Alienware M17 R4 980m Upgrade

So this is my first time attempting this upgrade. So far I have had to try and piece it together through post were people have had issues trying to make this upgrade happen. I may have overlooked it but if there is a guide or walk through available for this please feel free to provide a link.

Here is were I am at so far. I have the 980M and installed it in the system after reinstalling Win 7 Ultimate to get it on UEFI partition. I have not unlocked the BIOS for the Alienware as I have not found an unlocked version of the (current) A14 BIOS. There seems to be some discrepancies if this step is needed or not. Depends on the forum. They system itself does not detect the card. Not windows, in the BIOS under discrete card it show nothing. I suspect it has something to do with the 980M I have. 980m HW identifier 13Df. I originally got this card to put into a GT72S but turns out this version of the card is not G-Sync capable. I have no idea if this is part of the issue or not as I have been able to find no information on it concerning this laptop model. I have noticed that the Clevo card seems to be the preferred card. Although $812 seems kind of steep for a 980m. So from just this paragraph alone here are the questions I have.

1) Is G-Sync even required for this card to work?

2) Do I even need to worry about finding an unlocked version of this BIOS or should I roll it back to an earlier and unlock that? As I have found unlocked versions of ever other BIOS released none for the A14 version though.

3) Do I need to flash a custom bios tho this 980m? IF so could someone please provide a link to good one? I have seen post where people have had issues with overheating that were they seemed to believe was a direct result of the custom rom. I have no idea of the validity of this claim.

4) Clevo is it necessary or do I just need to find a particular revision of this card? I assume even after finding this card it will need to be flashed with a new vbios?

5) From what I have been able to gather it looks like i need to find any 980m so long as it 3.0B. Can someone verify this for me?



Any and all help is greatly appreciated. A big thanks in advance to any and all that are willing to help me out in this matter.



Patrick

 

Hi there, not done this but I did research it quite a bit when the 980m hit. Things I recall are that as the card is UEFI the BIOS needs to use a 'compatibility mode' for the card to be seen correctly.
Unlocked bios was not useful as setting the bios to only use the dGPU for boot would result in a brick. The compatibility mode for UEFI is not good enough for the POST so it needs to 'see' the iGPU for boot.
That's about it (of course modded driver needed).

Good luck,
oh yeah, search out user @woodzstack's posts as he helped a lot of 980m users and may have some advice...

 

Micky

Thanks for your reply. I think you answered my question and inadvertently raised another. You state the card is UEFI. That would mean the card I have is not usable in this scenario. As the 980 I have HW ID is 13DF... I think that is correct. Anyway this particular 980 does not have and is not G-Sync capable. Or is my understanding here flawed? Which is why it does not work in the MSI GT72s it was originally purchased for. Again many thanks for your reply. I will reach out to @woodzstack and see what he has to say. I answered the question I had. Have a great weekend.

Patrick

 

I am unsure of how g-sync capability comes into the scenario. I know it's an on-board licensed chip and that is decided by the OEM as it costs them more. FYI my clevo 980's ID ends in 13D7. No idea if it has G-Sync but believe it does.

There are vbios files for these cards that might help, but could just as easy kill a card for good .

 

I have tried to flash it with a couple of different roms meant to accomplish this upgrade for the GT72s. They all failed to flash the card all siting a firmware mismatch. The information I found about this was here.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/forcing-g-sync-on-13d7-980m-gpus.815029/

Right or wrong it is what I have been going by. There were a couple of things that stood out to me here. It states that the 13D7 and 13D8 are not G-Sync approved is the word they used. This 13D7 for the most part worked as expected except on reboot or power up using the 980m. For some reason would not turn on the back light on to the screen. Once it got into 10 if I closed the lid, let it do its sleep thing and then open the lid everything worked as normal. The only functionality I found this card lacking was G-Sync. I opted not to spoof a hardware ID that would allow me to proceed with flash. My experience tells me that trying to force something to do that it was not designed for can on lead to folly.

So that is where it got into getting different information depending on who I asked. NVidia telling me it absolutely does not mater in this setup and MSI telling me it absolutely has to be a card with G-Sink. So i am going to error on the side of MSI on this one. They are the ones that built the laptop all NVidia did was supply them with GPU's. MSI designed the card around it as it is an OEM product. I got that straight from NVidia. Gotta love OEM products they have been the source of so many headaces over the years. Keep in mind that right here in this paragraph I am referring the original card that came in the GT72S.

I know if absolutely none of this is relevant the A17R4. Except I have spoke with the guys I got the card from and they were saying that as long as I was at BIOS A12 (currently at the A14) or newer this card should detect. But it does not. Not by Windows or the Bios. What I suspect is that it probably needs to be at a revision of this card that is G-Synk capable. I have no idea if the actual functionality needs to be enabled. So everything keeps point me back to the card. That is is either not what is says it is a 980m or it has something to do with the firmware. And I do get that is why I keep getting the answer flash the rom. But again it will not flash with any roms I have found or were provided with, stating a firmware mismatch as to why the flash failed. Again card, card, card and again your problem is the card. Unless it is not but that is were all the information I have found keeps pointing.

I did reach out to @woodzstack as you suggested. He has not gotten back with me yet. I do look forward to chatting with him though. Thanks again Micky for your replies. It is all greatly appreciated.

Patrick

 

Well, I had a look around that link and came to the same conclusion - no conensus or any real hard core techie saying how it is! So I feel free to say how I think it works .

G-Sync is NOT a simple ID change. NV will use this for driver identification but for operation the hardware must be present.

G-Sync is identical technology to Freesync. Freesync can be frigged in software (Driver) but G-Sync needs a licensed chip/circuitry to validate against. This is simply an NV scam to license free technology and make hardware vendors pay extra for it.

As the GT72 has a g-sync panel their support would simply cop-out if the card ID does not reflect g-sync capability and say 'does not work' simply to close down the call!
In the R4 it should be as simple as activating CSM mode in the bios. I quote from GPUZ on my 980m, next to the UEFI tick 'your system BIOS must support CSM for boot if it does not support both fast boot/fast start....' The R4 was right around the time of release of UEFI so both the card and the BIOS may have issues with UEFI.

If you can see it in device manager (or as a generic VGA before driver install) then you are halfway there.

Good luck.

 

I wound up sending that card back and ordering another for the GT72s. Making sure it wasn't the 13D7 or 13D8. Or at least as best I would through a couple rounds of emails. I am going to try it in the Alienware before testing in the MSI. It is coming out of China so I am probably in for a wait. I will make sure to update here. I would have ordered it closer but it seems anyplace outside of China doubles the price for the card. Ever try to explain to a customer why they are spending essentially the same amount as if they were buying a titan. Ya I am not having that conversation either. Because purchasing it any closer once my boss marks it up puts it right in the middle or ridiculousness over priced and you payed what for that card. I will update once I have something that is neither a D7 or D8 revision of this card tested. Thanks Again Micky for all your input. It is nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

 

Update: I have not tried the new card in the A17R4 yet. Just got it in today. I did put it in the MSI Dragon and it worked as it should. No having to wait for it to boot to windows and closing the lid, waiting for it go into sleep mode and reopening to get the screen to turn on the back light. So at least for the MSI it does appear that the card does have to be G-Sync capable. A 13D7 or D8 will not work in this situation. I am fixing to pull the card from the MSI and see if I can get it to function in the Alienware now. I will update later as to how that goes.

 

Update: I put the card in the A17R4 this morning and it is showing me absolutely no love. Just like the previous 980m it is not detected by either the BIOS or the device manager. I then decided to put the original 675m back in it to see what it was doing. Note: the system was originally because the client thought the video card died. It shows all the same issues. I am starting to think that problem might be on the MOBO side. Then I found this article on Dells website.

https://www.dell.com/community/Alie...te-Graphics-not-detected-in-Bios/td-p/5640806

Same make and model and from what I can tell they replaced the Discrete card (Nvidia 675m) several times, MOBO several times, had a dell technician out to his house twice, and this poor guy has desperately searched the internet looking for any answers. From what I can discern there was never a resolution to this issue on this guys system. As you might guess none of this information was encouraging. But I am still looking around. Hopefully I will find an answer to this somewhere.

Any thoughts on the subject are surely welcome? I am at a loss at the moment. Mostly due to the dell article.

 

On a side note going back to a previous post. In the A17R4 is apparently does not matter if you use a G-Synk capable card or not. The functionality is not used in this model.

 

I went through a lot of that cra* with the 675 in my R4. Replacements, tec visits, MB, GFX, display all changed. The machine would work OK for a few weeks and then gradually the NV would fail, having to reboot until it worked. When it would only start in safe mode I got the 680m. Best card I have ever used, takes a LOT of OC!

Anyhoo, first can you confirm this is a 60hz panel or is it a 120hz panel? I thought the g-sync thing was a red herring

 

Hey Micky, I hope life has been treating you well. It appears to a 60hz panel. I only have the intel card to go by. When I check the display adapter under list all modes there is no listing over 60hz refresh rate. Tried pulling it up with the service tag but when I checked the Original config nothing displays there. And I do mean literally nothing. Like they shipped an empty box or something.

I agree on the G-Synk thing being a red herring. I thought it was a long shot. Especially since everything I have read said get the Cleo card. Did I spell that right? I am unsure. Which I believe are the 13D7 and D8s.

The problem now is this thing has not detected any of the 3 cards I have had in it. The original 675, the 13d8 and whatever revision of the card I had in it today. Not by the bios or device manager.

Any input is welcome at this point. The r4 bios does not allow me to disable the intel card. It is a very Base Bios. I hate when they do that. I get it save problems with technical illiterates from going in and screwing things up. But they are really just putting the screws to people like me that do this for a living.

Sorry if my frustration is coming through. I guess I should look on the good side. At least I got that MSI out today. Ya I am going to go with that. Look forward to hearing back from you Micky. Probably wont see it till tomorrow. Have a great day buddy.

 

Hi, doing good thanks!
Yeah, if you see the intel then it's a 60hz display. There are unlocked bios files for the R4 but IIRC the 980m in the R4 needs to be 'booted' on the intel.

It is sounding like there is another problem with all those cards not even showing but I'm afraid I am at a loss as to what to try next , I recall you tried various bios options re faststart/fastboot UEFI. I thought this was where the issue was.

Good luck and let me know if you find anything.

PS 'Clevo'

 

Update: New board came in yesterday and I got it installed this morning. Turned it on, went into the bios and the original 675 showed in the bios. So all of my previous problems were motherboard side. That is kind of encouraging. At least now I know it wasn't something I was doing wrong.

I am currently cloning the original ssd to a larger ssd and waiting on the new 980m to get here. Not sure how long that will take. But will update with my progress as soon as it comes in.

 

Update: The new 980m got here today. Turned the system on it showed in device manager and in bios. I didn't even have to run the driver. Windows 10 went out on got it on its own. Bench marked it and all seems fine. It was amazing how easy this was when everything was is working condition.

I wanted to say thanks @MickyD1234 for your your assistance and being there to bounce ideas off of. It was very helpful. Now on to the next one. Should I go ahead and mod a driver and install that? Or just leave well enough alone?

 

NP .
You might find that a stock driver will now install. Just make a note of the version win10 went for, but... if it's all working well , enjoy!

 

Well it has been ok... I ran into 2 issues after testing. The first I fixed. there was a spot where the thermal padding I put down need replacement with a thicker pad. The 2nd problem I have had no luck finding any info on and is as follows.

For some reason the fan (GPU Side) does not kick on. It works, I can use HWinfo64 to turn the fan on and crank it all the way up and even got a heaven benchmark of 2198 with an operational temp fairly consistent around 65 to 70 degrees. Not to shabby. But if I leave it to the system I only get brief instances where the fan bumps up to around 900 rpm and then drops out to 0. I suspect there is some issue with the fan. Any thoughts guys?

 

OK after a little looking around I think the issue is with the vBios. Seems this model laptop wants to control the fan speed through the motherboard and the Clevo card wants to do the same. I am off to hunt down a vBios for this card and will update later today or Monday.

 

So I now have HWinfo64 running a custom auto fan config. Consistently getting Heaven benchmarks scores around 2.1k to 2.2K. No over heating or throttling. I am going to go ahead and chalk this on up in the W column.

HWinfo64 seems to be kind of slow on both ramping up and winding down the fan speeds though. Can anyone recommend a better software controller for the fans?

 

I got HWinfo64 working correctly. Turn out I was missing an entry in that was needed in the ini file. System runs like a charm now.

For future reference the entry that was needed was "OpenFanCtrlMin=1" without the quotation marks.