loafer987

Nice thats looking good. Im impressed your physics score beats my aw17 at 4 ghz. Heres my latest 1070 score. http://www.3dmark.com/fs/12668293 Not sure how i missed this thread. I am extremely curious if the zotac 1070 would work in the m18x r2 now. a couple people have them in AW17 R1's but they required a vbios flash to MSI vbios.

Please let me know how this goes! I'd love to see that machine go another gpu generation! I may try a 1070 in one if you get this to go 100%!

Im scared to update for this reason... I might wait for one more nvidia update before I do the creators update.

I know this thread is super old, but I still have this laptop and after all these years I finally found what I like to call a final solution... This solution for this laptop that hasn't given me any problems and keeps my 920xm very happy without throtting. My old 7970 before had all the throttling issues, vs my 965m that has 0 issues, works on the stock psu and games much much better than the 7970. I have now tried about 6 different GPUs in my machine and anything above 80 or 90w tdp lead me to throtting under combined (cpu+gpu load) http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/4876709/3dm11/11656394# I also built a psu adaptor cable for an HP 210w power supply. I tried the 330W and the 240W dell ones and still had throttling for some reason. This adaptor with the HP 210w allowed me to push the cpu as far as I wanted within temperature limits. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m15x-330w-psu-mod-like-complete-need-bios-help.795463/#post-10368048

not sure what u mean ghosts. These are the best drivers I've come across for my aw17 yet. I havent tried BF1 yet but nothing but good news to report here so far. Im also running this driver on my m15x w 965m and its running below 70*C all day long. I'm very very happy with my m15x now!

@Klem @johnksss huge thanks for the vbios. Also huge thanks to @J95 for the driver mod inf. you guys are the reason I love this forum! I am changing my gpu in the near future, but before I do, Im having some stability issues with the 1.0v on the 980m vbios from the first post. When I bump the voltage up to 1.025 I get full stability. My asic quality is 81.3%. (quite good from what I understand.) long story short, is there any way one of you can quickly mod the original 980m vbios from this thread for me to default to 1.025v. I fully intend to pay in beer! Thanks!

@J95 Bought you a beer for making my life easy. Keep up the hard work!

I have an R1 ranger, on win 10 64bit. Im running this vbios with my 980m 8gb clevo version. Worked perfect for me. I am running in dedicated mode because of my 120hz lcd. My guess is you arent running off the 980m at all. your game appears to be loading on the intel gpu. try switching to dedicated graphics mode (Fn+F5) reinstalling the drivers in dedicated mode. Use the mobile 364.72 drivers from the nvidia website and this .inf mod https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/4906-alienware-aftermarket-upgrades-driver-support-modded-inf/&do=findComment&comment=140834 You'll lose battery life capabilities of your machine but the benefit is worth it. http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8422266 My firestrike score at completely stock clocks. Hope this helps good luck!

@Prema I am having issues with the clevo 1.1.1 vbios in my Alienware 17 R1. I have a 980m I installed using the 3 pipe heatsink and I keep having the card overheat, but only in certain games. ie. World of Warcraft will take my gpu up to 85*C+ where as looping uniengine benchmarks or 3dmark will never take the gpu over 75*C. I am using a Cooling pad with 2 80mm fans directly pointing at the fan intakes. I have also upgraded the gpu fan in the laptop from the stock 1.Xcfm one to the 10.6cfm model from the R3. I have an ASIC reading of 81.3%. What I am thinking is maybe this vbios has too much voltage applied for long term gaming for the cooling system in this machine? Will this Alienware 18 vbios help me with my issues at all or should I try a vbios with a lower 3dclock voltage? My current load voltage is 1.062v. I am running 359.06 mobile modded inf drivers. I honestly don't care about overclocking I just want this thing to be stable with or without my laptop cooler under it.

My 7970m would hover between 40 and 50 idle depending on whether it was in idle clock mode or if there was animated (or video) things happening. (clock speeds run higher when you watching Youtube for example) The fan profile on the m17x r3/4 doesnt start the fans until 50* if I remember correctly. You much better off checking you max temps with a program like GPUz while you play a game or run a couple benchmarks. The max safe temp id ever let a 7970m see is probably 75*. i believe they start throttling at that temp on certain other models of notebooks. I blew up the memory chips on a 7970m at only 1300mhz because they ran too hot for too long.

All 4 fans for refrence

Sorry to bump this super old tread but I believe this mod should be stickied. I just completed the same mod in my AW17 R1 and the difference is absolutely night and day. Major drawback however is noise, but this thing moves a TON of air. my 4930mx doesnt go above 80*c now (was peaking up to 95* on the stock fan). Thats just using GC extreme thermal paste. I plan to switch to liquid ultra as soon as I buy the special cleaner for it. Another side note. i bought the fan for the GPU for the M17x R3/4 and it drops directly in. no modding or wiring changes required. Works perfect and dropped gpu temps from 75-80 down to 65-70. Overall a massive win. But be warned the cpu fan is a noisy beast when you're pushing your cpu hard. *EDIT* Forgot to give fan part numbers. CPU = XN0G5 GPU = THPDJ

You think you have it bad.... nvidia users upgrading to windows 10 are killing their screens lol. https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/862417/geforce-drivers/windows-10-geforce-drivers-are-killing-samsung-and-lg-notebook-lcd-display-panels/ No support from them either. i think at the moment AMD/Team red is the lesser of 2 evils. On a more helpful note. If you have an m17x r2, your 330 w powersupply must be modded with a 240w id chip in order for the m17x r2 to actually make use of the extra wattage. http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x-aw-17/5072-%5Bguide%5D-dell-330w-power-adapter-mod-m17x.html I did this mod but built it into my 330W PSU. After i did this my scores improved drastically. If you have a clevo with a dell powersupply you need to ground the center pin in the power supply connector to force the 330w into full power mode. if you have a clevo psu, sorry i wont be any help! AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-920XM Processor,Alienware Also make sure your xfire option is turned on in the catalyst control center.

Excellent thanks for the response. I wanted to flash these cards back to stock as when I bought the laptop the display was already corrupted by the old owner not using this vbios. (From what I can tell)

Hello. I Just had a quick question. I just flashed this vbios to my clevo v1.2 card in my m17x r2. It seems to be working well but the card still detects as "subvendor DELL" in GPUz. I had to force flash the vbios as atiflash wouldn't let me flash it without the force command. Not a major problem, just strange unless Svl7 modified it this way. let me know if i have the option to fix this! Thanks

Does this mean no optimus or hybrid graphics on the R4 with newer gpus?

I just cooked my 7970m as well. Stupid cryptocoin mining addiction... I have been trying to figure out if my 7970m heatsink would work with the 780m/880m for the past 48 hours. Everyon seems to say it will work but noone can confirm this. If i dont have to buy a heatsink i would love to try out an 880m!

I understand the UEFI Boot problem as I have the 015.017.000.001.042717 vBIOS from svl7 at 1.075v 900mhz/1300mhz. Would updating to the 015.022.000.001.000000 vbios on the techpowerup site solve the UEFI issue? VGA Bios Collection: Dell HD 7970M 2048 MB | techPowerUp Also when I boot from the discrete graphics I get no HDMI output. The hdmi port makes the noise in windows that it acknowledges the cable was plugged in but I get no output. it works perfectly when I boot from the intel GPU but not on the AMD card. I am going to try booting from intel GPU and using switchable graphics to play a game and see what happens but Far Cry has those stupid black boxes still when I play it that way. Please anyones help is appreciated!

RodEire: if you mean you have the internal display working but its the external that you cant get going. I have the same issue any time I connect to anything with older HDMI revisions or anything like an amplifier. If I go straight to my tv it works. I still haven't found a solution for this either but i have a media pc so it really doesn't matter to me. The one that's strange for me is my HDMI 1080p Samsung 23" monitor doesn't work through my DP adapter either. Same as when i connect to my denon AVR3806 that outputs to my 50" panasonic plasma. But connecting directly to my 50" panasonic 50PZ77 plasma works perfectly... Very strange. I bought my adapter off ebay and the company refunded me for the adapter as we assumed this the the problem. i dont have an original alienware one to test with unfortunately.

I just tried reflashing the vbios to 1.0v and i reproduced the last result no problem. I'm thinking undervolting too much is the root of the problems here. I have the GPU at 900/1300 at 1.0v and the cpu stock and its fine. I will try throttlestop again tonight and go for something like 20x all 4 and see what happens. This is the result of last nights findings. AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel® Core CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz,Alienware score: P5641 3DMarks

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel® Core CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz,Alienware score: P5424 3DMarks Stock clocks .95v vbios AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel® Core CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz,Alienware score: P5678 3DMarks When I started to have throttling issues... .975 vbios AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel® Core CPU X 920 @ 2.00GHz,Alienware score: P5664 3DMarks Best score I was able to pull off before it all went south. cant remember what vbios. Probably 1.0v At one point I was able to get the full test to run at 23x I believe thats the bottom score. But I cant remember what vbios I was running at the time.

svl7! I have attempted to match your every move with your M15x to make this work and its driving me nuts. I have my 7970 flashed to your .95v vbios and I cant run the 920xm even one multi above stock clocks without gpu throttling. I also have an AC power meter and I am only drawing 130w max from the wall. as soon as I try to use throttlestop at all, even at 71/65 at 16 or 17 multi on 3 and 4 cores it throttles. But i know its not the total power draw as it used to draw 145w with my 5850m and now it maxes out at 135!!! Please any ideas at all! I'm so confused and lost... 3dmark 2011 combined test is the easiest way for me to test for throttling and anything above stock at all it starts stuttering...

Here is a pastebin of a 23x run of TSbench 1024m 8 threads with 27/26/23/23 at 80/70 as my settings. 469.931 seconds. It doesn't throttle throughout the whole run. Yes it gets a little warm however it never gets that hot in games so its not a thermal issue. M15x 23x no throttle - Pastebin.com

Yes I understand how TS works. I have also used the intel extreme utility which does the same thing. If I set the TDP to say... 90/80 I can take the cpu all the way up to 26x on all 4 cores without clock modulation or throttling. As soon as I add my GPU to the mix everything $hits the bed and I have to reboot and try again with lower multipliers. If i dont reboot and just try lowering the multi's it will still throttle even if I set it below stock multis... i don't know if this is a software bug or something hardware related. Regardless no matter what setting I use on the cpu. even if its a really low multi like 19 or 20 on 4 cores at 70/60tdp (which really is all i was hoping for as i know the M15x has weak power circuits) wprime will not throttle for the entire test, but as soon as the GPU is stressed at the same time like with far cry 3 or anything else fairly intensive, i get throttling or clock modulation and everything begins to stutter like my 3dmark video shows. Now where I don't know if my thought process is correct is the TDP settings. From what I understand these are "caps" for the power limits of the CPU. If I am correct thinking this I should be able to crank the tdp's to something like 90/80 and even though they are set that high if I use settings like 24/24/19/18 just for example its not going to use anywhere near the TDP settings. ie. what I set the TDPs to is not what its actually forced to use. If my thoughts here are correct I should be able to set the them higher than I would need and use a lower multi setting without issue. This seems to be Svl7's method in his threads about m15x's and videocards. Please correct me if i am wrong here but this is the one part of the program I am not 100% sure of.

Ok nope since the 1080p screen install or just since I had a memory that worked now it doesnt matter what I have TS set to even using the stock settings its throttling. Its more obvious in MSI Kombustor so I am using that for quick testing now. If I reboot the laptop and leave throttlestop closed the laptop runs perfectly without throttling. As soon as I open throttlestop is causes the throttling.