Recently got my alienware 17 and have a question about the 780m

i have been browsing the site for a while and recently purchased and received my 17. I absolutely love my new lappy. But i have been looking at the BIOS flashing guides, and wondering if i should flash my 780m to the unlocked bios? I know it voids warranty. I have been a desktop guy my whole life up until here recently . And i am very comfortable with the flashing and overclocking side of it all. I'm just wondering does the unlocked bios give any performance without having to overclock? or should i flash the card to another brand bios? say Asus ? something with a higher boost clock? And help is greatly appreciated. thanks all.

 

When the AW17 was new, the stock BIOS way way too conservative and would start throttling in the 70s. The 'other' vbios would let the 780m reach into the 90s before the throttling began.

So, it yielded a significant performance increase without any overclocking.

The last two BIOS from Dell have raised the limit on the 780 to a level that I am happy with without the risk of a 3rd party vbios.

Enjoy your new machine!

 

Thank you for the info. I will leave it be for a while then . Thanks :laugh:

 

Incorrect the vbios allows for overclocking past the 135mhz default. Allows use of 146% more power. As well as no throttling when overclocking. TRUE it does allow you to set the thermal throttle to 93*C but the throttling caused by overclocking is what makes the vbios flash worth it. Also this does not and will not void warranty.

 

I can't recommend Johnksss/SVL7's vbios enough. That was the first thing I did with this card.
Using the vbios doesn't void your warranty either by the way.

View attachment 109550

 

If the warranty implications don't concern you then there is much fun to be had with the unlocked vbios.

 

If you plan to OC then I say flash it, it really isn't that hard. But if you don't plan to OC it then I wouldn't bother, Alienware has un crippled the card some what and it should work just fine otherwise. I don't have mine OCed but it is unlocked and I get the same performance as I did with the stock bios.

 

Exactly, if you don't overclock then there is no benefit.

 

how does an unlock vbios not void the warranty? please explain cos i am confused.

 

Because dell can't tell and does not care about the unlocked vbios my friend.

 

Oh ok. maybe i'll unlock the bios when i get mine. also, how many vbios' are there for the 780m?

EDIT: so the stock vbios has the clocks at 771/797Mhz so does that mean the unlocked bios will bump up the clocks by default to what it is on the nvidia spec sheet?

 

Well...It would depend on whether the computer was ever sent in for repairs and working at the time....It def shows the unlocked vbios screen before the Alienware load bios screen on startup...that is a pretty dead giveaway.

 

Even without overclocking, flashing the vBIOS would give you higher performance.

It doesn't matter if you flash the vBIOS, flashing it back to stock BIOS is very easy to do. You can always flash the GPU back to stock vBIOS before letting the technician work on it.

Short of a total failure I see no point to send the machine back to depot. I'd much prefer to have parts dispatched to me and I will put them in myself. The latest AW 18 and presumably 17 (since I don't have it) is so easy to work on, it's just much safer to do everything yourself, if you have the skills for it. There has been too many horror stories with incompetent technicians, take for example what happened here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/746520-so-look-my-aw17.html

And if the GPU breaks, then there'll be no easy way to tell if the vBIOS has been flashed.

 

I wonder why alienware ships the AW 17 with a downclocked 780M to begin with as the nvidia specs have it at a higher clock speed of 823+ mhz as compared to 771/797MHz that it ships with.

If this is the case then I'll definitely flash the unlocked vbios.

Sent from my One using Tapatalk

 

Not if you use the intel card on boot up it shows nothing. But true if you sent it in without flashing it back to stock i.e. I did and they could probably tell but they didn't care.

 

As I've stayed before it's shipped with 849mhz boost clock.

 

where do i get the unlocked bios from?

 

NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks

 

neat,but know any sites that host them that dont require the 5 post before downloading?

 

The bios is worth every bit of time it takes to join and post or donate a small amount tot he guy shoe makes these awesome vbios's...

 

i have no doubt,i have been trying to do the post there for a few days,and still waiting for any of my posts to be approved by mods,although all of them are valid posts imo, cause there are some neat mods that they are doing.how can i donate to get access?is there a link somewhere im not seeing?

 

No, but you can pay 5 dollars to download the file if you wish not to post 5 times. http://forum.techinferno.com/payments.php here is the membership. Log in and you will be taken to the ti elite membership.

 

Yep, considering the improvements you can get to your system, and that the membership is permanent I believe that is a steal of a price.

 

ok paid the money,installed the vbios, is there a thread somewhere detailing good software and safe overclocking settings for the 780m?

 

It's mainly experimentations on correct clocks. But most of us yaw nvidia inspector. Allows for the most customization.

 

does nvidia inspector auto the clocks at boot?

 

MSI Afterburner is better. And it keeps the clocks at startup. Im using everyday OC 940MHz on my GTX780.

 

You can't set voltage of the Gtx 780m.

 

Yes it does, right click create clock shortcuts and you will see the option. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=742785 please see this thread.