are using has a tdp issue. I reccomend a prema 980m bios which should be available online still. Lastly you could have a faulty psu but unless you are getting artifacts the card is probably fine.
     
  8. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yes it's Windows 10, I'm 99% sure I've already tried that but I will give it another try anyway and download firestike. I have not been able to find the prema bios. His web site just has a box to subscribe and he's no longer on techpowerup as far as i can see, though I can't download through there anyway. If anyone has it can they dropbox link it or something?
     
  9. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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  10. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    Here is a vbios by johnkss ive had lots of luck with this bios in the past.
    https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...vbios-mods-900m-series-overclocking-versions/
     
  11. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm not able to download from techinferno. That's what I meant to put above. I mistakenly typed techpowerup.
     
  12. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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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.
     
  13. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    raise the voltage until it's stable just oc slowly till you reach max.
     
  14. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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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?
     
  15. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    Your voltage may be set too low. I believe the default voltage to be 1.00v. Raise your voltage to test. Try 1.25v Then raise your core and memory. Leave your power target alone unless it is default lower than 100% then raise it to 100%.
     
  16. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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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.
     
  17. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    My 980m didn't run well at below 1.25v. The Prema bios defaults to a voltage of 1.38v start out i believe. Maybe 1.41v.
     
  18. Raidriar

    Raidriar ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

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    You would be frying your card at those voltages. I hope you mean 1.0250/1.0380
     
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  19. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    You might be right. Its been quite a while. I honestly don't remember anymore
     
  20. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    I didn't push it that far as it seemed way too high. Not only that the bios would only go to 1.2. I think I stopped at 1.1 max because the card was just getting hotter faster. I am waiting on new thermal pads and some thermal grizlzy. At the moment i'm using an undervolted bios because it performs better than stock without the black screen although it still has that 80 watt limit.
     
  21. Raidriar

    Raidriar ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

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    black screen = dead/dying MOSFET
     
  22. Ashtrix

    Ashtrix ψυχή υπεροχή

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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, 2018
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  23. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    @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?
     
  24. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    I used 980ms in my 17r1 for 2 years almost. They could run at stock clocks and overclocked. The voltage needs to be bumped up but not a crazy amount and it should run fine. I owned 3. They were blue and i believe they were clevo brand. Ive tried slv7 bios and prema. Never had an issue or vrm problems. As long as you run in peg mode with a full uefi install of win 8/10 and use modified inf drivers you shouldn't be having an issue unless the card is damaged.
     
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  25. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    I don't know why the card is limiting at 80 watt then. I managed to borrow a friends AW17 and it did the same in his too. So it's either the laptops limiting it to 80 watt or the card itself is limited to 80watt by some power target limit that we can't edit in the maxwell bios tweaker. The only bios's that make it run over 80 watt are the slv7 and a prema one that was on the techpowerup bios unverified links but I don't know if that is V2. I cannot edit the slv7 or prema ones in maxwell bios tweaker because it crashes when loading them and I also cannot undervolt them through nvidia inspector, afterburner etc so they run hot. I can't seem to get hold of any other prema bios because the web sites no longer have anything more than a title page. This was an ebay card advertised as a new dell one and I think it came from china.

    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.
     
  26. EepoSaurus

    EepoSaurus Notebook Deity

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    How hot does the card run? A temperature of under 90c technically is perfectly fine. My 980ms would get up to 83c sometimes. It's not really a big deal. Are you adjusting the fan profile using hwinfo64? The fan won't work on the alienware 17r1 with a 980m. Go into the fan profile options through the sensor tab in hwinfo64 and set it run off the core temp and adjust the fan speed as high as possible past 60c. Dont know why but the fan wont work on auto. Has to do with the ec i believe. At stock clocks the voltage should be around 1.00v
     
  27. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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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
  28. Ashtrix

    Ashtrix ψυχή υπεροχή

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    @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 issues :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2018
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  29. michaelgqld

    michaelgqld Notebook Enthusiast

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    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