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    Recently upgraded my M17x R4

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by cskx2001, May 7, 2016.

  1. cskx2001

    cskx2001 Notebook Consultant

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    OK, so I managed to get ahold of a GTX 970m (6gig) card and inserted it into my machine replacing my GTX 680m (2gig) card. My machine is one with the 120Hz 3D display.

    Now I know that I lost the 3D Capabilities of the unit but retained the 120Hz portion, perfect for me really. It installed nicely and runs flawlessly with the standard +135Mhz overclock that Nvidia Inspector allows but I have one tiny problem. The GPU Fan does not engage on its own, I have to run HWiNFO64 to control the fans manually. The great news is that the card does not throttle at all and the hottest it has gotten in any tests without a cooling pad running is 143.6*F and it idles between 104*F and 109*F. That is compared to my 680M that was OCed to 1050Mhz Core, idling at 140*F and it hitting up to 185*F+ (and having to downclock my 3740QM to avoid shutdown. Those temps were even with no real overclocking going on, on the GPU.

    When using HWiNFO64 I have noticed under the COMPAL EC: Alienware M17xR4 secion where the CPU and GPU fans are, there is also an item listed called GPU #2. What has me curious here is its temperatures are near identical (within 2*F either way) of the CPU and nowhere near what the GPU Temperature numbers under the Nvidia 970m section is at. Is that sensor coming from the iGPU of the processor, or something I should be concerned about?

    Aside what I have small issues with, this card is performing VERY VERY well. Firestrike got me 7010 on its benchmark.
     
    cskx2001, May 7, 2016
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  2. JAY8387

    JAY8387 Notebook Consultant

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    what settings have you enabled to get the COMPAL EC to read mine has red crosses to the left of it & dosen't show fan speed
     
    JAY8387, May 9, 2016
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