Upgrading to Nvidia GTX 770m on Alienware m17x R3

I just ordered my 770m last night along with some upgrade ram!

Is there anything I need to be worried about upgrading from a 460m to a 770m in my r3? Heatsink, bios, etc?

If so, is there a guide to do this or can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks

Here are my system specs http://puu.sh/4pEBb.png

Here is the card I bought Alienware 17 18 M17X M18X Graphics Video Card Nvidia GTX 770M 3GB GDDR5 MXM 3 0B | eBay


Thanks so much guys!

 

only thing i would worry about is the power supply. it should be able to handle i but i don't know how many watts the 460m uses compared to the 770m but it will be easy.. you will just have to install the new video card driver and delete the old and restart then it should work man

 

You will want to make sure you organise the pads on the heatsink correctly so that all the chips on the 770M are covered properly.

 

and hopefully the the heatsinks will fit just fine.

 

Has the card arrived? Did it fit? No Problems so far? I am planning the same upgrade soon.

 

Card arrives tomorrow, will post on here how it goes.

Wish me luck!

 

Maybe I am reading the sale wrong but they list as 770 with 3g vram but in the product it list as 765 with 2g vram very confusing think I would email them?
May be just a bad editing.

 

I contacted the seller about this and he verified its the 770 with 3g ram, he also said he was going to change it for future sellers but i assume he hasn't got around to it.

Going to install the card tonight, came in the mail today.

 

It would be fairly obvious physically which one you got, the 765M would have empty solder pads where more memory could fit physically (765M = 4 chips each side of PCB, 770M = 6 chips each side of PCB).

 

Installed the card correctly, problem is it wont get past boot menu. The loading bar in boot menu fills up and then freezes. I also cannot get into the bios or boot options, it will highlight in grey but it will not take me to the menu. I'm thinking this is a bios issue? Should i remove the card so i can access the bios and update it? Kind of at a loss here, would appreciate any guidance.

 

That's a vbios issue, did you disable optimus before putting it in?

 

No I didn't disable optimus, should I?

What is the issue with the vbios? What should i do?

 

I'm not very good with this, sorry but after some research, would I have to download the vbios from a thread like this ? Request 770m 780m Vbios

If yes, then what? Some guidance would be appreciated!

 

Swap the 460m back, enter the BIOS/follow this guide http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...17x-r3-680m-compatability-63.html#post9038829 then install/770m.
If you boot to a white screen>shutdown, enter the BIOS and disable the integrated HD sound card.

For drivers use this .inf instead, unzip.

 

Okay working on it, why disable the integrated HD sound card though? Will this not make my sound quality crap?

Thanks for your help so far

 

I need to know the bios settings for the 770m as I cannot get past boot menu.

It gets stuck when the red bar reaches full and then the fan revs and nothing happens.

Thank you

 

Same settings, follow the 680m guide>Power on and press F2 to enter the BIOS If...
Install back the 460m so you can access the BIOS settings.

 

After setting up the display for PEG and disabling the internal graphics card when we booted without the 770m installed we got 6 beeps (gpu failure), which is to be expected. When we reinstalled the 770m, it boots without any display to a lit blank grey screen. I don't know where to go from here, any suggestions?

Thank you.

 

Enter the BIOS F2, disable the HD sound card>F10.
IDT/Nvidia 7xx conflict (blank screen), use an external usb sound card until there's a fix for it.

 

We disabled "High Definition Audio" in the Advanced Tab of the bios (2nd tab from the left in F2 menu)

Then we attempted to boot is as normal and it froze in the load at boot menu instead of being a lit blank grey screen.

 

I also remember getting past the boot menu ONCE last night while working on it, but when I went into device manager the 770m was not displayed... Currently trying to get back into Windows, past boot menu freeze like last night and then solve the issue of detecting the graphics card.

 

IGP disabled, Display PEG, HD audio disabled, try reseating the card.

 

Finally got into windows after making sure all settings were correct, now when I go into device manager the 770m does not show up and if I run the driver install for the 770m downloaded from Nvidia's site I get "Cannot detect the hardware".

How do I get my computer to detect the new graphics card?

 

Here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...gtx-770m-alienware-m17x-r3-2.html#post9382907
Place the .inf file (unzip) under C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\327.23\Win8_WinVista_Win7_ 64\International\Display.Driver>Run setup.exe within the extracted \International folder.

 

Okay after being in windows successfully, I opened Google Chrome to get on this webpage to get the driver link you provided and download the driver, but Chrome started acting weirdly and crashing, then many programs on the computer started crashing, so I restarted and when I restarted I get an windows error 0xc0000001 and try to continue but it loops me to the error page. Can't boot in safe mode either.

 

Still get this error without the 770m in.. This is bad news, doing a memory test now.

 

Try this with win7 installation disc How to Run a Startup Repair in Windows 7 /Windows Memory Diagnostic.

How to Check / Repair the Windows System Files from a Command Prompt at Boot

 

You can also try running with a single stick of ram.

 

By setup.exe do you mean NvCplSetupInt.exe? I assume so.

 

By the way I used last good configuration to get past the windows error screen.

 

After a long wait after launching the .exe I get "NvCplSetupInt: error: Could not create file "C:\temp\NVIDIA\ControlPanelInstallerTemp\NVPrxy32.dll" Access is denied.

 

Nevermind I got it! Put the file in Display.Driver and then ran the setup.exe in the International folder but still get the error saying the hardware is not detected when running setup.exe

 

Unzip>open folder>copy/overwrite nvdmn.inf file in Display.Driver folder.
Extracted driver NVIDIA DRIVERS 327.23WHQL ?

 

I would just like to say thank you so much for your help but sadly after following your instructions very carefully I got stuck on 3) Driver Installation: step 5. Whenever I ran the setup.exe it would say it could not detect the graphics hardware. I made sure I followed the steps carefully and tried 3-4 times. At this point I'm thinking of taking the laptop to a computer store for them to figure it out. I'd like to say thank you one last time and if you have any other suggestions on how to fix this blockade that would be great!

Thanks for your time.

 

Open device manager>Display adapters>Details>Hardware Ids, post here.

 

The 770 is not listed under display adapters.

There is an unknown device listed: its hardware ID is:

ACPI\CPL002
*CPL002

Sorry for the late reply, have been really busy lately and frustrated that this hasnt been able to work.

Thanks for your help.

 

I can get into windows with "Special Features disabled" and cannot detect the card... but then I tried disable the integrated graphics I boot to a blank grey screen and get stuck.

 

Disable IGP, set display to PEG, Disable HD sound card>F10 reboot, open device manager, under Microsoft Basic Display Adapter>Details>scroll down/Hardware Ids.

 

Laptop will boot with blank grey screen with those specifications.

 

"Will" Try it,

 

Sorry? I don't understand.

 

It worked using the proper settings (Disable IGP, set display to PEG, Disable HD sound card), open device manager, under Microsoft Basic Display Adapter>Details>scroll down/Hardware Ids.

 

The guy has to try doing a clean installation once he has the settings in bios the same way you described to him about 5-6 times. If, after windows installation for some reason the vga adapter is not listed, then there is something wrong with his new card, not being recognized by the system, being faulty or bios not recognizing it... But as long as the IGP is off, and it starts booting in windows, definitely the card is active and functional to certain extend. Maybe his current windows is messed up or he needs someone with more experience to look at this mod situation... Hopefully he will have it fixed!

 

I just wanted to chime in that I have also tried a Dell GTX 770M GPU in my Alienware M17x R3 and it also experienced the same getting stuck after the bios boot screen loading bar. It would just stay black and nothing.
All settings in bios were tested and they were set the same for when I was running the GTX 780M and AMD 7970M GPU's. So I'm not exactly sure if this GPU is supported. I would say it just needs a different vbios to get it working in this system. However I was too lazy to try.

Cheers.

 

Card returned, I spent hours and hours on this and tried literally everything. Including reinstalling windows, factory reset, cmos resets, every bios setting known to man. I would recommend to possible buyers of the 770m who have my laptop to not purchase the card.

 

Hi all,

My 580 recently crapped out on my Alienware M17xr3. I purchased a 770m, used this forum along with the given links, and have had a successful upgrade. I never had any issues with the bios, the only thing I had to do was modify the nvidia driver as posted, install from the folder using setup, and success. Now, I haven't been doing to much gaming so far, but everything is working with no errors. I never lost my sound, and everything is working great! I am not sure how much help I can be, but if anyone wants to know exactly what I did I would be very glad to help.

 

Glad to hear someone got it to work

Do you have a 120hz display model?

 

Sorry for late response, didn't see this until now. Yes i have the 120 hz model. So far i have played bf4, AC Black Flag, Splinter Cell back list, all on completely maxed settings with not a single issue. Its also incredible how much cooler the 770m runs then the 580m. Very happy so far, just improved the life of my laptop i paid so much for in 2011.

 

Thanks, I thought it might be a 120hz model. Since the iGPU is not even wired in it's probably the reason it just works - but I guess you have lost the 3D option in the driver?

 

Question who is the best seller to buy from on ebay i want the gtx 770m ?