Aw m18x R2 Dual 980m SLI upgrade!!

Some of the BIOS initialisation code has been messed with likely to help uefi support and maybe steps towards windows 10. Some step is hanging and making boot not happen in non optimus mode (the Intel procedure is already built in and the nvidia gpu is slaved in optimus so initialisation is less complicated for it).

 

If your room is silent and you are not using headphones of any kind or playing any music/games from your speakers, you will surely notice a max-fans clevo. And by "room is silent" I mean "if you are in a power outage, because ambient noise such as an AC, or a fan elsewhere in the room, or a TV, or anything else at all really" will drown out the noise. Now some people really are in such quiet rooms and won't use headsets or anything like that, but if you're not one of them then I don't see why a P377SM-A would be a problem for you. Far less using it in a classroom or outside anywhere. No chance people are gonna hear that, ESPECIALLY on auto fans.

 

This describes the entire AAA gaming industry right now, especially versus PC gamers as they are the smallest subsection of most AAA companies' dollars. Why not do it with enthusiast laptop gamers too?

I know the 880M was just broken for almost every user out there, but for most companies the 980M seems to work well though. I think this is something where Dell's unique setup with the mux + MultiGPU systems is just somehow broken. If we get it working fine on M18xR2, then awesome. If only the AW18 updates with a new alienware BIOS that allows the 980Ms and 970Ms to work and the M18xRx series and older M17x series don't get the same update and we can't get them working normally, then Dell just abandoned their older machines (which I do understand I guess). But still, it's never nice to see a company go the locked-down route. I'm still peeved at Clevo for their P65xSx series with integrated everything.

 

Well said, Mr. Fox. :thumbsup:

 

shuold i return thi 980m to eurocom???? there is no way to make it function correctly, and i dont want loose this money if there isn`t any solution until 2015....

 

They don't accept returns, do they? I ordered a 980M from them and they said there are no returns, so I cancelled before it shipped.

I think they only accept returns if the GPU is faulty.

 

shuold i return thi 980m to eurocom???? there is no way to make it function correctly, and i dont want loose this money if there isn`t any solution until 2015....

I will do reclaim in paypal, because in the auction they said fully functional with alienware and that isn`t true

 

If you can, sure. I think you should.

 

That's a major problem, too. There is no reason for any OEM or ODM to lift a finger or bother helping improve UEFI support except for Micro$haft mandating it. Macro$hat is the only one that actually needs advanced UEFI support, driver and firmware signature enforcement and Secure Poot. Why? Simple. Because it helps them secure their own future and control all of the brain-dead zombies. If these gutless and feckless OEMs would simply tell Micro$lop to ram all of their monopolistic pseudo security bull dukey filth up their tush and rotate on it until they expire from colonic hemorrhage we might not have half the problems. These OEMs are all cowering to the retarded tech-god from Redmond. I'm just so sick of the tail wagging the dog. They produce trash, yet have the cajones to tell the industry how it's going to be instead of the other way around. If the big OEMs would just grow some giblets we might have some amazing stuff to play with. With Micro$haft calling the shots we can pretty much count on something that falls short of awesome waiting for us down the line. With a "partner" like Micro$woft none of us need a nemesis.

 

I'm dying with laughter send help

(let help be carrying two 980Ms too)

 

this is waht Eurocom answer me when I try return vga card

Estimado lechonman:

The card is working in AW 17 (R5) and M17x R4
we tested in few systems and no issues

What is your model? What is your old VGA card? Is your VGA heatsink 3pipe or 2pipe? GTX 980M is 100W card so you need 3pipe heatsink


- upgradeyourlaptop
Pulsa el botón Responder para contestar a través de Mensajes, o bien abre tu cuenta de correo electrónico para responder

And they refer me to this video, that is a photo montage, in any place we can see is an Alienware with that card

Alienware 17 (r5) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M upgrade - YouTube

Here is my aw17 with 980m from eurocom (aka upgradeyourlaptop in ebay) where anybody can see what happens when I try to launch 3dmark, nvflash and farcry 4.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VcsTjATxbI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNXX7j4Yq8Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1a-9YAMxZA

 

ive had the same issues you are seeing and and it turned out to be some thing got corrupted with windows registry and a clean install of windows did the trick and every thing worked fine..
(no i dont have 980s) just letting you know what has worked for me in the past with the 880s and 780s

 

I did make 3 clean install of windows, in 3 differect units, 2 ssd and 1 hard disk, and allways same problem, laptop crashed when any app or game required to use the video device, I did must change 3d screen with and old 900p screen, because 980m didn`t work in 3d screen, I tried 3 different versions of modded nvidia drivers, and item never did work, now only want return this eurocom`s 980m and recover my money.

 

I think everyone should start writing emails, call them, tweet and write posts on their facebook page about the current situation. Maybe they will bow under and start helping with a working vbios to us if enough pressure is done.
Here is something I wrote on their facebook page with my throw away account.

 

Buenas suerte con eso! Good luck with that! Hope they accept the return. They didn't accept an amd 5870M I was returning years ago. because it was no compatible with my hp firebird. After that, I don't buy from them Anything from they Any More no matter what!!

 

When you say 3D screen, do you mean simply having the machine at 120Hz?

 

My laptop screen is 3d 120hz, and with that allways black screen and 8 beeps..... I told them and answered, graphics card is not compatible with 3d screen, and I sent before all specs of my laptop because they must do some test.

The last, they asked me if my heatsink is 3pipe heatsink, and if you look the video they are using 2 pipe heatsink.... no comment about that.

 

So basically, you can't get the 980M working -at all- is what you're saying... not exactly that it can't handle 120Hz screens.

 

Yes, I changed screen with an old 900p, and nothing work, whem I try laung a benchmark, laptop crashes, when I try launch a game, laptop crashes.... there is no way, allways the same, 980m no works in AW17

I uploaded videos with the proof, and they say in them video, that is a photo montage from timeline 4:45 to the end, it works, but they dont make a new video, just trying any game

 

Last answer from Eurocom

Hello Juan.

I am getting a video for you of it working shortly.

It is working fine on BIOS A09, have you tried downgrading?

Here are the setting that I am using:

Bios A09

Running UEFI.

Windows 8.1 PRO with all the updates and .net frameworks updates.

Intel video drivers from Dell / AW site.

Nvidia drivers ver. 344.60 modified INF.



For this I am just matching the exact same drivers / bios I tested within W7.

 

1) First take care of the rest of your drivers if you haven't already. Then remove all of the nvidia drivers you've installed.

2) Download the official 980M drivers directly from nVidia: http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/344.65/344.65-notebook-win8-win7-64bit-international-whql.exe

3) Download the attached nvdmi.zip file I've provided. Extract it.

4) Open the nvidia driver installer, let it extract all of the files. When the installer finally pops up, close it.

5) Take the nvdmi.inf file you extracted earlier and put it in C:/NVIDIA/DisplayDriver/344.65/Win8_WinVista_Win7_64/International/Display.Driver/ *Overwrite the existing file*

6) Reboot with driver signature enforcement disabled.

7) Now install the nvidia drivers using C:/NVIDIA/DisplayDriver/344.65/Win8_WinVista_Win7_64/International/setup.exe *Run as admin*

That driver should install assuming the device id is correct and I've modded the inf properly. I made it for Windows 8.1, I didn't bother modifying the Vista/7 section.

Good luck. :thumbsup:

 

Peter, you may want to give this a shot with your M18xR2.

This might even work for a 120Hz 3D M17xR4 using the VGA port with the LCD cable unplugged from the motherboard.

 

Great stuff and definitely worth chewing over. Here's my additional and admittedly under-informed two cents:

I haven't seen any instances yet where people have gotten 120 functionality on a 980m card... not in any brand, not just AW. As sad and tired as it sounds, it sounds like it's nothing personal except it being the oldest story in the world; cold hard dollars versus a small slice of their audience. Somewhere along the line, the bean counters at NVIDIA sat down with the heads of the engineering division and figured out how much it was going to cost in research and development to add the 120 functionality. When they balanced that cost against how many people would theoretically want the 120 system against how many would be perfectly satisfied with a 60, not doing the R & D won out on the financial bottom line. Companies that choose customers over dollars these days are getting rarer by the day, and while I won't say AW is one of them, in this case NVIDIA certainly was. This could potentially be how AMD ends up making their hay in the future, as there is still definitely a market for the 120 displays and it's not being serviced by NVIDIA any more. Just a though.

(NVIDIA's actions, by the way, are exactly the same sort of corporate thinking of "profit first, everything else distant second" that convinced me to leave employment at EarthLink in September of 2002. Honesty? I was proud as hell to work there before everything good about that company keeled over and died in the name of profit margin and churn retention. Outsourced employees were 1/4 the price of domestic ones, never mind the astronomically lower customer satisfaction ratings before and after the Great Purge.)

After my next laptop lives its cycle and dies, I'll probably look into assembling my own because there's certain things I want that just don't seem to go on laptops... like a keyboard actually worth a crap. Mechanical? Yes, please. Being on these forums for the last five years has been a real education, and I'm glad to say that the amount of snark and whinging that takes place is by far the lowest of any place I frequent. There's a lot of great knowledge here if you know how to ask the right questions, and people are pretty patients with newbies. I really hope Alienware moves forward with products we can all get behind, so this cool as hell community can continue to evolve and move forward.

And damnit, Alienware, BRING BACK NEBULA RED!

 

The reason you've not seen 980M + 120Hz functionality is because no new systems have 120Hz screens. The 980Ms are plug and play in Clevos for now; machines like mine or Ethrem's P377SM-A would be best to check if they work with the 120Hz screens. Technically, they should have no actual problems, just the 120Hz screens haven't been large enough in demand apparently for Clevo to continue stocking them or something.

If anybody wants to send me a pair, I'd happily test. If not, I understand because it's like $1500 USD + shipping rofl. Otherwise though, Ethrem was supposed to get a pair as far as I remember; if he does he could easily let us know if 120Hz works for him as he also has a 120Hz screen in his machine (though he lacks the 3D emitter I have).

That being said, the 980M feature level and 780M feature level are virtually the same... in fact, the 980M's spec sheet claims it has CUDA support, something the 780Ms don't claim to have even. Also, to support 4K res you should theoretically be able to push enough bandwidth for 1440p 144Hz, so... it should be fine. I don't get how you could code a GPU to *NOT* use a faster screen refresh rate. Also, the user before who had a 120Hz screen in his AW17 said he swapped it for a 900p 60Hz screen and the card still wouldn't work, so 120Hz wasn't the problem. For reference both pages are below.
GeForce GTX 780M | Specifications | GeForce
GeForce GTX 980M | Specifications | GeForce

 

I noticed that as well when I was Googling around and messing with configuration options on various sites. Does this mean that internal monitors with a 120Hz screen is a dying breed and moving forward, it'll be external monitors only? The only way you can get 120Hz on the AW website is to have the 3D display with the 880m, and there's only one configuration column that allow you to do that. Hopefully it's an issue that will solved by NVIDIA, or it'll really become a niche market.

Sad. The difference between the two is amazing.

 

It's supply and demand. Also, the panels have been out of production for forever. We're all getting 2010 or early 2011 panels (even in early 2014 with the P377SM-A models) when we ordered 120Hz. Nobody's making new panels because nobody is buying it, and optimus without the iris pro GPUs killed the 120Hz possibilities due to its limits in the internal displays as far as I know.

So basically, Optimus is probably the reason haha. Not everyone is wanting a SLI model just to have 120Hz. The P170HM3 was my original desire back in the day, with a 580M and a 120Hz screen + 3D emitter. Since the EM series, only the SLI models had 120Hz functionality, and surprise surprise? That's when optimus started running rampant. So... yeah. What I don't know is if the AW17 with the 120Hz screens support 120Hz when switching to the intel display, or if it stores separate profiles whenever you use the MUX switch, as that's the only machine I know that's the anomaly, and I've not seen many people with them to ask.

But yeah. Laptop stuff is changing and maybe we'll be seeing some good stuff in the future, but right now things suck.

Hopefully we'll get more MQ chips in the future. I expect none for broadwell (and if they do come out and run cool I might be considering one somehow) but maybe by the time I'm ready for a new system when Skylake or Cannonlake and Volta or Volta's successor (which I forget and cannot seem to find because google sucks at searching for these things) are released, they will be back and 1440p 120Hz will be a good thing and we'll all be using 3000MHz DDR4 10-10-10-28 RAM and stuff with 2TB SSDs for $100 each. =D.

 

The AW17 doesn't use a mux switch like the 18. The 17 with the 3D display has the iGPU completely bypassed. If you have a 3D AW17, you cannot use integrated graphics, only the dedicated gpu is supported.

 

Welp see! There we go! My question has been answered. It *IS* the iGPU's fault entirely. Thanks for clearing that up sir.

I'll rep you when I can give out some more; I gave out my limit for the day somehow apparently O_O

 

Correct... in fact, there are two separate ports on the 17" laptop motherboard. LVDS is for 60Hz and eDP is for the 120Hz 3D capable display. See image below. They are clearly marked on the PCB.

 

You can switch by using the different cable and display though (It may need a bios flash too but I don't think so).

 

Mr. Fox i've tried boot system by unplugging LCD cable, unfortunately no luck same 8 Beeps, i've tried most possible configuration as below,
Unplugged LCD cable, external monitor through miniDP = Black screen 8 Beeps
External monitor HDMI = Black screen 8 Beeps
Reset system and followed again same procedure but still no luck. i know it's stupid but tried without connecting any display still same 8 beeps.
Actually i dont have VGA cable nor my monitor got VGA port, Hence im sorry but i'm not able to try that configuration.

 

Nice try though.
Appreciate your work. Let's wait for a while. Since svl7 has alienware and is getting 980m next week, I guess we will be getting some answers.
If 980m don't work, .. oh man I really dont want to imagine that situation

 

I'm so jealous of those getitng their 980s XD!
Is it a huge upgrade from 880ms or should I not bother with upgrading?

 

They are only 50-60% faster. One GTX 980M is 10% below 780M SLI.
Nah lets keep the GTX 880M. Good enough

Spoiler

Signed, Alienware

 

LOL @ Cloudfire. :thumbsup:

Yeah, way better. I would never consider giving up 780M SLI for a machine with just one 980M, but 980M SLI would be so awesome in the M18xR2 and AW18. Unfortunately, other than the P570WM3 the 980M SLI alternatives available for purchase are pathetic or otherwise unacceptable (cooling issues, CPU overclocking limits, etc.). Without an unlocked CPU mounted in a socket that's as much of a deal breaker as just one GPU. Laptop has to be built be my way or not at all, LOL... there's no room crap compromises.

 

I dont understand why Dell not yet introduced 980M. I guess may be they got to clear out 880m stock. Or their so called team go no idea about why it is not working in their Alienware systems :S

 

So its not worth me selling my AW18 for an Asus g751 with 4860hq and single 980m and buying a desktop

 

Depends. SLI scaling is not present or that useful in many games, so it might be an upgrade in some games. It might also be a downgrade in a few which DO have such good SLI scaling. Up to you what to do with that.

 

That's totally up to you. If you're happy with one GPU and OK with the risk of going with ASUS (notorious for poor quality laptops and lousy service) might as well go for it. There's the ethical problem of financially supporting Intel and their BGA CPU filth. If people don't severely punish Intel for pinching off loaves of BGA feces by refusing to buy it, they'll just keep on pinching a loaf down our throats with more and more crap like that. They're driven by money, not excellence. The only way to get their attention is to hit them hard in the wallet. It's up to enthusiasts to make a difference here and take the high road in boycotting those products, because the average retard consumer doesn't have a clue what they are buying. If it looks fancy, that's all it takes to get them to bite.

 

Just read the last few pages of this thread and have this to add:

Mistake #1: Buying a GPU from Eurocom and thinking you'd ever get a refund.
Mistake #2: Thinking Eurocom can fix anything - they likely steal vbios work from T|I and repackage it just like others have done in the past. Lucky for them marco is a nice guy and doesn't do nefarious things w/his vbios releases.
Mistake #3: See #2 and #1.

Also as for where AW is headed, I saw that a long time ago and bailed when the new M18's were released. AW is a more mainstream focused company now, the bottomline matters most, especially now that Dell is private and doesn't have public funding. You can forget about the good old days of cutting edge performance, time to move on fellas. Wannabe console systems (that will fail) like the Alpha are just the beginning. Wait until they try to make a gaming tablet..laugh.

 

well said:thumbsup:
get out of the BGA and plastic crap about scary throttling

 

Gaming tablet is an oxymoron... a little bit more laughable than "gaming Ultrabook" LOL. Alienware isn't alone in their quest for mediocrity. They're just going with the flow, because almost everything available for sale is a pile of trash now.

 

Performance wise, nope. You will be slightly better off with GTX 780M SLI.
Heat/power wise - 980M is much better
Then there is other stuff like: If game doesnt support SLI the 980M will be much better. 900M series support MFAA with same smoothness as MSAA but much less demanding. Who knows, they could add support for MFAA for other cards later though.

Yeah I think you are spot on here Joker. Neither Eurocom nor HID are capable of making the new cards work in any of the Alienware machines properly. They have been working on them for a month now (not Eurocom) and HID always come up with an excuse "soon done noe" etc.
I sincerely hope SVL are capable of fixing this mess. If he does, im gonna support him with some money when I upgrade mine. That much he deserves I think.

 

@5150Joker. Hey Long time no see Bro!

 

I was open dispute in paypal for full refund from eurocom, they only know to say, vga works, then why should i removed my 120hz screen?????

 

Good question. To even suggest putting in a 900p 60Hz display instead of 1080p 120Hz. Nobody buys GTX 980M to play in 900p lol. Thats a job for like what, GT 640M or something?

 

Well you could put in a 60hz 1080p but it's not quite the same even with ocing.

 

With double GTX 980M to play in 900p had given hefty fps during gaming.

 

I wont be getting an ASUS then.

I think I might go desktop pricing up a new Area 51 its no more expensive than that of scan or pcspecialist here in the UK. It has the wow factor for me though as it looks like a purpose built machine. Aesthetics matter to me as the look is the first bit of the experience. Also the warranty is brilliant so far in my experience. I would rather have next business day on site than return to base.

 

That would be better, Brother Schneider. Area 51 looks pretty sweet and the warranty/service is compelling.

ASUS (IMHO) has truly amazing desktop components, but their laptops and horrible laptop support really makes their laptops a poor choice. If they were as good as the desktop enthusiast side of the business they would be fantastic.