Alienware M17x r5 + 7970M - Wont recognise - Please help!!

Hi guys,

Can anybody help me solve this, please.
Alienware m17x r5 - Installed an Alienware 7970M GPU - it won't install drivers for the card yet it recognises it under the bios.

The panel is the 120Hz one.

Tried the .22 bios and it just didn't even post, had to roll back.

Does this need to be flashed to the HD 8970M /M290X for it to recognise the card?

Cheers,
Ry

 

You can only use an NV card in a 120hz model. The on-board is disabled so you're kinda stuck with Nvidia.

 

Only card that might work is the rx 480 but that's still not confirmed as far as I know.

Otherwise Nvidia is basically your only option

 

Hi guys thanks for the reply one last question.

Will the 780m heatsink work on a Gtx 680

And will a Gtx 680 heatsink work on a 7970m?

 

NP. The 780m and 680m are basically the same design so no issues with the heatsink.

As far as an AMD card goes you are SOL I'm afraid. The panel is a native 120hz model. This means that it cannot sync at 60hz. Only NV cards contain the microcode to 'talk' to the panel at 120hz thereby passing the POST test. Any other cards will result in a boot failure, and taking out the card altogether will not work either. The on-board GPU is not capable of booting at 120hz and is bypassed in the hardware.

Avoid unlocked BIOS'. The potential to completely brick the machine is high.

Good luck.

'One question' ?

 

Just an FYI but the 120hz panel does have some advantages when upgrading. There is no need to disable the on-board as it does not work. This means upgrades to the 980m or higher is less complicated. Check out Eurocom's upgrade offerings to see what is possible and the work involved.

The quality when gaming on the panel is superb and tearing is rare. You really can see the difference at high FPS.

 

You can recover a bricked R1 with relative ease and a guide has been made in the forums.

Thus, there isnt any reason to not flash the unlocked BIOS, in fact you can update your microcode too to v22 all in the same swoop.

Also you can run 60hz on the 120hz panel. This issue stems from the signal supported by the GPU. If it doesnt support eDP then yes your SOL. Your not wrong, just a minor correction

 

Afraid running 60hz to the panel is impossible without a driver to sync it (and no driver is loaded at POST). It is a native 120hz and cannot accept any other signal. The POST specifications state a 60hz microcode GPU driver so the AMD cards are complying and once windows loads a driver they can use a 120hz panel, the issue is getting past POST. NV introduced 120hz driver (VGA spec minimum) microcode on the GPU card to allow 3D vision to be available in laptops and the POST to receive valid responses.

As to the unlocked bios there is NO advantage on a 120hz model. I recently worked with a user that had bricked his machine (R4) and it refused to respond to a blind flash or a CMOS reset. He eventually recovered it by re-flashing the bios chip directly, a real pain. Any messing with video options will almost certainly trigger a brick - been there, done that! As for VBios, yes they can definitely help speed up the GPU.

The mechanism to bypass the on-board is part of the MB design with two video ports, one for 60hz and an active on-board, and the 120hz one. I believe this is called a muxless design but I'm overstepping my knowledge level there

 

Hi guys - so i tried the 680M in the 17X R5 (R1) and it didn't work :S it wouldn't allow driver installation but it was detected so i am guessing the 680M is too old and not supported.

I have decided to just split the 120Hz panel and sell it on ebay and will buy a 60Hz its only for my mum, she can probs get 2x the price for the 120Hz so will get her some extra money and she doesn't game

Thanks all for your help , really appreciate it.

 

Sure, you just meed a modded inf file for the driver to install. This is needed when the GPU is not standard for the machine. You can find modded inf files at forums.laptopvideo2go.com. Each driver needs a matching INF and you replace the original file with the new one. Easy fix and it is not machine or GPU specific.

 

Odd, I can set 60hz on my panel without the use of a custom resolution.

Also r4 is not an r5(r1)

Your also wrong on there being no advantage. As with the unlocked bios you can disable c states and energy efficient p states to maintain a higher cpu over clock.

I've flashed every gpu and bios of every laptop that I could, any problems that came up were due to my own lack of attention to detail and even then I've never not been able to recover the system shortly after.

 

Yup, once a driver is loaded you can set the resolution down to 60 and the driver does the work of matching the refresh rate with the panels requirement. As I said the issue is at boot when the only driver loaded is the VGA compatible one built into the GPU card microcode. With NV it can sync at 120hz and pass POST, the AMD cards, they only meet the minimum spec of 60hz therefore the display fails to respond causing 8 beeps (Display failure).

Nothing to do with resolution, just the speed the frames are sent to the display, the driver will convert to match the display. In actual fact when you select 60hz you are still seeing a 120hz scan with frame doubling (this only applies to native 120hz panels, all ext monitors, whatever their refresh rate, are capable of stepping down to true 60hz when required - multi-mode).

Sure an unlocked bios can be a great tuning tool (my bad), the one on this X8 is awesome (Prema), it has more options than I have ever seen, even on an enthusiast board, but... The last brick I saw on an AW was from changing a simple GPU memory setting!!! If someone wants to try some hardcore tuning then by all means. This thread was all about replacing a GPU and a common mistake I see is users thinking they MUST have an unlocked bios to upgrade (see it in a lot of instructional posts) the GPU when this is not needed .

Usually recovery is simply a case of a CMOS drain or worst case a blind flash USB drive, but best avoided for the uninitiated in PC tuning, and simply want a new GPU.

Noted the AW17R1 but as the last of the upgradable AW models the panel/MB config is the same as the R4 (part of the R5 confusion, this was never a Dell designation until recently with the AW series).

Boomshanka

 

I would venture it has to do with the output signal first before syncing any frames. I have a lvds panel for this laptop that overlocks to 120hz, if that was all that was needed then it wouldn't be much if a problem.

I don't think anyone uses custom resolution to set a custom resolution but to set a custom hz on the panel.

Uh yeah that would brick any system, if it was truly a gpu memory issue then it has nothing to do with system bios and everything to do with with vbios. Though I suspect it was IGP and setting it beyond its parameters. Which just means the user didn't do his homework before experimenting on his only laptop.

The recovery on the ranger is not a blind flash or clearing nvram. There is an emergency flash process built into the ranger and the guide can be found here in the forums.

 

'The recovery on the ranger is not a blind flash or clearing nvram. There is an emergency flash process built into the ranger and the guide can be found here in the forums'.

If you mean putting a copy of the bios file on a USB and triggering the machine to overwrite the bios then I only know that by the description of a 'blind flash', is there another way?
If it was possible to feed a 60hz signal to a 120hz monitor then why would dell go through all the work of extra paths on the MB and removing access to the iGPU - they had to as a multi-sync panel does not exist.

The X8 also has a 120hz panel so the iGPU is hard wired out, you will never find a machine with a 120hz panel AND optimus - not compatible hardware.

 

The guide can be found here on the forums.

It's not "if it is possible" it's a fact you can easily set 60hz. It's one of the default options in Nvidia control panel.

Motivations aside the option is there. I never stated that any of this was for Optimus in fact I went the edp route to forcibly disable the HD graphics so I'm not sure why Optimus is being cited.

I am feverish and recovering from food poisoning so it's easier to type on the tablet but makes getting links a pain. You can find the guide in the alienware thread it's fairly recent