*** Windows 10 + NVIDIA WHQL Drivers are Killing Alienware and Clevo LCD Panels ***

You can download a torrent of a genuine Dell/Alienware Windows 8/8.1 OS. Just install it, and it automatically detects your key from the hardware & activates its self. Works on most Alienware laptops, I actually have the original USB.. Funny enough, I used it on my dad's Samsung laptop & it worked perfectly for him as well! Saved him from the obligation of buying a new OS.

 

Good lord, this Sinistar used to scare the crap outta me. I am going to have nightmares now dude.

 

But it is missing the specific AW stuff, right

 

LoL. I don't think so... Even the USB lights up.

 

If Windows 10 + NVidia drivers bricked your 1080p screen, it could be interesting to see if it bricks the 900p screen too - although could be infuriating for you if the same thing happens again!

 

Just in case monitor firmware flashing goes wrong, what are the best 1080p 17.3' panels one can buy? My panel is LG LP173WF1 tl b3, if others are better I would rather buy a better panel in case I have to.

 

So i think the problem stuck with Nvidia and Windows 10...

is there any risk running windows 10 on my Alienware m18xR2 with dual AMD Radeon 7970m with crossfire?

 

The970m sli is so not worthy of an upgrade especially when compared to the 880m sli (only 10%). Either you go with the 980m sli (as I said before 25-38% difference) or wait for the 990m. Keep in mind that if the 990m speculated specs are true, it will annihilate both the 880m sli and the 980m sli. Now imagine SLi'ing dem babies ᕦ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ᕤ

 

Hey @Daniel1983 , how's your 880ms doing? I did notice a bump in performance with the latest drivers. Are you on windows 10?

 

can some please correct me, everywhere i have looked, 970m is way superior to the 880m and 780m, and is only slightly more expensive, i know the 980m is way better card, however for the price of one 980m, i can get two 970m's

 

a single 980m is the same price a dual 970m's. so i find it easier to go for a 970m, and when time comes, go for a 990m, or something better.

 

The 970m vs the 880m is somewhere around 20% difference but as the m18xr2 supports sli, I presume you'll get yourself a pair of gpus right? So sli vs sli, it's around 10%. So yeah 970m sli vs 880m sli is not worth it at all. That's just my 2 cents though.

 

Here is a PowerStrip reading of the screen - stored on EDID. If I try to pull the data directly from monitor, I get the error 'DDC communication with the monitor failed or is not supported'.

There is an option to write a custom monitor driver as well.

Spoiler: Dell Display controller report

Diagnostic report - generated on 22/08/2015
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PowerStrip build - 736
Windows build - v.6.2.9200.2
DirectX build - v.10.0.10240.16384 (th1.150709-1700)
OpenGL renderer - (n/a)

System board
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type - Intel
Transfer mechanism - DiME
Non-local memory - 1792.0 MB
PCI Express version - 2.00

Graphics card #1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Identity - Dell Display controller
Memory clock - 200.00 MHz
Engine clock - 200.00 MHz
IRQ - (n/a)
Display driver - igdumdim64 igd10iumd64 igd10iumd64 igdumdim32 igd10iumd32 igd10iumd32
DirectX driver - igdumdim32.dll, v.10.18.10.4252
Attached monitor - Generic PnP Monitor (Microsoft)
Monitor caps (1) - 1600x1200, 75kHz, 85Hz

Graphics card #2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Identity - Dell CPU-to-PCI bridge
Memory clock - (n/a)
Engine clock - (n/a)
IRQ - (n/a)
Display driver -
DirectX driver -
Attached monitor - ()

Device enumeration
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dell CPU-to-PCI bridge (01548086h)
Intel PCI-to-PCI/PCIe bridge (01518086h)
Dell Display controller (01668086h)
Dell Universal serial bus (USB) (1E318086h)
Dell Communication device (1E3A8086h)
Dell Universal serial bus (USB) (1E2D8086h) - using IRQ16
Dell Multimedia device (1E208086h) - using IRQ22
Intel PCI-to-PCI/PCIe bridge (1E108086h)
Dell Universal serial bus (USB) (1E268086h) - using IRQ23
Dell PCI-to-ISA bridge (1E578086h)
Dell Display controller (13D710DEh) - using IRQ16
Dell Ethernet controller (10831969h) - using IRQ16
Intel Network controller (08B18086h)
Dell Reserved (unknown class) (520910ECh)

 

Or you could go with the 880ms and save more dosh for little to no performance lost.

 

880Ms are the worst cards to get.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Since I got my 17R2 a couple of days ago, I have not even bothered with my AW18.. The 17R2 with a single 980M, 4980HQ, 16GB RAM (out of factory no overclocks) absolutely DESTROYS the AW18: 880m SLI, 4930MX OC'ed to 4.4GHz, 32GB RAM @ 2133MHz. My Firestrike score is slightly lower on the 17R2, but the gaming performance on it is night & day difference when compared to the AW18. I would choose the 17R2 to game on over the AW18 ANY day of the week. Literally. The Alienware Amplifier & Zotac Titan X I ordered should arrive by no later than Tuesday next week; really looking forward to doing some benchmarks & tinkering with overclocks to see what I can squeeze out of what everyone seems to refer to as a lemon (the 17R2). This is one lemonade I truly enjoy drinking.
When I fired up "Project Cars" & maxed it out even further than I ever had on the AW18, and I had much better performance with higher overall FPS, I was instantly in love.

Do not buy anything aside from the 9 series cards. 880m's are total crap. If you are planning to go SLI at some point, but can only afford one VC now, spend the extra $ and get a 980m. It's a beast! You will not be happy with 970m if you enjoy maxing everything out in your games.

 

Agreed... The 970M can troll a 880M easily and easily OC and own it... 970M SLI definetly!

 

No ideological preachings and even less overinflated metaphors (sorry, gents, I can't entirely agree), @Ali Masood. Since Project Cars was mentioned, I think you can consider the following . . .

Porject Cars Performance

980M Ultra:


970M Ultra:


880M Ultra:


980M SLi Ultra:


880M SLi Ultra (65-120 by title and rather similar to my own performance with a previous copy of the game):


Not much out there for 970M SLi, but I think you get the point, and the reason why I'd rather stick to more reasonable expectations than 'way superior' as a comparison summary. Furthermore, this roughly speaks to the actual overall documented differences between these cards at stock across a wider range of titles with various features. *Of course, if one is looking to do some serious overclocking -- perhaps even dual PSU mod -- then the game changes quite a bit in further favour of the Maxwell cards.*

Splitting hair over 970M and 880M is just that: splitting hair, and this wouldn't be an overinflated metaphor. For the same price, the choice is obvious, but if it's a money-related issue, then you likely know what to do going forward and to remain realistic about the information, the hype and even the excess cynicism. It wasn't that long ago when the 880M was the sole universal pariah around these parts -- still is for quite a few as can be seen by the posts in this forum -- but then Nvidia made sure that the 780M SLi wasn't left out of the firing line for long, either, and the new drivers haven't been kind to that configuration whatsoever.

Having that said, I think it would be ideal to wait a while as the price of the 980M will drop further, and then you can get an SLi combination for that card rather than, you know, split hair on forums. ; )

 

Thanks for sharing my 880M SLI Project Cars video in your post.

In regards to the 980M Project Cars video you shared, I am shocked.. He must have a very bad CPU bottle-necking his 980M BIG time!

I am a heavy "Project Cars" tuner--squeezing the last possible frame out of the game on the highest settings possible (have spent over 70+ hours tuning on various setups) and I can tell you from experience that in that game your CPU makes a MASSIVE difference in your final results. Projects Cars is CPU heavy, especially on mobile platforms. When I get more time, I will make & upload a Project Cars gameplay video on my 17R2, and you will clearly see that my settings will be significantly higher than those in the 980m project cars youtube video you shared, not only that but my FPS will also be at least 20+++ FPS higher than his. System configuration truly makes a BIG difference. Having a 980m paired with a crappy CPU, you will suffer a lot. That I know is the case in the video you shared. Just some food for thought.

 

I quite intentionally did so, because I tend to follow your videos, mate. ; P

Also, well said on the CPU role in scaling of performance; takes me back to the days when we had the M17X R1 units and were working out means to get even more performance out of the Xfire units because they scaled much better with higher CPU output. So, good point about the CPU performance, which is why I reinforce your output with my own experience and state that it is similar in rough terms since I do not have the 4930MX, but rather, the 4710MQ.

I can't comment further on the single 980M video but the 880M video isn't all that different in CPU spec terms, nevertheless, it would be great to see more videos from you on the M17 R2. When it comes to the individual with the Clevo 980M SLi, it was indeed running on a slower 4910MQ CPU, which kind of explains why the difference between your two rigs is much narrower than the conventionally observed 30% difference. However, on that note, even with my slower CPU performance than his machine's, the gap wasn't nearly as wide as one would have expected and this is despite the fact that mine wasn't scaling that well with SLi, either. Perhaps I had some nebulous driver advantage, but these are the variables we are dealing with at the moment.

Regardless, I do stand by my previous post, which isn't in disagreement, but merely introducing nuance to the matter. The individual would be better off just waiting and getting 980M SLi configuration, or starting with just a single 980M and then getting a second, rather than splitting hair over the 880M-970M dichotomy.

 

I don't know about you guys but my 880ms annihilate all the games I threw at them and will continue doing so for at least 3 years to come. take for example in gta 5 everything maxed out, the titan x (slightly faster than the 980m sli at stock speeds) gets 45fps on average while my 880ms get 30fps. I personally find the 900 series (except the 990m) to be one of the smallest upgrade of all time. Don't take my words for it well then you'll surely agree with the CEO of NVidia when he himself hints at that:


look at where Maxwell is compared to Kepler and then compare it to the Pascal and Volta architectures.

 

I'm one of the guys who got a bricked screen on windows 7, never installed 10.

 

880m are barely saving money,
so if i get the 880m with the sli support, they are 2100-2200元/card,
and the 970m's are 2300元 per card.

i dont mind spending another 15$ even if its only 5 percent faster, though the difference it much greater.

i dont know why everyone has a hype about the 880m, i have used it in my aw17 r5, and the perfomace difference was negligible, (as in its there, but it wasnt worth me getting a new card)

now that i have a barebone, 18, i can get new cards even if they are same performace as my existing cards, since its a different pc, i am not getting rid of any good parts.

 

The main advantage of the 970m(s) over the 880m(s) is the power consumption, heat output, DX12 full support & Maxwell architecture ... If you have a 880m it ain't worth upgrading to a 970m if we are just talking raw performance ... But if you are starting from scratch "Which you are doing" it is 970m all the way

 

Mine bricked on windows 10 AND 7. I never even loaded back into 10 with my new screen. I made a boot disk just to be safe. I was using old Nvidia drivers as well on 7.

The only two things I can think of are either it was an extreme coincidence my new screen died within the first couple hours, or the bug is corrupting BIOS/vBIOS.

 

I got a 980m not long ago. I loaded it up in Win10 not knowing about this issue. This caused me to one day get 8 beeps on that Win10 and 353.38. Ended up ripping everything apart. Took the RAM out and the CMOS battery before putting it back together again. Drained the residual power. Cut it on - okay, 5 beeps. Held FN + turned it on, waited for it to power off again. The next time it powered on, it was fine.

I ended up turning off Secure Boot and enabling Legacy Boot and installed Windows 8.1. It's been running fine ever since, in Optimus mode, though there's occasions when the 980m no longer shows up in Device Manager (after running DDU, etc.) but it always comes back after a cold boot. Everything works fine. If I turn off Legacy Boot and/or enable Secure Boot, I have glitchy graphics and the 980m locks up. I can't get it in PEG mode at all, but I'm okay with that. I'm not seeing any performance degradation due to Optimus.

tl;dr - I had an 8 beeps and brought it back. I don't know if this will help anyone, but maybe it will.

 

could you also please check out my post
http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/10072867/

and give me your point of view.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/10072867/

and give me your point of view.

 

You've already provided the answer. If the price difference is that petty, then of course, the 970M is the better choice, hands down. Go for it. Raw performance, as has been stated, isn't actually that different and you are looking at marginal gains, but you'll have the faster of the two options with more flexibility and thermals going forward. Mind you, I say all this sans hype about 880M, which as you might appreciate, is non-existent on this forum. It's almost a past-time to hate on that card despite the fact that Nvidia did gimp it through poor driver support.

However, I would still advise you to consider just waiting a little bit longer for the GTX 980M SLi kit. Thing with prices on novel items -- and relative to everything else, the 980M is still the most novel -- is that the drop is more rapid but then it starts to stall towards the lower end as the item gets older. Ergo, the price difference between these cards might narrow down as well, especially if Nvidia drops a proper new card down the pike in September.

 

@Ali Masood , as previously mentioned by the others, the 970m gives you more flexibility, DX12 and low thermal output which that alone gives it the edge over the 880m but raw performance, not so much. As I already own the 880m sli, the performance that both the 980m and 970m sli provides is trivial and certainly not worth shelling 1000USD for. That being said, the drivers NVIDIA have been releasing does affect the overall performance of the Kepler cards making the gap between the maxwell and my cards wider than it actually is. So there is one more advantage of going with the 970m. If you want my 2 cents though, wait for the 990m, that beast of a card is gonna make so many enthusiasts orgasm
( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

AUO B173HW01 V4, second only to the DreamColors. @Mr. Fox has one, maybe he wants to chip in. Either that or the soon-to-be-released B173ZAN01.0 (all three side-by-side). That's an eDP panel, though, so can't run it unless you have eDP connector as well. The P570WM certainly could (with the right cable) and it's likely even better than the V4 and the DCs, so ... might trade with Mr. Fox . Will definitely be my next 17.3" panel, replacing the V4 (actually a V5 originally, only ag-stripped and re-calibrated).

Custom driver is useful if you want to force-override ' default monitor PNP09FF', but it doesn't help at this stage.

Was a bit expected, means you still don't have the edid. No matter; found TLB3's specification sheet (inc. edid). Only need to put the hex values in order and you have the edid ... there's 128 bytes, though ... so ... I cheated and changed only the values different from the SLB5:
dell panels, correct edids, v2

Panels added:

Code:

PnP id        panel nr.
-------        --------------
LGD02DA        LP173WF1-TLB3
LGD0343        LP173WF1-TLB5

Actually, the TLB3 is slightly different from pdf; this version uses calibrated colour values.

 

having read though everyone's point of view, i think for the time being ill just jack the 780m from my aw17r5, which will get me past the day, and college work/engineering designs and what not, and end of September do one hell of a upgrade with something that will last me a while,

one more question, i see that youre rocking the 3940xm, whats your take on the CPU's, are the xm's worth it, with the depreciation in price, they are easily affordable, but do i see any gains in performance with a xm vs a qm, does that higher tdp help in anyways,

if i get a lower end cpu, would they be a bottle next if i decide to get the next gen 990m's

thank you for you the advice, its much appreicated.

having read though everyone's point of view, i think for the time being ill just jack the 780m from my aw17r5, which will get me past the day, and college work/engineering designs and what not, and end of September do one hell of a upgrade with something that will last me a while,

thank you for you the advice, its much appreicated.

 

No prob mate Just make sure you don't end up broke after getting them especially if you decide on getting two of dem babies what degree are you majoring into if you don't mind me asking ?

 

Trade? I like trades. Sometimes. What are we wanting to trade?

My P570WM motherboard does not have eDP, only LVDS.

 

Ah, too bad, you have an older mb revision then. Was made official only with P570WM3 ('Value Change'):

Spoiler: P570WM vs. P570WM3

No problem; either a little soldering or a new motherboard ... bit expensive, perhaps ( $480). The V4 is fantastic anyway, so not much reason for a change, I suppose. Also, being an LVDS, it can be oc'ed to 100Hz with ease, whereas even eDP@70Hz would be a 'good' result (3D panels excepted). Either is only possible on non-Optimus systems, so another point for ' Optimus = evil'.

 

They actually offer it both ways, but the motherboards do not have both ports on them... one or the other option. This is one of the newest models, one 1 year old this month. I bought it used barebones from a member of this community. Had I purchased it brand new from Eurocom, I would have ponied up the cash for eDP 120Hz, but I have zero interest in having one with a 3D emitter. That said, there's really nothing negative I can say about the 60Hz display on this bad boy. In spite of what I would have done buying a new machine, I did not realize this was such a high quality panel. I am very pleased with it. It is every bit as good at the 18.4" displays on my Alienware systems and I really don't notice any difference in size during use. Even setting one machine next to the other the experience is close to identical with respect to screen size. It's also a glossy display, and I really love that. I have never cared for matte display panels. I've had many laptops with a matte screen finish and, without exception, I always enjoy the glossy more.

 

Lets see if anyone want to pick up this story...
Sunday though

 

Well, I'm glad you were able to get those questions answered. Welcome to our community also. Very glad you joined us. Going with 780M is a good option. It is an excellent mobile GPU and I am still happy with mine even though 980M is more powerful. Next to 980M, there's no better option than 780M.

Folks, let's keep the thread on topic now. This thread is for the Alienware 8-beep/no boot display problems that are being introduced by the combination of Windows 10 and/or Windows Updates for Windows 10 readiness and the latest GeForce drivers corrupting the EDID.

 

Well ****.

Woke my computer from sleep, and it was running fine with Windows 7. Today I got around to updating the missing devices, USB3, fall sensor, Intel H77, card reader, and the Alienware OSD and Command center. (all downloaded directly from Dell).

Rebooted and 8 ****ing beeps.

Windows 7, legacy mode in BIOS. Used Mr. Fox's 345.20 modded drivers.

The only thing that seemed off to me was that during the Intel H77 update, my screen went off and came back twice - just like if I was installing the Nvidia drivers.

What. The. ****?

EDIT: Sad part is, I had a sinking suspicion that this was going to happen as soon as I installed the Intel H77 drivers. This is the third screen now - 2 on windows 10, 1 on windows 7.

 

lol sounds like this might get expensive for Nvidia

@PC GAMER whaaat?

 

Where did you get the HM77 chipset update? I'm using the original oldly-moldy download from Dell Support, which is actually just fine. Now this makes me wonder if something from NVIDIA drivers may have screwed up something with the graphics switching mechanism. Should be interesting to see if you pull the MXM cards if it will POST normally. Let's hope so. Did you secure erase or diskpart clean the drive, or just format/install? If wonder if there was maybe some leftover nasty Windows 10 malware cancer lurking on some of your sectors. Are your disks GPT or MBR? I am running all MBR disks and Legacy BIOS.

My M18xR1 and R2 are both working fine now. I secure erased the mSATA that I was running Windows 10 on using a USB port on my Clevo and restored my Windows 8.1 image on that SSD and all is well. A replacement display for the Alienware 18 should be arriving tomorrow. When I secure erase that SSD before reinstalling Windows, I think I am only going to use drivers from Dell Support and my 345.20 mod and just totally skip over any new and improved crap that might be floating around.

 

SOMETHING must have been written to the VBIOS or BIOS. There is no way, statistically speaking, that this can happen 3 times in a row on accident. Especially since I've only soft restarted my laptop when this happens.

 

Dell.

 

Maybe so. And, I blind flashed my BIOS on the M18xR1 and M18xR2 before installing new display panels as well. So, maybe that saved my bacon. I think I will flash the Alienware 18 BIOS before installing the display or booting into Windows as well, just to be safe. I'll also pull out all the RAM sticks and power it up and let it beep until it shuts down to dump all of the NVRAM. Can't be too safe with this aggressive new WHQL certified malware crap. We have your system and a 17 now with this scenario if I am not mistaken.

If this happens to me again, I will be parting out my machines and selling them in pieces on eBay. There's no way in hell I am spending more money on any of them to fix the damage caused by Micro$lop and NVIDIA. I'll use part of the money to buy a 4960X CPU for my Clevo and call it a day.

 

Dude !

But Mr. Fox is right and will iterate (for the fourth panel):

And can fix those panels or its tiny eeprom, if you want (and still have them). Shipping twice may be expensive, but resell could still net a profit. Especially when considering the rising demand as of late ...

 

Mr, Fox, can you get me in touch with Alienware so I can ship this laptop to them? Since it is now permanently useless to me until Nvidia makes things right (somehow), they may as well use it for testing.

It's pointless as I now have no more money to allocate for this. I've despaired. I am leaving tomorrow and now won't have personal computer access for a week. I have an extremely expensive laptop that is now a brick that can't be repaired. Hundreds of dollars have been spent in an attempt to fix what someone else (yes, companies are considered a person) broke.

What am I going to do? I can't do anything other than take Microsoft and Nvidia to court and attempt to get some money back for my bricked laptop.

 

I knew that it would eventually be deleted did it for the lulz
Sorry

 

NVIDIA is still trying to capture a machine for failure analysis. Do you want me to check with Manuel Guzman for you? They were hoping to capture mine and I fixed it already. I did send Manuel one of my messed up LCD panels for examination. If they want your machine, I will send you a PM or have him contact you directly.

 

Has anyone affected tried simply re-flashing the vbios & bios to test if in doing that alone would fix the 8 beeps.?. Or am I the only one still able to boot with HDMI connected.?. ... Should have tried that, but time was an issue so I never tested this. If anyone else has; please let me know otherwise I'll have to get it done to help eliminate some new theories floating in this crazy head of mine.

 

sorry about taking the thread off topic,
i actually posted in the m18xr2 owners lounge, but wasnt able to get any replies, where as my post hit it off over here.

i am really looking forward to getting this issue solved, i do plan on running my m18xr2 on win 10 aswell,

luckly i am running windows on my r5 120hz without a problem.