M17x-R2 + GTX 580M + SLi

Great to hear of your efforts chukwu. I hope that the SLI problem can eventually be worked out. It'd be such a shame to have two powerful GPUs which can't be utilised... hopefully your bounty can kick the project into gear again!

 

Thats what im hoping. I have been pulling my hair out because my M17X R2 came with two GPUs (Gtx285m) and they were connected via SLI cable and now when i upgrade to x2 gtx 580m there is no SLI option??? very frustrating!

 

man I wish I had an R2 to give that a try, very nice thought though, it will definitely encourage someone to tackle this problem to great lengths

 

Im wondering if it has something to do with the fact that Dell bought Alienware and Nvidia requires SLI certification from any MB using dual GPUs. As i do recall the stock drivers from Dell support the SLI feature yet any updated ones from Nvidia do not. Maybe there is a way to mod that particular driver from dell that would leave SLI function intact???

 

That's close to what the problem is - except it's a whole lot messier then just a driver lock out. What's actually going on is that SLI has to be certified in the bios. CFX doesn't. That's why Dual AMD cards work fine. Currently the R2 only has bios certification for 260m SLI, 285m SLI, and possibly 280m SLI.

The only way around this is to mod the bios to add a GTX 580m SLI certificate. Ichime has apparently been trying to contact the people who released the modded A10 R2 bios to see if they think it's possible to do this.

To my knowledge, GTX 470m SLI and GTX 460m SLI have been tried in the R2 with identical results.

 

So im wondering if flashing the BIOS of the M17x R2 with the M18x or the M17x R3 would make a difference in solving this issue? Or maybe modding the drivers for the 285m in a way that you could fool the laptop into thinking the gtx 580m is the gtx 285m ? has anyone explored this possibility?

 

There's no way in having 580Ms and fooling your laptop to having 285Ms by modifying anything in the drivers.
The 580Ms will have to carry the 285M IDs which is done by flashing the vBIOS.
Doing so, i'm 99% sure it'll brick the 580Ms.

 

Fwiw i pricked a 5870 changing the device id in the vbios and flashing it. And those cards were similar

 

Obviously I am grasping at straws here. Spent a good ammount of money on these 2 cards and would like to find a solution to this current problem. Im sure that there is something that can help us make headway in this matter. All you gotta do is make is happen and i will put some $$$$ in your pocket. 200$ Bounty!

What about changing the BIOS in the m17x R2? I have read alot about modding it, what are the chances you can actually change it to a similar alienware bios w/o bricking the entire notebook?

 

Slim to none unless you know what your doing. Put a 0 in the wrong place and your done. Not many people know how to mod a bios.

 

You're guaranteed to brick the mobo if you try flashing a M18x bios onto the R2. Your chances of bricking the mobo if you were to alter a M17x bios to look like a M18x bios or vice versa are also probably 100%.

You're only chance is modding a current M17x R2 bios - to replace the GTX 260m SLI or GTX 285m SLI certificate with a GTX 580m certificate. You're not going to be adding certificates, only replacing them due to the very strict size requirements of the bios. Very few people know how to do that. You've gotta be fluent in Hex coding and machine code as far as I know. I've contemplated learning how to do it myself, but the amount of time it would take to teach myself what I would need to know is ridiculous.

You should look at this thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/555010-first-m17xr2-bios-mod-need-suggestions-future-mods.html

And this site:

Alienware M17x-R2 A10 BIOS Unlocked OC Options

It outlines everything that went into the first bios mod. They're supposed to be working on a second revision, but we've heard next to nothing from them for about 6 months. Your best bet would be to message the people who were working on it and see what they have to say.

 

Just putting it out there:
The M17x R2 doesn't work with the 260M or 280M properly.
I tested the 280M and they work if they are flashed to 285M so that leads me to think it has only support for 285M, in SLi that is.

 

So i guess that debunks somewhat the theory that flashing you vbios will brick your card

 

Not necessarily. A 285M is pretty much a 280M overclocked. I didn't brick a 5870M by flashing it with a 5850M vbios, but when I changed the device ID through hex editing I bricked it. When I booted with a 5850 vbios on a 5870 card, it was all pixelated and messed up.

When I OC I always edit the vbios clocks and voltages and that won't brick it, but if hex editing is very very sketchy and I don't recommend it. Don't know what would happen if you flashed a 285M vbios to a 580M. Since the cards are so differant you'd probably brick it. Can't really know for sure till you try it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

 

Understood. So i guess the real question i how do we add the SLI certificate to the existing BIOS on the m17x R2 without bricking the BIOS in the process.

 

A start would be to decomplile the system bios, and then find places where the device ID for the 285M is and change it for a 580M device ID. Then recompile and test, although I have no doubt that it is a lot more complicated than that as other functions may stem off the 285M ID that are more specific to the 285M and not the 580M so it would probably take a professional to know all of the bios directions. Something I always wanted to learn but it's just overwelming.

 

So what your saying is that we need to find an IT professional and hold a gun to his head lol. Well I did message TheWiz over at BIOS mods and ask him if it is possible for him to look into it for us so heres to hoping he send me a response back

 

That's the exception to the rule. You have to look at and understand the details. Not doing so will result in a massive loss of money.

The 280m to 285m flash only works because the cards are so similar in terms of hardware. They're nearly identical. Basically the only differences are core revision and clock speeds both of which are for the most part trivial.

To flash a GTX 580m to a GTX 285m vbios would not work because the two cards are not in any way similar.

One of the major problems I can foresee is if in Hex, the device ID for the GTX 285m and the device ID for the GTX 580m are not EXACTLY the same number of bits. If they're not exact then I'd make an educated guess the project would get a million times harder.

 

I was in touch with The Wiz over at BIOS Mods and he is very interested in finding a solution, so it looks like this project has been officially revived! I think his angle will be adding certification to the A10 BIOS for the 580m rather than do any type of Vbios mod so this is encouraging!

 

I also think that equally important thing is to make the bios recognize the M18x 330w psu. Carrying modified two 240w just does not make any sense. Without the power figured out, I dont think the gtx 580Ms will run well, if not at all, with the xm chips.

Is there a way The Wiz can look at this as well?

 

The 330W PSU was one of the first issues he was asked to look after on the project. I still have some doubt about the R2 capable of handling 330W anyway.

 

The system bios will throttle the system. Even people with dual 240w psu's have throttling. Just a little more head room. Its a bios issue. One reason i never pursued my 330w psu project to swap the id chip of a 240w to a 330w psu.

 

This was exactly what i was thinking. Considering that the R2 VRM has to be designed for the 240W PSU, plus maybe a 20% upper safety limit. My guess is that it will throttle at around 280W

 

im using the m18x 330w psu atm
1. power brick doesnt heat up like crazy while gaming like the 240
2. i dont get power drain shut down like 240
3. i can over clock cpu+GPU with out any PSU heat issue and power shut downs
IMO 330w is best way to go with 6000 series in R2. I dont understand what throttling you ppl talk about i dont experience any only time i did it was the cpu but i just had to check 2 boxes in throttle stop to fix that. I can make a video and show you guys my setup and gameplay while over clocked.

 

Having to hack the wires though, to me that makes it a no go. I need a clean solution. Gotta keep my stuff looking OEM.

 

^ i second this

(not meant to criticize ppl who went for the dual 240W PSU, kudos to all of you )

How are you using the 330W with the R2?!

 

He's not only running only the 330W PSU, he put it together with the data cable of the 240W PSU

EDIT: here it is

@DR if the eeprom is the same it might worth a try.

 

Hi everyone,

While I am still looking for a permanent way to incorporate the SLI cert into the BIOS, I have sent a software solution to chukwu77 for testing.

Warm Regards,
TheWiz
BIOS-Mods Administrator

 

OOoo This sounds quite promising - can i ask how you went about doing this in software? Maybe something like a VM?

As for throttling with Dual 240 watt PSU's. I haven't tried recently, but on my old setup with dual 6970m's, it would throttle around 285 watts. A few times it would max at 318 watts for a few minutes. I still don't think it'd be a good idea to channel in excess of 300 watts through the R2 for long periods of time though because with tolerances taken into account, I think that's close to the limit.

However, I think that that throttling may have been due to my Dell 6970m. I think with my current set up, I'll be able to pull over 285 watts without throttling. Still haven't tested it yet, but I will today.

 

There is a very reputable SLIPatch tool that patches windows where it takes the certificate from the BIOS. Because NVIDIA will not check for certificate changes unless there is a new BIOS, this tool will patch the registry, and more importantly, hal.dll afterwards so that the NVIDIA program/drivers see it as certified no matter what.

 

Thewiz, welcome back!

 

Thanks Dan, good to be back

 

Wow that's pretty cool. I always figured the certificate was used independently from the OS and was read by the vbioses of the gpus.

 

Small update: We have spent all weekend on this and are currently at the stage where we have flashed both cards with the M18x VBIOS update. It seems that Uche may be having issues because his cards, while the same model, seem to be a slight different. (one reports as a VGA, one as a 3D card).

In any event both cards took the M18x vbios well, so we are waiting on a few other things to see if we will have any luck.

TheWiz

 

At this pace i believe in a short time i may be spending more money on my rig for yet another gpu upgrade.... gotta love the R2

Thank you TheWiz, i've sent you a PM, let me know

 

Congratz TheWiz.... one small step at a time ^^

 

Interesting...

Glad to see you're back first off. If you are talking about HyperSLi by anatolymik, I tried it (and his older SLi patch) on this setup (2x 580M in R2) and SLi still didn't work. I'm guessing that it's probably a power draw issue since I'm limited to 240 watts and nVidia probably disables it based on that. I would need an M18x owner with a 580m SLi setup + 240w PSU to confirm this.

Otherwise, if you need a guy to test SLi functionality in the R2, I'm you're guy!

 

Thanks ichime,

I am working directly with the HyperSLI developer to do the traces needed to figure out the SLI functionality issue. Meanwhile the M18x BIOS update makes the card run a bit better but has no reflection on the SLI portion.

Thanks for the welcome back,
TheWiz

 

How much does 2x 580m cost? If this works I know what ill be buying . Been following this thread since it was created. The r2 sure does have some longetivity!!!

 

wow you managed to o/c both your 5870m to 985/1280, stable for gaming ?
Anyway true to say that r2 has an incredible lifespan..

 

Haha yeah. I want to overvolt to get over 1000mhz on the core. I this.k my card is just truly blessed haha.
So with 16gb of ram confirmed working hopefully 580ms working lets hope it can keep up with the m18x.

RGBLED FTW!!!!!!

 

Just a quick update, me, TheWiz and the Hyper SLI developer are very close to cracking this case. We were able to successfully flash the Vbios of the 580m on the r2 with the vbios used in the m18x and now we are working to break down the code for SLI response to the nvidia drivers. I feel like soon we will bring it home on this issue. These 2 guys are truly awesome at what they do guys and should be applauded!

 

I got an idea that could help (if they didn't try it). Since HyperSLi is based on tricking windows into thinking that it's running off a SLi certified motherboard, how about making it thin that it is running off an M18x motherboard? That way we can tell if it's a software issue or hardware (from my tests, it seems that the main issue would be something to do with the power supply...)

 

ichime, can you try to see if you can enable SLi in linux, something simple like Ubuntu?

 

Man this is getting interesting!

Ichime, don't you think there will be a lot of hex code editing in the bios, to make it show itself as a M18x motherboard to windows?

 

Hey guys,

I need a favor from anyone willing to help. If you have two 280ms in SLI please contact me directly because I need to generate a log file for the developer with the 280s in SLI.

Many Thanks,
Chris
webmaster AT bios-mods DOT com

 

Well me and TheWiz were able to get windows to see our Motherboard as an Asus Rampage II MB so it is possible to do! Ichime do you still have your 285m cards with you by any chance???

 

We simply made the NVIDIA SLI String show as an Asus Rampage II, the new HyperSLI software will acurately report the correct hardware, we are trying to directly emulate the SLI checks in the drivers but we need someone who still has their NVIDIA SLI configuration in tact so we can generate a logfile of the working SLI flags.

 

I have SLI GTX 285m's if you guys need anything.

Just tell me what to do cuz im a noob in the laptop gaming world

Theyre getting replaced in a few days though with new 285m's since mine are throttling for some reason

 

Hi pewpewbangbang,

I have sent you a PM message.

Thanks fr helping,
Chris