Alienware 17 r5 graphics upgrade

Hi guys, ive owned my alienware 12 month, and just want to know if its possible to upgrade the graphics card
the laptop was deployed in april 2014

heres the current spec

i7 4700mq
16GB Ram
Radeon m290x 4GB

is it possible to have SLI x2 cards in this machine, if not what would be a good card to upgrade it too
Thankyou

 

Yes you can upgrade to a 970M/980M and no you can't do SLI because the AW17 R1 is a single card solution not a dual card solution.

if you wanted SLI you should have gotten the AW18.

 

To piggy back on this, since I have the same question:

Will everything swap over cleanly with any 8XX-9XX Nvidia card? Will optimus and work? Any benefits to any specific card, aside from speed? Looking at a 880M or something similar. Thinking I can probably get like $200 from my m290x and have a nice $200 upgrade.

 

880Ms yes but they're extremely bad when it comes to thermals...they run too hot.

980Ms they do work and run cooler but you need to do a a bit of set up work before installing the card and you are required to use modded drivers....it is not clean swap.

 

I just like to share my experience here regarding GPU upgrade on AW17 R1 2013.


About 2 months ago, I upgraded my AW17 R1 (2013) with GTX770M to Windows 10 Pro, and it was running without much problems.

With Windows 10 Pro installed, yesterday I changed the GPU to GTX970M and installed nVidia driver with modded .inf. The modded driver is installed in dedicated GPU mode (not Optimus mode). This is done by a more knowledgeable friend of mine.

Here is brief description of observations after the modded driver installation:

1. After modded driver installation completed, we can hear the notification tone of something plugged-in in Windows (like the tone when you plug in USB device);
2. Screen immediately went black. However, the hard disk LED is blinking;
3. When an external monitor is hooked up via the HDMI port, the external monitor is able to turn on and display the Windows desktop normally. This is observed by "duplicate" the monitor;
4. When a game is launched in full screen mode, both the laptop and external monitors are able to display the game. After exiting the game, the laptop finally is displaying Windows desktop normally;
5. My friend found a workaround fix for this issue, by using the AW17 power button to enter sleep mode. Only after entering and wake up from sleep mode the laptop monitor is able to light up and showing desktop.

So, my AW17 currently is able to use GTX970M under Windows 10 but only with a workaround fix. After cold boot/reboot, the screen will still turn black. I need to press the power button to enter sleep mode and pressing it second time to wake up, only then the monitor will turn on and display normally.

Anyone of you understand what is going on and know how to solve this, pls let me know.

 

First time I hear of such a problem. Do you have the 60Hz or 120Hz(3D) screen?
If you have the 60Hz, try using Optimus instead and check if the problem persists.

 

Mine is 60Hz screen. During the troubleshooting process we did try to install modded driver in Optimus mode. In device manager, the display adapter listed both Intel and GTX970M. However when testing a game (Metro Last Light) there was too much lags and stutter, so we guessed the GTX970M is not activated somehow.

 

Strange. I really recommend you try following one of the detailed guides on how to upgrade, avoid throttling etc....


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my guess is that you did not white list the game in the nvidia control panel.

 

Probably, but before the GPU upgrade, I remember I did not tweak around the control panel, and playing games didn't have any problem. Anyway because of so many confusion we just continued to troubleshoot in dedicated mode, and the story afterwards are summarized above.

 

Does the built-in display go black like no backlight? If so I've had that with the technical previews.

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EDIT: but when i did test win 10 it was with a 60hz panel in dedicated mode not a 120hz panel exclusively in dedicated mode.

 

Yupe, no backlight, just like when screen left idle for sometime and it goes into sleep mode.

 

I'm going to test again but this time with my 120hz panel and see if there's any improvement or issue.

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