M18xR1 black screen

Hi all,

Yesterday I was doing some excel work and the screen started showing corruption (graphics artifacts) and I switched to Igfx and it was painful, but when I tried to switch back to the dual 580's the result was no bios.

Powers up, fans on, hd indicator on, no reaction from the screen whatsoever.

From what I have seen this is likely that the video card is dead. so I tried reversing the the primary and secondary, no dice, same problem. I am pretty sure the secondary died awhile ago as I havent been able to use SLI for some time, so I figured this wouldnt work.

Thoughts of getting a replacement card, either a gtx780 or 880? what work would be required to get this to work? is it plug and play? need modded drivers etc?
Or is it just time to bite the bullit and get a new laptop, or something?

It has the extreme CPU so it was still quite the beast of a machine.

Thanks for your assistance community

 

If you are interested in sli 880m pm me. But to be honest, if you are going to stay with this machine 980m are better as they run cooler (I believe they work in the 18x R1, correct me if I am wrong). I believe you would need to install an unlocked BIOS in order to use these.


-imest

 

Best card for M18x R1 is the GTX 880M flashed down to 780M voltage and clocks. Maxwell cards do not work in the M18x R1 as it is missing UEFI drivers to initialize the card.

 

I just thought of something, doesn't the M18xR1 also have SG graphics mode in the BIOS? Can't it run a single 980M in SG mode or was that tested?

But I agree 780M SLI is best guaranteed set-up for this system and even today should allow you to play many games (especially those with SLI support) @ 1080p.

 

I feel like I've tried before but it won't even detect/initialize the card because it has no idea how to handle GOP.

 

so 780/880 are best options, I guess I can see whats out there and give it a try. and I'll search for threads on the upgrade process.

 

Again I have 2 x GTX 880m if you are interested PM me.


-imest