NVIDIA Maxwell VBIOS mods - 900m series overclocking versions

[Robbo]

That's a good run Mike, the GPU score is in line with what you would expect for a +200 overclock, so it doesn't seem to be throttling or anything. Good job!

[Fidanza]

ive asked a question in my last post just for double check and to be sure but nobody answer...this thing(msi gt72) is not cheap and i dont get money from trees..! anyway;

Firstly , my rig is MSI GT72 Dominator Pro 2qe which has GTX 980m 8GB

Secondly, i just flashed 980m mod.bios on my system and i tried almost every possible gpu,mem and volt.combinations and spent nearly 3 hours and get too many crashes to achieve the optimum performance settings with this custom vbios..

i used 3dmark14 fire strike test with nvdia 344.75 drivers

i always get with the stock oc bios 9.3k and with this bios with the same frequencies get 8.4k which is not going anymore than that..and perfectly shows that this custom vbios unfortunately is NOT SUITABLE with MSI GT72

the max point i get with this custom vbios is 9.6k with 1357 core clock and 6000mhz mem clock with +0.75mV volt. normally this values should give me a minimum 10k..

and somebody said its releated with psu and we need 300watt ...sorry dude in the msi dragon center we can see the power comsumption and that reaches max. 175 watt nothing more and we have 230PSU..so your theory is dead..!

in short , this custom vbios gives MSI GT72 more heat nothing more..!

so you guys really want to help, i can send you my stock vbios so you may create a more stable custom gtx980m vbios for MSI GT72 users.

thanks for your effort and work for the community

little note: i can overclock my screen to 70hz with stock but with modded vbios only get 65hz

[thegh0sts]

i hope that the unlocked vbios will be updated to where it makes the GPUs usable and I am happy to hold out until they have been updated.

[Khenglish]

ive asked a question in my last post just for double check and to be sure but nobody answer...this thing(msi gt72) is not cheap and i dont get money from trees..! anyway;

Firstly , my rig is MSI GT72 Dominator Pro 2qe which has GTX 980m 8GB

Secondly, i just flashed 980m mod.bios on my system and i tried almost every possible gpu,mem and volt.combinations and spent nearly 3 hours and get too many crashes to achieve the optimum performance settings with this custom vbios..

i used 3dmark14 fire strike test with nvdia 344.75 drivers

i always get with the stock oc bios 9.3k and with this bios with the same frequencies get 8.4k which is not going anymore than that..and perfectly shows that this custom vbios unfortunately is NOT SUITABLE with MSI GT72

the max point i get with this custom vbios is 9.6k with 1357 core clock and 6000mhz mem clock with +0.75mV volt. normally this values should give me a minimum 10k..

and somebody said its releated with psu and we need 300watt ...sorry dude in the msi dragon center we can see the power comsumption and that reaches max. 175 watt nothing more and we have 230PSU..so your theory is dead..!

in short , this custom vbios gives MSI GT72 more heat nothing more..!

so you guys really want to help, i can send you my stock vbios so you may create a more stable custom gtx980m vbios for MSI GT72 users.

thanks for your effort and work for the community

little note: i can overclock my screen to 70hz with stock but with modded vbios only get 65hz

As I pointed out before your combined scores were very low. How do the graphics test scores compare? You're not giving much info to figure out what's wrong.

In regards to the refresh rate I've found that when just over a screen's limit, it will sometimes display correctly, and sometimes not. For example this screen is fully stable up to 87Hz, but sometimes I can get up to 90Hz to display correctly, or maybe only certain display patterns cause a display error while others are fine.

[chap]

Finally got it flashed.....thanks Robbo youre help was great.

First run overclocked i think that its my limit as well everything more gives me crashes......so +230 is the max for me.

But still impressive for a 6 year old lappie......smile.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]13558[/ATTACH]

do you have tried overvolting it? as the 970m has a very low tdp there is a lot of headroom

[Fidanza]

the points i gave for 3dmark14 fire strike is overall point not graphical points...

[Steve135]

First let me thank svl7 for the significant work he has put into this project. I'm going to upgrade my M18x GPUs and have been researching possibilities online for the past few days. I was about ready to pull the trigger on a GTX 780, as I've heard numerous people report issues when trying to upgrade their older AW rigs with nVidia's 900m series GPU's, when I came across this thread. I was thinking of going with a single GTX 970m initially, and then adding another with a possible CPU upgrade later on down the line.

So as a question for the forum, will a single GTX 970m work on my rig with the VBIOS provided here by svl7? and do you think this is a good upgrade path for my rig? or should I go back to the GTX 780m idea? Also, I've heard elsewhere that I may need to upgrade to Win 8 or 10 to run nVidia's Maxwell architecture. What are your thoughts?

Any comments or insights are appreciated, Thanks,

[bronysk8ter]

Thanks! I flashed the modded vbios for my 970m and it works great.

[Robbo]

First let me thank svl7 for the significant work he has put into this project. I'm going to upgrade my M18x GPUs and have been researching possibilities online for the past few days. I was about ready to pull the trigger on a GTX 780, as I've heard numerous people report issues when trying to upgrade their older AW rigs with nVidia's 900m series GPU's, when I came across this thread. I was thinking of going with a single GTX 970m initially, and then adding another with a possible CPU upgrade later on down the line.

So as a question for the forum, will a single GTX 970m work on my rig with the VBIOS provided here by svl7? and do you think this is a good upgrade path for my rig? or should I go back to the GTX 780m idea? Also, I've heard elsewhere that I may need to upgrade to Win 8 or 10 to run nVidia's Maxwell architecture. What are your thoughts?

Any comments or insights are appreciated, Thanks,

If I remember correctly, people couldn't get Maxwell (980M) to work in the M18xR1, user Mr Fox and Godfafa tried it I believe. I haven't googled for the posts to double check, and am just going off memory - someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this. So far in Alienware working systems with Maxwell are: M15x, M17xR4, A17, M18xR2, A18.

[mike2668]

i got i little more with overvolting it too 37,5 mV 265 core and 400 on mem, max 185 Watt and a score of 10437 (12331 graphics only)

do you have tried overvolting it? as the 970m has a very low tdp there is a lot of headroom

[chap]

give it ore juice, as long as the temperature is ok u can go up to 80mv or even 100mv, just depends on cooling

make sure u also raise the power target

have fun overclocking!

[mike2668]

Cooling is not a problem really... watercooling on Cpu and on Gpu, temp not above 50 degrees on heavy overclock right now.

give it ore juice, as long as the temperature is ok u can go up to 80mv or even 100mv, just depends on cooling

make sure u also raise the power target

have fun overclocking!

[chap]

pictures or it didnt happen,

in that case there would bejust the limit wwhere the gpu takes way more voltage for very few mhz

[mike2668]

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m15x/8622-m15x-hybride-cooling.html

thats the picture its also on the benchmark treat....

[Robbo]

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m15x/8622-m15x-hybride-cooling.html

thats the picture its also on the benchmark treat....

[ATTACH=CONFIG]13570[/ATTACH]

Impressive with the water cooling (although I guess you've kind of turned it into a desktop now!). In that case, with your temperatures being excellent you can probably really go to town with the voltage & power slider!

[mike2668]

To be honest its a hybride cooling so the water is connected with quickreleasconnecters and so it completely moveable. The stock fans take over when ever i am moving it with me. So its mobile asmuch as it was before.

[Robbo]

To be honest its a hybride cooling so the water is connected with quickreleasconnecters and so it completely moveable. The stock fans take over when ever i am moving it with me. So its mobile asmuch as it was before.

Ah, I see, great! Well, you can still go to town with the voltage & power slider anyway!

[ciphray]

anyone with success flashing this to an msi gt60? upgraded my 880m to a 970m and the stock performance gain thus far isn't too impressive, still have the clevo vbios that the card came with.

[omega939]

To be honest its a hybride cooling so the water is connected with quickreleasconnecters and so it completely moveable. The stock fans take over when ever i am moving it with me. So its mobile asmuch as it was before.

Do you mind showing us a pic of your watercooling kit for your aw 15 to us? thanks

[mike2668]

there you go...........there is also a video link there

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m15x/8622-m15x-hybride-cooling.html

Do you mind showing us a pic of your watercooling kit for your aw 15 to us? thanks

[Steve135]

If I remember correctly, people couldn't get Maxwell (980M) to work in the M18xR1, user Mr Fox and Godfafa tried it I believe. I haven't googled for the posts to double check, and am just going off memory - someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this. So far in Alienware working systems with Maxwell are: M15x, M17xR4, A17, M18xR2, A18.

Thanks Robbo, I appreciate the response. I'll just plan on getting a 780m and go from there. I'm curious though, how does your M17xR3 do with 2014 game titles like Far Cry 4 or Assassins Creed Unity? It looks like you've got a few mods in there that keep it purring.

Cheers,

[thegh0sts]

so does the 347.09 driver throttle even in optimus mode or does it just not let you OC (as opposed the 344.75 drivers)?

i know it doesn't let you OC but even with the stock vBIOS will the 347.09 throttle the 900M cards when in optimus mode as opposed to dedicated mode?

[TBoneSan]

For me 347.09 core never throttles on sli. Memory does occasionally. On the whole a day and night difference with the other drivers, quite good, but no overclocking fun to be had.

[Talon]

anyone with success flashing this to an msi gt60? upgraded my 880m to a 970m and the stock performance gain thus far isn't too impressive, still have the clevo vbios that the card came with.

Yes the card works fine with the unlocked vBios on the GT60.

The 880m is a crap card compared to the 970m. Coming from my 780m to the 970m the performance increase was felt and real. The 880m isn't much faster because it's the same card with slightly higher clocks and definitely runs at ridiculous temperatures.

Overclock the card on the stock Clevo vBios +135mhz core and see if that's stable. I can run the MSI or Clevo vBios all day at +135mhz while gaming and it's never crashed even once in any game. Sometimes I'll overclock the memory 100-200mhz and is also fully stable.

With the unlocked vBios on my GT60 I was able to push +235mhz overclock with a slight voltage increase. I'm sure it can go much further as I still had not hit 1.0 volts, but decided to stop since I don't need it running that fast yet.

Another good thing about our GT60s is that they don't throttle at all. My clocks never leave full boost on this unlocked or either Clevo or MSI stock vBios. I'm not sure why the Alienware laptops are throttling. We have Optimus and it never throttles. Maybe MSI got the Optimus right as I've never had an issue with GPU throttling and I monitor temps and clocks in game with OSD.

[Robbo]

Thanks Robbo, I appreciate the response. I'll just plan on getting a 780m and go from there. I'm curious though, how does your M17xR3 do with 2014 game titles like Far Cry 4 or Assassins Creed Unity? It looks like you've got a few mods in there that keep it purring.

Cheers,

780M sli will be pretty potent for you, even if it is not the latest tech - if you're gonna do that though I think it's only worth doing if you can find them really cheap, because a single 980M is not far off 780M sli performance. Just make sure that buying 780M sli is gonna be cheaper than a new 980M notebook. Actually, having said that, it's bound to be cheaper getting 780M sli, and the rest of your notebook is still good, so I think it's a good plan!

My notebook is going well with my upgraded overvolted & overclocked (thanks svl7!) 670MX. I don't have those 2 games you mentioned, but I can give you some game benchmark scores of relatively recent games, some of which are quite taxing even by today's standards, note that I use a small 1600x900 screen so that helps:

Tomb Raider (max settings apart from FXAA enabled): 67fps

Batman Arkham Origins (max settings apart from x2 MSAA): 48fps

Batman Arkham City (max settings apart from DX9 and 8CSAA): 65fps

F1 2012 (max settings, 16CSAA): 83fps

Metro Last Light (Original Vesion, Max Settings apart from Quality High, Blur Low, Tessellation Off): 52fps

Bioshock Infinite (max settings apart from no DDOF): 78fps

Titanfall: can run max settings if OK with 40-60fps, but I run reduced settings for 78fps (screen refresh rate).

3DMark11 GPU Score: 6740

Firestrike GPU Score: 4733 (6123 when run at my native 1600x900, same as 880M using 1920x1080)

(I keep a record of the results I get when new drivers come out - don't want to use a driver that gives me less performance!)

Yep, so it runs games OK at the moment (like an 880M with a 1920x1080 screen in terms of fps), so I'm not upgrading my GPU yet - in fact I'll either buy a new laptop or build a desktop in a year or two. (120Hz screen and good GPU for definite!)