AW17 (2014, Radeon R9 M290X) GPU Upgrade to 980M

[hackz]

Hello,

 

Recently, my Radeon R9 M290X stopped working (everything indicates it's broken). So, I was thinking about buying a Geforce 980m but everything I read about installing a 980m in an Alienware (GPU upgrade) mentioned about having to install modified drivers and turning off the driver signature enforcement.

 

My question is:

• why do we have to install modified drivers?
• Is there a way to install drivers directly from the official nVidia website? Modifying the BIOS and inserting UEFI drivers, or modifying the vBIOS? in order to use the official drivers?

 

Thanks in advance, I await a response.

[naightmehr]

On 5/15/2018 at 6:58 AM, hackz said:

 

 

My question is:

• why do we have to install modified drivers?
• Is there a way to install drivers directly from the official nVidia website? Modifying the BIOS and inserting UEFI drivers, or modifying the vBIOS? in order to use the official drivers?

 

1. We need to install modified drivers because the laptop was never intended to have a gtx 980m, if you try to install the drivers on a machine with an ID that has never been shared with NVIDIA then it won't recognise the machine. By modifying the the drivers you basically add your specific laptop ID to the driver so it'll recognise it as a compatible machine.

 

2. The only way to get drivers working is to download the official driver from the NVIDIA website and modding the .inf file, there is no other way.