Alienware 14 spreading it's wings thread ;)

@Raidriar, @Mr. Fox , @Khenglish , @Prema
SO.
The thing is, I'm trying to restore and actually exceed the capabilities of the AW14 with GT 750M. I've already received plenty of support and information on the matter from Mr. Fox and Khenglish (thank you kindly once again).

I've already done the typical electrical work that is in general branch of my trade, which is resolving electrical shorts, small issues of that sort ( I ussually work with 12VDC/230/400VDC), fixed AlienFX shorts, full cleaning, restoring cooling, fixing battery issue, which was bizarre, it never charged past 27%, but after a couple of full drains it's inching towards proper capacity, and now it's time to do a think-tank on how to resolve compatibility issues, both BIOS and vBIOS related.

The idea is to do a BGA swap of the GT 750M to a GTX 960M while upgrading mere 1GB of vRAM to at least 2GB (maybe 4GB). Now, here are the things that come to play - we are assuming that same grid BGA should work with the same pinout (hard to say "pin" in relation to a ball of solder), but there are some things to consider:

1. What kind of vBIOS should be used? A standard 960M MXM? A variant of a BGA version from another laptop? Or some sort of a hybrid?
2. What do we do with the BIOS? Has anyone managed to unlock the AW14 BIOS? Is it possible to use an unlocked A12 from, say, Ranger, and would that do the trick?
3. Is there any other way to override Optimus on any system? The AW 14 has the I/D GFX button that is taunting me, while not doing anything...
4. I've spent a couple evenings sifting through all the BGA grids on NVIDIA chips, 960M seems legit, and I have a suspicion that 965M might fit, but maybe I'm missing something? Maybe there is another chip? The machine (at least mine) is eDP only, so in theory if there is such a chip, maybe even a Pascal card would be fitted in?

Are there any other suggestions?

I could use all the help I can get, and if we succeed with this one we can make a tutorial on how to squeeze some adequate performance from this undernourished machine. Sure, AW13 already fullfills that role, but not to any great degree, and it's full BGA, while this one can have swappable elements. My estimate of the cost is around 150-200$ tops, including a chip and reballing job.

All contributions are welcome, I hope together we can transcend the AW14 stigma

 

As far as I know the maxwell die/package layout is incompatible with Kepler so this isn’t going to work. Khenglish would know better

 

I think the pin layout will be different.

Maybe going from 750m to something like 780m or 770m? Or some of the quadro variants of kepler

Although I'd be concerned with the power delivery lol

 

Within each generation same layouts/grids show up all the time. You think that the pinout would be different? As in different lanes do different stuff?
Here are examples of GT 750M:
https://cdn.videocardz.net/cache/ac40e9df788a22149c9e36016cd225d7-1200x900.jpg
GTX 960M:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTZAKDhl0wUERc6KOkKcXxd-SGreWgaR0LtZQ&usqp=CAU
and I've just found GTX 1050M:
https://www.hklrf.com/05chanpin/img/201810111515395.jpg
So there is a third contestant

One could assume that if they have a similar ball layout it would be compatible, except like Khenglish pointed out, incompatibilities emerge when using different bus width and VRAM generation - GDDR5 won't work with GDDR3 card, and so on.
Given the standardisation of MXM, for example, which are basically a pieces of the motherboard cut out with a normalized layout of components. I don't think that they produce more than 2-3 PCBs for MXM for each generation with basic BGA layouts and keep it at that - even though it's not a still widely supported standard, logic (and company savings) suggest that it actually is being recycled from generation to generation, since same stencils are used, like in the examples above, for more than 4 generations (from GTX 7XX to 10XX). I really wish to come out with a constructive discussion here and with experience sharing, since it can benefit everyone - maybe we can break the circle of BGA supremacy with some nifty experiments of our own? We've done (you guys definitely more than me) some crazy stuff with our machines, breaking the End of Life support being one thing, and maybe we can overcome another barrier, being back-compat with BGA upgrades to stick it into the face of BGA spamming OEMs?

 

As you said, if you want to do 700 series to 900 series, you need to make sure GDDR type is same and the BUS is also the same width.

I am not sure how you will be able to inject vBIOS in the BIOS, but should be possible.

 

I've considered that. The stencil is different, it's the same as 970M. One other model that had this one was 870M, but as Khenglish pointed out, it has 192bit memory bus. That's what undercuts us here. Quadros are a legit idea, but this stencil has only M2000M.
Other chips that can be done is GTX965M, and maybe something else, further investigation is required

 

@EepoSaurus also wanted to do this exact project, maybe he can help with some info


Some good info here especially last post

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/aw14-attempting-to-upgrade-gpu.815692/


Some more info here as well:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-14-reball-and-upgrade-gt-750m-to-gtx-765m.812182/

 

The vBIOS is on a separate chip, just like on a normal card. In this case, there is a Winbond chip that can be overwritten.
The bus is 128bit and it's GDDR5, but only 1GB, I'm swapping it to 4GB.

 

I guess I should answer your original questions asked

1) 960M MXM vBIOS can work I believe...if you can find a AW 15 R1 960m dump that might be even better

2) You need unlocked BIOS to be able to access hidden settings: https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-REQUEST-Dell-Alienware-14-2013-Unlock-Advanced-Options

NOTE: Only SG and IGPU will work since the GPU is wired through the iGPU. SG is already default and will be fine. Don't know any features you'd really need from this for this project.

3) No. You can only use iGPU or SG. This was tested by me on M14xR2, I think AW 14 behaves same way.

4) Look at my edited post above. It sounds like 750M to 960M should be compatible.

 

I've seen the thread about @EepoSaurus concerning the GPU upgrade and the post about the 960M, it was one of my motivators on going forward with it I do wish to know how it ended though

I'll need a little help with the unlock, could I ask to explain it to me? What am I supposed to edit in the bios dump? I'm willing to do it myself to understand it for the future, so what exactly am i supposed to modify? just add the branches given in the thread you've posted?

 

Once again, all three cards stated above, 960M, 965M and 1050M are 128bit memory bus. I'm beginning to see a corelation between a specific stencil and bus width (the 870m which is on the same one and has 192 kind of knocks out the idea, but...)

Since I think it's safe to assume that the GPU is wired through the iGPU, and that one is wired to the eDP, is it possible that this system is Pascal ready?

 

Ok, I got a quote for the whole project from the reballing service in my town that didn't look weird at me or decline the service outright, and actually offered some help regarding rewiring the board to work properly (there may be some resistor swapping to reach proper current), what we need now is a vBIOS for any of those cards. If anyone has a Dell laptop with either a N16P-GX-A2, N17P-G1-A1 or N17P-G0-A1 would you be so kind to upload it? I could dive into the monkey cage that is Techpowerup's vBIOS library, but I'd rather get something from a more reliable source ...

 

Yes the laptop can support Pascal theoretically since AW 17 R1 and 18 can and they are same BIOS family.

However, I do not know if 1050 series will work. 960M is most likely to work if everyone is saying it should.

vBIOS you might want to go ask in the AW 15 section.

 

I'm consulting the BGA fix guys to see if they can figure out a wiring diagram for this.
Also, does anyone have access to AW 14 schematic? I can't for the life of me find it on the web...

 

Hey @MrMogwai

I'm not really and AW14 guy as never owned one, but have got a copy of the schematics. Might be able to assist with sBios / vBios as got a little experience.

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AnQkhyPppV58i5UfSwxVX4eWKHt0SA

Cheers,

Javers

 

going to necro this . keep us updated im actually pretty curious

 

I totally missed this thread. I can tell you how my project ended. It ended with me reselling the m15 r1 board. The 965m ended up being incompatible. The 960m may work and I meant to buy a 15 r1 with a 960m but I got out of modding the old alienwares shortly after this. I still have my old alienware 14 and it runs like a champ. I also have a spare 14 r1 board which I bought to have reballed. I think the single most influential reason while I decided not to do the reball swap is it would cost ~400 by itself. I spend ~500 on two motherboards and at the end I likely have 2 dead boards and I'm out nearly 1k. All that is mostly fine for the chance of better performance but the 960m compared to an svl7 vbios 765m is about a 10% bump in performance maybe. Super discouraging. The concept of a 1050 or a 970m is exciting. it would certainly be worth it then. How did this turn out for you?

 

I dont think it was possible, especially the AW14 has only a single fan. My old AW14 still works, only w/ i5 4200m and GTX 765m. Can still play games but its already struggling on latest ones.

 

I'm sad to say that it was postponed due to the fact that I needed to supply my 14 as a replacement laptop until I've fixed the owners 17 R3 (which ended up being 17R2, a downgrade-upgrade, from 6700/970 to 4720/980), but it's back in my hands now. I've seen a few materials about chip replacement, one of Polish YouTubers attempted a swap in IIRC an MSI or such of 1050 to 1050 Ti, it needs a bunch of BIOS tweaks, on this one however some onboard components need to be swapped.

I've had to put the project on hiatus for a while, life came my way hard (overwhelmed with work and raising my sweet angel of a daughter ), but as a 'hold my beer' enterprise I'm going to go for it if anyone has any more tips, I'm open to suggestions

Also, after some fiddling with other machines, the touchscreen equipped 17 R2 I'm looking into touchscreen upgrade, or an OLED. I know there is JOLED brand screen out there somewhere, has anyone seen it in action?

Thanks for the feedback and every word of wisdom thus far, it's highly appreciated!