Alienware 17 with GTX 980M

I've installed a 980M in my AW 17 R1, and it's been running great. There's one annoyance though - when upgrading to the latest Nvidia drivers I have to download the drivers, unzip, and modify the nvcvi.inf file - then I can install the driver.

I have to add these lines to the nvcvi.inf file:

%NVIDIA_DEV.13D7.05AA.1028% = Section061, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7&SUBSYS_05AE1028
%NVIDIA_DEV.13D8.05AA.1028% = Section061, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D8&SUBSYS_05AE1028
%NVIDIA_DEV.13D9.05AA.1028% = Section061, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D9&SUBSYS_05AE1028

I think it's because the GPU is a Clevo card. Is it possible to flash the card to prevent having to modify the driver in future? I was looking at the Prema mods, but wasn't sure if they would solve this problem.

 

In short no. Because these laptops where never designed to take these cards.

 

Even a Dell ID would fail. The original ini file only contains OEM combinations. Since win 10 has forced NV to drop it's beta program (long story!), we now get multiple 'hotfixes' and I can only imagine how annoying that is!

Check out the forums on www.laptopvideo2go.com . A user here on NBR I pointed only recently told me he found the latest ini there and it worked great, they have every known combination in use and add new GPU's as they arrive AFAIK. Still some messing but a little easier.

Good luck.

EDIT: The prema vBios would only be useful to you for more overclocking and alleviating throttling. Also noticed the different ID in the dropdown, weird. Maybe the pre-made ini file might fix this, so you see the correct name there?

 

Thanks for the feedback, I'll check out the ini files on laptopvideo2go. Frustrating it's not possible to just flash the card..

 

https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...t-upgrades-driver-support-modded-inf/&page=66

Heres where I get mine from.

 

Huh, go figure.... I thought the highest user-tested video card on the AW17 R1 was the 970M. I'm pretty sure that done did work properly.

 

That's what I thought, already sold a guy a dummy on that one .

Nobody with a 120hz panel could get it to boot. It appeared to need the intel tGPU o get past boot, and I was sure he tried a lot of things?

 

Be careful with this. My 980m would black screen with Prema's vBios installed. As soon as I removed it and went back stock the problem stopped, and I never even OCed it.

 

I have a 1070 in my aw17r1 and it works perfectly. The 980m should be no problem if you have the 120hz screen.