M17xR3 580m problems, is it over ?

Hello,
so I have this m17xR3 for now 5 years and counting if I'm not mistaken, and it originally came with a 460m GTX as a graphic card. About 2-3 years ago or so, I decided to change that graphic card with a more powerful 580m GTX. And all was going well until the beggining of this year, roughly.

The problems I am experiencing is the following : somewhat randomly, the screen will go black (sound still playing) and I can even hear windows 7 making a pop-up sound when the black screen happens. Sadly, I cannot read it. Indeed, short after the screen goes black the sound stops playing and I'm left with no other options than to hard shut down with the power button.

Now, things I tried : resetting drivers, flashing the V-BIOS, making a fresh windows 7 install, trying widows 8, 10. None of this has worked, and the problem keeps coming back. It must be hardware, I think at 98%. However, except for the black screens, the graphic card works normally. It has an idle temperature of around 50°C, and if I try gaming, it goes to around 60-70°C. However, the frequency of the black screens when playing is much much higher (I can rarely run a game for more than 5 minutes).

So, what I really want to know, is if anyone know what is causing this problem ? It's somewhat strange that the cards works fine at times, and a times I can't even go 3 minutes without the black screen appearing. Should I go and buy another one ?

Thanks for your answers in advance.

P.S. : By the way, I try disabling the graphic card from device manager, and the problem does indeed disappear.

 

Hi,

Unfortunately the 580m was about the worst card Dell ever used! I had two fail in my R3 and it was replaced with an R4/675m. Guess what? The 675m was a rebadged 580m and that failed as well. Dell sent me another 675m and I immediately went out and got a 680m. WOW. What an awesome upgrade, with a little overclocking I was running all my games maxed out!

basically, you have another toasted one . Search out the 580m threads. At one point in time failures were weekly! Dell were giving replacement heatsinks to anyone with a 580m that called in.

Now the kicker - the R4 I got had the 680m as a listed upgrade so it was a simple plug and play swap (with a little research on pad thickness' and placement). For you with an R3 it gets a little more tricky.

1. You have to make Bios changes (PEG) to disable the on-board. Optimus will not work so it will not switch to the NV GPU .

2. Every time a new driver comes out it has to be modified to recognize the GPU/Machine ID, these, by default, only contain configurations the OEM's supply to NV. Modified inf files are available at laptopvideo2go.com/drivers

The 780m has all the same caveats but runs hotter so has less overhead, and can cause sound issues on the R3 . 880m? Nope another card with issues!

Good Luck.

 

Ok, so basically I have to change the graphic card. Ok. I had the alienware m17xr3 which has also the 3D options, and if I understand correctly, it has no Optimus feature.
So, you're suggesting I should buy a 680m to replace my 580m ? I thought also about that, but I was afraid of the issues it might bring in since as you said this card is not officially supported by the R3. Do you know what issues I might run into ? I know I will loose the 3D option but that is not a big deal, I just want to make sure that I'll be able to make my laptop run smoothly with a 680m card, could you confirm ?

And thanks for the quick reply !

 

NP. Yup 680m is my favorite choice for older machines. If it is on a 3D model then no bios messing is required either. The panel is connected differently than the 60hz and the intel GPU is not visible to the hardware.

I've helped quite a few r3 owners with the 680m and so far it's been reasonably trouble free. Biggest issue has been making sure all the pads are in the correct place. If you mess this up temps will quickly climb but it's not a disaster.

The only issue is you will need to mod the driver with an inf file as I mentioned earlier. This can be a pain but is quick and easy once you have done it.

Because the R3 is not UEFI compliant you might have issues with win 10 (Dell specifically state the R3 is not win 10 ready) but as long as you're not trying to use a 9xx card it should be cool.

The 680m comes in two flavors. 2gb and 4gb. The dell one is 2gb BUT I have seen a lot of people use the clevo 4gb model with no issues. The advantage I got for going 2gb was that my 3D was retained (I love it!). It may well have still worked but I didn't want to risk it. I also have a bunch of vbios files for the dell one that allows me to massively over clock and overvolt. It eats it up running at +220mhz on the core clock! By default you cannot go over 135mhz and this may well be enough. It's just a case of monitoring the heat.

If you have the 580m 3 pipe heatsink that is fine for the 680m but get the x-bracket with the 680m as this sets the clearance. You may well get away with the 580m x-bracket if you have problems sourcing since the 680m is a cool runner.

Good luck.

 

Thank you so much for this precious information ! Some final questions and I'll go on onto my quest of upgrading my laptop :

- I really don't use the 3D much (or at all) so, should I be going 4gb model ? Does it impact the performance greatly ? (I've seen that the overclock mods are only for the dell, what do you actually advise ?)
- I went to search for a x-bracket for the 680m, however, all the models I found are listed compatible for the 680m AND 580m (among others). Did I miss something or is it actually the same x-bracket they use ? I do indeed have the 3 pipe heatsink installed for the 580m.

I will probably be back as soon as I get my 680m, to ask more questions about the modded drivers and vbios, you seem to know the procedure quite well ! Again, thank you so much for your time !

 

You're welcome. I went through 6 months of pain and a LOT of support calls (including a conference call with Dell US) so as soon as I see a 580m problem I try to get the user to draw a line under it and go for an upgrade .

Now, you are always going to loose 3D as the 680m was not certified in the R3. This makes the decision plain old performance based. All I can say is that when I did the upgrade the general consensus of opinion was that 2gb was plenty unless you wanted to use multi-monitor setups. Things have moved on and now NV drivers use a ton of v-ram if they find it for things like tessellation maps. If you want to get the best out of it then I put the vbios mods above only being able to go to +135mhz (although I have a nagging, distant, memory that the limit may only apply to the Dell ones?).

You may find that the choice is made for you as to what is available.

Heatsink x-bracket. Yes, I have seen that too. But, the theory is that since the contact pressure of the heatsink is set by the post heights, a thinner core will need a matched x-bracket. In practice we are talking about Nm's so nothing to be too concerned about. Just me being OCD . I also saw that the genuine Dell x-bracket had a heatshield with a pad on it so that just made me more keen to get an exact match!

This is a 680m heatsink as delivered direct from Dell. Note the peel-off section on the x-bracket. I would not sweat it though since every one I have seen runs games in the mid to high 60's c. I run the max overvolt and +220 mhz and it runs around 70c . I will PM a zip file link for a few documents I put together for getting the best out of the dell 2gb model.

Good luck with the search.