Upgraded m17x R5 from 860m to 970m - teething problems...

Hi there posters,

Cliffs at the bottom, I might go on a bit here!

I recently purchased a 970m to upgrade my i7 R5 m17x from it's stock 860m. Previously I have upgraded the HDD and RAM and also installed windows 10. Not too many problems with 10 and they've sorted them selves out with each update.

On to the 970m upgrade; The card arrived and I swapped out the old one with the new. It didn't show up in the BIOS, I was running A14 and still in Legacy boot. After reading a lot of posts on here and on some other forums I decided to reinstall windows with UEFI and start from scratch. I also downgraded the BIOS to A13, not sure if this helped or not.

The card still didn't show in the BIOS, swapped my old card in and that also didn't show in the BIOS. I was getting sweaty palms by now, no video cards was a downgrade as far as I was concerned. I tried all sorts of fixes with nothing working. Eventually after reseating the card five times it showed in the BIOS and Windows 10 installed the driver when it rebooted. I modded the latest nvidia driver and that installed as well. Very happy with myself.

To test the new card I would run 3Dmark and compare it with the score from my old card. Lo and behold the score was lower, it seems the clock speed is limited to 540Mhz whereas the 860m was 797Mhz. I've checked my PSU and its 240W, I can see in GPU-Z the core speed steps up to over 1000 when it loaded but seems to dip off afterwards. Meanwhile my on-board intel is maxed out all the time at 600Mhz.

Cliffs: new 970m clock speed 540, old 860M clock speed 797Mhz. Halp.

So, anyone have any ideas, maybe I need a different driver. Or to update the BIOS back to A14. Maybe the Optimus switching isn't working properly, I can't use the FN+F5 anymore to switch.

Cheers

 

why did you downgrade the BIOS to A13? the recommended BIOS is A14!

 

I was spitballing with a mate, we decided to try an older BIOS. The BIOS is now A14.

 

Just ran 3Dmark with NVIDIA Inspector open, the GPU Clk spiked to 1038Mhz then dropped back to 135 for the rest of the test. The P-State seems to be locked at P8.

 

don't use 361.43 drivers. only use 359.xx.

 

Try flashing prema's vbios?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

OK, I'll give that a go now. Many thanks, update to follow. Hopefully that should kickstart the Optimus working again as I fear that is the issue.

 

Hi Nick, I looked at that but I only see the 3GB card and it say's for R3 only, I have an R5. Are there suitable mods for the newer Alienwares?

(These are ONLY for AW 15 R2/17 R3 and are NOT compatible with other models)

4GB GTX980M:
AW15R2_17R3_4GB_GTX980M_OC_PM_v1
MD5: 1d6cc3244f8a70b074689f43c03a4918

3GB GTX970M:
AW15R2_17R3_3GB_GTX970M_OC_PM_v1
MD5: 4904d6db3c264330fab8ab080d303d97

 

I am guessing that you have the 6gb 970m? If so the vbios you linked are for alienware specific models. The card you have is a Clevo so you must use the clevo vbios linked below:

https://biosmods.wordpress.com/gtx9/

Just because you put a clevo card into an alienware doesn't make the card alienware: it's still a clevo card.

The alienware specific vbios will not work with the clevo cards as alienware is using BGA GPUs.

So use the ones that are in the link provided.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Please check @thegh0sts's reply. As he mentioned, you most likely have a Clevo card so you need use a vbios adapted to it.

 

That sounds right, it did say Clevo when I bought the card and it is a 6GB card. I've installed the 359.06 driver and I don't have Optimus enabled, working on the assumption that the FN+F5 key doesn't toggle the cards any more.

I've some work to do but will test the card and get back later. Thanks for all the help guys.

 

FN+F5 will toggle you just have to reinstall the drivers for optimus mode. even then it will override the dedicated mode drivers already installed. this is why i went with a 120hz panel so i don't have to deal with optimus!

 

So the driver for Optimus is separate, ahhhh!

I'm looking to do the 120hz next, I have one of the Acer 3D screens and it looks so much nicer than the stock screen. Baby first though...

I've done the vBios and that went well. Just finishing this last bit of work then some more benchmarking, fingers crossed

 

That's what happens when you use modded drivers.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

What the deuce?

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/cg/3357678/cg/3340863#

... Just tried running Unigine Heaven benchmark and it's clearly running on my onboard Intel, in the NVIDIA control panel I have selected maximum performance and also checked that that program is set to use the 970m.

How do I go about reinstalling Optimus to make the switching work? I don't seem to be able to find it as a single package to install....

hmm maybe uninstall both gfx drivers, clean and then install stock intel first then try switching, then install my modded nvidia?

 

OK before you do anything, and i mean ANYTHING, give use the current state of your laptop.

remember, we're practically blind here.

 

OK, here goes;

P18E001 (this is an R1 not an R5? I'm a bit confused about the numbering for these!!)
BIOS AW17A14
NVIDIA 359.06
vBIOS 84.04.22.00.F1 [MODIFIED]

NVIDIA Inspector shows the card idle (P8), when I run a program or a benchmark the card Clock spikes from 135MHz to 1037Mhz and slowly falls back to idle, the onboard card seems (and sounds) to be doing all the work.



Can I get any other info for you?

 

I tried to uninstall and reinstall the Alienware On-Screen Display driver, the uninstaller is crashing with the following error;

"Error 1316.The Specified account already exists."

and then in another window..

"Error: -1603 Fatal error during installation.

Consult Windows Installer Help (Msi.chm) or MSDN for more information."

 

I have 2 things I can recommend for this, as I already faced this in the past:

1- https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/program_install_and_uninstall (Not sure if it works in Win10). Basically you run the tool, you choose the stubborn software that you want to uninstall, it fixes the uninstaller if it finds something wrong.

2- http://www.iobit.com/en/advanceduninstaller.php?__c=1 This basically adds a new icon in Add/Remove programs to basically "force" the uninstall process.

Give them a try and let us know if either method works for you...

 

Gotcha..

SOLVED: after a LOT of mucking about with drivers and modded files I think it was a failed install of Alienware's On-Screen Display. It wouldn't install or uninstall and kept giving me odd error codes. I manually cleaned all the entries from the registry by searching for "on-screen" and deleted folders or keys where necessary. After a reboot the software installed properly and now the benchmarks are looking goooood...

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/7101078/fs/7242613