Aw m18x R2 Dual 980m SLI upgrade!!

Yes he can. he is overclocked Actually he is using single card, in single card configuration R2 will work same as M17x R4 do.

 

Wait a minute, I must have missed something as an observer. If you only install one 980M you can boot successfully with Legacy Option ROM enabled? SG mode has to be enabled, not PEG? It's only with both PCI-e slots filled with a 980M that problems occur with Legacy Option ROM?

 

That is correct.

 

OK, this is even more strange that I imagined it. It's great that people content to live with only one GPU can run Windows 7. Now we have to figure out why SLI only boots with GOP and pure UEFI.

 

I've tried to edit Win 7 boot manager with Win 8. it reaches to windows install option then it fails to load windows 7 install.wim;(

 

What seemed good news yesterday...not the laptop itself (dead) but Dell 980M, MXM/hopefully vBIOS with legacy support. Alienware 17 Notebook | Dell

Software
Operating System Options
Windows® 8.1 (64-bit) (Standard)
Windows® 7 Professional (64-bit)
Windows® 8.1 Pro (64-bit)

Display
17.3 inch FHD (1920 x 1080) Anti-Glare 300-nits Display (Standard)
17.3 inch FHD (1920 x 1080) TrueLife 300-nits Display with Touch Technology

This looks bad. Lacking 120Hz option, meaning SG all the way...optimistically just wrong specs.

I"m able to boot to desktop, system sounds but stuck with the win logo, tried 'No GUI boot' option. novesa yes. Still close...

 

But they gimp the 980m with 4gb of ram..??... Bet its not mxm....

 

Yeshh we just need to pass that logo i guess. Looking forward to update

May be soldered GPU :hi2:

 

There are MXM 980Ms with 4GB and 970Ms with 3GB... MSI likes them. At least, as far as I know.

That being said, the AW17 link is dead XD

 

Right now....

 

Oh damn, 4GB 980M, remember the 2GB 680M? XD XD XD

 

Well, let's hope that works. Would be nice.

Yes, I get this far as well. Seems like Windows is working. I can hear system sounds, and I can even blindly run commands (win+r) and I can tell those work in the background, I can logoff and logon again, but I cannot ever see the desktop, LOL. Weird stuff.

Likely an indication of a BGA version of 980M like other Ultraturdbooks would have. There is still a chance the vBIOS could work, as long as the memory capacity does not interfere. I have used MXM vBIOS firmware modded by svl7 for BGA GPUs on other Dell machines before. If it cannot directly flash, it may have code that svl7 can add to the MXM vBIOS to fix the no legacy VGA support problem. Probably has something to do with UEFI signatures that is blocking VGA access. Maybe NVIDIA only provided signatures for the GOP parts. Hopefully, it is not that, because it may be difficult to correct that kind of problem.

It will be interesting to see if 980M legacy VGA works on the M18xR1. I believe that version of UEFI is so old that it may not support firmware signatures. Maybe there is a chance it will ignore that filth like the Clevos do. Isn't "progress" just wonderful?

 

in the great words of godfafa_kr...."Optimus enabled" speculation of course

 

"Touch enabled" erm... the only thing I can say is they are "out of touch" putting that stupid crap on a 17, LOL. Well, I got something they can touch, but we are not allowed to be vulgar in the forum.

Ah well, more utterly worthless gizmos for the sissies and derps, I suppose.

 

idk Mr Fox the term broken sli 980m is pretty vulgar to me it stinks alienware normally so good with upgrades have turned out to be such a pain....

Can someone put me straight on something the new AW18 i refer to alx18 or aw18 does that machine(the new chassis currently available) function correctly in sli with 980m's are all aliens with sli a bit messy atm?

 

We won't know until I get my 980M cards. I will test it on the AW18 and M18xR1 before I install it in the M18xR2 if I can contain my excitement. It will be at least a week until I have them. As far as I know, nobody else here has tested either of those machines. Based on what johnksss showed us, it's not completely broken unless you take into consideration that Windows 8 is required. That being the case, one might accurately conclude it is broken by virtue of the fact that Windows 8 is broken. It's not working as well as it does in a P570WM3, but it's still a big jump in performance from 780M SLI. As long as Windows 8 is required (for pure UEFI GOP boot) it will never be as wonderful as it could be with Windows 7.

 

I can't but agree and tbh if someone had a al18 in cambridgeshire i might consider dropping mine in their machine for a few bench runs see how it panned out but alas im not sure i could stand to watch my cards rendering windows 8.1
nah tbh as bad as 8.1 is im right on the verge of breaking 30k graphics score in 3dmark 11 so cant be that bad...im just being held back by power limitation aka crapo stoc bios my cards clock like trains but until power limit goes up there isnt anything more i can do

but proven +225/235core stable +500 vram solid stable just without the juice its throttled down so a complete wasted exercise

It's going to be pretty exciting to see some of the crazy scores people start rocking with their dual psu mods when vbios are improved as its very early doors atm...

 

Great stuff bro Johnksss. I got a little overexcited at first thinking it was a R2 bench. Ill probably be grabbing a set of 980m's for the R2 soon. If you and SVL7 need a hand running some tests ill be happy to help.

 

Its what i was hoping for the r2, but that was just not the case... . At least...Not now.

 

lol same. Then I saw the 4930K and immediately went "Meaker's got competition"

 

They all do.

 

Johnkss, that's a mighty overclock there with the 1400Mhz boost on the 980M of the P570WM! The corresponding Graphics score looks pretty hefty too, but it's a bit hard to work out whether or not your clocks were stable at boost from that score. Were the clocks stable at boost (1400Mhz) throughout that run? Have you guys managed to get around the Power Throttling limitations that are part of the stock vBIOS? (I know there are problems associated with using it in the Alienwares, but this is just a question related to how it's behaving for you in the P570WM).

 

My clocks are stable about 98 to 99 percent of the time.
Yes, It held 1400 mhz 98 to 99 percent of 3dmark11. It held the whole test on vantage.
Yep, got around power throttling.
And it works far better in the Clevo, but now after running it in here, We can make it work better in m18 as well. But I sold that machine so development is done on that platform.

 

Well done, good job, stable clocks are a healthy sign! Do you reckon there's much more left in your sample of the 980M for greater clocks, did you have to up the voltage much?

 

Thanks.

Yep, I think there is plenty more. I just took a break to do some other things. I just slapped them in the clevo and ran some test to see what I would get. Ill get a bit more in depth with it later when I have more time.

 

That's a great sign! I'm sure if you guys also unlock some of the lower Maxwell cards too, then they'll be some good results coming from those - I reckon the 970M would be good unlocked as that runs even cooler than the 980M, and has it's stock clocks even lower, and I'm quite optimistic that you'd be able to hit higher clocks on the 970M in comparison to the 980M, so a lot of headroom in overclocking with an unlocked vBIOS on that card - 970M could be awesome! I'm hoping that when the Dell vBIOS comes along for the 980M (and other Maxwell cards), that this will solve the problem in Alienwares and make them compatible with Windows 7 & older 'legacy' based machines too. (That would give me the possibility to upgrade my laptop if I wanted, but I might just by a new one if I ever do that, I'd want a better screen, hopefully 120Hz).

 

Sigh I think I just come to the conclusion that ive chosen the most expensive, hardest and least compatible way to play games ha ha . I really want to do this but im thinking I might wait and see what comes out in 2015 once all this new console crap dies down. Hopefully ati comes to the party and releases something to rival the 980m. Or even better yet game manufacturers actually put time into there pc games and code them properly so we dont need to buy a f-ton of hardware to make up for the bottlenecking "im looking at you ubisoft!!!"

Seen some of the scores there though and even one 980m pisses all over my crossfired 7970m's pretty sure im getting just under 8000pts on fire strike compared to 14000pts might have a good look at getting one for now but not looking forward to having to downgrade to windows 8..... windows 10 by rights should be ok as you know microsoft every 2nd windows is crap ie 98- good, ME- crap, xp- good, vista- crap, win7- good, win8- crap etc ha ha. But we're all going to have to make to move from win7 soon anyways as DX12 isnt getting made for win7 apparently

Would love to see if one/two of these works soooo cheap
http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=30307

 

Yes, an unlocked vBIOS on those could really provide a massive % overclock I reckon, making that card even better value - I reckon a pair of those unlocked in SLI with good cooling would be a value performance king!

 

Not sure if its worth investigating but ive noticed the vram on the 980ms seem to hold higher clocks under windows 7 instead of windows 8.1

ill clean install both o/s and investigate a little more tonight i can add 520 stable in 7 but it cant in 8.1 but tbh its a messy install thats well over due wiping.

 

Two GTX 980M just ordered today from Ted at HIDevolution. I will be testing functionality on Alienware 18, M18xR2 and M18xR1.

More to follow, but be patient. I will not have any answers until the end of next week (around the 21st of December).

Please note that I will complete testing with all three machines before sharing the results publicly.

Also snagged a Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD on eBay for $350... :thumbsup:

 

Speaking of samsung evo. I need to repost in that thread about it's speed. Mine degraded to a crawl!. I had to recondition them the other day.

 

How much you snag the cards for ?? Btw love the evo 840 just got a 500gb one for my 18 and a 256gb for the 17. About 13 sec for windows7 to load.. so good

 

Check the link. They sell them for the price shown in the link. Read the description. You get more bang for the buck with HID than RJ. You get support from HID, versus nothing from RJ except GPUs.

 

Itching to know if this will working in an m18x r1

 

Yes, but that says for a AW17. Does not say anything about putting them in to a different machine? They covering that as well?

 

That's what they sell. I guess I am going to be the guinea pig.

Getting them to work in the Alienware 18 might be a problem due to the screwed up (locked down) BIOS with limited menu access. Only time will tell. As long as they work in the M18xR2 I will be happy. I'm only testing functionality in the 18 and R1 for the benefit of others. Alienware 18 is going to stay with 780M SLI and the M18xR1 will get my R2's 780M SLI upgrade as a Christmas present.

If all goes as planned, the M18xR1 will be my "Alpha Console Replacement Replacement" for my living room HTPC and TV gaming rig. - - I think I will call it the Alienware Ωmega. Should look nice in the black finished home entertainment center with all white AlienFX. The new Kodi (XMBC) seems to work pretty well compared to Windows Media Center. 2920XM @ 4.3GHz and 780M SLI should be a little more of a console killer than the new Alpha.

 

Thanks mate muchly appreciated if worst come to worst ive got a motherboard upgrade planned at some point maybe or in my area they have got a few m18x r3s going for less than what I paid for my r1 for some reason

 

I think they should work in the AW18, but without access to sg mode. It wont work in legacy. It should just give 8 beeps. Unless there is a bypass setting that we don't have access to.

 

So there are no such Bios options like in the m18x R2 ? -> UEFI = Enabled, Legacy ROM = Disabled

 

Yes, the Alienware 18 has those options. What it lacks without an unlocked BIOS is access to all of the other menus, especially this important one for changing video configuration. That said, I believe it will work in the 18, too... more to follow. It's all wild guesses right now. I'm excited. Christmas is a good time for this.

 

This might be a dumb question but I thought m18x and m18x r1 were the same thing ??

 

They are the same, but that's not a dumb question because people often create confusion by calling them random names that are not accurate. Adding the R1 eliminates confusion about what machine is being discussed. That's why I really hate it when people call the Alienware 18 an M18, or an R3, LOL. Their names are M18x, M18xR2 and 18... or (I think I have this right) Avenger (M18x) Avenger MK II (M18xR2) and Viking (18).

OK, I have a lot to get done at work today... later, guys.

 

Ahh cool "note to self don't call the wierd looking 18 a r3"

 

Great Mr. Fox, if you get the 980M cards, are you going to see if you can OC the AW 18 with those cards?

 

Yeah, as long as you say the AW18 people will know. You can drop the AW from the M18x R1 and M18x R2 models though.

 

Yer ive seen it called an r3 about a million times now

 

Thankfully I never have XD.

 

Just look on ebay r3's everywhere

 

I ordered from Ted also, the drivers they send are complete crap (they dont work), but for us enthusiasts that will be the least of our problems. Overall good service from the support rep on the Ebay site.