Aw m18x R2 Dual 980m SLI upgrade!!

Sounds like one of your mosfet chips is a bit weaker.

 

It could be. I need to get my AC cooling setup in place again so I can do more testing to see if it is affected by temperatures. It is not immediate and seems to happen near the end of the first test in 3DMark 11 and Fire Strike, almost like clockwork. Something could be getting too hot and causing it. If freezing cold air doesn't change the behavior, I may just sell the 980M cards and use the money to buy another pair of 780M because they are totally worthless to me if I cannot overclock them high enough to compete on the leaderboard. They work flawlessly stock up to around 1325MHz on core and beyond that is hit or miss whether the screen goes black. I thought it was too much memory overclock that was causing it, but it is not that at all.

 

It's likely the point at which the current requirement goes over what the chip can produce. Same symptoms I had at 1400mhz or above at 1.2v. You may want to consider the vrm mod, I'd add in that missing side capacitor too (It's a different value, see fully populated 970m pictures).

 

(Updated 4/30/2015) NVFLash certificate checks bypassed v5.218.0.1: (Use this one if you just want to mod your own BIOS.)
X64 Download Here

(Updated 4/30/2015) NVFLash certificate checks bypassed v5.218.0.1: (Use this one if you just want to mod your own BIOS.)
X86 Download Here

 

I may serious consider doing that at some point soon. I'll have to find someone that can solder the chips for me, or try to do it myself without destroying them. I'd really love to be able to run these GPUs my way. As far as the missing side capacitor, did you do that mod also, or just added the missing VRM chips?

I haven't needed that before to change values in the Maxwell vBIOS. Has something changed? Does it work in pure UEFI mode for 970M/980M? I have been using the version of NVFLASH that @Prema and @svl7 have provided without issue other than the pure UEFI flashing hurdle with Alienware installations.

 

I did just the vrm and noticed the memory clock went down a bit though my core was stable at higher clocks with no shut down.

 

Official link

NOTICE ABOUT NEW VERSION!! READ THIS!! (v5.218.0.1)
With the newest version of NVFlash landing on us (Thanks topway for letting me know!), you NO LONGER HAVE TO DISABLE YOUR CARD in the device manager. NVFlash will do this on it's own and re-enable it after it has flashed. Also, x86 and x64 versions come separate. So choose the correct one for your OS!!!

 

FULL PURE UEFI NVFLASH WORKING!

Flashed from Prema to svl7 vbios mod in less than a minute both cards from pure UEFI system with this nvflash version:
Official link

NOTICE ABOUT NEW VERSION!! READ THIS!! (v5.218.0.1)
With the newest version of NVFlash landing on us (Thanks topway for letting me know!), you NO LONGER HAVE TO DISABLE YOUR CARD in the device manager. NVFlash will do this on it's own and re-enable it after it has flashed. Also, x86 and x64 versions come separate. So choose the correct one for your OS!!!

(Updated 4/30/2015) NVFLash certificate checks bypassed v5.218.0.1: (Use this one if you just want to mod your own BIOS.)
X64 Download Here

 

14890

I will record a video showing how it behaves but it's the same as with Prema's vbios. The voltage drops to 1.000V which is the same as P1 state.
And core clock always goes back to 1126 MHz. I'm still a strong believer about hardcoding with same frequencies and same voltage both P states but I don't know how to do it. I have tried Maxwell BIOS editor 1.36 but is not compatible with mobile vbios or I don't know how to open mobile vbios.
I've to go but I will come back later and will try more drivers and settings.

 

Same settings 3D Mark 11
P18260

 

You could try editing your stock bios as that opens with Maxwell bios editor but obviously doesn't have any of prema's or svl7's magic

 

I'm interested in one of the 980M's if you are selling!

 

Holy this is insane. Over double what I get with my 680's

 

so what did you do the flash the cards, I just uninstalled the drivers and restarted but when I use prema's modme.dat file says it cant u run on this PC
and when I go to list adapters manually the windows is only open for a second so i cant get the numbers...

 

That is fantastic news about the UEFI compatible NVFLASH. If I knew for sure that I would get lucky on the second try, I would consider buying another pair of 980M that overclock better and put these in the Alienware 18 since it is limited by the single 330W AC adapter anyhow and won't support even the level of overclocking my current 980M cards are able to manage.

 

That is good news about the flasher i think your chips will be fine with some extra mosfets. I sent mine to a highly rated BGA repair shop on ebay with schematics on pinout and how it should look when done. Each left hand and right hand set are mirrored so be careful about hm how they are orientated

 

The procedure is the following:
Download nvflash (the version that I linked before but for your system) x64 or x86.
Put the rom inside the folder of nvflash.
Press windows key -> write cmd -> wait till the results appear -> second mouse click -> run as administrator -> go to your nvflash path (cd nvflash path).
use the line of commands which comes inside Prema's modme.bat but changing the name of your desired .rom

After that follow the instructions. Everything should be fine.

Sorry I couldn't be home tonight I needed some fresh air. Tomorrow I will continue with more testing.

 

How much wattage does a single 980M pull in relation to 680M? I'm interested in replacing my 680M's for one 980M given the absence of SLI support in 100% of games and the new issue I am having with horizontal flickering lines around objects in GTA 5 and a few other games (Skyrim with an ENB, Unigine Heaven etc.). The problem goes away if I run the game in single GPU mode or in windowed / windowed-fullscreen. I have no idea what is causing the issue in full-screen mode.

I'm serious about buying one of your 980M's though, give me a few weeks to a month and I should have enough for it if the price is reasonable.

 

If I decide to sell them, I will let you have first dibs on them since you asked first. I am not sure I will though, since they work fantastic other than not overclocking as high as I wish they would. Might try the MOSFET mod like Meaker did to see if I can overclock them to 1400+ on core without the black screen weirdness. The only reason I bought them was for overclocking. I still do most of my gaming with 780M SLI and see no point in upgrading those GPUs to play games when I'm already seeing 100+ FPS in almost everything.

Wattage is very similar to 680M and 780M. Contrary to popular belief, 980M is not a power-sipping GPU. It produces a lot more performance per watt, but consumption isn't remarkably different. If anything, heavily overclocked it draws as much or more than 780M does. The important difference is, stock 980M SLI performance is close to my highest stable overclock with 780M SLI. In case you are interested, I posted some comparison videos on that subject over here before I went to bed this morning. If all you are planning to install is one 980M, your 330W adapter will provide more than enough juice under any overclock.

Your display artifacts issue sounds like a bad SLI bridge cable to me. They are dirt cheap (under $5 each as of November 2014) from Dell Spare Parts. I bought three not long ago so I would have spares for the M18xR1 and R2. Part # is GDMRG if you want to see if they still have them in stock. I am not experiencing a lack of SLI support, but I generally don't buy games when they are released. I wait until prices fall and drivers are usually matured to the point that SLI support is no longer an issue... at least on the titles I regularly play.

 

TY Mr. Fox, it's nice to see youre still around and as helpful as ever. Yeah youre right, unless youre pushing higher res on an external display 980M is TOTAL overkill for 1080p. I still can't believe how strong even 680M SLI is, 680M and better 780M SLI are completely adequate for 1080p, 780M SLI is ideal because of the price-point now that 980M has arrived and it has 4GB of VRAM. The issue for me though is, I'd rather have a strong single card system over a pair of 780M's, for those few holdout games that don't have SLI support and for the wattage limitations and not to mention shortened life-span of running the PSU at it's limit all of the time. I would be in heaven with a single 980M. If I didn't have a desktop to push higher res then I would consider a pair of 980M with no overclock, fingers crossed that the 330W PSU is good enough (I believe it is according to Nikos et al.)

Well, let me know if youre going to part with them, I definitely want one and possibly both if money is no issue at that point in time.

I will look on Dell Spare Parts for the SLI bridge, thanks again.

 

You're welcome. Always glad to help where I can.

Just call them on the phone at (800) 357-3355 and give them that part number. The web site pricing and availability is unreliable.

 

i flashed (Prema v1.1) my 980ms yesterday and tested it yet. I get much better results as before. its +135 / +400 , 350.12

 

As Prema said is a work in progress:
EUREKA!
3DMark FireStrike
15165
3DMark Vantage:
Graphics Score 58609

Power consumption around 510 W. I need to improve my Dual PSU mod to prevent the laptop to shutdown. This is the first time it has such a peak power.

The wait is over . Prema did it!

PS: We need to donate Prema, you don't know how much time and effort he gave to us to make this vbios come true. I lost the count of the vbios we tested so far and he was doing this procedure since the cards were released LOL! Insane work.
BRAVO PREMA BRAVO!

 

Does this mean there is zero throttling of the GPUs now when heavily overclocking? I remember when Mr Fox and others were testing overclocking 980M sli in M18xR2 that throttling would occur - they only used to work well at stock clocks. Is that all sorted & changed now?

 

It certainly looks like it is fixed. The amazing @Prema has done his magic on the firmware. Hopefully, it will stay fixed and not get messed up again in a future driver update. I guess that may depend on what was broken and needed to be corrected in the firmware.

 

Cool, although the Firestrike Score that was linked in that post was only running with 980Ms at 1038Mhz core clock, which is stock right, so I'm wondering if the throttling is fixed when at say 1300Mhz for instance? (Also this mean you could revive your M18xR2 with 980Ms if you wanted!)

 

I'd love to be able to do that. I could repurpose all of my 780M cards in the other machines so everything would be SLI instead of the AW18 and M18xR1 running a single 780M. Right now, only the M18xR2 is running 780M SLI because I am short two 780M cards.

If we can get Maxwell Legacy/CSM functionality back for the Ivy Bridge and newer Alienware machines, or even the Sandy Bridge beasts, (essentially all machines with InsydeH20 BIOS,) things will finally be right on all counts... in spite of NVIDIA's corruption.

 

I'm out home right now but just for your information the benchmark was done with 1262MHz on core clock not 1038MHz.
Heavily overclocking enabled but maybe the system or the cards can't hold that. More testing needed.

 

Right, so the frequency reported in your 3DMark scores is incorrect then? (Sometimes I know there's bugs in the reporting of clocks, but in my experience it usually displays the idle clock or the 3D Clock). Isn't 21,800 points in Firestrike a bit low for a no throttling 1262Mhz 980M sli? Shouldn't it be more like 23,000 given that stock 980M sli is 19,000. Your 21,800 Graphics Score is about 15% higher than stock 980M result.

 

If the Futuremark SystemInfo scanner fails to cause the CPU and GPU clocks to boost to their max, which it frequently does, the loaded clock speeds reported in the benchmark result will be inaccurate for both CPU and GPU.

 

Those clocks are stocks but with the difference that now is working the boost to 1262MHz and the memory wasn't throttling at all. No need to use nvinspector at all to match both P States which is highly appreciated, believe me haha.

 

GTX 980M SLI - no overclock: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9770583

Note the "reported" GPU core clock does not reflect boost. @Prema vBIOS leaves boost functional. The @svl7 / @johnksss vBIOS disables boost and the clocks reported are actual, not base clock.

Here is a comparison of the two vBIOS (close to identical performance, but notice the reported difference in GPU core clocks)

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/9770583/3dm11/9771871

The only reason the CPU shows 4.3GHz is because I am using ThrottleStop with c-states disabled. Otherwise, the benchmark scanner would have reported the CPU clock speed as 1200MHz, LOL.

 

If the processor had been at 1200MHz would your physics score in these benchmark tests be taken for cheating ... You do not cheat Mr Fox?

 

Without using ThrottleStop to disable c-states the CPU in the P570WM does idle at 1.2GHz. The Futuremark SystemInfo scanner sometimes does not load it enough to cause it to Turbo Boost before the benchmark begins, so it will show 1200MHz for CPU on the benchmark results when that happens.

 

It might not be many opportunities for overclocking settings in bios for your P570WM... The Futuremark System Info scanner want not to load a weak processor until throttling, before the benchmark test begins. Maybe suitable for Hq processors

 

There are many settings that are not available in the P570WM BIOS. Fortunately, it still overclocks the CPU very nicely with the settings that are available.

 

All processors should have been with a minimum of 6 cores and overclock hefty. That would be something for my AW17 . Why uneven numbers on your processor in Futuremark info scann? Nicer with whole numbers. Eg 4300 or higher instead of under 4300 as 4298ghz ...

 

I want a minimum of 12 cores clocked at 8ghz each

 

This comes in the year 2020 for laptop's but only with all cores at 1.8GHz

 

Ah, I see, so that run you posted was with no overclocking at all, it just was stable at it's maximum stock boost then. Well, that's a good result, would be interested to see if you get throttling & what your scores are when you start overclocking it?

 

Stock clock on GTX980M is 1038Mhz
Stock Turbo on GTX980M is 1126Mhz

The run he posted was @ 1262Mhz, constant 99% utilization, no vRAM throttle, no core throttle and no voltage throttle.
The vBIOS' we are testing are no any longer dictating the limit. They can run 1450Mhz+ without throttle...

In his specific system its the GPUs/AC Adapter...it crashes @ about 510W power draw due to the dual AC Adapter facing some challenges...

 

Amazing work, Prema!

I sure wish that my 980M GPUs would run at 1450MHz. This is about their limit... higher core OC produces a black screen lock-up. I'm guessing it is a hardware limitation, since any unlocked vBIOS results in the same behavior.

Great result, but not what it could be if they ran at full potential... http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9774231

 

Here's a comparison with @Prema's awesome vBIOS v1.1 against the above. In addition to finally fixing the Alienware performance problem, it is every bit as effective firmware mod for Clevo machines, no loss of GPU boost for folks that want it, with equally excellent overclocking results as the other vBIOS mod in the above test (just a hardware impediment on overclock ceiling affecting GPUs in my machine).

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/9774231/3dm11/9774342

 

This is a very good step forward for the R2 ... but still no luck for the A 18 right (bios block)?

 

Great job with the vBIOS, and an explanation that I now understand!

 

So what would be the top clock speed i can run a dual 980m on M18xr2 with a SINGLE Ac adapter 330w??

I am thinking on gettting a pair of 980ms but i really don't wanna deal with 2 huge bricks. is it even worth it to upgrade from 780m sli with a single AC adapter?
thanks

 

Actually, I think the problem may be solved for the AW18 also. There is a new version of NVFLASH that works in a pure UEFI environment, so the need to have an unlocked BIOS to set SG mode and flash one GPU at a time is probably behind us now. We need a couple of testers to confirm it, but that appears to be the case now.

 

You might have issues with GTX 980M SLI and a 3920, especially if all of the above are overclocked at all. I know the MSI Titan GT80 is powering 980M SLI with a single 330W brick (possibly the same one we're using) but it does not have a 120W TDP Extreme Processor.

And to be frank, are you pusing 4k on an external display? 980M SLI is TOTAL overkill for 1080p. The whole point of desktop GTX 980 SLI is to push 4k. Everyone with 1080p is getting by with just one GTX 980 no problem. Hell I'm pushing a few games on my desktop at 2560x1440 that don't have SLI support with a single overclocked 780 Ti and am still seeing 90FPS completely maxed out! Seriously, you need to really ask yourself if you even need a second 980M.

One good thing about running only one 980M is that you will have a higher OC headroom (more wattage on tap) and you will prolong the life of your PSU (running any PSU at capacity will diminish its life-span).

After seeing GTA 5 running at a silky smooth V-Sync limited 60FPS nearly completely maxed out (see the GTA 5 thread here) with 680M SLI with a moderate OC with an avg. of 60% utilization and knowing that 680M SLI is about on par with a single 980M I have no desire to pick up 980M SLI (I will be replacing the 680M's with a single 980M however, when money permits).

It's your $800-$1k. I wouldn't even consider 980M SLI unless I had a 4k display at home, and at that point I would consider building a desktop for cheaper as being only able to really use the full extent of 980M SLI at home kind of defeats the purpose with a mobile gaming rig.

 

Well, it depends on what you enjoy most... gaming, overclocking, or a lot of both. Since @Juang1985 asked specifically about overclocking, how well a single 980M will game at 1080p is a totally different topic. Overkill is a basic requirement if you're interested in serious number chasing rather than simply enjoying nice framerates when gaming.

The thing about 980M is that stock it is already runing at clock speeds (boost clock) that are on the edge of 780M clock speeds at max overclocking, and 980M SLI power demands are very similar to 780M SLI. 980M is more efficient (powerful) at any given clock speed or power demand level, but does not seem to draw less power when you start overclocking it. At stock clock speeds a single 330W AC adapter works fine. It doesn't have a lot of overclocking headroom, but neither does 780M SLI. You'll go farther with a 3920XM than a 4930MX because the Ivy Bridge Extreme CPU draws a lot less power than the Haswell Extreme.

I guess the best answer I can give to @Juang1985 is that 330W is inadequate for any kind of hardcore overclocking with 680M, 780M, 880M or 980M SLI. If you're fairly happy with moderate overclocking abilities with a single 330W AC adapter right now, you'll be happier with 980M SLI performance because it is already a big jump without any overclock. I don't know exactly what the max overclock is going to be with one 330W AC adapter. Maybe [Nikos] can give you an idea.

 

Thanks Mr Fox,
So it is safe for me to buy a 980m SLI and no go thru too much trouble?? or should I wait till further testing???

I am not as tech savvy as some of you here so I would need some help from the experts here.... im sure i can figure it out since i flashed my 780m Sli to SLV7 vbios.

I wish we can have a received step by step instruction of the updated procedures we have to do... something more noob friendly