The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
They will release the updated BIOS, but probably not before the refreshed models using the new BIOS are already out on the streets. I haven't seen an indication that anyone has accepted delivery of one yet.
I am planning to install single 980m bought from an NBR member who bought it from
@woodzstack in my Alienware 18 which has A10 BIOS , 770M Sli Win-7 64Bit Pro , 4940 MX CPU , boot option : legacy, i am not planning to upgrade to win 10 currently as i have read here at NBR it is destroying screens of AW18 , My question, is it safe to install single 980M on my AW 18 for now with current settings , what vbios would i need to flash the GPU with , would i also need to upgrade to latest BIOS available on dell website ? Will i be able to add another 980m for sli in future with current settings , or is pure UEFI must for sli ?
Short answer no. Bios a10 does not support the 980m. That's the whole reason this thread exists. Alas, when Dell released bios a12 this thread became irrelevant. Just upgrade to bios a12 with your new GPU and you should be good. You won't need pure UEFI or UEFI anything. When you get a 2nd GPU just slap it in. Prema did release a vbios specifically for the AW18 to make sure the 2nd GPU fan worked. I'm using that vbios, but I'm also still using hwinfo. Prema's vbios also stops the throttling issue. I don't know about the new ones on Dells site.
MAKE SURE YOU DO THE HEAT SINK MODDS SHOWN ON THE 1st page of this thread or you will ruin your 980ms.
Are there any technical difference between the 4GB and 8GB version of the 980M GTX (apart from the amount of RAM)? Alienware offers the 4GB while Clevo sells the 8GB. Can i also flash the AW vbios on the clevo card?
Hi, I'd like to update my Alienware 18 that currently has dual 780m to 980m. Now I know the bios was the main issue with the update but not has been fixed with the A12 bios. There's lots of Information on here but it's very hard to find something current and get a straight answer.
My question is this, is it now a simple replace the old gfx cards and install the drivers and it's all good or is there still issues. I'm running windows 8.1.
Also what about heatsinks for the 980m, I'm not happy to mod the 780m heatsinks, I don't have any tools or skills. Am i able to buy the proper heatsinks for it??
Where is the best place to buy the 980m from and the heatsinks??? Who also has a good deal and not charging US $3000!
Hello and welcome to our community. The thread for this topic was on page 3 in the list and I merged your post with it. A12 and
@Prema vBIOS mods of the new vBIOS provided by Alienware makes this upgrade a reasonable proposition for the Alienware 18. It's still not what it should be in the M18xR2. The 780M heat sinks do not need to be modded. You just need to pay attention to pad placement. You can get the 980M GPUs for a great price from
@woodzstack (a member of our community).
hey welcome top NBR, don't install EVGA precision, to use the 980M. (for overclocking etc..) use the latest system bios from DELL and you should be good to go, otherwise you will need a modified driver. If you run into any issues, let me know, i will try and sort it out and help you.
Someone asked about the 4GB versions and 8GB versions ?
There are 2 types of 4GB versions, there are the ones soldered into laptops, and then there are the even cheaper variety with the green PCB you can find on ebay for like 100$ less then the good ones with 8GB. You want the ones with 8GB, they are on BLUE PCB and have newer generation components instead of older , recycled or low quality components, and start with much much higher ASIC quality (think of efficiency, heat/electricity wise), I sell only the good ones, never used or refurbished. People know this, sop they know they can't trade it back to me, because I don't deal in used, recycled or refurbished.
Bugger wish i new about buying the 980s off woodzstack 3 days ago... anyways hey has anyone used the amd 100watt heatsinks they are slightly cheaper ??? Also has anyone got the 980m's working properly in windows 10 sli? I bought my 980m's from CEG and they're boasting that theres will work in windows 10 yet everywhere else ive looked say they don't... also that win10 + nvidia driver problem killing screens is long gone hey ??????
Seeing as the new bios fixes most of the issues with the upgrade it would still be wise to install windows in uefi mode anyways for better boot speed etc??????
Why not? Apart from the agreed-upon view that Windows 10 is intrusive crap -- and the LCD issue, which is being settled -- it is meant to be officially supported on Alienware 18 with the latest GPU offering.
I dont mind windows 10 if anything i like it as much as win7.. as for the intrusive crap i half unchecked all the boxes to disable it but in the end i probably really dont care if they want to sit there and document when and what porn im watching i really dont care
Thanks for that update. I had to go and have a look at the Alienware thread, which concluded early December, with a new and broader thread since more systems are being affected by this issue.
I was under the impression that the situation came down to a bad series of Nvidia drivers and Windows 10 since I do know of few individuals who have successfully upgraded with newer drivers and avoided this issue for a good few months. Furthermore, from what I have seen in the second thread, even Windows 8.* machines are being affected and that EVGA Precision X is being implicated as another causative factor.
Now having that said, if this issue isn't being settled, then Dell (and a wide assortment of retailers including Sager, etc.) have got one hell of a problem on their hands with those new units that they're shipping out at the moment with no other option but Windows 10, and this is without counting all the other Alienware 18s that they actively encourage everyone to upgrade to Windows 10. I'm not being facetious, by the way -- Dell have a somewhat chequered history of being short-sighted on certain issues -- but this does present an interesting conundrum on their part, and not just limited to Dell in this case.
Nevertheless, I don't think that with this growing momentum, the problem can be ignored over the long term. DX12 is an eventuality, and it stands to reason that most consumers, even those with older GPUs, would certainly like to take advantage of its efficiency features. As such, this combined issue of Windows 10 with Nvidia drivers and certain displays cannot be ignored, not with the growing list of machines that are experiencing this issue because this will spell blow back not just from certain consumers, but also retailers and large companies.
Ok has someone done sli 980m's with the new AW18 bios???? I just done mine and i thought the new bios fixed the fans but i can not for the life of me get the second fan to work :/ :/ :/
From what I understand -- open to correction -- one needs to use two different vBIOS versions for the cards (these are official from Dell) that allow them to be identified separately for the fan tables to function correctly on both cards in this model. The vBIOS update for the 970M/980M cards on the Dell website is set up this way for SLi support.
@Prema's vBIOS mod for the Alienware 18 is the official Dell vBIOS unlocked, with master and slave application. If you put the same vBIOS on both GPUs the GPU fans will malfunction if I understand the situation correctly. Something with the Compal EC causes the fans to misbehave.
Nope, Prema has a vBIOS combo (master/slave ROM files) specifically for the Alienware 18. It is based on the stock Dell vBIOS and exclusively for the Alienware 18. Check the sticky thread at the top of the M18x/18 subforum.
Ok i havent had a nvidia product since i got screwed when halflife2 come out ha ha.. can i just hard clock the cards via editing the vbios like i do on my amd cards .. as dont particularly like 3rd party software running in the background doing the clock speeds etc
You don't need any third party software running and none is provided. Just the firmware and flashing tool. You flash the
@Prema vBIOS and you're finished. Prema has already done all of the editing of the firmware. NVIDIA vBIOS tweaking is very complex. It is unlikely you will get good results just tweaking the clocks like an AMD vBIOS. In fact, I can almost guarantee you will not be pleased with the end result because it won't solve any of the performance issues that stock NVIDIA firmware is notorious for causing.
Nah i ment can i get the prema vbios's, flash said cards, get asus gpu tweek or the like, with that get a decent overclock.. then adjust clocks/voltage on prema's vbios's to the values that worked via the gpu overclocking software using a vbios editor..
You don't need to do that. And, no. Prema vBIOS is read-only, not editable.
If you use NVIDIA Inspector to find the voltage and core/memory clocks you like, click the button to save a profile shortcut on your desktop. Double-click it to set the clocks and voltage. No fuss, no muss, and no background processes are running. When you close NVIDIA Inspector it closes completely, but the manual settings stick until reboot. Then you can click the shortcut for the profile whenever you want to apply it and nothing opens or launches. It just applies the settings. You have to do it for each GPU, as they do not sync up automatically using NVIDIA Inspector.
You could use ASUS GPU Tweak and close it after applying your settings. It does not need to be running after the settings are changed.
Yes, but not with 980M in an Alienware, unfortunately. Mine are better for Kepler or non-Alienware systems and they are especially good for 780M and 880M. You need a driver mod from
@j95 to get the best result result from 980M in an Alienware. Then again, if you're not having any throttling you should be good to go. That Fire Strike graphics score is pretty decent, so you might not need a driver mod with the special
@Prema vBIOS for the Alienware 18. All of the focus in the NVIDIA driver mods revolves around resolving serious throttling issues that Alienware seems to be cursed with for some reason. I don't know why that is, and it makes me sad.
Yer pretty happy with the score but of course there is always a need for more ha ha. Glad i went the AW18 now was going to upgrade the motherboard in my m18xr1 to an r2 then get the 980s but decided against it ..
ill tell ya what i can swap you your 780s for my 7970s coz i know how much you love amd
No thanks... I'm staying green for the foreseeable future, but only as the lesser of two evils; not because of the grass being greener. I think it's actually AstroTurf. Plus, I am just waiting for money to come through from a gentleman in Armenia that bought all of my excellent Alienware stuff. I don't think he would be too happy about switching GPUs on him. (Never dreamed there would be so much hassle transferring money from Armenia to USA... easier said than done. Seems USA financial institutions and/or US government has lots of road blocks.)
i grew up in Russia and i would never send anything valuable to CIS countries
i sold a GPU to someone in France by accident because Ebay puts "international selling" to ON by default so i have to disable it for every listing, and i was quite upset about that
@1Schumsta1 - I posted this in the Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge, but I thought you might want to add it to the opening post. Thanks to Brother
@Alienware-L_Porras for the part numbers.
I have made it perfectly clear to him that until I receive payment and convert it to spendable cash that cannot be taken back that I am not shipping anything anywhere. I am leery of selling anything on eBay. I just sold my two 980M cards and even though they paid using PayPal I have to ship them and wait until 2/29 before the money is available to me because eBay is holding the funds until then. Had I known that I would not have allowed payment using PayPal and would have required another form of payment like wire transfer, money order or something I can immediately convert to cash in my hands. That deal with eBay holding the money for a period of time really sucks and I'm not going to play that in the future. If I don't have the actual cash in my hands, there is no sale as far as I am concerned. Only an opportunity for fraud and theft.
Hi, it's a very nice tutorial. However, recently I heard it's may not necessary to reinstall the windows for installation of 980m sli in AW 18 now. Is this true?
Hi, similar question here. I also bought 980m sli cards from woodzstack and ready to install it. My latop is AW 18(2013,9), with A12 bios, win 10 now, do I still need to reinstall the windows after I replace the 770m sli which I am using now with the new 980m sli?
People have posted that once they upgraded their pc to bios a12 and installed the 980m card all was good. There is no needs to mod the Nvidia drivers anymore. That came from a win7 user. I'm still using pure UEFI with bios a12, because I'm to lazy to change it back. If you use Prema's vbios for your cards, note that v1.1.1 was made specifically for the AW18 and the 2nd GPU fan worked fine. However, when Nvidia driver went to 361 and higher you will need v2 of Prema's vbios. V2 was not made specifically for the AW18 and there are posts of the 2nd GPU not working. To be safe us hwinfo to set your fan speeds. I don't know anything about Dell drivers.
I think the worst that can happen if you drop in your 980m cards after installing bios a12 is that they won't work
I tried Prema Vbios v2 for AW18 and i also cant install new drivers. Everytime when Installer installs Graphics Driver my AW is shutting down immediately. So i went back to Clevo vbios v2 and all is working good except 2nd fan.
i finally made a jump to using prema vbios. 1st time using it. and i can tell you it makes a difference. Here is a single 980m with a little OC. I am using driver 358.50 on windows 8/8.1 x64 Also i'm running pure Legacy.
Ok by the looks of it i had the v1 of the prema vbios. Just updated to v2 and installed the newest drivers. Just benchmarking now to make sure everythings the same and also install the new oculus software if it all works definitely going to donate thanks prema
Just to be absolutely clear. Based on what I've read so far, I can upgrade my AW18 mid 2014 from 860m sli with windows 10 and A12 bios to 980m sli and all I need to do is also upgrade the heatsinks to 100w versions and everything will work as expected without any mods to any software. Is this correct?
Now that we have the new bios A12 from dell, why do we need steps 7-9? Aren't there official drivers now? I'm running windows 10 on an Alienware 18 mid 2014 with A12 bios and 860m sli.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
![[IMG]](images/storyImages/image.jpg)
prema v2 + these drivers are the best for me
Last edited: Apr 10, 2016Rengsey R. H. Jr. likes this.
