Alienware m9750 XP SLI-Enabled Drivers?! Must Read.

Here's my specs...

m9750 with Windows XP Media Center
T7400 2.16GHz Dual Core
2 GB DDR at 667MHz
Dual (SLI) 7950 GTX's with 94.23 drivers
100 GB Hard Driver 7,600RPM

I have called Alienware numerous times on this issue and haven't recieved a response that actually helps me at all. I have the 94.23 drivers for my SLI 7950 GTX's. They are from march...which is absolutely ancient when it comes to gaming. I can't play the newest games with SLI enabled because of the outdated Nvidia profiles and old .cfgs. I pay $4,350 to a company I trust and they don't release updates so that I can play the newest games at optimal performance. I'm about to get legal with them. This is borderline false advertising. New games run half as good as they should just because someone at Alienware is sitting on their butt instead of pushing Nvidia for new drivers...

I just wanted to know if there is any news on newer drivers or if there are any 3rd-Party drivers that support 7950 GTX's with SLI.

I will never buy an Alienware again. It is sad - because I have purchased over $7,000 worth of equipment from them within the last 5 years.

 

Most OEMs don't actually update the drivers very often. I suggest using the laptopvideo2go.com drivers.

First, download this file to your desktop:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/nvidia/165series/16501.exe


Run this file to create a 16501 folder ON your desktop, then right-click and save the following file INSIDE the 16501 folder:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/165series/16501/nv4_disp.inf
Open up the 16501 folder and run the setup to install the latest drivers.

Word to the wise: NEVER trust your computer manufacturer to put out the latest video drivers, be they ego-stroking companies like Alienware or consumer-grade churns like Dell (or anything in-between, including Clevo).

 

Thanks - your links are broken though!

 

could you try to post them again...

 

You can get the drivers from this page.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13793

Look at the quickstart guide if you are having troubles with the modded inf.

 

Strange...I've been having problems with posting direct links all day.

If you click on the "Download Drivers" link at the top of the 403 page that comes up, you can just right-click and save the top-most Down arrow and the top-most "INF" to get the linked files.

 

I did what you told me to do and dropped in PCMark06 from a 8430 to 3996. I don't think the drivers I downloaded are SLI enabled. Do you have the same alienware as i?

 

Laptopvideo2go just takes standard NVidia drivers and tweaks them to work with notebook video cards. Strange that your benchmark score would drop, though. Perhaps try a slightly older driver, like 163.14?

 

Alienware just released a new driver in September. Check the site again, but I recommend the 163.69 driver from laptopvideo2go

 

they released one in september for vista, I have XP. Does the 163.69 support SLI on XP?

 

Yup, they have a vista 32 and 64 bit and an XP 32 and 64 bit. Alienware will post new drivers as they become available from Nvidia, but for notebooks that doesn't seem to be too often. That's why laptopvideo2go is awesome. It's the same official nvidia drivers that are released, but they modify them to work on mobile units.

 

None of them have SLI support though...that is the biggy...

 

163.69 does. I'm using it right now.......Are you sure you are enabling it properly? SLI works just fine on my notebook.

 

Could you tell me the specific steps to enable install the drivers and turn on SLI...

 

are there benchmark results for Go 7950GTX SLI for XP compared to vista. I have heard overall that XP is much better, but i'd like to see some numbers for once.

 

Could you tell me the specific steps to install the drivers and turn on SLI...

 

Can you check in your hardware profile to see if two 7850s are detected? You can find this by right clicking "my computer", select the "hardware" tab then click on "Device Manager". You should see two "NVIDIA Go 7850" under display adapters.

If both cards are there, I have a sneaking suspision that your sli bridge might not be working if both cards are detected. Typically in an SLi system, if everything is detected and working properly, on boot up, the system will ask you if you want to enable sli or not. Otherwise, your system just doesn't "see" you system as Sli capable.

As far as I know ALL nvidia drivers support Sli (except the really old ones before the technology was available obviously) and will give you the option to enable or disable it provided the hardware is there and detects properly. Your sli bridge should look like a little black dongle attaching both video cards together. I saw some pictures of it on the Alienware site on how to upgrade your system. I'll post a link after I do a quick search.

<edit> Linkage <edit>
http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/alienware.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=5557

Black looking cable is the sli bridge.

 

Download the 163.69 driver and modded INF files. The driver app is a self-extracting file that creates a driver folder. Extract driver files then remove the INF file in the extracted drivers folder and replace it with the modded INF file. Finally, click on the driver setup app and let it do the rest.

When setup is finished you can open up the nVidia Control Panel and click on the Set SLI confi in the Select a Task... column. You should see two radio buttons which give you the option to run with one graphics card or in SLi mode.