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Has any of the experts here managed to persuade Windows 10 to talk to a GTX770m? Mine was perfectly happy under Win7 but I slipped and succumbed to a Win10 installation and that only works with my old GTX260m. That gives just acceptable performance, but I would like to get the 770 working if possible and would prefer not to roll back from Win10. Win10 hangs on a pale green screen. Fortunately I run with HyperOS so have optional boot into Win7 partition still available so can still run the 770 under that. Until I took this step into the "future", the 337.50 driver was working fine. I need to (be told how to) modify a suitable driver so that I can install it with the 260 and then change the hardware back to the 770. Or should I give up with the 770 and try a 780 or 880? Btw, the 770 has the latest BIOS I could find (April 20, 2013). All advice gratefully received...

So I took the plunge, and bought a 970m. Got it all up and running, but the GPU is throttling in every game I try and run. Has anyone had this problem and been able to overcome it? So far I've... Tried a couple of different driver versions (345.20 and 347.88). Neither driver fixed the issue. Flashed with the slv7 vbios. Still the same issue. Reinstalled Windows 8, and tried the drivers again. Still not working. Tried forcing P0 P-State in nVidia Inspector. Nothing happens. Symptoms Using MSI Afterburner, the GPU load never goes above 50%. nVidia Inspector shows the P-State as P1 whenever I'm in a game, not P0. 3DMark11 score is only ~P4000 Specs Alienware M15x Core i7 920XM (standard clocks) GTX 970M 6GB with slv7 vbios 8GB RAM Windows 8.1 Pro (fresh install) 240W PSU Can anyone help? I'm completely stumped at this point... Thanks!

Guide - M15x with Nvidia GTX 470m IMPORTANT: The Nvidia 470m is not officially supported by Dell. Upgrading to this card may void your warranty. Some background to this mod: The first guy who tried to put a Nvidia 470m in an Alienware M15x was @iloveb00bs in December 2010, shortly after the card got released. Unfortunately it didn't work as desired, the card worked, but only at 2d clocks. All attempts to bring it to 3d clocks failed, and the card wasn't supported by Nibitor support at this time. Also @widezu69 didn't get it to work a couple of weeks ago, so I didn't think it would be possible. But in the process of trying to upgrade the Asus G73JW of a colleague I got my hands on a Nvidia GTX 470m and since we didn't get it to work in the G73, I thought let's try it again in the M15x... I had to mod the vbios to get it running at 3d clocks. I'm not that experienced with Nvidia cards, so that's probably why it took me a couple of attempts to get it working. First I changed the 2d clocks and voltage (P3 in Nibitor) to 3d values. The result was that the card idled at 3d clocks, but as soon as I opened a 3d application it went downclocked itself to about 73MHz core and got to 2d voltage again... pretty annoying. After some more tests I realized that I had to change the lower 3d clocks and voltage (P7 in Nibitor). This did the trick. Apparently the card only checks P7 and P3 in the VBIOS, the actual 3d clock entries (P15) seem to have no effect at all. The fan control works perfectly. Haven't tested DP/HDMI audio yet, but I'll do this sometime soon. Things to do before exchanging the card: Download the drivers. I used the latest Nvidia beta driver (v275.27) and the modded .inf files from laptopvideo2go. As the card comes from Clevo I guess the Clevo (and resellers) driver will work as well. But I usually prefer the latest driver for performance and stability. Also get GPU-Z for monitoring your video card and verifying it. Make sure you have thermal paste, maybe some new thermal pads as well as something to clean the heatsink (e.g. isoproply alcohol) and some cloths around. I also highly recommend using a grounded ESD-mat and a wristband. Know what you're doing. You need to partially disassemble your machine to get to the GPU. Prepare yourself thoroughly, check out my little GPU exchangement guide and if you need more information also the M15x service manual, as well as the . It can be helpful to write down all the steps in advance when you're doing this for the first time. In case there's still something unclear about the disassembling procedure after checking out all the stuff I just mentioned, just ask. Exchanging the GPU is really pretty easy. Very important: Make all the necessary preparations to flash the modified vbios to the card in order to get it working at 3d clocks: You'll need a DOS bootable USB drive with NVflash on it. If you have already such an USB drive you can skip the next step and simply copy the mod470m.rom file from the attached archive to your stick. If you first need to create such an USB drive open an read the Spoiler: Creating a bootable DOS USB drive (by [MENTION=5]Brian K.[/MENTION] ) Step 3: Download and extract Nvflash, the tool for flashing a Nvidia vbios to the GPU from DOS. Copy the files to the root of your already correctly formatted USB stick. Step 4: Download the modded GTX 470m vbios and put it on your USB drive as well. The upgrading procedure: Uninstall your GPU drivers. Make a power drain (Turn off your M15x, remove the power cord and the battery. Then press and hold down the power button (Alienhead) for about 10-20 sec. Remove your GPU - Here's a little guide with pics in case you need some help. Clean your heatsink, if necessary replace the thermal pads with new ones. Make sure the 470m has a retention bracket on the back of the GPU. If not take the one from your old GPU and put it there. Properly insert your GPU, make sure that it sits properly and that the die is clean. Apply the thermal paste, and attach the heatsink. Then (after reassembling your system), boot, install the drivers and reboot. Make sure the fans are running (otherwise you probably forgot to plug in the fan). Open GPU-Z and verify your card and the clocks. Default 3D clocks are 535/750/1070 MHz (core/memory/shader), you can see them in the "Graphics card" tab of GPU-Z. Make sure PowerPlay is enabled in the Catalyst Control Center. Also make sure Stealth Mode is deactivated. Check your temperatures. Idle temps should be 40-50°C, depending on your ambient temp of course. While gaming or doing something similar GPU-intense the system will run significantly hotter, 60-70°C, maybe a bit higher. >>> Now you need to flash the modded vbios to your GTX 470m in order to get your card working at 3d speeds <<<WARNING: Flashing the vbios of your GPU always involves some risk and can brick your card in case something goes wrong. Make sure you know the exact procedure before doing this. I do not take any responsibility for damaged cards, systems or whatever. -Plug in your properly prepared USB drive -Make sure your system is plugged in (AC adapter and to be safe battery as well) -Reboot -When you see the Alienhead press [F12] to get to the boot menu, choose "Boot from USB" A command prompt will appear. First of all, make a backup of your original 470m vbios! Use the following command: nvflash -b orig470m.rom Before flashing, test whether the file isn't corrupted (errors while copying it to the stick or similar): nvflash -v mod470m.rom The image size must be 64000 bytes and the CRC32 3C8FA599 Now flash the modded vbios: nvflash -5 -6 mod470m.rom Press enter. A couple of warnings will appear, follow the instructions on the screen to confirm the flash procedure. Remember, some Keyboard layouts have the [Z] key at the place where the US layout has the [Y] key. So in case you have such a keyboard you'll need to press [z] instead of [y], otherwise the flashing procedure will get cancelled. Then press [Ctrl][Alt]+[Del] to reboot your system, unplug the USB stick. You can use GPU-Z to verify the flash of the vbios. It should look like this afterwards: Here some first benchmarks, both at stock clocks, PhysX off and the rest in the Nvidia control panel on standard settings, CPU at 3.2GHz. I haven't seen other 470m benchmarks of other systems, but 9k stock vantage seems reasonable. The card is probably pretty overclockable, but I haven't tested this yet. I have yet to find overclocking tool with which I can set the core clock manually, so far I only managed to change the memory and shader clock with Nvidia Inspector. Otherwise I'll have to modify the vbios in order to overclock it (which isn't the best solution as I can't really push the card with this method) However, it seems the card can be overvolted, haven't tested it yet but Nibitor allows me to change the voltage to 0.99V (instead of 0.94V). The only issue so far is that the card runs either at 3d clocks or at 2d clocks. Nothing between this. (As I said, the card only seems to use P7 and P3, if anyone knows a solution to this, let me know). M15x GPU exchangement guide .pdf modded 470m vbios - only for AW M15x.zip

Ahmed Mossam at bios-mods.com has uploaded an unlocked BIOS for the M15x, based on the Dell version A09. A very big thanks to him for his work!! Here's the link to the original thread at bios-mods: M15x BIOS unlocking request I have flashed this BIOS and the system works just as with the regular BIOS, the only difference is that there are several new menus accesible in the "Advanced" tab of the BIOS: -IGD - LCD Control Sub-Menu -SATA Control Sub-Menu -SATA Hard Drive The performance options have new sub-menus as well: -Plaform Thermal Configuration -Clarksfield QPI-Sub-Menu -Clarksfiled Memory Sub-Menu Unfortunately there are no frequency ratio options in the bios. Each of those has a couple of further submenus. Check out the pics of the screen in the spoiler for all details: Not every of the new options will be useful though, e.g. enabling eSata port multiplying won't do any good since the PM55 chipset doesn't support this feature. I haven't tested all the new options yet, but I'll definitely take a closer look at them. Instructions for flashing: - Download the unlocked BIOS files, they can be found here. - Download the BIOS A09 executable file (R293649.exe) from the Dell driver site and extract it and copy the files to the root of a DOS bootable USB drive. - delete the following files W6702M.A09, W6702MB.A09.bin, W6702MB.A09 from the USB drive - extract the .zip archive with the modded BIOS files and copy the three files to the root of your USB drive - rename the modded files (W6702M_SLIC.A09, W6702MB.A09_SLIC.bin, W6702MB_SLIC.A09) to W6702M.A09, W6702MB.A09.bin and W6702MB.A09 -Shutdown your system and boot from your USB drive -Type fa.bat and hit enter -follow the instruction on the screen, after the flashing is finished, the system will shutdown itself -restart your system and don't do anything, it will restart a couple of times before it will boot into Windows, don't worry. Everything at your own risk of course, I don't take any resposibility for bricked mobos. Crisis information should be available at bios-mods.com in case you mess up totally. Hope some of you guys test this as well and give some feedback. Again, a very big thanks to Ahmed Hossam from the bios-mods.com forums.

Hi guys, i have several question that i want to ask.... Before i want to upgrade my m15x, i just want to make sure of it 1. Is nVidia GTX 765M compatible with alienware M15x ? 2. if its compatible, then what requirement that i need to upgrading my m15x? 3. will the old X bracket will fit for GTX 765M(and also maybe a guide to remove the old GPU to the new GPU, cause i'm really noob at this)? 4. and lastly what driver or bios/vbios i need to install it? Here is my m15x profile.. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333) BIOS: Ver A03 1.00 Processor: Intel® Core i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~1.6GHz Memory: 4096MB RAM Graphic Card : nVdia GTX 260M

well, this problems starter when try reinstall my windows 7/8 or boot (formmating)... when I try to start the configuration of the new system this throws me a screen with a randomly color. I really can't solved this. purposely recently install a new video card "GTX 765m" (before GTX 260m) and not have problem in windows or games... please i need your help to solved this problem, Thank You.

Hi All, I recently bought a Dell Alienware M15x laptop. I thought it would be a good idea to do a full re-install of the OS as the laptop was previously used. After the re-install the lights on my laptop stopped working. After a bit of research I found this is a common problem with the Alienware laptops and its not an easy or quick fix. I tried what the DELL website says to do by downloading the latest drivers and doing the re-install again but no joy! I then contacted DELL support who advised due to the wrong firmware being applied, my motherboard was now corrupted and will need replacing for which they wanted close to £400. My issue is I used the resource CD that comes with the laptop from DELL to do the re-install. The CD's only purpose is for that very reason, to provide all the drivers needed after a re-install. If this is a known problem, why is DELL providing these CD's with the laptops? surely there's a legal case to made somewhere in this?? I can't afford to spend another £400 on a new motherboard so I am hoping someone on these forums has come accross this issue before and managed to resolve it. If so I would be immensely grateful if you could post how it was fixed. If I cant fix this issue I will have to sell the laptop as spares or repairs and only get back a fraction of what I paid. I will also NEVER buy from DELL again!!! Looking forward to any response!!!! PLEASE HELP!!!!! Please see the error messages I am getting below: Error reads: Error 2: Error reads: AlienFX Test: PLEASE HELP!!!!!

Yea im new to this site but i found info i browsed usefull even before i joined because im looking for a good upgrade for my M15x alienware laptop for december (christmas / birthday) instead of getting an entirley new system which would cost alot of money cause i like aiming for laptops due to the fact i got the space for this thing and desktops even though cheap are stationary. so due to that fact ,till i get the space eventually for a desktop i want to try and see the upgrades i can get for this laptop. and this is my problem, i dont really know what would be compatible with the laptop so ima just say the upgrades im looking to get, the specs of my current cpu, and price range. So what im looking for is increased RAM (if possible), a new graphics card, and a new hard drive. (any other suggestions i will exept too if you think somthing else would be nice also, or in place of one of my suggestions). My basic specs are: Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: Alienware System Model: M15x BIOS: Ver A09 1.00 Processor: Intel® Core i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz Memory: 4096MB RAM Available OS Memory: 4020MB RAM DirectX Version: DirectX 11 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M and the price range really for total upgrades im lookin for is about less then 500$- maybe little over (but mostly lookin to go cheaper if anyone knows any deals) NOTE: txt attachment is if your interested in my full specs. DxDiag.txt

Hi all I decided to upgrade my M15X. Current configuration: DDR3 SDRAM 4.096 MB @ 1.333 MHz 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX260M 500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 720QM Im looking for nVidia gtx 670M and gtx675M, but no idea what works better on my laptop, I was read some issues about power supply (75W or 100W), about throttling and about incompatibilities. Im reading your posts, and get more and more doubts, can somebody help me? Thank you so much!

Hey everybody, I installed a gtx 660m in my M15x and after finally installing the drivers, it works! But there is something weird about it. Here is a picture of what I mean: Laptop Forums and Notebook Computer Discussion Can someone tell me what's going on!!! (note: I can only overclock the memory not the core clock)

I have a dell 6990m bought it off ebay, part number RDRGR, was tested in an m18x r1. Anyways the card is fine I'm assuming but I have a black screen the moment I start up the computer but I can hear the sound of windows starting up and everything. Please someone help. What do I do? Also My specs are i7-740qm 500gb hdd seagate 6gb ram Original card was radeon hd 5730m HD+ 1600x900 screen

Hi, i just got my dads old M15x and started to play bf3 when it lagged like hell. I looked it up with both intel and EA and they said i should disable hyperthreading in the Bios. The problem is that my BIOS doesn't have that option so i would really appreciate if someone could give me a link to an unlocked bios or something? M15x i7 820qm GTX 260m

M17x and M15x LED Error Codes LED Error Codes Alienware™ M15x has a different keyboard status LED Layout, it is Scroll Lock, Caps Lock and Num Lock. source: Dell

I was browsing the others forums and I come across this picture. I would die for a paint job like this, so here is the question, do you think this is achievable in our M18x which is an aluminum cover? I know inap aka iloveboobs aka iwillkeepyoudistractedwithmydesktops did and awesome job on his m17x-R2? Do you think this is doable with the the 3m tape? Wait a minute, It was you INAP!! OMG wow nice job, now do you think this can be done in the m18x?