aarpcard

Ended up cutting out my vents and 3-D printing custom replacements. Resulted in about 8-10C drops on both gpu's and cpu. Liquid Ultra resulted in another 7C drop across the board. Beginning to think my heatsinks are warped.

This mod/hack looks fantastic. Definitely want to try it - I'm doubtful I have the available cooling though to support over 4ghz. 3.9ghz on my 4800mq barely results in acceptable temps.

. . . So provided you could design a way to power the GTX 980 125w cards found in the GT80S, there's no reason why they shouldn't work in a Clevo laptop from an electrical and vbios perspective. I remember reading somewhere that all Clevo laptops after the p37X variants (including the p37x variants) employed the true MXM standard - meaning any MXM card that also followed the true MXM standard would work in those laptops and there would be no bios/vbios compatibility issues or bios SLI profile issues. Is this true? If so, I might start looking into how to procure two GT80S GTX 980 mxm cards.

Hey man, Long time no see lol. Did you end up replacing the ram? Also, 980x's are getting relatively cheap now. I think I saw a ES for ~$200 on ebay. Might be worth trying that out.

Do you have a different known working gpu you can try? That would isolate it to either being a screen or bios issue, and not the gpu.

I suspect you're going to have to do the exact same thing I did. Read the posts by Prema and Mr. Fox in this thread. You're going to have to reflash the EDID of the screen through I2C bus access in Linux. However are you saying that your internal display won't display the bios, but will display in windows? That sounds like it might be a different issue.

Just flashed my second card with Precision X uninstalled. No issues so far.

Any chance the card in the first post is still a prototype card? It looks like Clevo is really trying to cram it into a standard mxm 3.0b form factor. That layout is already so dense, I can't see how you can go any smaller, but maybe there's some room on the back of the board. . . If their goal wasn't to completely comply with MXM 3.0b, then I don't see why they'd even put in the effort to get so close, as that looks to be a very expensive layout.

Just finished flashing with Linux. It works! Thanks a bunch, both of you! Attached is a dump of the terminal window. I had the N173HGE-L11 panel, so I used the CMO1720_GTF_AUO_old.bin file and it worked. This whole issue is really insane - I think there could be grounds for legal action somewhere. I'll keep you posted on if it reoccurs - especially when I flash the second card tomorrow, although I have uninstalled Precision X. dump.txt

Thanks for all the helpful info guys - I'll keep you posted. The latest updates to my OS were installed on 7/31/15 - so definitely not the MOST recent, but maybe recent enough? Also I'm expecting my second GTX 970m to arrive tomorrow. Should I hold off on reflashing the display panel until I get the second card and flash it with prema's vbios, so the display doesn't get bricked a second time? Or would uninstalling Precision X be good enough?

Never used Win 10 on this machine - however I was using Precision X =P

Thanks for the fast reply man! Forgot to mention, I'm using Windows 7 Professional 64bit. I knew about the bricked LCD issue with Windows 10 prior to flashing, but didn't think it'd be an issue because I'm on 7. Is the same issue even possible on windows 7? I'll look into flashing it via linux.

I recently bought two GTX 970m's to replace the 7970m CFX setup in my p-377sm-a. I got the first card in the mail and installed it without any problems. It was essentially plug and play. The only problem was the throttling due to the TDP limit imposed by the vbios. I decided to flash Prema's custom GTX 970m vbios which is supposed to take care of that issue. I flashed the card, restarted my computer, and all I get is a black screen. The computer boots into windows fine, but the internal display is black. I plug the computer into an external monitor via HDMI, and it works. For some reason, after the flash windows stopped detecting the internal display. At this point I decide to flash back to the original vbios to try and fix the issue. The flash was successful, but still a dead internal display. Next I try putting my 7970m's back into the computer and guess what, still a black internal display. WTF? I reinstall the GTX 970m, and flash it to a different vbios. Upon restarting, the computer won't post. The vbios flash got corrupted somehow. I put a 7970m back in the primary slot, and put the GTX 970m in the slave slot, upon booting, windows doesn't even detect the GTX 970m and nvflash is just as useless. I take the GTX 970m out of the computer, and desolder the eeprom chip which stores the vbios. The only issue is the chip is sinking a TON of heat and it's very hard to get off. I finally get it off but the chip is destroyed. It turns out NVIDIA put a thermal well underneath the eeprom chip. Why the **** would you put a thermal well under a eeprom chip? It doesn't get hot - it doesn't need cooling! As a result, the chip sinks so much heat, that it's nearly impossible to remove it without destroying it. So now I'm screwed . . . or maybe not. I have about 4 dead 6990m's lying around that all suffered from warped PCB breaking the solderjoints under the gpu itself. I look at the eeprom's on those cards and compare them to the eeprom I took off of the GTX 970m. Different part number different chip. However, according to the datasheets, they seem to be pin compatible. At this point I have nothing to loose, so I unsolder a few of the AMD 6990m eeproms (AMD didn't stupidly put a thermal well under the eeproms). I pop the AMD chip into my flasher and flash Prema's GTX 970m vbios to the AMD eeprom to it. Everything seems fine and I proceed to solder the AMD eeprom to the GTX 970m. Voila. It works! Praise be to the eeprom gods. TLDR: Fixed a bricked GTX 970m by soldering an AMD eeprom to it. BUT: I still have the issue of the internal display not being recognized by windows - not even turning on in the bios. Did the original vbios flash somehow corrupt the display firmware? If so, how did this happen? Prema, can you weigh in on this please? Does anyone have any suggestions for either reflashing my display firmware or otherwise fixing the issue?

Thanks so much! I'll give it a try and report back!

Shouldn't be an issue with the memory. I was able to successfully CFX different brand 6990m's and 6970m's. I was even able to CFX a 6990m with a 6970m. My suspicion is a CFX bad cable - or it's not seated right. Can you confirm its functionality with a different pair of cards? Are the cards Clevo cards?

Good to know - thanks! Figured as much anyway. Swapping to GTX 970m's is not immediately viable for me. Does no one really have a R9 m290x vbios for the P377sm? The laptop was supposed to ship with that as an option. I have the means to reflash the card(s) in the event there is a bad flash.

I'm running one 1.1 card and one 1.2 card. Both worked as 8970m's when flashed with the P370sm 8970m vbios. Would my laptop take a P370SM bios? If so, I'm sure this will fix the issue. I've read that some people have done this, but I'm not convinced of the risk?

Just my two cents - every single 7970m I've tested (about 5) has had absolutely no problem getting to at least 6ghz on the mem.

How would one go about increasing heatsink pressure on the cpu and gpu dies?

bump - anyone have any ideas?

Just curious. Is there a general rule on MSI cards in Clevo laptops? Kind of how Dell AMD cards won't work, but Dell NVIDIA cards do work.

Hey guys. I went though this thread as best I could but I may have missed something in 303 pages so I'm sorry if this has been covered. Is there any way to overvolt the system ram in the bios? When I had my M17xR2, I had the option to overvolt the ram. I'm attempting to OC my ram and I need just a hair more voltage to make it stable. I can't find this in option in the bios . . . or in XTU. Is there another way I can overvolt the ram or am I just missing something entirely?

Hey all, I've been a longtime member on the forums at notebook review and also a lurker on here for quite some time. I recently just bought a p377sm-a barebones. I put two 7970m cards in the machine out of my Alienware M17x R2. Both cards are clevo cards. Everything works fine except for digital video out - i.e. HDMI and Displayport. Analogue out via Display Port to VGA adapter works fine. After asking asking for advice on notebookreview, I believe this is an issue with the vbios not being entirely compatible with the system bios. I also flashed the bios to the premamod bios. As such I have tried the following: Flashed the 7970m's to vbios 15.19 which is for the p270em. Didn't fix the issue. Flashed to the 15.21 vbios which is for the p370sm. Didn't fix the issue. Flashed to the 8970m vbios for the p570sm. Didn't fix the issue and had no video at all. Had to blind flash back. Flashed to the 8970m vbios for the p370em. Didn't fix the issue. However, windows detected the cards as 8970m's and everything ran completely fine as 8970m's. Flashed to the R9 m290x vbios for the p570. Didn't fix the issue and had no video at all. Had to blind flash back. I tried to find the R9 m290x vbios for the p377 but didn't have any luck finding it. I think that might be the vbios I need to make this work. Obviously the bios is looking for a vbios with both p370 or p377 tags and 7970m, 8970m, or R9 m290x tags. Since the only official AMD card that the p377sm-a supports is the R9 m290x, I think that is the vbios I need to try flashing. However I could only find that vbios for the p570. Does anyone have the vbios for the R9 m290x in the p377sm-a? I can't find it anywhere and I think this might solve my issue.

-Alienware M17x R2 -i7 920xm @ 3.5ghz (Throttlestop set to 100W TDP) -12gb DDR3 1300mhz RAM -Dual 7970m 2gb @ 925mhz core, 1400mhz Mem -2x 1Tb 7200rpm drives -120gb SSD -720watt custom built PSU -Windows 7 Ultimate 64

Can you disable the HD4000 in the bios?