Robbo

Yeah, I'd be interested to see the results, considering that the desktop cards overclock to about 1500Mhz I think there could be another 300 or more Mhz in these cards.

I'm curious, does anyone know if svl7 is working on modifying the vBIOS for the 970M/980M? I'm assuming NVidia still have the core locked down to a +135Mhz overclocking limit.

clearly rubbishly! ;-)

Skyrim is CPU & platform limited most of time unless you're using all sorts of mods, and I don't know about the other 2 games. I still question 53 degC maximum temperature because I don't think it's achievable under normal environmental conditions, and also its highly unlikely that your fan tables are setup to react to a 53 degC temperature, which is another reason why I don't believe your 53 degC figure. Automatic fan control laptop tables are set up for fans to come on & ramp up to higher rpm's at warmer than 53 degC (I'd be surprised if the laptop even decided to switch it's fan on at 53 degC!). All this just puts your 53 degC figure in doubt. If you're not pushing GPU usage to 100% in the games you're playing, and you have manually set fans to 100% maximum duty cycle then I could maybe believe your 53 degC, otherwise not.

Not above 53 degC during gaming for a 680M at 1.0V and 960Mhz! I find that hard to believe, maybe you measured it in games where GPU usage doesn't get very high, especially as you're living in California, and not like Finland with no central heating or something! (The thermal pads you used aren't really going to lower the temperature of the GPU core, the GPU temperature reading is from the GPU core, so it is the paste and heatsink interface that will influence this temperature).

Mine's been fine at 1.05V for over a year now, max temperatures in the Summer are 71degC (usually 65-68degC though). If your temperatures are high and you're using a lot of voltage then you might decrease the life of your card - you definitely want it under 90 degC, and under 80degC if you can manage it. (I've not heard of anyone frying their Kepler mobile card yet, apart from the guy above!)

Ah, this could be a problem then. If it won't even post then I don't think you can blind flash it even, because that's the first step of the process after pressing the power button. You could take your card out & put it in a friends laptop & flash it, or take it to a computer shop & have them flash it, or you can solder a new vBIOS chip onto it apparently. Those are the options that I'm aware of, but other people please add to this or correct me if there's other options.

I'm not an expert on recovering from a bad flash, but it's happened to me once. Do you have a machine with Optimus? If so, then try taking out your CMOS battery (leaving it out for a few mins & put back in), I did that on mine and it reverted the system BIOS to default settings so that it would boot using the Intel IGP (previously I had the BIOS set to use NVidia GPU only) - I was then able to just flash back my previous vBIOS. I don't know the methods of blind flashing etc.

I've heard loads of cases where people have tried to mod svl7's vbios, and it normally ends in a brick - don't know why. (A lot of the time it was with people trying to use svet's tuner on them).

Definitely the video card, and also I'm not even sure if you can upgrade the CPU to the next generation CPU on a laptop - don't know if it would be compatible, but definitely upgrade the GPU before the CPU in your case.

Using NVidia Inspector raise the Power Slider all the way to the right (max) - to give you the most headroom possible.

No need to apologise, you're absolutely on topic! :-) Here's where you can find the vBIOS that's been designed for the Alienware 18 specifically (for some reason it's not listed on the first page of this thread): BIOS / VBIOS modification request thread (svl7) (Post #81 in that thread).

Hi, you can get the modified vBIOS from here, and it explains how to flash your GPU too in the first post of that thread (or rather a link in that first post to the instructions): http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/1847-nvidia-kepler-vbios-mods-overclocking-editions-modified-clocks-voltage-tweaks.html In terms of overclocking, if you've never done it before here's a cut & pasted overclocking guide I did in one of my posts many moons ago: If your temperatures are OK, then you can start to overclock.Overclocking process is as follows: 1)Determine your max stable overclock of the core at stock voltage.Increase Core Clock by 100Mhz, run 3DMark11 through till end, if no visual artifacts or crashes and if temperatures are ok then increase core clock by a further 50Mhz and repeat process. Keep repeating this process until you see artifacts or crashes, at which point back down to your previous stable overclock & do further more vigorous stress testing. Best way to do this is run a game that pushes the GPU to a constant 100% GPU utilisation (GPU load in GPUz) - eg TombRaider, Far Cry 3 are good for this - if the game is stable for 1 hour you've probably found a stable core overclock. 2)Now determine your Max Stable Memory Overclock. Leave your core at your maximum stable overclock for this process. Increase Memory Clock by 200Mhz, and do the same testing procedure as above using 3DMark11to work out an initial stable max overclock. You can increase the memory clock in bigger chunks in NVidia Inspector,because there's a peculiarity with GDDR5 memory in NVidia Inspector whereby a 200Mhz increase is actually equal to a real 100Mhz increase- it's do with a very technical fact that I don't fully understand with GDDR5 being 'quad-pumped' (4 times faster than DDR3 at any given frequency) - (you'll see evidence of what I'm talking about when you view your memory clock in GPUz, where it displays the REAL memory clock). Anyway, in NVidia Inspector, increase the memory by 200Mhz the first time you test, then in 100Mhz chunks thereafter. Each time you complete the 3DMark11 test view the GPU score, if it's not increasing anymore as you raise the memory clock, then stop your memory overclocking where it is. This is because GDDR5 has memory error correction. As memory overclock increases the rate at which errors occur outpace the rate of error correction, thereby resulting in a lower or not increased GPU score, so overclocking the memory beyond that point is futile & only serving to greater stress your card. Once you've reached your max stable overclock in 3DMark11 then do that 1 hour of gaming like your did for the core clock (make sure you have your core at your max overclock when you do this too). If it's stable, then you've now reached your max overclock for both the core & memory at stock voltage. Increasing the voltage will enable you to reach higher core overclocks, but will increase temperature too. Keep you GPU below 90 degC. Increasing the voltage only affects the GPU core, not the VRAM, so adding more voltage will only enable you to get a higher core overclock, won't increase your VRAM overclock.

Have you already bought the 780M, it's not much of an upgrade to the 680M, especially not after you've flashed a modified vBIOS to your 680M & overclocked it? My advice to you is to not buy the 780M, especially now that all these new Maxwell cards are coming out too. 680M is still a great card, and most definitely with the modified vBIOS. It's not worth the hassle with 780M. EDIT: you can get 880M performance with your 680M with a modified vBIOS and a good overclock.

For what it's worth I've heard this a couple of times on this thread regarding 8xx modified vBIOS on here, but don't know if it affects everyone. (no fix to my knowledge bar plugging it in!)

Cool, you'll always be able to install the latest NVidia drivers though, if you use a modded inf file for that driver, so you don't have to stick with the drivers from Eurocom.

Not that I've seen, but I've never gone looking though.

Nope, didn't work that way for me when I tried it months ago, and didn't work that way for me just now, so can assume it wouldn't work for some other people too - hence the Firefox recommendation. But who cares, it's an irrelevantly small point really!

Thanks, looks like laptopvideo2go linked the wrong inf to that driver then, here's a link to an inf from the 340.43 driver, which should work with the latest NVidia driver: http://laptopvideo2go.com/infs/340series/34043_win8x64/nv_dispi.inf Yes, you don't HAVE to use Firefox, but Firefox will save it using the correct extensions without you having to edit anything in the file name - so is more fool proof, and a quicker simpler process than yours listed (assuming the person has Firefox of course!).

Does the graphics card show up in Device Manager before you try & install the graphics driver? Are there any warnings in Device Manager associated with it? (If you don't know how to find Device Manager, just type that into the search bar of the start button in Windows 7). I think it should say Standard VGA or something - this means that Windows has installed it's generic drivers to the card. I would wager that you're having a problem with the inf file that's preventing your install. Rather than modding your own, use Firefox (the other browsers won't work for this) to download/save the modified inf file from this popular site that I've used for getting modified inf's in the past, this is a direct link to the inf file you should try to use (it will look like a page of text, you want to 'Save As' in your browser in order to download it and have the inf file created: http://laptopvideo2go.com/infs/340series/34052_win8x64/nv_dispwi.inf Place that inf in the relevant folder and run the setup program & it should install. (Check out my Device Manager questions first though).

The measly 180W power supply looks like it might the the culprit. My system uses up to 170W rarely with my overclocked 670MX in some games, so with your 680M overclocked to just a shade below my 670MX figure, then you'll be using 180W MOST of the time when playing games. I think you need to drop your overclock to stay within the 180W limits or beef up your power adapter, and if you buy a Killawatt meter you'll be able to see how much power your adapter is drawing from the wall.

You're welcome, good luck!

More difficult to explain that to actually do, I mod my own. Essentially, you have to find the correct inf file for your machine within the nvidia driver folders once you have unpacked/extracted the drivers from the downloaded file (you can do this by downloading the driver from NVidia, running the program as you normally would to install the drivers, and then pressing the cancel button once installation starts - the drivers will remain unpacked on your system at C:\NVidia). For example, Dell laptops have the the config files in an inf file called nvdmi.inf. I open up that file using notepad and replace all M17xR4 680M strings (%NVIDIA_DEV.11A0.0551.1028%......PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11A0&SUBSYS_05511028) with the hardware strings related to my M17xR3 with 670MX (%NVIDIA_DEV.11A1.0490.1028%......PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11A1&SUBSYS_04901028). You can find your hardware strings in Device Manager. I choose a similar system and 'similar' GPU to mine to replace the strings because I figured it would reference the installation of the correct driver 'Sections'. There's also a section (at the end of the file) where you have to add the name of your GPU to your corresponding hardware string (NVIDIA_DEV.11A1.0490.1028= "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX "). All in all lot easier to do than to explain!! (Tip: have a look at the weird numbers and letters in the strings, there's a pattern and logic there that relates to the system & GPU model you own).

No real risk of negative impact, I've had mine overclocked for a year now without problems. NVidia even advertise that you can overclock panels with their cards, however they do put in a little disclaimer, but at the same time they intimate that it won't be a problem. I've not heard of any issues doing this before.

If you're happy that your 880M's aren't throttling, and don't want to OC, then you're better off staying with you current stock vBIOS for the 880M. Even if you do want to OC, for gaming purposes your gaming stable overclock isn't likely to give you much extra performance, maybe 10% if you're lucky - the 880M's are already running pretty close the thermal/voltage/Mhz stability limits when at stock settings. Crashing of your cards during attempted overclocking can also set a 'reduced performance flag' to the 880M's too, so all taken together I don't think it's worth OC'ing the 880M. I used Typhoon Burner to overclock my RAM, by creating a new overclocked XMP setting on each of the RAM sticks - it's complicated & doesn't give much performance improvement (a slight increase to CPU performance - less than 5%), if your memory sticks are already at 1600Mhz there's not much to be gained running them any faster. The type of RAM overclocking I did partially explained in the following post: *OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x Benchmark Thread - Part 4 - Page 234