*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R1/R2 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 1

You can put only one gtx 680m or two HD 7970/8970 and maybe m290 , those 3 card are the same , just an little overclock betwenn them , same gpu.

You can buy them on ebay, eurocom, dell directly maybe but it will be very overpriced. Look at some thread about 7970m crossfire and gtx 680m , you will see the details about the upgrade , be very carefull about the screw things , you will need to put more pressure on a 7970m , i f you don't the card overhead so you will have to modifie a little the stock screw. Very easy to do.

Think about you cpu, if you have like me an 720qm or 820/840 it will botleneck your card a lot, it clearly visible for me, an 920xm will be the best upgrade, the 940xm is the same .... In any way you will have to oc your cpu so buy the cheapest (920xm).

With one gpu and 920 xm oc you will ned a 240W power supply in good condition , with two gpu you will ned two 240 w psu or one modded 330 w psu from alienware m18x.

 

Hello there Mr. toto, thank you for your quick and informative response. I am actually looking to buy the 680m instead of the two video card thingy. Crossfiring is just too much for a guy like me. A friend of mine actually told me about the 750 is the 680m better than the 750? I thought it was like the newer the better? Do I need to change to 920xm to change video cards?

Sorry bout the noob questions. Anyway, also... I got 8gb of ram on mine and I was just wondering would 16gb be worth it if i'm only gonna use for gaming?

so.... I found a 920xm on Amazon and here it is.. I was just wondering if you know any cheaper than this?

http://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-i7-920xm-Processor-BY80607002529AF-3-20Ghz/dp/B003OUPISW

Then, I found a 680m on ebay and also was just wondering if you know where to get a cheaper one?

Alienware M17x M18x VGA Upgrade Kit NVIDIA GTX 680M 4GB DDR5 MXM 3 0B | eBay

 

Hello there Mr. toto, thank you for your quick and informative response. I am actually looking to buy the 680m instead of the two video card thingy. Crossfiring is just too much for a guy like me. A friend of mine actually told me about the 750 is the 680m better than the 750? I thought it was like the newer the better? Do I need to change to 920xm to change video cards?

Sorry bout the noob questions. Anyway, also... I got 8gb of ram on mine and I was just wondering would 16gb be worth it if i'm only gonna use for gaming?

so.... I found a 920xm on Amazon and here it is.. I was just wondering if you know any cheaper than this?

http://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-i7-920xm-Processor-BY80607002529AF-3-20Ghz/dp/B003OUPISW

Then, I found a 680m on ebay and also was just wondering if you know where to get a cheaper one?

Alienware M17x M18x VGA Upgrade Kit NVIDIA GTX 680M 4GB DDR5 MXM 3 0B | eBay

 

You can find WAY cheaper parts :

cpu for 225 $

Intel Core i7 920XM 2 0 GHz Quadcore 8 Threads 8M 3 2 GHz Max 2 5 GT s SLBLW 0735858211307 | eBay

Gpu for 560 $

NVIDIA GeForce Dell GTX 680M 2GB DDR5 for MSI Clevo Alienware Upgrademonkey | eBay

NVIDIA 680M GTX 2GB Dell Alienware Sager Clevo MXM III CPCXD Laptop Videocard | eBay

520 $

Dell Alienware M18x M17x NVIDIA GeForce GTX680M Laptop Video Card CPCXD 680M 2GB | eBay

420$

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M 2GB DDR5 MXM 3 0 VGA Card for Dell Alienware M18x M17x | eBay

Those are 2Gb version card but it's enougt anyway. A 4 Gb version will help in some rare case like massively modded skyrim or other things like these, in all other case the gpu will not have enought power to render a game in a quality that need more than 2 Gb. I am not sure if i am well understandable.

Be carefull, those link are for a graphic card alone, you will need the right thermal pad, thermal paste and maybe a new backplate. Some time the backplate is sent with the card, you will need some other screw if i am right, i am not sure about that , you should check this on 680m thread.

For the 750m, on this website you can compare all gpu for desktop and laptop : NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

The 750m in younger but its an low end card, made for middle range laptop, for exemple on desktop an gtx 480 is better than a gt 640, equal to an 750ti. The 680m is an powerfull card, it will need quiete some time before an entry level card beat it.



You can just upgrade the gpu, i don't know the game Dota, if it requiered a lot of cpu work you should upgrade it too, but if not stay with your actual cpu and try. If it work without lag, fps drop, you are good.


8 Gb of ram is quite enought, 16 Gb would be helpfull in 3D drawing, photoshopt, after effect and things like these , for gaming you can stay with 8 Gb.

 

Mr. Toto, I can't thank you enough for your very-very informative and swift responses. I really do appreciate your help.

I was soooo close on buying the 680m with 4gb. LOL. Good thing I waited for your response. Anyway, I actually got an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 x2 on my m17x r2 right now.. and the game that I told you about (DOTA2) I play it on ultra setting it goes 12-29fps and it goes slow motion and lags so bad so I really wanna change my video card to a better one. Also, you mentioned about CPU.. I actually got a i7 x920 2.0ghz.. i'm a big noob so I don't know.. is this the same as the 920xm? lol sorry bout this dumb questions.

Unrelated question:

1.)Is there anyway I can cool down my unit everytime I play a game on it? coz it goes like 80-90°F plus it's so loud. Any idea on how to cool it down and make it more quieter?

2.)Do you know any great wireless receiver cards that I can buy to improve mine?

 

I try to do my best

So you don't have one 4870x2 , in fact you have two 4870m in crossfire. I had one in mine, pretty good card when it work, but they rae clearly too old for now.

I have just look about the spec needed for DOTA 2, it's strange i think your rig can run it pretty good.

It need a card like (desktop) 8600 / 9600 gt or hd 3600 series ...

Your cpu is an 920xm , so not need to buy an other you have actually one of the best cpu for this alienware. You can overclock it to get more power but its nod needed for this game.

I think you have one or two problem, one is overheating, you said it became very loud and hot.

First temperature , it's the cpu temps or the gpu temp who reach 80 - 90 ° ( Celsius not Fahrenheit ) ? Have you ever cleaned it up ? For the cpu it's pretty simple, you have to open the back , unmount the battery , you got the cpu fan in front of you , you unscrew it and you clean the dust on radiator, be careful to not break the fan's tiny wires.

For the gpu , it's a bit harder, you have to unscrew the power panel , there are two screws at the back, under the panel. You unmount the power pannel, be careful for all the clips and the ribbon. After that , you unscrew all the 5 keyboard's screw, push it to the screen and release it , be careful , there are two ribbon.

You unscrew the two sheet of metal that are on each side , two captive screw per sheet.

You finally unscreww the gpu board , thwo screew , they can be unscrew with a little flat screwdriver if you don't have the phillips one. Be VERY carefull about the crossfire wire , it's the tiny blue ribbon , remove it very carefully , do not unplug it on right gpu , it's a pain in the asse to get it back without unmounting heatsink.

You have to remove bias the gpu board to release them . Than you got the two gpu fan , un mount them and clean the dust.

If you are confident too unmount the gpu heatsink, do it , a repaste would be nice, with those temps your thermal paste should be dry. You should buy some new thermal pad and paste before doing that. Be carefulll when mounting back the heatsink , the gpu, mem chip and voltage regulation have to be in contact with heatsink , so be carefull with thermal pad thickness.

Then mount all back in and try.


If you are still in confidence , unmount the manganese plate ( the big grey one ) , you will have too unplug the screen câbles, wifi and bluetooth câbles , the pad pannel , the all screen. Then you will have acess to cpu , unmount the heatsink change the thermal paste and mount it back.

That's all for the hardware part.


Software now, maybe you should try this firts .

Get back to single Gpu , crossfire might up with some game, go to catalyst and disable crossfire. Update your graphic card driver, i have use an 12.something without problem with one hd4870m , i don't know if it will work with two.


For the wireless card , i have heard about the intel 6300 card , but i think it depend of the antenna and not the card , i dont know, network and things are not my cup of tea.


You can also buy an laptop coolert tab in complement, i have personnally an "cooler master U2 notepal cooler" , not bad , a bit loud but it do the job.

 

Hello there Mr. Toto, I ordered a new video card for my unit and I bought a nvidia geforce gtx 680m 2gb not 4gb.. I hope they're the same.

And yes it is Fahrenheit. It gets really really hot. Also, sometime when I play games on ultra settings nowadays.. my fps from 40 drops all the way down to 5 or even lower then sometime my screen just go turns all black.. like totally black out. but the power would still be on. I wonder what causes that?

I also bought a new cooling fan which should help my unit cool down easier. I kind of dont trust myself on opening my unit so I guess ill just pay a computer techie to install my new video card then ask him to see if he could clean my fans aswell. I bought a new bigfoot wireless killer n 1103 I hope that'd help me have a better connection.

What else? hmmmm... oh yeah! Interesting fact. I spent more than $2000 now for my m17x r2.. I should've just bought a brand new gaming laptop. lol, too late now.

 

Hi , for the black screen i think it can be two things. 1 , your Gpu are deying , du to constent overheat , or 2, your psu is a but weak ... I would like confirmation from other member about this, i have already heard about deying psu that cause low brightness on screen but never about a black screen, pretty sure it's your gpu. Anyway, your fps drop are from overheating , gpus or cpus go to throttle state in the aim to reduce temp.

You made the right choice, opening an m17x r2 is quiete easy but you still can break a lot of expensive parts very quickly. The tech guy will have some insurance things i guess, its work like that in France. If the guy break something his insurance refound him and he buy a replacement part.

Your R2 can go further if you want, you can still overclock your cpu and gpu, and with an gtx 680m you will see an uge gap from 4870ms

I will not buy a new gaming laptop before some years, i can ad a secondary gpu, or maybe the new 295m, new cpu ... Best screen ever on gaming laptop, i don't know what to buy to replace it ... an m18x r2 maybe for better cpu.

 

Errr... yeah I think your reasoning make sense on why my screen turns black.. Coz' it happens when my R2 goes supernova(goes really really hot ). So yeah, i'd just let a professional work on it pay $200-300 additional on what I already spent for parts and accessories on my unit but I hope it'd be worth it (a couple of years or more I hope). It's kinda different down here in Hawaii actually, if they break something and if you ask them to replace they'd chase you with machetes They wont replace it for free and charge you for what they break but luckily that hasn't happened to me yet. (fingers crossed)

I heard about that overclocking thing.. is it easy? coz if it is I would love to do that! And hopefully with my new 680m 2gb I would be able to play new games now. I really hope 680m 2gb is enough to play the games I want..

 

Yeah , there will be an uge change. It will depend on your expect, in two or three years it will not run the last crysis's style game on ultra. With this card you will be able to play all games, don't worry, i have in my desktop an gtx 480 , pretty old card now but i still can play all games on medium / hight ... Just have to made a cross on some effect but it run like a charm. Last years games requirement have not growed up a lot in my mind.

Overclocking is an possibility to inproved your cpu,gpu or ram power by increasing there clock speed.

For example, your 920xm run at 2 Ghz, with overclocking it will be able to run at 3.2 Ghz and more, it depend on the quality of your cpu, the max frequency may vary a lot depending on cpu quality, motherboard vrm quality, temperature ...

It's pretty simple on extreme cpu ( like your 920 xm ) , you just have to change the cpu multiplicator, all the component on motherboard use a bus system. The cpu bus connect the cpu to ram chip and motherboard souhtbridge. It run at a pretty low speed, 100,133,166 Mhz , it depend on different things. So your cpu run as this bus speed X a coeficient , to stay synchronised. So for 2 Ghz and 133 Mhz BCLK ( base clock frequency ) you have an X15 coefciencient , if you set it to 25 your cpu will ( try to ) run at 3.325 Ghz .

But there is a problem , a cpu use a base 2 system or binary system , i am not sure of the english word for this. It use 0 and 1, 0 is equal to 0 volt , and 1 is equal to the vcore minus all the loss ( cpu power tension ) , 1.3 V for example. When it work , the signal inside the cpu go from 0 to 1 etc etc , when it run at 2 Ghz , the signal have some time to go from 0 to 1 , it's not immediate. You have an transition time. If you increase the speed , you lower this time. If you increase too much the speed , the signal hasn'got enought time to go from 0 to 1. The cpu can't see if it's an 0 or an 1, all the calculations are corrupt and your computer crash.

So you have to increased the cpu vcore, to increase the gap between 0 and 1 , with enought vcore the signal will still be usable. You can't increase Vcore to a very hight number , for example a 8 Volts vcore will instantanly burn your cpu. The max vcore available in M17x R2 is +0.075 and +0.150 from stock vcore , on good desktop motherboard there are a lot of possibility but we have to deal with that.

Now, if your cpu is a s*cker it will need a lot of vcore to be able to run a hight speed , so your overclock will be limited to something like 3 Ghz ... , AND more Vcore = more heat to evacuate , the m17x r2 cpu heatsink is pretty good but it won't make miracle ... So don't expect to push it to 4 Ghz or more.

You will have to unlock some system security in windows , there some good tutorial for that on this forum , look after throttlestop thread.

It's not so easy for a newbie to start with an laptop ... But it's already pretty simple, back in time it's was way harder.

 

Daaaanggg..... My mind is blown.. that's kind of too much for me.LOL! I wonder if I can ask somebody to overclock my system through teamviewer. hahahaha,That was just a little bit too much for me Mr. Toto, to be honest.. almost half of what you said I didn't get it. But, thank you still for explaining it.

Oh yeah! got a question.. I've got 8gb of ram on this right now. Will it make any difference if I buy that corsair vengeance thingy?

 

That will be hard, almost every parameters you need to change are located in bios. Anyway your cpu is quiet good for now so don't worry about that, you shouldn't see a lot of botleneck with one gpu, with two it's an other story ...

On m17x r2 you just have two speed avalible for ram, and you can't change it without ... overclocking And it will change just a little, nothing noticeable in use, just in benchmark. You have to focus on the capacity, 8 GB is quiete enought for me, if you do virtualisation things , 3D drawing ( solidworks, catia ... ) or photoshop / after effects is can be necessary. For only gaming i will stay with 8GB. Wait for your 680m and try, you can swap the ram by yourself, it's pretty easy.

You are talking about this kit i think : Vengeance® — 16GB High Performance Laptop Memory Upgrade Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10)

The R2 can't go above 1333 Mhz , so this kit : Corsair Memory — 16GB DDR3L SODIMM Memory (CMSO16GX3M2C1600C11) or this kit : Corsair Memory — 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 SODIMM Memory (CMSO16GX3M2A1600C11) will give the exactly same performance. You can buy the fastest ram on earth it will still run at 1333 Mhz in the R2. On the other side, if you buy and other laptop that use DDR3 it can be a good idea too have fast ram. DDR4 is comming , not today but in two or three month in desktop. In one or two year they will be on laptop.

Other things , you will only see 8GB in bios but in windows there will be 16 GB available.

Last things , there are only two ram slot, so you won't have 8 GB + 16 GB "just" 16 GB.

 

Yeah, i'm not pretty confident enough yet to touch the bios settings and do that overclocking. I'll probably just wait til someone offers to help me do it personally

Yeah, I don't do 3d drawings or photoshopping on my unit. All I do is just play games on it browse the internet, youtube, and facebook on it once in a while, and watch movies occasionally and that's pretty much it.

Speaking of swapping... I would actually wanna try to swap my video cards myself but i'm just too hesitant.. coz if I swap them myself I could save $200 on labor to pay the computer guy here. :/ I also got the bigfoot killern wireless 1103 on the way but thats not gonna get to me till next month. Is it hard to get to the wireless card? or not?

And yes! that's the vengeance card that I am talking about. It just sounds cool if people ask you how many rams you got and what ram card you got lol

 

For your usage 8 GB is plenty enought, but you can swap to 16 GB and use them later in other laptop or just for fun , some times agos i have run a raid 0 of 4 ssd , pretty useless but pretty cool too

Swapping the wifi card is easy :

1 - unmount the battery
2 - unscrew the three little screw who where behind the battery.
3 - push out the palm panel by sliding it , be careful to the tiny ribon
4 - unmount the ribbon if you want, it's easyer to work
5 - unplug the two antenna wire from wifi card
6 - unscrew the old card and screw the new one
7 - plug the wire
8 - plug the ribbon back
9 - try to find the right spot for the palm rest
10 - slide back the palm rest
11 - get back the screws
12 - get back the battery


You should look this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZvuCdt3M0

You don't have to go as far as he go , but you can see the basis. In this video you can see how it is to unmount the heatsink , don't forget , new thermal pad , new thermal paste and i have heard about screw things. You need new screw if i am right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BQaloY3M6s

Here you will find the lastest driver for the 680m in m17x r2 : http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/696220-m17x-r2-680m-driver-assistance-needed.html

You should install hw infos and be friendly with the fan control system, set all the things. In mine i have set the full speed for gpu at 65 °C , 3500 rpm for 60 °C , 3000 rpm for 55 ° C and 2500 for idle. Can seems a bit loud but the 7970m shut down at 85 ° , the 680m don't and run cooler. You just have to find the right setting for you. Don't forget to use the auto start fonction.

 

I believe the one that I bought comes with a thermal pad but not the paste nor screws.. I don't know where to buy this stuff. I thought when I put the video card it's just plug and play?

Is there any step by step process on how to do this? coz i've never done this before.

 

So , i have made some reshearch , you got the 2 gb card , with pad , that's pretty good , you will not have to find what pad and thickness to buy bla bla bla ....

Do you have the an xbracket with your card , a cross on the back ? If yes , the m17x r2 screw will not work with it , but you can use your old xbracket from one of your 4870m , look at this thread : http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...grade-options-gtx-680m-7970m-questions-3.html

You have to use the old xbracket and you ad some thermal pad on mem chip , those pad will touche directly the gpu fan , it will work as heatsink.

Bytheway you have to buy new thermal paste, i don't know what type of shop you got in hawaï :/ , its something like this : Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste 3 5g Syringe PC and Xbox Repair | eBay , go to an computer shop , they all have some of these , there are a LOT of thermal paste , artic silver 5 is a well known product and it provide good perfomances. DO NOT use methal liquid ( made by liquid coollaboratory ) , it will scrap your heatsink. Just try to buy a mainstream/good one. You don't need a lot of paste.


So you have to :

1 - unmount old heatsink from left graphic card
2 - unmount right graphic card and it's fan ( it can be a bit loud when the right heatsink isn't here)
3 - unmount the heatsink from the left card
4 - unmount xbracket from your 680m ( if you have one with the card )
5 - unmount the old xbracket from the 4870m , be carefull, there is some adesiv stick
6 - put the old xbracket on 680m
7 - try the heatsink on 680m to see if everything is good
8 - put the thermal pad on mem chip , vrm chip
9 - re-use old thermal pad from 4870m for the underside mem chip of 680m
10 - put the 680 in mxm slot to see if the underside thermal pad are correctly in contact with gpu fan
11 - apply thermal paste on 680m gpu die, put a piece of thermal paste and use a credit card to apply correctly the paste , it have to be thick enought be not too much , it can take some try but it's ther crucial time. If you don't have good contact , you will have overheating problems.
12 - mount the heatsink , go from 1 to 4 without strenght , and after screws them from 1 to 4. The heatsink musn't moove after that , it as too be stuck. Theoricaly you can't crack the gpu die , the screws aren't long enought but think about it when screwing.
13 - Get back the card in mxm slot , screw it with the two phillips screw
14 - get back the keyboard and power bar , mount all in place and try


If everything is good you will see the alienware head and boot to windows , it might take some time during the firt boot.

If something is wrong , you will have the scroll and ver.num light blinking.

If your computer power off imediatly when you run something that requiered a bit of graphic power you might have a overheating problem , get back to hw infos and look at your settiings, play a films or something and see if temperature go super hight. If yes you have to re-do the thermal paste job , something is wrong , you may need mor pressure on gpu , we will see that after.




For hw infos , its pretty easy.

1 - run it , the main page appear
2 - go to sensor
3 - click on the tiny fan button , just on the left of "reset value"
4 - the fan control appear
5 - click on custom auto for GPU1FAN
6 - you choose the thermal sensor , so i expect something like "GPU [#0]: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX680 M NVIDIA Internal"
7 - Choose on temperature 1 source , gpu thermal diode , or something like this ( i have an ati card so i don't know how it will be with an nvidia ) , choose the one with gpu in the name
8 - choose NONE / OFF for sensor 2
9 - set you temparture and fan speed , here is mine :

temperature 1 thermal fan speed
1 : 0 2000
2 : 40 2500
3 : 50 3500
4 : 60 4000
5 : 70 4500
6 : 80 4500

The gpu fan can't got further than 4000 rpm but i hear a little best with 4500 rpm so ...

Set what you want , just try to stay as cold as possible for longer gpu life.

Then , click on OK , save and close , on main page program / settings and click on auto start , minimize sensor on startup , minimize main windos on startup , display snesor on startup , wake disable gpu.

With this it will start at each boot , just check some time if he do is job as speeding up gpu fan ...

 

Thanks for that step by step procedure Mr. Toto, well, all I got to do now is wait for the card at the mail and all my other goodies like the cooling fan, wireless card and stuff. Pretty excited about getting all of em. I guess I could now say that my money was well spent my on r2. I just gotta buy a thermal paste now.

Quick question, do I really need to buy an anti-static esd wrist cable? Coz I saw some video that they said I need to have so I wont ground the card?

Also like what I said. There's a cooling fan on the mail so do I still need to change the gpu fan speed?

 

You should use an esd cable, but you can just touch an electrical thing who is connected to ground, do not wear cotton clothes too. Personally i never had any problem with computer hardware manipulating them without esd cable, but some people have naturally high level of static electricité.

The cooling fan isn't able to cool the 680m , it help providing cold new air but that's all. The gpu fan is stuck to the heatsink, so the air flow must go throw it , the heatsink is pretty resistant to air flow so you need a lot of static pressure. It's easier to stuck the fan directly to heatsink ( look at all cpu heatsink , they all have there fan directly on them , not 3 or 4 cm before ). So yeah , you must control the fan speed, if you don't, it will stay at 2000 rpm and that's not enough to cool the card during game.

Don't hesitate to post pictures if you are not sure of your work. Take other pictures for yourself, it will help during remounting time .

 

An ESD cable is kinda hard to find here in Hawaii, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the store Radioshack but normally they have all the small goodies like that cable but unfortunately they dont. So, I guess i'm just gonna go do it without the cable and hopefully nothing goes wrong.

Wow, this GPU thing really is complicated huh. I'll go try to download that hwinfo on my other laptop later today and try to play with it. Then, i'll probably gonna use your setting on my alienware and see how it goes.

 

Yeah it can look hard for the first time but after some time it's a pretty easy task Don't worry about esd cable, a lot of people don't use it without any problem.

 

Well mind aswell give it a shot, well Mr. Toto. I'll comeback here once my package gets here and i'll let you know when I start working on it.

 

I need help! So I installed the new wireless card (KillerN Bigfoot Wireless-1103) and it worked.

But the problem was on the new Video card (Nvidia 680m 2gb).

I installed the video card and did all the precautionary steps and did everything that I can do in my knowledge.

Like; Flash the bios, updated the bios to the most recent one, downloaded the newest drivers for the video card. we also did the auto detect from the website but still nothing happened, we did a system restore, installed a fresh OS but still nothing.

My Alienware doesn't detect it as a nvidia 680m, I mean it runs as a video card but it't not detecting it as a 680m.

HELP PLEASE!

 

I think it's normal , you have to install a modded driver to get your 680m to work on the r2.

You have to install the driver like this :

1 - Download the driver and extract it
2 - Install it, when it says "no compatible device found" , close the dialog
3 - Go to the nvidia folder , C:\NVIDIA by default , go to Display.Driver folder , replace the nvdmn.inf file by the modded .inf file.
4 - Run setup.exe within the extracted Nvidia folder. (green icon .exe)
5 - Select custom install>next>Check clean install option>uncheck Nvidia update
6 - Reboot

You can get driver and .inf file on laptopvideo2go LaptopVideo2Go: Drivers[]=win7x64 .

You can find this "How to" here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-m17x-r2-680m-driver-assistance-needed-3.html

If i am right you should use windows 7 , if you want to use windows 8 you have some tweak to apply.

EDIT : you might have to rename the modded .inf file with the exactly same name as the original .inf file.

 

Mr. Toto!!!!

Yeah, so I contacted the guy who sold me the card and he said as long as the computer booted up it means that the card is 100% functional and all I need to do is just look for modded/treated driver for it. The problem is I don't even know how to look for one and what to do. My Alienware is actually running right now and is on a very very small resolution (Not sure what exactly its on right now).

But here's the info. I can provide ya'll: I'm running a Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit; got 8gb on it; i7 x920.

I don't know what to do now.

 

The seller is right , and defect card would not boot or give a lot of artefacts. You just need the good driver.

So the driver are on laptopvideo2go , here is the direct download link :

LaptopVideo2Go: Drivers

Click on "Click here to download the requested driver." and "Click here to download the modified INF file." wait untill the download end.

Now , start by installing the driver normally. Go to your download repertory or whatever repertory folder you use for downloading, and just double click on "30292 win7 x64.exe", it will extract the file and ask you to create a folder in C , say yes. Then the installation begin. It will say "no compatible device found" , it's totally normal. Close the dialog box, that will close the installation , if not close the installation.

Now you have to swap the .inf file , so you first rename the modified .inf file by : nvdmn.inf.

When you have done that, copy it ( CTRL+C) , go to C:\NVIDIA\ ( C:\ is the windows partition on your hard drive ) find the Display.Driver file and open it. Now paste the file ( CTRL+V) , windows will ask you if you want to replace the file or make an copy , choose replace.

Now go back to main folder and start the driver installation, when you can choose between fast install or option install , choose option install, check clean install , uncheck nvidia update.

The installation will process normally without the dialog box this time. At the end restart your computer and everything should be ok

 

Hey there Mr. Toto, so I worked on my laptop today, did all you told me but still for some reason it's not working.

There's still a message saying something like no compatible drivers are found or something plus my screen resolution is still very small.

I don't know what to do now.

 

You have got an private message.

 

Well, now I got the driver to work out. But it has the old driver on. Can I update the driver? if I do what's gonna happen?

Also, Now I need help on overclocking my cpu, I have a i-7 x920 @2.0ghz. I want to overclock it to its maximum potential.

A step by step noob process would really be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

So it work ! Great thing to hear. I am doing the same thing for the newest driver, i will send it by private message. You just have to install it , no need to uninstall the old driver i think. If it doesn't work properly you still can uninstall the old driver and go to the new one.

Did you do the hwinfos64 thing ? I insist on that , that's very important. If you don't do that your gpu will reach hight temp a lot of time and will die pretty surely.

For the 920xm oc , i haven't done it before on this laptop with all the software so i send you to this thread :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/476426-m17xr2-overclocking-guide.html

They will be much more qualified than me to help you.

 

Alright, Imma go ahead and check out that guide and see if it'll be easy enough for me. If not, i'll prolly just leave my system as it is.

But, overclocking it would really be amazing. LOL

Anyway, THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the help Mr. Toto. I really do appreciate everything. Godbless you

Keep in touch though alright?

 

A safer option would be using ThrottleStop. Its essential for anyone with a 920XM. All it does is allow you to increase your TDP to allow your CPU to maintain the higher speed without throttling. At stock settings the XM CPU's throttle when they reach the TDP limit which is set at 62W on our machines. (Dell overclocks our chips already, they arent running standard Intel settings which are 55W TDP and 24/23/17/17 multipliers)

You can read more about ThrottleStop here. A safe setting taking into consideration your temps would be a TDP/TDC value of 80/72. Dell sets the CPU multipliers to 24/24/24/24 by default on our machines which is fine. Monitor your temps closely as the higher the TDP the more heat the chip produces. I try to stay under 90C but up to 94C is fine.

 

It was a pleasure, don't hesitate to ask

 

I'll definitely check that one out even though I don't really fully understand what overclocking, throttling, and all those other good stuff mean but I guess it's like a performance tweaking ei? But, anyway, thank you for dropping by.

 

Hello, everyone! I've been having a persistent problem with my screen. From the beginning of start up, it shows a white screen. I've tried updating the video drivers/bios, updating the system bios, and going through the painful experience that is Dell tech support for people whose warranty has expired. They said I should replace the screen, which I understand to be a difficult operation. The issue started with the screen going blank and requiring me to reboot it before it would work properly again. Now, it just goes to white. Below are the stats. Any help would be great!

M17xR2
ATI Mobile Radeon HD 5800 (in crossfire)

 

Have you tried reseating the screen's cable?

 

Most likely your white screen is the result of a defective cable or a defective LCD electronic board.
Usually is the cable.

 

I haven't. Would that explain why the monitor, when this all started, would flicker off and on seemingly at random? Is there a good video showing how to reseat it?

 

Backstory - I have an alienware m17x-r2, came with i7 - 920, 2 Nvidia 285M's operating on windows 7. Im trying to install a NVidia 680M and get everything working. Iv tried to use the modded drivers J96 has posted and have not had any luck getting things working correctly. Im still running off my iGPU however, that does me no good when im trying to upgrade to a GPU that can run directX 11. Im lost and stuck and frustrated beyond belief.

The message below is a private message I have sent to user J96, can anyone else on here help me with this. I do not want to put my old cards back in right now....

Hey, im having a lot of trouble trying to get these modded drivers to work. Iv followed your step by step intructions except for unzipping the modded drive with 7-zip or win. I simply used the method that was already on my machine. Does that matter as long as it gets unzipped? Also, where are the updates box that needs to be unchecked? I havnt found something saying exactly that when trying to install. I can get to the actual install screen and start the process but it always ends up saying the install has failed. Then even if I reboot up, my screen resultion is back to full however there is a lot of frame blurring and tearing going on when trying to move anything on the desktop. Furthermore, I cannont get the device manager to register that something is there anyway other than the standard iGPU. I have come to find out I am in over my head on this project so far.

 

Well folks, I may have to retire my beloved m17xr2, which means I'll have to go back to plastic builds, 16:9 and 1080p, blah, blah, blah, subpar stuff. I didn't even realize the newer AW are no longer made with anodized aluminum

 

Sorry to hear that. Did it break on you?

 

Yes it has been showing its age lately and recently parts are failing one by one. I was surprised to find out abt AW latest changes and builds. I'm too spoiled by r2's aluminum chassis, screen, etc that finding replacement will be hard or may have to change priorities bcuz market has changed so much - yeesh!

I hate to leave Alienware but some other companies are looking as competitive or better.
But Thanks community for all the help and support its been a great ride.

 

Just curious to what's left that still works on your system. If the mono and CPU is still good it may still have a lot of potential to be a good machine.

 

Ure right but warranty is winding down and I am in touch with AW techs to see what are my options.

 

Hey guys,

Back to this forum after a pretty long gap. Need your help once again people. So I'm having a problem with my almost 5 year old AW m17x R2. With the passage of time I've had to lower down the graphic settings in most of the newer demanding games which is obvious since the hardware on my system is an old timer in computer years.

My FPS in games had been dropping over the years but were still very much playable. But lately I've noticed that the games will start out fine with the FPS in the range of 50-60s and then suddenly tank down to low 20s or even below that and then randomly go back up to the 40s for a while and then drop back down. This fluctuation keeps happening and the period of low FPS grows longer and longer. I've tried monitoring my GPU and CPU temps and while the CPU temps go as high as 60 something but the GPU is almost hitting the high 90s even crossing the 100 mark! The highest I clocked it was at a whopping 111! I'm not very good with all this hardware stuff but I imagine this is not normal. yeah? I've very recently installed the new drivers for my 5870 which is the Catalyst 14.12 Omega package. I assumed that it was the root of the problem and I ran AMD driver cleanup utility and installed the catalyst version 13.9 which improved my FPS maybe by 5-6 but the sudden FPS drops persist.

Can someone suggest what could be the cause to the problem? I'm guessing that my AW lappy just needs a thorough cleaning and perhaps I need to repaste the CPU and GPU. I'm thinking of using Arctic Silver 5 for this. But the thing is I'm not TOO good with hardware so I'm really avoiding doing that and hoping that it would turn out be some other issue. Need your theories on what else could be causing this and any suggestions that might help fix it.

Thanks in advance!

 

If your temps are hitting 90 plus during gaming you will see throttling to prevnent the cards from overheating. I would take the video cards out and do a thourough cleaning of your fans and heatsinks. Typically hitting them with canned air will do the trick. If you have owned it for 5 years and game on it regularly, I would repaste. Not sure about Artic Silver 5, but older Artic Silver pastes were conductive and not good for laptops. I would suggest IC Diamond. Techinferno has a couple articles on the IC Diamond if you got any questions. As for dissassembling your system, dell/alienware put out step by step vids on how to take the R2 appart. I hope this helps, let us know if you need anything else.

 

I've been very lucky with my old r1 rig and been running smooth and fast for many years but in the last 6 months I have been having what I believe to be a motherboard problem.

The rig starts up on SLI and appears dead as the screen is blank BUT when I shine a bright torch I can see the screen is working but not lit. Similarly if I run an external monitor thru HDMI it is running fine. If I switch to integrated the system runs fine and the screen is lit.

I have done some searches and on the Dell CS site it is identified as mobo, has anyone here had this problem and replaced the mobo?

 

That sounds like a mobo problem, to be fully sure, take out your GPUs and test each one individually by placing it in the primary mxm slot and see if the problem shows up on each card. Is it still under warranty?

 

I'll give that a try Captain.

It still gets the same furmark etc scores?

 

Tried upgrading the GPU drivers to the latest from the Nvidia website?
Has happened with me a lot of times, I'm 99% sure it's a driver breakdown.

 

90% sure I've tried different drivers including the stock ones but I'll give it a try b4 I buy a mobo. ; )