M17x R3 upgrade, GPU to 980m, CPU?

Righto, have been lurking around the forum for a bit, reading up on the R3 upgrades, some good ones out there. I'm moderately competent around computers, but by no means can be called exceptional, so please bear with me.

Have made the decision to upgrade to 980m from a lowly 460m. Purchased from an online retailer reasonably well known for upgrading Clevos. Is on the way. Fingers crossed it actually works as advertised and that I'm not just a guinea pig with more money than sense.

I'd like to see if anyone has an opinion on whether the CPU might end up being a choke for the GPU post upgrade. Currently installed is 2820QM, from stalking around this forum and from the GPU sales rep I understand that the R3 can be upgraded to the 2920/40XM.

Three queries. One: I have found an ES 2920XM chip online for sale - cheaper than the OEM versions. Any opinions on whether these are safe/sensible to install? At the end of the day I'm happy to save the cash but not at the expense of possible/likely problems down the track.
Two: I've also had a look at the TDP for the current CPU and the 2920s, 45 on the 2820 and 55 for the 2920. Can I confirm that this isn't going to be an issue? I seem to recall this being asked previously, but have read so much about upgrading these machines over the past few weeks, but can't remember for sure.
Three: While the lappie's guts are out, what else would be advisable to do as far as maintenance. I've not done anything in the life of the machine (early 2011) so the poor old girl is a little starved for TLC. Obvioulsy if the GPU and CPU are to be replaced, they will be repasted (sub query 1 and 2 - any advice on paste - have read here Liquid Ultra is the ducks nuts, and does the same paste work for both CPU and GPU?).

As a background/explanation, the machine is a work lappie, so needs to run reasonably reliably. Work software uses some larger images for GIS and some 3d modelling for mineral exploration, but it's my personal laptop as well so want it to run some decent games. I'm on the move, live and work out of a backpack and in different countries (hence the need for a laptop over a desktop for gaming), and work is usually in countries that don't necessarily have access to exceedingly knowldgeable techs, so if I have issues I'm on my own.

Cheers in advance for assistance, appreciated.

 

Waaaaait a second. What online retailer provided you with a 980M before november?
Regarding the CPU, as far as I'm aware, the entire 2920xm ES series ran extremely hot.
I'd look for a 2960xm/2920xm retail just to be safe.
Also, with the ES version you may run into microcode issues and have the CPU with locked multis until you resolve it.

 

Yeah, the 2960XM is the best of them. Grab one of those.

 

@OP I hope you are not a guinea pig but it is looking like it as far as GPU goes! Going to test clevo 980m in alienware m17x R4, m18x R2, AW17

Depressing stuff but it might indicate why AW is the only large OEM not offering the 9xxm cards?

Does it have a 120hz display (3D)?

Keep us updated and good luck

 

Let us know how the upgrade goes!

 

L_Porras: Are you saying the upgrade should work? The 980m WILL run on the R3/R4 models...?

 

You'd be the guinea pig

I see no reason why it shouldn't work, except for maybe HDMI sound problems maybe. The power consumption shouldn't be greater than the 580M or 680M, seeing how Maxwell was all about reduced power consumption and efficiency.

 

In my other thread someone linked to another forum where they tried it and the laptop didn't boot with it.

 

This one? Going to test clevo 980m in alienware m17x R4, m18x R2, AW17

It seems that the 9xx do not support; optimus, 3D vision, direct x 11, adaptive v-sync and G-sync. All available on the 880m!

GeForce GTX 880M Dedicated Graphics for Laptops | GeForce

GeForce GTX 980M Graphics Card | GeForce

 

Correct, check my latest post in that thread though. Very confusing information I was given from a seller.

 

Seriously? Not supporting optimus? Its not going to work in any alienwares then. My answer as to why it won't work in our systems? nVidia decided to remove optimus components from the vBIOS. The M18x and M17x R3 use a multiplexor switch to alternate between the iGPU and the dGPU. The M17x R4 uses a muxless switch where the dGPU passes through the iGPU to drive the display. Both AMD and nVidia cards have coding in the vBIOS to handle these types of switches. If nVidia omitted that code from the vBIOS, the 980M will never work, as it will have no idea how to handle the switch. I can't believe nVidia decided to remove one of their redeeming (and very successful) features from their 980M

 

Yeah I did. Confusing or what? I think they are all chancing on the fact it should work.

If optimus is not supported then this might be something to do with AW not being able to just add them in. Their POST code is more stringent than Clevo? We know they had to rewire the MB in order to use the 120hz panel and hide the iGPU totally, or POST fails. Related methinks?

I mean, they will have had the cards for months now and they have their own vBIOS programmers so whatever the problem it's not a simple one...

 

Optimus is supported, there are machines shipping with the 980M in other brands with optimus running.

 

I thought it had to be a typo but with all the other stuff it would not surprise me that they did something stupid. What about Direct-X 11 also missing, and adaptive-sync, gsync? All listed for the 880m and not the 980?

 

Yeah, sounding like I might be a guinea pig indeed, but will keep all in the loop as I go along. It might not be a for a while, have to head back overseas for work for 5-6weeks so hopefully this will be my Xmas pressie.

I do understand that from previous people's upgrades from about 7xx onwards that the 3d is sacrificed. To be honest I've never used it in the nearly 4 years of owning.

sangemaru - Looks like I very well may be a muppet with a little too much money, had been trying to find info on release dates on the 980 cards. Obviously I didn't look hard enough...Email sent to supplier, will see what shipping/delivery date they're proposing. Suspect I've been gulled into pre-purchase...

MickyD1234 - Thanks for the links, I'll have to have a read at my leisure.

 

The optimus is listed under specifications tab for the 980M
http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-980m/specifications

But has quite a few features dropped. 3D, Adaptive-Vsync, G-sync. The video decoding, 7.1 HD over HDMI are also not listed too along with DX11. I suspect some of these work...

 

We can but hope...

 

Wow, they dropped all of those technologies with this 900M series? Is this a joke? Huge step in the wrong direction, unless the 970M and 980M will be replaced next year by a 975M and 985M (or something) with those technologies "re-added." That doesn't make sense...

 

It must do somehow but I'm just dumbfounded! DX11?? surely not. Another mistake like Optimus?

 

It in fact turns out that it will not work. I have just recieved an email from the supplier, indicating that they will require Dell to come up with a vBIOS update for this to work.

So either I drop to the 780m, or refund and wait. Thinking to refund and wait.

 

There's no telling how long you may be waiting. It may be a day, a week, months, or eternity. The 780M is still capable of running games just fine....

 

Agreed and with the R3 it will be even bigger pain in the .. I'd take the tried and tested 780M upgrade.. It will be like a 400% upgrade from the 460M so that's already very good..

 

Has anyone managed to get 3D working again in the M17x R3 with 680m/780m/880m?

If anyone has one out there, I'll guinea pig it.

 

Nope it's not possible... It's a BIOS problem..

 

Yeah, something I have seen called '3D Certification list' in the BIOS. I think it is fixed to 'sold' cards only for some sort of licensing issue with NV?

 

That's exactly it, it's the hardware ID that has to match.

 

It actually work on a Chinese guy's M18x r2... He upgraded it to i7 3940mx + 980M sli...
Here's the link. Just need to translate it to English by using Google.
http://tieba.baidu.com/p/3644894474?see_lz=1

 

We already knew it could work on an Alienware M18x R2 just not an M17x R2 no reason to redirect this thread ..

 

That can be changed. If someone shows how to edit it in the bios or how to change the vbios to have a specific ID, etc... modified drivers can be told to work by doing muhc the same thing, relatively speaking. So, whats holding us back ?

 

Sorry for the very late reply but this forum has just asked and i believed answered (even though my layman brain doesn't quite understand) my question

Just for my sake can someone answer this....... Can i put a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M SLI into a Alienware M17x R3 (Early 2011) and if not what id the hightest card i can put in? an 880m sli?

thank you

geoff

 

You cant run SLI in a M17X R3, but you can run a single 880M, but i think a 780M is a better choice, i have read the 880M runs hotter. Therefore i choose the 780M to my M17X R3

 

Thank you.do you think it will make a huge difference between the 580m and the 780m

 

The 780m is much more powerful than the 580m. The 580m was unreliable as well.

 

No sli for the R3. Only the R1/2 had sli (and all the M18's)

The 880m was a problem card and anyone that researches will avoid it. The 780m works BUT a few people have had on-board sound problems that can be a bitc* to fix. The 680m is the safest bet as it runs very cool and can be overclocked like a demon. Easily exceeding stock 780m performance.

Still quite a bit of work as you need a modded bios and driver but the 680m in my R4 still performs great on the latest titles (just a setting or two dropped a notch from max).

Good luck.

Edit: If you have the 3D 120hz model no bios work is required.

 

You can buy 880m or 780m. If you buy 880m you need to flash vbios or if you are lucky you will have newest vbios already on the GPU. You can run 780m on stock vbios without problems but check compatibility first.

Regards

 

Getting a 980M to work on the R3 would be amazing, but right now I think a 880M is the best upgrade. Managed to get one installed to a R3 and it works perfectly. ^_^

 

You would have to go dedicated mode, because Optimus doesn't work properly on the R3 with the newer cards, that's for sure. Thus, maybe those people with 120Hz screens, and thats an issue in itself, almost certainly requiring 2 videocards to swap in and out between installations. It also might simply not work at all.

 

The cable for the 120hz display bypasses the MUX and directly connects to the NV card. The Intel GPU cannot output to a native 120hz panel when driverless - at POST. The machine fails POST if the Intel GPU is visible for testing.

Prema now has a special windows version of NVFlash that allows you to disable the NV card in windows, flash it and then re-enable. This is the only way to flash the 9xx cards.

 

Yes, and I have used it. So, can M17X-R3 do dedicated mode ? Can they be forced to use 9xx cards ?

Also, I thought Optimus meant it was MUXless. As if that was something special.

 

With a 120hz panel it is always in dedicated mode. The issue with the R3 is that the bios does not support UEFI so the trick to get the R4 to boot with win 8/UEFI and a 9xx card does not work. Win 8 came out during the R4 run so it got added from BIOS A08 onwards.

I'm no expert on the MUX thing but maybe MUXless is part of the? The Intel GPU must NOT be visible to the BIOS with the 120hz display or it fails POST. The cable used with the 120hz panel makes it invisible.

 

So the 880m is compatible with m17x R3?

 

yes it is, I am running a GTX 880M 8GB in my R3

 

Woo hoo!!!

Sheesh. Eurocom is so behind. GTX 880m is not even listed as an optional upgrade for the R3 on their website.

Any chance I could have a copy of the .inf file from you?

My email is [email protected]

 

No need to send you an .inf, because although Eurocom don't list the 880M as an R3 upgrade, they do have a driver in their archive which I'm using.

http://downloads.eurocom.com/support/drivers/upgradeyourlaptop/Alienware/M17xR3_880m_120hz.zip

 

Thanks so much for the link.

How do I know which version of Windows each file is for?

Also, what's the basic for installing a driver. Would it make a difference if I use Windows 7 as opposed to Windows 10? Do I just download the.zip file, click on Appilcation and that's it?

 

Thank you so much again for sharing the link.

I have a M17X R3 with 3D stuff, thus, made things a significantly less straight forward.

The M17X R3 used to have a GTX 580M but it went nuts so I decided to go with a GTX 660M that I happened to have laying around.

Anycase, I still had to tinker with the .inf file of (M17xR3_3D_6xxM.zip) to get the driver installed successfully with Windows 10. Otherwise I would get "nvidia installer cannot continue". Unfortunately, this driver (M17xR3_3D_6xxM.zip) would produce poor screen resolution at times.

I then tried the graphic driver ( M17xR3_6xxM.zip) and so far it's pretty good.

It was a nightmare trying to get the correct drivers from NVidia to work but thanks to the link you gave me, I am now at peace.

Also, thanks to Eurocom for the drivers. Looking forward to putting in a GTX 880M in the future.

-------------------------------------

UPDATE:



So this is how to get the NVIDIA driver (361.43 WHQL) for the GTX 660M to work with Alienware 17xR3 and Windows 10 (x64 bit). Directly install (361.43 WHQL) onto Windows 7 and 8 would work fine except that the screen would always revert to 640 x 480 resolution after rebooting. Directly install (361.43 WHQL) onto Windows 10 would lead to black screen as well as not being able to install. By chance I was able to directly install (361.43 WHQL) once and was able to understand how I did it.

Installing either ( http://downloads.eurocom.com/support/drivers/upgradeyourlaptop/Alienware/M17xR3_3D_6xxM.zip ) or ( http://downloads.eurocom.com/support/drivers/upgradeyourlaptop/Alienware/M17xR3_6xxM.zip ) from Eurocom to Alienware 17xR3 with Windows 10 and GTX 660M would work, however, weird and odd resolution would result, thus, necessitate constant reboot to refresh.

Any case, this is how to get Alienware 17xR3 with Windows 10 (x64 bit) and GTX 660M to work without problems:

1. Install either ( http://downloads.eurocom.com/support/drivers/upgradeyourlaptop/Alienware/M17xR3_3D_6xxM.zip ) or ( http://downloads.eurocom.com/support/drivers/upgradeyourlaptop/Alienware/M17xR3_6xxM.zip ) from Eurocom. You would then get a "nvidia installer cannot continue" and "nvidia installer failed" message.

2. Mod the .inf in the "nvami" of the " Display.Driver" folder. Watch this to learn how to mod .inf and then properly install the driver for particular Windows 10:

Make sure to "Disable the Driver Signature Enforcement" when installing and after .inf has been modded.

3. Install NVIDIA driver (361.43 WHQL). You would then get a "nvidia installer cannot continue" and "nvidia installer failed" message also. Mod the .inf in the "nvami" of the "Display.Driver" folder for the NVIDIA driver (361.43 WHQL).

Again, Make sure to "Disable the Driver Signature Enforcement" when installing and after .inf has been modded.

When the Installation Options screen appear, I just chose Ecpress (Recommended) and it worked fine.

 

Glad it all worked out. I'm running Windows 7 on a non-3D R3

 

Hi and i'm sorry if this question was asked before. If 980m with g-sync works in R3 ? right now i dont now if buy this card or save some money and buy new alienwate.