Alienware M17x R4 7970m to 780m Replacement

Hi all,

My 7970m is showing clear signs of dying and I have a GTX 780m coming in tomorrow.

I did a complete uninstall of all AMD/ATI drivers and registry keys and I was wondering if there is any other procedure I have to follow before putting in the new card such as resetting the BIOS or taking out the CMOS battery.

I've been looking for a step by step 7970m to 780m upgrade process I can follow but haven't found any yet.

I did find this by 'bigtonyman' and I was wondering if this would be the same for a AMD to NVIDIA upgrade process

to be safe this is what I would do:

1. uninstall the old graphics card from the device manager.
2. shut down the laptop and pull the bottom plate off.
3. take the CMOS battery out so you can reset the bios later
4. unscrew the GPU heat-sink and remove the old card (here is a good guide on how to do this in an r-3 by an older forum member).
5. hold the power button for 10 seconds to reset the bios.
6. seat the new card and apply thermal paste(many different methods on how to do this).
7. carefully place heat sink straight down on the GPU die and alternatively tighten screws so the heat-sink makes good contact with the GPU die.
8. put the CMOS battery back in.
9. put the bottom cover on and attach battery.
10. start the machine and see if the new card shows up in the bios.
11. if it does, you are set and good to go, just install the drivers for the new card and you are done.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading

 

That should do the trick.

 

You might want to join this guy on the 780M installation. Looks like it will take a few tricks to get the job done, more than just plug and play like the 680M which is officially supported by R4's motherboard.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/737888-gtx-780m-installation-m17x-r4.html