ChillAlarm

Hey all, Did the upgrade last Sunday and everything went smoothly. Haven't flashed a modified vBIOS as of yet seeing as I haven't had any major issues thus far. All I've done is flashed the unlocked BIOS, installed the new card, and installed the modified driver. Pretty simple in hindsight, just seemed pretty daunting at first. Now my only issue is that I believe my display cable is damaged. That started before my last cards died. I suspect it's the cable because when on integrated graphics the display works perfectly. But when switched to the discrete graphics the display is fuzzy. Just looks like there's a lot of static, but when connected to an external monitor it works perfectly. But that's a problem for another day.

Thanks again @ssj92! I'll give that a go and see where I get.

@ssj92 Thanks for you quick response! I've got that BIOS downloaded and ready to go as soon as my card comes in. Really I could do it today but don't have a reason to. I read elsewhere that the heatsink should be good but I'll see. Planning to do the upgrade Sunday night. Are you saying that I don't even need to mess with the vBIOS or modifying the drivers?

A little more research done and now I'm beginning to doubt this whole complicated process. From the forums here and here it seems like I don't need to jump through so many hoops. Just update to A12 BIOS and pop in the card. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

I'm having a little trouble getting a hold of premas vBIOS so can anyone recommend an alternative? Would this one from SVL7 work?

Hey all, I'm going to be upgrading my m18x r2 from dual radeon hd 7970m's to a single gtx 980m. Ordering an upgrade kit today from here that should arrive in 3 days or so. I've taken it apart before but all parts are original thus far. I've noticed this is a pretty common topic here on TI but haven't found a straighforward guide. I'm planning to document the upgrade as I go along to serve as that guide. My plan as it stands right now is this: Flash swick and SVL7's A11 unlocked BIOS, teardown and replace the cards more or less following this guide, rebuild and check that I didn't screw anything up too terribly, and flash prema's vBIOS. As of now my next step is downloading the latest nvidia drivers and modifying them for my system following this guide, but if that doesn't work I may just revert to using j95's modded drivers. My specs are: PC: Alienware m18x r2 OS: Windows 10 Home CPU: Ivy Bridge Intel i7 3630QM RAM: 12GB Dual Channel DDR3 HD: 1TB RAID 0 GPU: 7970m Crossfire (sadly dead) BIOS: A11(stock) For flashing the BIOS and vBIOS you have to create a bootable dos usb. I found a great guide for that here.

Hey Zoldago, Thank you for your response. As this is my first hardware upgrade I'll probably go with your suggestion. It'll already take enough jury rigging on the software side that I probably should play it safe here.

Watched the new Spiderman last week. Overall it was good, especially like the new actor but Peter Parker's genius didn't really come through. Hopefully he gets out from beneath Tony Stark's shadow in the coming films.

Hi all, I am an Alienware m18x r2 owner looking to upgrade my 7970m's to a 980m to start, hopefully adding another one in the future. I am a 21 year old computer science major in Dallas and only got into PC gaming about 4 years ago with this laptop and have been hooked. I'm looking to extend the life of this pc as currently my GPU's are down.

Thanks for the guide, going to be quite useful soon for a GPU upgrade.

Hey all, I'm planning to do a similar upgrade though my m18x r2 currently has two 7970m's installed. It is also already on Windows 10. From my understanding to get the 980m to work on this laptop you need an unlocked a11 BIOS and modified vBIOS for the card, usually swicks and prema's mods respectively have been recommended.

Hey all, I was reading on another forum that the 7970m heatsinks could be used with the gtx 980m in the m17x r4, link here. Would that also apply to the m18x r2? I am replacing my burnt out 7970m's with a single 980m to start and need to know what all I need to get. Any help would be much appreciated!

Hi all, I'm planning to upgrade my GPUs soon due to their fairly recent demise. This is my first and only gaming laptop and I've grown quite fond of it. I have two 7970m's inside currently and want to start off by putting a single GTX 980m in since that will already double what my cards could do. I have the m18x r2 and have been reading up in preparation for the upgrade but one issue I have is that I'm already on windows 10. Every topic I've read about this upgrade has people going to windows 10 after their GPU upgrades and I'm wondering if that will be an issue?