Aw m18x R2 Dual 980m SLI upgrade!!

Are you only using 1.15V at 4.4GHz? My 3920xm seems to need 1.29V at 4.3GHz.

 

No that is when its not doing much. I believe when i benched it was at 1.211v Correction, after looking at it, 1.206v

 

Where can i get my hands on a copy of Johnksss and Slv7's vbios? Thank you sir

I think i found it. Is that right?

https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...vbios-mods-900m-series-overclocking-versions/

Is that older vBios faster then the newer one by Prema v2 (no offense anyone)

 

Yes, that is the one. You may experience instability using the older vBIOS with newer drivers. Black screens and BSOD, etc. If you do, grab the Clevo vBIOS from PremaMod.com instead.

 

I'm pretty sure if you asked nicely on there that Johnksss might convert it to a newer vbios.

 

@Mr. Fox By the way, you are 100% right about the wattage being limited. even with dual 330w psu it won't go much further tha 354w for me, I get to 354 and she pulls the pin, no matter if I use prema's or slv7/johnksss So its something to do with the bios and what cpu is in there, oddly tho i"m not seeing it be as picky with the 2960xm, I'm guessing its old enough tech that it doesn't care because with that I can peak at about 360 before it stops. So this even makes me want to swap to clevo even more.....

 

You haven't other choice. I can push over 415w with a single 330w. This with 980. The very good 330w psu isn't the limit!!

 

Yes, something's definitely fishing going on with the firmware being gimped. That's one of the reasons I finally threw my hands in the air and said screw the whole idea. It's much better now with @Swick1981 BIOS mod than it ever has been, but every example I see the 980M/980M SLI is still not performing at 100% capacity. I think there is an unholy alliance between Dell and NVIDIA to conspire against their customers to get the older upgradable beast machines out of circulation in hopes of selling them new systems. I can't prove it, but it certainly feels that way.

 

Yep so I think I might put a Alienware EXTRAVAGANZA up in the marketplace in the next few weeks lol I have way too many parts laying around for them. Time to get out with my cards while I can

 

I think that would be wise. Ted or Donald at HIDevolution can provide you a barebone EVOC P870DM-G to use your 980M SLI in for a decent price with the amazing @Prema unlocked BIOS. I run my delidded P870DM-G 6700K at 4.7GHz all day, every day, easily bump it to 4.8GHz for a bit of an edge on benching and DDR4-3000 in a laptop is pretty sweet as well. Here's quick look at all of the Prema BIOS options.

 

Youre making everyone jealous Mr. Fox.

So I have a question guys, right now I have the option of upgrading from 680M SLI to either 780M SLI or a single 980M for the same amount of money.

What is the situation with 980M in the R2 exactly?

The way I understand it I would need to enter BIOS upon each and every boot and switch to IGFX, then exit, then boot into Windows and then shut down and re-enter BIOS and switch back?

Would I need to reinstall Windows or upgrade to Win 10?

And I suppose I would need to rely on others to modify drivers as they are released to work right?

If it weren't for the 8GB of VRAM and having 680M SLI power on a single card I wouldn't still be interested.

This is why I am kinda leaning towards 780M SLI.

680M SLI is adequate for a good deal of games except those that require more than the available 2GB of VRAM, which has actually become the majority sadly.

I'm mostly interested in 780M SLI for the 4GB of VRAM, with the 20% performance improvement being a welcome bonus.

 

Does anyone make an 18" barebones?

Homer

 

As far as I know the only other 18" model is the MSI Titan, which is a BGA turdbook. I wish there was an 18" Clevo like this one. That would be nice.

Man, that's a really difficult choice because 780M SLI no longer functioned correctly for me in the M18xR1, M18xR2 or Alienware 18 with drivers newer than 345.20 (released February of 2015). That was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me and played a major factor in deciding to sell all of my Alienware stuff. I still loved the machines themselves, but the malfunction was more than I could put up with. After a year of fighting performance problems trying to use current drivers I finally decided enough was enough. That conclusion came with a great deal of sadness attached to it and melancholy memories of some good times.

NVIDIA cancer drivers seems to be causing mayhem for many non-BGA Alienware systems now, which is one reason I think there is some kind of conspiracy going on. Those same 780M cards that ran like garbage in my Alienware systems worked flawlessly in the Panther, so go figure. And, to be clear, the problems I had with 780M SLI throttling with newer drivers was remarkably similar to the problems I had trying to use 980M SLI. Almost identical, in fact.

I never thought I would say it, but I think 880M SLI actually works better now due to screwed up drivers. It still doesn't perform anywhere close to as good as 780M SLI with old drivers and 880M still doesn't overclock nicely, but having to use ancient drivers is really bad for newer games. Some games won't even launch without pitching a fit about the driver version if you use old enough drivers to work correctly with 780M SLI.

I am not really trying to make anyone jealous, just want everyone to know there is another option out there that might be a better fit and save some frustration and financial loss for as many friends as I can. Quite a few of us long-term Alienware beast lovers are now running a P870DM-G and loving every minute of it. @Phoenix, @TBoneSan, @j95 to name just three guys that I know you are familiar with.

 

What exactly is the issue with 780M SLI and drivers beyond 345.20? I am on the latest driver and am not experiencing any throttling issues with 680M SLI, is the problem you describe limited to 780M?

Hmmm, well it's a good thing I posted this question here first before pulling the trigger on 780M.

I really wish I had $3k lying around for a GTX 980 powered P870DM-G.

Would you pay ~$500 to upgrade from 680M SLI to single 980M?

 

To be honest, I would not recommend spending any money on a GPU upgrade. Just keep running 680M SLI until you can buy something different is what I would recommend.

Yes, 780M SLI and 980M SLI. Does not seem to affect 680M or 880M SLI for some reason. I have 3 or 4 YouTube videos and tons of posts at GeForce Community raising hell about it.

I'm glad you did not pull the trigger. That's why I jumped in and said something. I'd hate to see you experience what I did. Very demoralizing.

Basically, what happens is the core and memory clocks fall to 400MHz and just stay there under load. It's truly horrible. Overclocking makes it worse. It happens in all benchmarks and most demanding games. Tried stock vBIOS and about a half dozen different vBIOS mods and none affected the behavior for better or for worse.

Just a minute and I will grab the video links from YouTube and post them. I'll be back.

Edit: here are a few of them. You can clearly see the problem in these videos. Again, all of the 780M GPUs were tested in the Panther (P570WM) and all worked flawlessly in that machine. The second video is probably the best one to watch.

 

Mr. Fox I would rep you again but I have to rep three other users before doing so lol. Well thanks a lot for saving me a whole lot of stress and I agree, I'm going to run this system into the ground and hopefully join the Monster AlienKiller P870 crowd when finances allow.

Alienware RIP.

BTW, is 1.050v the max I can run on 680M or is there a vbios with more voltage? My temps are fine, I'd like to shoot for more than 1006 MHz core at 1.050v for gaming, or is that ill-advised?

 

double-post

 

I'd say definitely go for it (more voltage) if you were planning to keep it a long time and there was a good upgrade path. If you're going to just be gaming, probably best to baby it and sell it fully functional when you are ready to pull the trigger on a replacement.

 

So I don't do that process at all with Windows 10. Honestly It is mostly shut down and power back up. Rarely am I going into the bios other than to tweak settings. It only throttles on benchmark, gaming on the other hand is great. So I mean 1 980m has been proven to be a beast on benching, but reality is if you are using it for gaming, 980m sli isn't a bad idea just don't overclock the cpu too much, once I get past 4.4ghz is when she gets weird and anything past 4.6 is pointless with this cpu. So if you are going to upgrade, honestly get the 980m's they rock. I'm just wanting more power.

If your benching, get a clevo, if you are wanting to game then you can stick with your R2 for now.

 

double post - Site is acting all sorts of weird.

 

By the way Vulcan, I have a vbios with 1.075v if you are interested in it, I ran them on my 680's and they lasted 3 years running full clock at that voltage and I was usually on +240/+650 with my GPU's and sold them on ebay and the guys that are running them now are still emailing me letting me know that they are great.

 

Wait so youre saying you don't have to go into BIOS upon booting and switch to IGFX and back again and aren't experiencing throttling while gaming? Are the GPU's overclocked? Just to be sure, are you watching the frequency?

Hmmm, maybe I will consider single 980M then...

 

Ya i have them overclocked to +100/+400 and they run fine with the [email protected]. Considering you would be running 1, you would be able to do more than that with a bump in the voltage and it would probably be at roughly +200/+600-750 and be alright.

 

Yes please! I'm at +250 / +400 with 1.050v with ASIC quality of 72.2% primary and 73.5% secondary. I'd like to try for 1100MHz on the core.

 

What kind of Firestrike score are we looking at here with a robust OC single 980M? Just trying to get an idea of what kind of performance loss or gain there would be going from 680M SLI to single 980M.

In the meantime I want to try that 1.075v VBIOS, is it on Tech Inferno or can you PM it to me?

What sucks is that I have to find NVFLASH again as it was on my boot drive that recently succumbed to drive failure. Could anyone point me in the right direction?

So if I were to upgrade to single 980M could I stay with Win7 without reinstalling and expect non-throttling behavior without having to switch to IGFX etc.? Or is that only with Win 10?

 

@vulcan78 - Just be aware that going from 680M SLI to single 980M is not a big jump in performance. In fact, they are close to the same in overclocked benching. Single 980M is actually a measurable performance downgrade (if you don't count broken drivers) compared to 780M SLI.

Here's an overclocked benchmark comparison to chew on while you make a decision. I cannot provide stock comparison (since I hardly ever do stock benchmarks) or gaming comparison, but I think this still shows you might not be gaining as much as you might expect to gain. SLI is still a force to be reckoned with and should not be taken lightly. 680M SLI is not a wimpy setup considering how old it is. The 2GB vRAM is the main thing wrong with it.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/6924868/3dm11/11400069

Edit: since you asked... Fire Strike comparison...

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/3542605/fs/9242200

Edit #2: These are good examples of why NVIDIA marketing fluff should be taken with a grain of salt. Smoke and mirrors and cancer driver magic to fake us out and make their new stuff look better, and hurt their old stuff. Just like they did to 780M... digital genocide and masters of deception.

 

So xnah on the windows 7nah, I can't get my cards to work on Windows 7, I get the 8 beep of doom but with windows 10, she runs like a champ. As for Firestrike score ummmm I think someone on here ran it and it was pretty good with a single, blew the 680m sli out of the water if memory serves. I myself with a single 980m can run GTA V at ultra at roughly 40ish FPS and high at 60+

 

Even with the @Swick1981 M18xR2 BIOS mod? That should give you Maxwell Legacy support as it does others.

 

Yep, I did everything that everyone else does and all it has done is made it easier to install the cards for me, I still have to rely on UEFI in order to run em. Win 7 Ult on my OCZ 240 doesn't give 2 _ _ _ _ s(Fill in Blanks) The second that I set the bios to run legacy she instantly 8 beeps at me and I have to power drain and pull the cmos battery to reset the bios.

 

Well, that sucks. Sorry to hear that. It worked OK for me. I tested it for a bit and had no trouble with Legacy and Windows 7 causing 8 beeps with Maxwell.

 

Ya, these cards I have are from November of 2015 I believe, Brother @Rengsey R. H. Jr. sold them to me just recently, great cards, just no luck with the bios panning out for what it was meant to do.

 

Wow that Firestrike difference is pretty big, I had no idea single 980M was that much faster than 680M SLI in Firestrike. And yeah 13k GPU is very impressive. And 1471MHz, that's humming along!

So just to clarify, I could have this kind of performance simply moving from Win7 to Win10, i.e. no throttling issue? Would I still need to rely on modified drivers?

 

Yes still need to Rely on J95 over at techinferno for driver mods but he is pretty spot on when the driver comes out.

 

That's a compromise I'm willing to make. With a single 980M I could continue playing Planetside 2 again (SLI support it abysmal with this game) along with AC Syndicate (VRAM usage is INSANE).

Man I wish I made this decision about a week ago before completely tweaking Win 7 to my liking after having to reinstall it due to boot drive failure. Oh well, what is the best way to move from Win7 to 10? I heard something about upgrading, but then uninstalling and doing a clean install.

 

Take a closer look. And, look at the graphics performance differences. The overall scores, especially in Fire Strike, are misleading because my 4790K in the 15" baby beast (El Cazador) was violently raping Nikos 3920XM in the physics and combined test. There is only 1.2% difference in the graphics scores in that Fire Strike comparison. In the 3DMark 11 comparison my severely overclocked 980M was only 3.8% better than 680M SLI. If you decide to do it, the most compelling reasons would be higher stock clocks and more vRAM for playing games at stock clock speeds.

 

Ah yes, I noticed the 4790k but didn't bother to ask. Is that in a laptop?! Yeah that would explain the massive difference in the Combined portion of Firestrike.

Yeah, 2GB has become nearly unusable to be honest, I'm having to keep all of the settings down with newer games, with some, such as AC Syndicate, being completely unusable. And having 680M SLI power on one card, although not really faster benchmark wise, would be a really big deal as there's still quite a few games with non-existent SLI support, Planetside 2, one of my favorite games, if not my favorite game of all time, chief among them.

I haven't been able to play Planetside 2 since the ANT update went live 2-3 months ago as I'm "mobile" again and don't have access to the monster desktop in my signature.

So yeah, this is very interesting and is a natural choice for my R2, I moved from 2x 780 Ti SLI to a single 980 Ti overclocked to 1500MHZ for the very same reason that I'm eager to move from 680M SLI to a single 980M.

Oh and keeping it to a single 980M the 330W PSU will be plenty, it will probably run a lot cooler with a longer life-span to boot.

2x 980M for 1080p @ 60Hz is overkill if you ask me. For those who have their R2's connected to an external display, say something like my desktop's PG278Q ROG Swift then yes, 980M SLI is justified, but not at 1080p @ 60Hz.

 

Upgrade, clean install, after that should be pretty swell.

I'm sporting a AOC G2770PQU 27" 144hz 1080p screen and that was part of the reason I went with 980's was 144hz and most games, sure its great but when your not getting over 60fps its kind of a useless tool so with 980 sli she gets well over 75+ in most games if not mostly 100+. Honestly once I swap over to Sager/Clevo, I will probably run 2 of the 27"144hz because I like the monitor so much.

 

Check this out...

 

Can I use this guide to flash 980M?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/about-flashing-my-680m-sli-bios-for-overclocking.681684/

Anyone know what 980M will be here:

"nvflash -i0 -5 -6"

 

Hey guys Im about to try this, ive tried reading this entire thread but my eyes are bleeding and I might have missed something. With the BIOS posted in this main thread is the problem of the cards not being recognized solved? I dont want to go through the hassle I went to back in the day of upgrading my old Area 51 M17x to GTX280s. ​

 

This BIOS will keep you from getting stuck in the 8 beep loop. And allow you install your OS in Legacy Mode (without UEFI) therefore allowing the use of Windows 7. I don't know what you mean about the system not "recognizing" the cards. Do you mean they didn't show up in the device manager? or that the drivers won't see the cards as valid?

 

I was referencing that beeps the computer makes when placing the cards in the lap top. Thanks for the heads up. Sounds relatively plug and play at this point. I just need an elite membership so I can download the new bios for the motherboard. Not looking fwd to the disaster that is NVIDIA drivers again. AMD has been quick with updates. They had a crossfire drive update for Battlefield Beta the same day the beta was released for example.

 

After 5 posts you will get upgraded just help out a few people in the forums it happens quickly.

The drivers and patches you need are also on TI. To install, run the driver installer, it Will fail, then goto C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\372.70\Win8_Win7_64\International\Display.Driver or similar. Drop in and overwrite with the
nv_dispi.inf (including nvdmi.inf) files you also download from that link. Delete the folders they tell you to in that picture. now manually run the installer from the folder. C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\372.70\Win8_Win7_64\International\setup.exe

Oh yeah remember to disable driver signing (smash F8 while you boot) (if windows 10 look up how to disable driver signing it's a different procedure)

 

Heya all,

So I finally managed to install a 980M in my M18X R2. Yes, it has the Prema vBios, and I believe it has the correct one.
Now as we all know, it needs a IGFX - PEG switch on cold boot in order for it to work without throttling.
Well guess what, this causes the famous sound issue. So I have a card that doesn't throttle and a laptop with no sound.
Curiously, Doom works @ 60fps, no throttling, without even doing the IGFX switch, so there is sound there.
Benchmarks as well as Shadow of Mordor experience throttling unless you do the trick. Even the lame Path of Exile engine causes the card to throttle if you haven't switched between IGFX and PEG on cold boot.
My best course of action seems to be to return the card, get rid of the laptop, buy a g-sync IPS machine, listen to master Fox and forget this ordeal
Cause even without the card, I only need Windows to freeze or do an improper reset and I'm without audio for at least the next hour. AFAIK, there's no fixing this.

Edit: I have the 372.70 driver. Doesn't make sense if you can't have the latest. Also, Crysis works atrociously.

 

To repair the audio issue, just put the laptop to sleep by closing the lid, wait a bit and pop the lid back up. Audio should be ok. I also have a single 980m and 5 out of 10 times during GFX switch I have the audio issue. A small setback considering the power of this 4 year old laptop.

 

Hrmm I have never had a single audio issue. What OS are you running. Could be a driver issue. Also did you check your default audio device. perhaps its switching to the hdmi out or another port like a goober.

 

No this issue couldn't possibly be resolved except in the way @jerryzago described. I've managed to get my card to be stable and with sound by putting it to sleep, and to my surprise, it does not always lose the audio when you switch IGFX, just like he said. Very strange. Anyhow, getting around 9K in firestke, Crysis seems to work a bit slow - I'm thinking a single 980M should handle ultra just fine without screen tearing or any stuttering, but newer games like doom and the witcher run fluently, the latter when optimized with Geforce experience. Might keep the rig as it is, after all, and thanks once again @jerryzago . Will do some more tests just now, didn't have time on the weekend. I'll hopefully make a final decision to keep the card cause I don't want to be returning orders I've been resolved to made.

 

How's it going everyone?
I haven't been on this thread in nearly a year. It has gotten ALOT bigger.. Last update I took was I believe nvidia 357? Seemed to be a pretty stable build. Alas, life took over and I haven't used my laptop for anything but occasional printing... I have skimmed a few dozen or two pages back and have come to realize I have missed out on alot.
I'm going to have alot of spare time on my hands in the next month or so and would like to start from scratch and get fully updated. Last time I was around this thread, the windows 10 update would "permanently brick" your system. I understand that is no longer an issue and that the card actually runs smoother on the new OS? I plan to look deeper into compatibility of older games with windows 10 as I spend alot of time on the classics..

At this point I believe this (obviously I will research everything more in depth) is basically all I will need:
Fresh OEM copy of Windows 10 pro
updated/modded bios files
Newest modded nvidia drivers

Not much has changed I guess aside from the new bios. I will be researching this much further but my main questions at this time are, can you flash new bios over any version of old bios? I know before you had to downgrade and "blind flash" to get the newest modded bios. I am also seeing the graphics/audio glitch that requires you to switch to igfx then sleep/wake the system to restore sound and avoid throttling. Has there been a fix to enable integrated graphics or are you simply fooling the system into thinking its running the 980m?

 

m18x R2 has come a long way since early 2012. It has been more upradable even than a desktop. In a desktop around 4 - 5 years you may need a major update to keep up (CPU - mainboard - RAM - PSU - GPU). m18x has been able to keep up only with a major GPU update. Mine still has the 3720q it came with and only 32GB ram update. Also it has the stock 2x256 samsung EVO SSD and now a dula 980m SLI to make it future proof for some time more. I believe that this system will be worh at least 3 -4 years more. 8 years sticking with a system, I believe it is quite a bargain. Sure, it is not a number-hunter or a cutting edge machine, but in terms of everyday usage and occasional gaming it is propably one of the best systems ever made.

 

This, the M18X R2 is the concept of AW realized, I am saddened that the dual GPU AW is now a thing of the past. Ill be performing the 980 SLI swap after the holidays.