1pinkpanda1

Does anybody still have the 84.04.44.00.0A stock vBIOS for the 8 GB GTX980M? (I think I accidentally deleted my backup and I like to have one just in case.)

Hi all. I'm on an AW M17xR4, using optimus and the modded nv_dispi.inf. Everything installs fine, but when using the card I still get throttling/P1 switching issues. J95, switching in your .inf alone supposed to fix the throttling problem, or was there something else I was supposed to do in addition? Update: Same problem with the 353.00 inf. Also noticed that when throttling sets in, fps is capped to 30 and nvidia inspector shows PS_FRAMERATE_LIMITER_FPS_30 set on the global profile; maybe this isn't the same throttling that occurs without the inf mod, as that doesn't seem to have a framerate cap? The cap also persists until reboot; if I close the "throttled" application and change the frame rate limiter setting in nvidia inspector back to off, then reopen the application, the cap is still there but the second time 0xA000003C shows up in nvidia inspector, and "frame rate monitor control" gets set to PS_FRAMERATE_MONITOR_CTRL_OPTIMAL_SETTING. I'm at a loss, does anybody have any ideas on any of this?

There's a couple Acer and Asus models over 18 inches I think, found this in a quick search. Not sure if they're any good and they probably won't match the performance you'll see on the Alienware 18 or MSI GT80. Any particular reason you're looking for 18 inches + (most laptops are 18.4") if you don't mind me asking? There's a lot more choice if you expand your search to 17.3" and you don't necessarily lose performance.

Does this only work if you currently have certain older (older than A12?) BIOS versions?

Just curious because I haven't heard about this; does g-sync with mobile cards operate on the laptop's mobile panel, or is it for connecting to external g-sync enabled monitors?

As I understand it GRID is more of a streaming service. As in they just take your keyboard and mouse input and essentially stream you a game that you're playing on a completely different system, not unlike Steam's in-home streaming feature if you're familiar with that, except that GRID does the streaming over the web instead of your local network (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong). So I'd be inclined to say that GRID and services like it are a ways removed from the type of solution we'd need to replace external interfaces for GPU's; you might say GRID removes the need to own hardware entirely, but that doesn't really solve the eGPU interface problem. I do think though that the fact that services like GRID are starting to pop up indicates that internet technology is getting to the point where somebody probably could develop a streaming protocol for GPU data and have an internet interface for GPU's that would help deal with the lack of physical external interfaces.

I'm not sure about the voltage, but I think it should be fine, although it might mean the 1.35V stick will run at 1.5V and waste a little bit of power. I know for sure that using different sizes will work fine, but you might want to check the CAS latency on the different sticks since they're different manufacturers. I have two 8GB sticks, a 4GB stick, and a 2GB stick in my machine, all 1.5V (DDR3 instead of DDR3L, which is 1.35V) but the latencies don't match so the machine is stuck using the latencies from the slower two sticks. I think the performance difference is very minor though. Also in my experience my BIOS reacted strangely to the latencies that didn't match; all of my four sticks are 1600 MHz but instead of taking the lower latency and running all four at 1600 MHz the machine defaulted to taking the faster CAS latency but dropping the clock speed to 1333 MHz. Once I manually set my clocks and latencies it worked fine but the machine wouldn't resume from sleep properly. So tl;dr, in my experience mixing RAM worked fine and there was a minimal performance loss that I could counteract with a lot of headache.

I think this might have to do with the card's ability to boot as a discrete card (without optimus) in a UEFI boot scenario as opposed to a legacy one. I'd expect the 980M to work fine with the switchable graphics feature (and to be properly detected by the BIOS in both modes). Some of the old cards with old vBIOS which wouldn't be detected by the BIOS as a dedicated card in UEFI mode. Of course, I'm just speculating too, as I'm about to but have yet to try the same upgrade.

Wow, now I have to worry having just purchased the same card from the same place. Did you ever figure out what that was? Also, another question for somebody who upgraded to a 980M on the M17xR4; did the laptop still boot fine if you used the switchable graphics key? Because of the vBIOS on my old card (660M) the key doesn't work without a vBIOS upgrade to the card, since the 660M's vBIOS didn't support GOP (I think).

General question about the 980M's vBIOS; is it GOP enabled? (if that's the right term?) As in, can you boot with a 980M as a discrete card on a system that boots via UEFI? I know you couldn't on some older GTX 660M's without updating the vBIOS.

Hi, I'm a random guy who is trying to keep all his Alienware M17xR4's features working through a lot of upgrades without hurting his head too much...

Is this why the switchable graphics key on my M17xR4 doesn't function if the system is configured to use UEFI boot instead of legacy? Or is that an unrelated effect of switching BIOS types?