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Hello fellow Aliens, My specs: Alienware M17xR4 got it back in Dec 2011 (Dell decided to upgrade my M17xR3 that crapped out on me) Intel Core i7 3940XM Upgraded from 660m to 780m 16GB Samsung 1600 RAM 2 500GB Samsung SSD in Raid 0 ( i know sue me) This will be a little guide with my journey of upgrading my dedicated GTX and CPU. Eagle vision activated and started the hunt on eBay for something that would not leave my bank with a massive dent. All i wanted to do is breathe more life into this monster that i have grown way too attached to. A quick search revealed people want way too much for their hard ware . How ever i started making offers and messaging people to negotiate a better price. I think it took me two days before i found a nice 3940XM listed for 350$. Messaged the dude and surely he replied with 200$ is a no go . But i can do 300$ . I had to come back with 280$ and to make the story short he accepted . Put my 3610QM after looking up on eBay they were going for 80$ give or take. So i listed it for 60$ with 4$ shipping . I got an E-mail from eBay; congrats on your listing...and your item sold . I did not want any negative feedback, so i removed the CPU wiped the thermal paste and decided to be with out my baby () until the 3940XM () arrived ( which took 3 days). That package was like a in my arms being delivered to its rightful owner. Reading all the replies on the offers i had made on 680m and 780m listings. From hell no to sorry you are crazy, there was a fellow that shared with me that the money is not a priority and his new 980m made him so happy he would sell his 780m for 300$ . Naturally i offered 280$ with paypal invoice = no eBay seller fees. What you know he accepted!!!! Listed my 660m for sale and till this day it is still there . I dont want to share my agony with you, waiting for a seven business day delivery by UPS ground , so lets fast forward to when i got the 780m and installing it. Seller advised i would need a 100W heat sink, which my poor 660m oddly had. So 780m is installed and a dual boot of Win10 and Win7 in order to see which Win the 780 preferred. Windows recognized the new hardware, so did the Bios, so i went to www.Nvidia.com and downloaded the latest drivers . The installer kept on saying no compatible hardware was found so that drove me . It was not until i googled " M17xR4 780m upgrade that i found out the 780m is not compatible the "Legal way" and a INF file modification was in place to get the drivers installed. Again googled M17xR4 780m upgrade drivers, and i found numerous of people crying for help as well. I thought to my self ( i will never see this work today, better try this in the morning, but before i went to sleep i needed some wisdom of a fellow Alien to come to my aid. A guy that goes by tanzmeister replied and guided me. Here is a copy paste for yas. These are the links you should check in order to install drivers properly:Flashing vBios:1- Guide:http://forum.techinferno.com/nvidia-video-cards/2166-[guide]-nvidia-vbios-flashing.html2 - vBios for the 780mhttps://www.techinferno.com/index.p...king-editions-modified-clocks-voltage-tweaks/Modded drivers:http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...od-for-780m-880m-and-980m-mobile-gpus.767644/I am not actually sure these drivers are modded... They might just be "Enhanced". So check out this link as well to learn how to mod drivers yourself (really not that hard)https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/4055-guide-modding-nvidia-oem-inf-files/To install a modded driver you need to restart Windows with DSE disabled (driver signature). Please google this to find how to do it. I personally haven't tried MrFox's drivers but I read they yield fantastic results on Kepler GPU's (780m included) so you can give these a try. Everything worked!!!! Red Alert 2 and Age of Empires 2 were running!!!! Joking aside i launched Gta v and The witcher 3 which ran at a decent 30+ FPS. Castlevania Lords of Shadow 1 and 2 i could play at Ultra. I was genuinely happy with my rig. Until today, for some reason i wanted to try an unlocked Bios. I was on A13, looked up Drivers on Dell's website and downloaded A12, A11, A10 and A05. Did you guess what i did next? I flashed them all one by one, A12 first which was a sucess, A11 which also yielded good results. A10 finished flashing and instead of restarting my Alienware decided to take a nap. Turn it on, and what i feared has happened. I HAD BRICKED MY BIOS!!!! Pulled my crappy Pentium laptop and googled M17xR4 bricked Bios. Thank the merciful lord of forgiveness, of light, of hope, of all that is great. I had stumbles on T|I: Following that i Blindly flashed A05 through recovery (which you really do not know what the hell is going on, Put the file on a flash drive, insert it in eSata. Shut down and remove both battery and AC adapter. Hold the END button on your keyboard and plug in your AC-adapter. Fans turn on 100% All the lights where showing, but then it started beeping and i had to go to work in 30 mins so i left it and proceeded to a warm shower. Finishing up and coming back to the room it was still beeping so i unplugged the AC-adapter reinserted the battery and AC-adapter. Pressed the and voila my tears were sucked back in. Thank you for reading, i know i am not much of a writer, but i just wanted to share my journey if someone was thinking of doing the 780m upgrade.
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Hi all. I'm considering downgrading (blind-flash method, verified it works on this system before) my M17x R4's system BIOS from A10 Unlocked to A05 Unlocked. Reason being the idle clock for the Intel iGPU - I liked the behavior much better in A05 and earlier. I was able to idle at 350MHz(qm chip)/400MHz(xm chip) instead of the advertied 650MHz, which results in significant idle power savings. The new BIOS does still allow for this, but only if the system is exposed to AC power (yes, adapter is original.) The problem is if I have to restart my system for any reason while on battery power, I get stuck with 650MHz iGPU clock and a 25% greater overall idle power draw until I can plug in. I've documented this behavior further in a previous post, but for this question let's not focus on the reason I want to downgrade - unless you know another way I can force the behavior I want. What I want to ask is this: Other than the CPU microcode update which does not apply to my current ES CPU, the new Windows 8-related features, and the slightly faster POST, are we aware of any other meaningful differences between the two BIOSes? Differences in system performance? I did notice a slight improvement with A10 over A05 on my previous CPU but I attributed that to the microcode update, which no longer applies to my current CPU. I've yet to run A05 on my current ES CPU.
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This is a modified version of the M17x R3 BIOS A10, it brings back the SATA behavior of A08 and earlier, while keeping the features of BIOS A10. A lot of users don't seem very happy with the changes Dell made to the SATA performance of BIOS A09 and up, thus I created this BIOS. Just keep in mind one thing: Dell probably didn't change the corresponding settings in the BIOS for no reason, so it's possible that certain drives may have issue with this BIOS, I don't know. According to a lot R3 users, A08 brings a clearly better SATA performance on a wide variety of drives. It's up to you to decide what you need and what you want to use. Now you have the choice. Download link for BIOS A10 with the 'SATA fix', and unlocked hidden menus: M17x R3 BIOS A10 - unlocked & 'SATA fix' Read the included READ ME for further information and instructions. Load the default settings in the BIOS setup after flashing. User at your own risk.