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Going to test clevo 980m in alienware m17x R4, m18x R2, AW17


godfafa

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so kinda wondering if i should still bother with the 980M or just hold off and get a clevo? though it is a waste of a good (not great) AW17!

maybe i'll jump into the deep end and get one...will see.

That's what I was thinking too. But I would rather have my 17 with 980m then another laptop with 980m. And there's no way I will buy a new alienware with 980m . With soldered everything.

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That's what I was thinking too. But I would rather have my 17 with 980m then another laptop with 980m. And there's no way I will buy a new alienware with 980m . With soldered everything.

i'll get paid at the end of the month so will see how much i get and whether it's enough to cover it :P

EDIT: If it all works out i might see if i can get back some of it by selling the 780M.

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so what's the best driver + vbios combo? prema vbios + 344.91 drivers?

EDIT: I do have the cash to buy a 980M but i am hoping that i will get my pay to give me some relief as it were to make me not feel bad for spending $1.2k CAD on a GPU.

waiting for this is just as bad as waiting to get tatts done :P

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Hello everyone,

I have received my gtx 970m card today and I tried to install it in my alienware m17x r4. I guess the 980m and 970m have similar installation process. I made sure in the bios to have UEFI mode but I cannot disable the legacy. Everytime I do it it says that no mxm card is detected and put it back to "enable". The bios version installed is A13.

Is there anything I've been missing? Thank you for you help.

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After experimenting with prema's vbios mod for awhile I can conclude that prema's vbios runs a little hotter than others due to its extra .062volt. My GPU bumped from 71-72 degree celcius to 73 degree on max load and I suspect it might go as high as 75 if I left it running for prolonged period.

Bear in mind that this 73 degree is achieved by overclocking the card as well and under Malaysia's hot climate ( Which I am currently enjoying my holiday in). The temps are otherwise still acceptable considering that 75 let alone 80 degree is still within the safe range especially if we are to overvolt/overclock the card.

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After experimenting with prema's vbios mod for awhile I can conclude that prema's vbios runs a little hotter than others due to its extra .062volt. My GPU bumped from 71-72 degree celcius to 73 degree on max load and I suspect it might go as high as 75 if I left it running for prolonged period.

Bear in mind that this 73 degree is achieved by overclocking the card as well and under Malaysia's hot climate ( Which I am currently enjoying my holiday in). The temps are otherwise still acceptable considering that 75 let alone 80 degree is still within the safe range especially if we are to overvolt/overclock the card.

sounds reasonable though probably will be lower if there's constant airflow.

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@J95 I found it!! NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Alienware 041W46 After using Perma's 980m vbios mod, my score on stock clock bumped back up to 12.4k graphic score! Take note that this is on 344.91 drivers/dedicated mode .

Physics score was 9316 and now is 7460... this is w/ 240W PSU?

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@thegh0sts The temps would be much better too if we can actually access the GPU's fan via hwinfo. I noticed that the GPU fan automatically turns off once it reaches 45 degree celcius or lower and would only boot up back to 2000rpm at 50+ degree celcius as well as 3000+rpm @ 70+ degree subsequently. Although it may lower down the fan's volume it does get on my nerves that i could not control my GPU's fan independently.

@J95 Physx score was somewhat throttled on that one because I installed the drivers wrongly, this is the correct and current score NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Alienware 041W46. And yes, this is with 240w PSU.I will upgrade to a 330W PSU as soon as Im back in Melbourne again as I am currently in no rush to do any heavy OC. Just the stock performance is sufficient for the moment.

By the way, the 9k+ physx score was on Fire Strike, not 3dmark11. Here is my current score for fire strike at stock http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5601856? The overall combined score is lower because I skipped the initialy Fire Strike demo as I was only interested in knowing the graphic and physx score.

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@thegh0sts The temps would be much better too if we can actually access the GPU's fan via hwinfo. I noticed that the GPU fan automatically turns off once it reaches 45 degree celcius or lower and would only boot up back to 2000rpm at 50+ degree celcius as well as 3000+rpm @ 70+ degree subsequently. Although it may lower down the fan's volume it does get on my nerves that i could not control my GPU's fan independently.

@J95 Physx score was somewhat throttled on that one because I installed the drivers wrongly, this is the correct and current score NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Alienware 041W46. And yes, this is with 240w PSU.I will upgrade to a 330W PSU as soon as Im back in Melbourne again as I am currently in no rush to do any heavy OC. Just the stock performance is sufficient for the moment.

By the way, the 9k+ physx score was on Fire Strike, not 3dmark11. Here is my current score for fire strike at stock NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Alienware 041W46 The overall combined score is lower because I skipped the initialy Fire Strike demo as I was only interested in knowing the graphic and physx score.

Little detail...:D

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@thegh0sts The temps would be much better too if we can actually access the GPU's fan via hwinfo. I noticed that the GPU fan automatically turns off once it reaches 45 degree celcius or lower and would only boot up back to 2000rpm at 50+ degree celcius as well as 3000+rpm @ 70+ degree subsequently. Although it may lower down the fan's volume it does get on my nerves that i could not control my GPU's fan independently.

@J95 Physx score was somewhat throttled on that one because I installed the drivers wrongly, this is the correct and current score NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-4700MQ,Alienware 041W46. And yes, this is with 240w PSU.I will upgrade to a 330W PSU as soon as Im back in Melbourne again as I am currently in no rush to do any heavy OC. Just the stock performance is sufficient for the moment.

By the way, the 9k+ physx score was on Fire Strike, not 3dmark11. Here is my current score for fire strike at stock http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5601856? The overall combined score is lower because I skipped the initialy Fire Strike demo as I was only interested in knowing the graphic and physx score.

Fan control isn't dependent on the GPU as the fan tables are in the BIOS. Have you gone into the HWinfo settings and disabled EC support? If you haven't then you should and that will give you the ability to make a custom fan table.

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ORZ

holy shit I couldn't be happier dude thanks!

No problem.

Also, can you go into the hwinfo folder and look for hwinfo64.ini?

Add the following line at the end of the document and save:

OpenFanCtrlMin=1

This will allow your fan table to start at boot.

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I usually schedule hwinfo to run with task scheduler. Do I still need it after inputing that particular line?

It usually doesn't start at boot what the line does is keeps the fan table minimized cos if you close it the fan table stops running. I use that, no need for task scheduler.

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It usually doesn't start at boot what the line does is keeps the fan table minimized cos if you close it the fan table stops running. I use that, no need for task scheduler.

I see. You just solved one of the few dilemmas I had ever since I purchased this AW 17 2 years ago

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I see. You just solved one of the few dilemmas I had ever since I purchased this AW 17 2 years ago

So long as you have hwinfo to start at boot then you are good to go!

The proper solution would be for alienware to give us full fan control so this is merely a workaround.

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I've noticed that I can only set the fans to a specific value ( 0,2000,3400 for GPU and 0,2000,4600 for CPU). Is there any way to alter this?

No, like I said it's all in the BIOS and there's no way to alter it without alienware giving us full access. We're stuck with those speed levels.

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Oh well, guess i'll live with it. Shouldnt be too greedy about it i guess :D

asking for full fan control is not being unreasonable - it's just alienware not getting off their butts to implement it and push it out in a new BIOS and I think A14 will be the last since they already have the new refresh with the BGA crap.

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