M17x R4 1070 Succesfull Upgrade 2020 (Tutorial)

Managed to get a MSI GT62VR with 4k panel in Norway for 590 euros thats included shipping which is cheaper than what I would have had to pay for it importing it since its like 30% import fees with the VAT and everything.

Will be interesting to see if the MSI 1070 actually works in the M17x R4, and I am gonna check the Dell 1070 see if thats actually working in the MSI laptop.

 

The MSI 1070 WILL work in the M17x R4 if it works 100% well in the GT62VR, just be sure to test it in the GT62VR first. The Dell variant may work on the GT62VR, but I doubt it as you were having issues with it in the M17x R4.

Just be sure to part out the GT62VR when you can ensure the MSI 1070 works well in the R4 so you can make some money back

 

Yeah you are right, worth a try before I ship it back to China though.

That MSI GT62VR looks like its in pristine condition, got it off a game developer. Might be interesting piece as a barebone for some on this forum maybe.

 

I just got the GT62VR, tested it, the 1070 inside of it works great, so I took it out, put the Dell 1070 in it and what you know? LOL, it works. Its a little slower than the MSI one though but it works, it passed my 2 hour stress test, so this is odd to me, the Dell 1070 works in the MSI GT62VR without any problems, did not even have to reinstall the GPU driver.

But in the Dell Alienware M17x R4?? It did not work, the fact I also have to take it completely apart to dremel away some pieces so the MSI 1070 will actually fit in it, oh so nice right after work too! Wonderful, I think I will do it on Saturday...


Left - Dell, Right - MSI


Left - Dell, Right - MSI

They literally have the same vBIOS, what the #### is going on?? This is so strange, is my Dell Alienware M17x R4 maybe faulty?? Its worked with GTX 1060 and WX 7100 just fine, but this is beyond strange for me, anyone know the answer??

 

Yeah, dremeling it out may be annoying, but the MSI 1070's were overbuilt Here's a thread that will help you out if you haven't seen it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...other-socket-victory-against-bga-crap.803637/

Just make sure to somehow better cool the VRM's as lack of cooling on them is what tends to kill the MSI 1070's fast.

 

Last week I finally figured out why the GTX 1070 would not boot in the M17x R4 thanks to old forum post by D4ddy from 2017.
I already knew about this forum post but I kind of forgot about it until Tenoroon reminded me about it.
Crustieraxe01 the OP of this forum post had forgotten to mention the BIOS settings that are essential to get the GTX 1070 to boot without error.

BIOS settings and must have LVDS display
In the boot section, you must completely disable the "Load Legacy Option Rom" otherwise your BIOS will try to load a non-UEFI compliant vBIOS in your GPU which it wont find because Pascal mobile are UEFI only.
This means you get 8 beep error code.

The only way to do this without issues is to have LVDS cable and a LVDS display ready at hand, you must reset your BIOS completely by removing the battery and the BIOS battery and unplug the laptop, then plug everything back in again including BIOS batter.
Proceed to start it up and enter BIOS assuming you still have the LVDS display attached, go into BIOS and change the crucial setting in boot menu.

After this you can plug your 120Hz eDP display back and it will boot finally.
I believed the problem to be that of the GPU itself because I had a MXM 3.0b Dell GTX 1070 card.
However it turned out it was a BIOS issue after my MXM3.1b MSI GTX 1070 also had similar issues as the Dell card, they both work fine in the M17x R4 now.

Chassis modification
Because the MSI card is much larger I had to cut away pieces as D4ddy had described in his older post.


I just used simple cheap small hacksaw and some files to get it smooth. You have to take your entire laptop apart to do this, it can be tiresome specially if you are frustrated like me after months of trying to get it working LOL...

You also have to cut away the corners on your MXM connector, do what I did, apply loads of electrical tape around the area you want to cut in case you put too much force on it and you slip then you wont ruin your board.
The right side of your MXM connector has a metal piece that interferes with your MXM card, just pull it out with a pair of pliers no need to cut that section away.
I used a surgical knife to cut the left side away because I needed precision, but anything small and handy will do.

Power throttling and fix
After some benchmarking and testing I found another issue however a common one, the M17x R4 has a tendency with both GTX 970M, GTX 980M, GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 to power throttle the GPUs to their lowest P-state during heavy load, this can be solved by going into BIOS, enable fast boot and in Windows make sure Hybrid shutdown is enabled, then hibernate (Sleep wont have same effect) and wake your laptop up.
After hibernation, your laptop should remember to maintain the highest P-state on your GPU at any given time, with fast boot and hybrid shutdown enabled it should remember it in memory, you only need to hibernate again if you unplug your battery and power cable.

Quick Benchmarks (Stock settings)
I did a few quick benchmarks in 3DMark to test if everything is in order and here is my results compared with others.

FireStrike
My Scores: 12 326

Graphics Score = 17 267 | Physics Score = 9 216 | Combined Score = 4 670
​

D4ddy Scores: 13 443

Graphics Score = 18 711 | Physics Score = 9 881 | Combined Score = 5 229
​

Crustieraxe01 Scores: 12 033

Graphics Score = 17 405 | Physics Score = 8 206 | Combined Score = 4 601
​

TimeSpy
My Score: 5 159

Graphics Score = 5 584 | CPU Score = 3 606
​

Total temps after two benchmark runs.

Future money wasting scheme
This are all from stock speeds on my part, nothing is OC not even my CPU, I only have 240W power adapter for my M17x R4.
However with a 330W power adapter and its also possible to upgrade your fans to better ones on both the CPU and GPU, there is potential to squish out even more performance, because I only have 240W adapter I am not confident to push either the CPU or GPU any further and the CPU seems to be hard limited to 55W anyway right now with this GPU installed.

I hope this helps anyone in the future to deal with the same issue I have, installing GTX 1070 can be an expensive adventure if you do not have a LVDS display already, LVDS cables are super expensive nowadays and I was stupid enough to put mine somewhere I cannot find it anymore, probably thrown away by mistake, EXPENSIVE mistake, 40 euro for one of these cables more expensive than the LVDS display I had to buy which was only 15 euro.

 

Well done, man!
I myself carry out this configuration (see above in the file).
A problem remains, 1 start in 2 on all games and benchmarks, I have very much lag.
Shutting down and restarting corrects the problem.
I think it comes from optimus but I can't solve this problem other than that.

An idea?

 

my graphics score is lower than yours even with overclock.

The parameters under window and in the bios are:
maximum performance

The power supply is 330W

 

What display do you have? 60Hz or 120Hz display?
And with a 330W adapter, depending on what model it is, if its a Dell XM3C3 330W power adapter it should work fine, but if its a non standard you have to disable Power Adapter warning in BIOS.

If you are using Optimus (60Hz display) this means its running through your Intel GPU and this can lead to performance loss of up to 10% in some cases.

With a 120Hz display (PEG mode) your display is connected directly into your GTX 1070 and therefore it does not have to go through your Intel GPU, no performance loss.

Remember that you have to enable fast boot in BIOS, make sure Hybrid shut down is enabled inside of Windows 7, 8.1 or 10. And hibernate at least one time if your GPU is dropping fps in games very suddenly.

After you hibernate only one time, it means your GPU will maintain high power state at all time, it will no longer drop FPS in games, you need to hibernate again if you unplug laptop from power and unplug battery too.

 

thank you for your answers, these are relevant.
I confirm that my screen is 120hz, that the adapter is an xm3c3 330w, that the power adapter warning is disabled.
Fast boot is enable in the bios.

you describe exactly what I do, when you mention the hibernation of the PC to remedy the drop in FPS.

I wanted to understand why I had to do this and if there was a way not to do it anymore.

this is a minor problem, with which I live well. if there is no answer, that's okay.

Thanks again for your answers.

 

I forgot to ask what vBIOS do you have on your MSI 1070 card?

The reason for the throttling issues with Alienware R3, R4 and the Ranger is because the GPUs boot with lowest Power-State which would be P1 out of 5, something like that.
There is a bug with Alienware BIOS not telling GPU to dynamically boost to higher P-state when under demand, somehow hibernation fixes this, it saves the higher P-state which is P5 in memory and remembers to run GPU at its correct boost cycles.

Its really strange, I have not yet figured out why this is the cause, but these are the symptoms.

 

This never happened to me on my MSI 1070 via R1 / Ranger

 

Hi,
the Vbios of my 1070 MSI is 86.05.5B.00.8A