gtx 765m sli or Single gtx 980m

Hi Alienware pros. I'm a little confused on what to choose. In my other Alienware 18(4700mq) I've got gtx 765m in sli overclocked +135 to the core +600 to memory and everything seems to be running ok...but you know us always wanting more performance.

I've been reading around of all the troubles with the 980m in sli, the ALW18 being internally power limited, and some fan issues...But I have the opportunity the pick up my friends gtx 980m very cheap. What would be the right thing to do for more performance?

Stick with the 765m overclocked in sli and stay with windows 7 or go to a single gtx 980m upgrade to windows 8.1?

If anyone can chime in & let me know it would be greatly appreciated.

 

My thoughts are: buy it, try it and if the performance is unsatisfactory, sell it. Maybe you can download a windows 8.1 iso image and trail the setup before you need to activate windows? If you are buying it really cheap, you should move it easily at the same price or maybe even profit from it.

If you can get the same performance (or better) from a single GPU as opposed to sli/crossfire, it is normally preferred as you won't have to worry about poor scaling etc.

One thing I am unsure of is driver compatibility for the 980m (non sli) with the Alienware 18, but I think a single GPU combined with windows 8.1 should ensure you shouldn't have any issues.

 

I heard that a 980M is a No No for Alienware 18 and older.

PS: for comparison, Here are my benchmarks of my current Alienware 18 with 780M GTX SLI vs my previous ASUS G751JY laptop which had a single 980M GTX, both were using the 347.25 drivers at the time of testing and both running at stock clocks (I don't overclock). Also bear in mind the ASUS G751JY laptop was running using a crappy CPU 4710HQ vs the 4900MQ which is in the Alienware 18 at the time of testing


2x 780M GTX SLI




980M GTX (Single)




But then again, you can't really be certain tht the 980M GTX in that ASUS laptop that I had would run the same without throttling on your Alienware

 

I'd check over at tech inferno, I know the 17 has been fairly ok with the 980m in optimus mode.

 

I'd say that they are quite similar setups.

 

The 980M will work with the AW18.. Your best off with a single GPU + 4940MX... it's more then enough performance.. You'll need Windows 8.1 installed... Drivers will need modded infs to install (J95 does them over at techinferno forum).. Now the GPU fans don't ramp up properly with it however HWinfo64 can be used to set it..

@Scanner can provide more information about this..

 

Well a single 980m offers 780m sli performance and you never need to worry about having a single 330w brick if tweaking.