Cloudfire

You are not reading what I wrote. Read: You obviously have Legacy enabled because you were able to use mnvflash. It doesnt work with Legacy disabled and UEFI enabled. Thats pure UEFI. You understand the difference? Alienware 18 with 970M/980M can only use pure UEFI. No legacy, no mnvflash or nvflash. GT72 can use whatever it wants. Legacy or UEFI or both

It won`t work. You have UEFI and Legacy enabled. We have UEFI and Legacy disabled. mnvflash only works with Legacy. If we enable Legacy we are fucked so we can`t use that option. Disabling 1 or two cards, deleting drivers, running in windows, using cmd etc etc, it doesnt matter. UEFI are in the way both mnvflash and nvflash doesnt support pure UEFI.

Nothing happens. You just disable the Nvidia driver. The cards continue to run on Windows drivers. But its useless. I tried disabling the drivers, SLI on and off, with drivers, the mnvflash still cant find any cards. Its because it doesnt support UEFI. So we are stuck I posted screenshot a few pages back

Tried these? Problem with m18x crossfire

Legacy works just fine with 1 GPU. I could remove one and flash the remaining one, do the same with the second one. But thats way too much hassle because I need to experiment with different voltages and clocks. Which means flashing and removing many times. Plus if I need to flash back to my exisiting vbios, I need to redo everything again. Not going through that again. Already had to reset BIOS twice and a third time switch back BIOS to UEFI which involved removing the GPUs. Absolutely horrible FN+F7 is lower the sound of my speakers btw

No, Alienware 18 doesnt have SG unfortunately. You need to be very careful when giving out these advices to 970M/980M owners because if they enable Legacy then they are screwed Does this mean we can use 5.163 with UEFI btw?

Are you nuts? Thats a bad bad advice. I enabled Legacy yesterday (With UEFI) to use NVFLASH. Do you know what happens then? Pitch black screen and 8 beeps. You will need open the notebook completely to remove both graphic cards, put it back together, change BIOS back, open the notebook up, reinstall the graphic cards, put it back together again. And you accomplished nothing

mnvflash doesnt work with Alienware 18 and UEFI. The program gets stuck and needs to be removed from task manager. Hwinfo fan control method for Alienware 18 and 970M/980M is broken. You have 3 settings. 0 = Does nothing 1700 RPM = Does something but not good enough to keep my GPUs at bay. CPU however is cooled fine by this after I downclocked it using BIOS 3700 RPM = Leaf blower. Way too noisy. You can make fan tables based on temperatures. Say you have 1700RPM all the way up to 70C and 3700RPM on 70C/80C. Since 1700RPM isnt good enough the GPUs will eventually get to 70C. 3700RPM kicks in. 1 seconds goes, the temp is down to 69C. Its back to 1700RPM. 5 seconds goes, 70C and back to 3700RPM. Freaking annoying fan cycle. You have a setting within HWInfo to increase fan cycle ms (how long its active) but that doesnt work for AW18 or most machines anyway (tried it a gazillion times). If you happen to touch Legacy settings in BIOS with Alienware 18, it wont even post when you save and exit BIOS. Dell stupid engineering monkeys have locked down this system so much you will need to do a hard reset with removing RAM and doing a special sequence to reset BIOS. Removing battery and CMOS doesnt work at all. I wouldnt recommend doing Maxwell upgrades with Alienware 18.

@svl7 : Any chance you can mod nvmflash to be usable with UEFI (Alienware 18)? It tries to find the adapters but is stuck. Right now I can`t even flash my GTX 970Ms on this locked down machine :/ I`m looking to downvolt my GPUs because HWInfo can only do 0, low and high fan settings. And the low is almost enough but I need to downvolt them to be able to. Here is what I get using mnvflash. I tried having it on for 5 minutes but its stuck

Can`t say I`m too happy with my 970M SLI upgrade for my AW18 1. I have to use Win 8.1. Although it got some pros like shortcuts, fast booting etc there is a lot about it I can`t stand. I miss Win7. 2. Only one of the GPU fan works automatically. You have to use HWinfo to control the third fan. And you can`t just control that fan. No, if you enable fan control for that one, rest wont work automatically. So you will need to make tables for all 3 of them. 3. You only get 0, 1700 or 3700RPM with HWinfo. 0 = No cooling. 1700RPM = Not good enough. 3700RPM = Good enough but leaf blower. You can make a table, say 40C 0RPM, 50C 1700RPM 80C 3700RPM etc. Problem is that it heats up to 80C without problems when you are using 1700RPM. And the fan will go in leaf blower mode and cool the GPU down to 79C and stop. Then few seconds after that it get back to 80C. Full speed. Stop. Rinse and repeat. Basically horrible fan cycling.

Thanks man Questions: 1. I see that there are 8 entries for GTX 970M/980M in the nv_dispi.inf. In the nvdmi.inf there was only 4 of them for 780M which I replaced with 970M, Are the 4 other ones for SLI? 2. 347.09 driver might crash with SLI you say. What about the older ones?

Taking out the RAM SODIMMs and quickly installing one of them resolved my issue. But its a method that takes some time. You need to remove cables, HDD, ton of screws, just to get the palmrest off where the last 2 RAM slots are. Then connect the palmrest and cables again to be able to power it up. Then put the machine on the side to be able to slide in the RAM slot since you only have like 2 seconds. Then BIOS is back to normal and you may even have to reinstall Win8 due to SATA settings etc. lol. But atleast it fixed the problem. Need to be more careful next time I use XTU

Help :/ I was using IGP for a while. Have GTX 970M SLI installed. Tried both single and SLI and both worked 2 days ago with editing INF on the 347.09. Tried FN+F5 today to enable the GPUs and finally try some benchmarking. Now all I get is a black screen. Can hear the CPU fan spin for a second, the LED lights on the keyboard is on plus on the side, but dark screen. What have happened? The GPUs worked 2 days ago. Im using 347.09, Windows 8.1, 970M SLI and 4940MX (downclocked and downvolted). What should I do?

I assumed they took the best part of the wafer and allocated them for Extreme processors. Take the 4940MX for example which Dell is now shipping with a stock clock of 4.4GHz on all newer AW machines. I mean, if a company so big as Dell guarantee clocks like that, they got to have great belief in the quality of the CPUs. Its 400MHz above rated specs from Intel. Too late, already on its way to me. I bought it to play around with OC every now and then plus increase reselling value Thanks. You are right on your previous post that the tine they produce the chips affect quality, but it also depends wether or not they use a different stepping I think. 4900MQ and 4930MX should be produced around the same time, so if you got better result with 4900MQ, it could mean that Khenglish are right that you pay to have it unlocked. Huh, me dont like. Either way, Im getting the 4940MX which is the latest, and since you got best results with it, it may be promising

Well thats interesting. Im pretty sure XM processors have better quality in silicon because they are rated to run higher speeds than QM processors. Better silicon quality, means they should deal with voltage better in general. I just wonder how they do with lower voltage. You are probably correct that its a silicon lottery and each XM processor are different, but wouldnt you agree that in general, XM are better with voltage and overclocking than QM processors?

Alienware 18. You have been a bit over the top lately about soldered CPUs, Intel bashing and Microsoft mocking. Not that you are wrong though Nah I was referring to buying a $1000 CPU to run it on a max speed of a $300 CPU lol. Oh well, atleast I have a powerful CPU to take out for spin whenever I want to. btw, does XM processors deal with lower voltage better than QM processors? I mean, are they better binned and therefor can do say -0.1V easier?

You will probably explode now in pure anger, but I`m getting a notebook next week with 4940MX which I plan to downclock and undervolt with Intel XTU... Yeah I know, you are like now. I will of course play around with overclocking (A lot of it), but when I`m not doing benches or need greater CPU performance, I`m gonna make it spew out as little heat as possible when I found the CPU speed needed for my tasks. I plan on getting a pair of GTX 970M which will do nicely with my 100W heatsinks, so someone will finally test out AW18 with Maxwell to find out if AW18 works with them. If someone doesnt test them before me that is

I dont trust them until I or anyone have tested it out. AW18 have UEFI too. Makes no sense that only M18x works.

To avoid confusion like above, this should be sticky: There are currently two ways to get GTX 980M to work: #1: With any type of boot (Legacy or UEFI): This method only works with Optimus Enabled. If you disable it (FN+F5) you wont be able to boot up the notebook. Works on both Windows 7&8. This method require to use the INF mod to download drivers. There are some posts where they said the computer would crash every now and then. So stability is unknown. Does not require a special vbios. This method is only useful for Alienware 17 and older M17x models. Does not work with Alienware 18 or M18x due to not having Optimus. #2: With UEFI enabled and Legacy disabled This method only works under Windows 8. Any attempt to use Windows7 will result in a freeze during boot. Both Optimus and No Optimus works with this method, so you get full normal support like you are used to. Does not require any special vbios and works both with AW17/M17x and M18x (AW18 is currently untested but should work), single card and SLI. FN+F5 switching works perfectly. Like method #1, you will still need to modify INF to be able do download drivers from Nvidia. This is currently the best method, due to full functionality and perfect stability. The only thing thats missing which is being worked on at the moment by svl, is support for Windows 7.

Around $1700-1800 maybe. Try comparing with ebay. There are notebooks for sale with 770M there.

The GTX 765M have a TDP of around 60-65W I think. GTX 970M around 80W. But Alienware makes 2 types of heatsinks I think, up to 75W and up to 100W. You have the one that goes up to 75W so you should be fine You will need to use the INF trick to install the driver. You dont need to do anything to the vbios. Just enable UEFI with in BIOS and disable Legacy. Im not sure about what PSU you will need. Meh, just 600 points down Fox. The GPU will still perform like they are supppose to. Not a world disaster in my eyes, but Im not partisipating in any OC competition anyway so what do I know Look on the bright side, you can beat GPU scores with 980M while waiting for Win7 support. Pretty sure overall you will beat 780M anyway with total score. Yeah you need UEFI which R1 doesnt have. Try contacting SVL. Maybe he have some tricks up his sleeves

For those with UEFI, just deal with Windows 8 and having full GTX 980M/970M support with both Optimus on/off in the meantime somone figures out how to get Win7 to use UEFI without Legacy. Or til Dell come out with these GPUs so you can snap Dell vbios that works with both Legacy and UEFI. Win 8 licence is really cheap on Ebay and you can customize it to be acceptable. My opinion.

You dont need a special vbios. Just boot up the notebook without the GTX 980M installed (You cant access BIOS with 980M with Legacy enabled) and go to BIOS settings and set it to boot as UEFI (enable it) and disable Legacy. Save and continue. Open the notebook up and install the GTX 980M. After that is done, just turn the power on like normal and it should work regardless if you have Optimus enabled or not.

Oh, OK. But I mean, it should work anyway. Both have UEFI so

So all we have to do is use Windows 8.1 and UEFI boot and it will work ås plug and play with any Alienware machines?! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG Thanks for the testing and the good news gofata. That nobody saw this easy method is all in the past. Off to get me one of those Alienware 18 machines and upgrading the GPU Peterx, you should confirm it working in AW18 as well. That would help greatly and be a final confirmation