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OFFICIAL: Alienware M17x R3 / R4 - Owners Lounge


Brian

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best cpu 3940xm. pretend the 880M is a 580m/680m/780m and get the mod desktop driver from NBR or a driver from the one selling you the card or edit the .inf file to accept the driver. as for the heatsinks, its pretty much the same as i mentioned

But with the 880M keep in mind that a 330W psu is recomended to not have performance issues.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Does anyone know difficult is it to replace the GPU on the r4s? I've seen the videos, but only from hardware companies, and I don't necessarily... trust those.

GPU is fairly easily to replace. I cleaned my machine once per 3 months so taking out GPU and repaste it is very easily. First time you do it, you will get nervous. Just have a guide detailing the steps next to you and slowly do each step. Once you know how to do it, the next time becomes very easy. For upgrading GPU, you need a compatible GPU such as 780M or 880M. Make sure you do research and read threads from R4 owners who have successfully upgraded their GPU. There are like tons of threads out there. Be prepared to do some software mods as well.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi I have M17x-R4 with HD4000 and GTX 660m. Want to upgrade to 680m. I have three pipe heatsink but don't know if its 100W or 75W. Also I have 180W ac adapter and I think it's not enough for this card. So I should to buy 240W ac adapter. BIOS version is A13. It mus be all right, and VBIOS I have got no idea, but I ask seller to flash it for M17x-R4.

But my biggest problem now is with shared graphic card HD4000. I have grainin screen. Not everywhere. Most on the place where colors are change. If I use wrong pixel test and display only one colour, then everything was good. If laptop is cold and I switch it on after one or more hours then screen looks like with 256 colours only. Then after temperature grows it better and better but dithering really never disappear. I try to upgrade drivers, flash BIOS but nothing helps. Only if I switch HD4000 off with FN+F7 and using only GTX 660m, then screen is without problems. Sorry for my english, but I learn this language only half year from South Park series :) So can anybody help me with this? I mean with this video cards :)post-33593-14494999663057_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
Does anyone know difficult is it to replace the GPU on the r4s? I've seen the videos, but only from hardware companies, and I don't necessarily... trust those.

It's not difficult at all. You just need to take out the heat pipe and fan, screw of the x-bracket and there you go, one more push to get the card out and replace the new one. There is a 980m replacement but you also need to upgrade the adapter as well.

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It's not difficult at all. You just need to take out the heat pipe and fan, screw of the x-bracket and there you go, one more push to get the card out and replace the new one. There is a 980m replacement but you also need to upgrade the adapter as well.

Well, you need to make sure the pads are padded up properly to the layout of the chips on the new card - the Kepler chips cards differ from the Fermi cards, and the Maxwell cards then vary from the Kepler cards - you have to check pad placement. Also, if you're changing between AMD & NVidia you need to get the X-bracket that matches each manufacturer, and you should remove any black tape on the heatsink GPU core contact plate because die sizes are different & black plastic tape is not a very good heat conductor!

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  • 3 months later...

Just had a 780M upgrade from 6970M and having the white screen when i enable the HD Audio in A12 BIOS unlocked. i got the video driver installed no problem from eurocom, just would have the problem when turning on Audio. Kindly someone help please.

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Just had a 780M upgrade from 6970M and having the white screen when i enable the HD Audio in A12 BIOS unlocked. i got the video driver installed no problem from eurocom, just would have the problem when turning on Audio. Kindly someone help please.

Hi, make sure you're following the procedure than j95 outlined in Post #92 at the following thread:

Alienware M17x R3 460M to 780M - Questions/Concerns | Page 10 | NotebookReview

Hopefully that will fix the issue.

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  • 1 month later...
Hi anyone succesfully installed clevo 8970m on alienware m17xr4? I need help after driver install the screen turns blank no display. I already flashed different vbios but still no luck.

The M17xR4 shipped with 7970M as a standard option, and the 8970M is effectively a 7970M with a slightly higher core clock, so perhaps you could try flashing the 8970M to a 7970M using a 7970M vBIOS. Then perhaps it will be compatible with your M17xR4, then you can just overclock it a bit to get the 8970M performance. Make sure you've got the same amount of VRAM though as the 7970M vBIOS you're going to flash, and if I was you I'd also check for examples where people have flashed from 8970M down to 7970M just to be certain there's no problems doing so - can't imagine there would be though as they're the same chip (make sure same amount of VRAM though).

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The M17xR4 shipped with 7970M as a standard option, and the 8970M is effectively a 7970M with a slightly higher core clock, so perhaps you could try flashing the 8970M to a 7970M using a 7970M vBIOS. Then perhaps it will be compatible with your M17xR4, then you can just overclock it a bit to get the 8970M performance. Make sure you've got the same amount of VRAM though as the 7970M vBIOS you're going to flash, and if I was you I'd also check for examples where people have flashed from 8970M down to 7970M just to be certain there's no problems doing so - can't imagine there would be though as they're the same chip (make sure same amount of VRAM though).

Hi Robbo thanks for the response my card Clevo 8970m 4GB. It is possible to flash it with 7970m Vbios withing bricking the card? I

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Pls can someone tell me whats the latest stable nvidia driver for overclocking. I currently have 352.86 installed and i want to flash my Dell nvidia 680M GPU vBIOS with an unlocked vBIOS with stock frequency. Will I have to roll back the driver to a previous version? if so which one? Dell Alienware M17x R4, i7-3610QM, 12GB RAM 1TB HDD, Windows 7 Home.

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Hi Robbo thanks for the response my card Clevo 8970m 4GB. It is possible to flash it with 7970m Vbios withing bricking the card? I

You might be out of luck considering you've got the 4GB version of the 8970M. I don't think the 7970M ever came in a 4GB variant, therefore flashing a 7970M 2GB vBIOS to your 4GB card could well brick your card I think. If you had the 8970M 2GB variant, then I think it would have been safer to flash it to a 7970M 2GB. If you like, see if you can find examples of 7970M 4GB cards, but I don't think they exist - if you could find a 7970M 4GB vBIOS then you could probably try flashing that (pretty sure they don't exist though!).

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

hi all, i have just bought an m17x r4 with a 3d panel and nvidia 675m second hand and it arrived some days ago. as it arrived, i put new thermal paste on cpu-gpu, cleaning all the old one and put back heatsink in right place. after that i updraded bios from a00 to a13 and all was ok till this point. after that i installed windows 8.1 and got the installation of all drivers and program that i need. after that, comes the first problems: as always in my computer for vga at least i try to get the newer directly from amd-nvidia website and i go for the 355.82. i run the installation, but after removing windows driver , as it started to install the driver video monitor went off. after waiting a bit, i have shut down pc. after that rebook pc worked fine and was able to log in to windows with no problem.this all ok for 2 days , while installing some other application like start is back, fraps, powerdvd.the night i power off pc and in the morning started the big problems: after i power on pc, i see bios and the windows loading bar, but when pc should pop-up login screen, monitor went off. tried to login many time with no success, so i started pc in safe mode, disinstalled nvidia driver and put dell ones. after that all was back to normal, except that battlefield 4 requires newer driver to work properly. so i go for another newer driver try, but always with the same results. this time ive noticed that when i have the black logon screen, if i connect the hdmi cable to an lcd, pc internal monitor image comes back to normal..... if i play games, framerate and video is ok (no artifact no glich) os i assume my 675m is not fault.

anyone experienced that? i have to go with windows 7 again?

hope to fix this.... i was planning to get a 980m next days, but first i need to know if it's a lcd problem or vga problem, or simply a windows -bios error.

i have tried the fast boot option disabled and also removed fraps+ powerdvd+start is back, but same error.

edit: installed windows 7 64bit and all is normal. my question now is .... how came windows 8.1 give me all that problems ?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I'm not so sure that the 980M's are even half compatible due to M17x R3's not having UEFI support. I could be wrong though.

BallsOS , you are 100% right M17x R3 not support hardware UEFI, answer is simple and lies in his north bridge ... Intel HM67 hardware does not support this feature as my M18x R1. I encountered this when I put on my laptop video card GTX 880m and had to downgrade the vBIOS on legacy! But GTX 980m not supported Legacy vBIOS! The last video card it`s nVidia GTX 880m.:09:

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After removing the video drivers, you need something like driver sweeper to remove all remnants of the old drivers. I had the same problem when I removed my 3D panel display to the normal 1080p 60 Hz and upgraded my GPU to a GTX 765M. Try that and let me know how it goes.

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  • 1 month later...

Dell updated their site and almost all drivers for mx17 r3 are gone. Specially synpatics driver touchpad i'm looking for, since updating to Windows 10 it is not fully compatible (can't do scroll when using finger on the border). i uninstalled it to install and whoops.. not compatible driver.

Any ideas? we need a bank of compatible drivers for mx17 r3 at windows 10.

Please, suggestions :) i'm touchpadless now

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Dell updated their site and almost all drivers for mx17 r3 are gone. Specially synpatics driver touchpad i'm looking for, since updating to Windows 10 it is not fully compatible (can't do scroll when using finger on the border). i uninstalled it to install and whoops.. not compatible driver.

Any ideas? we need a bank of compatible drivers for mx17 r3 at windows 10.

Please, suggestions :) i'm touchpadless now

I have windows 10 up and running ok with the hacked video drivers as I fitted a GTX680m (at the cost of loosing my 3D ability)

I'm usuing synaptics_touchpad_15.3.31.1

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guys need help

for some reason when i run my bions in UEFI mode with legacy boot disabled my main laptop monitor end up being not recognize for some odd reason,

which requires me to use my external monitor i dont know how to fix this im using GTX680m by the way.

if i unplug my external monitor while on UEFI mode the laptop gives me 8 beeps.

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