AW18 Wont Boot to Windows in SLI

Hey fellas,

I have an 2013 AW18 with two 780m's. I was playing Dirt Rally last week when the screen suddenly started displaying incorrectly.

The best way I can describe it is, it looked like one of those old T.V.s where the reception is going in and out and the image starts to split into several lines that are aren't aligned on the screen. I wish I could describe it better, sorry.

Anyways, after about 3 seconds of that, windows notified me that the display driver had crashed. I can't remember exactly what I did next but this is the situation I have now; if I enable SLI the computer will prompt a restart. It will show the windows starting logo then go to a black screen which will persist forever. At that point I have to roll back the drivers (to disable SLI) or load last know config (to disable SLI) to get windows to boot to the desktop.

An hour ago I reformatted windows 7 in hopes that it was a software/driver issue but it didn't help. I think I have a hardware problem at this point.

How can I verify which card, if any, is bad? What is my next step here in diagnosing?

 

Things to test:

1. Switch to iGPU and do graphics intense work to verify it is not a LVDS problem.

2. Switch back to 780M SLI, disable SLI, run graphics intense program. If you get problems, primary card is bust (left card if you look at the system as if you are typing on it)

3. If no issue, enable SLI, run graphics intense program. If problem it is the secondary card (right card) or SLI cable problem.

Of course it would be prudent to run DDU then install latest nvidia drivers to rule out driver malfunction

 

Thanks for the help, Raidriar!

1.) How do I switch to iGPU? Unlikely a LVDS problem because wouldn't I have problems with my screen display if that were the case? I don't have any problems with screen display.

2.) I get no problems with graphics intense programs in single card play. The computer wont boot past the windows logo after I enable SLI (it prompts you to restart computer). So I can't test SLI. That's why I'm assuming 2nd card failure. Does that sound right to you?

3.) I used DDU to clean then reinstalled latest drivers.

 

Here's a better question, if this were a desktop I would just try each GPU individually to see if one was bad. Can I do the same thing here with this laptop?

 

I've been pretty busy lately. I gave up on trying to fix my laptop. Then found a little inspiration.

Fresh OS. Fresh drivers. Now with just a single 780M the computer will freze for 1 or 2 seconds every minute or so. It does this in game and on the desktop.

It's probably safe to say this is a hardware issue right? Could I really have 2 bad graphics cards? Or does this likely indicate a motherboard?

Anyone know of any good Alienware laptop repair shops?

 

Most likely a hardware fault in the 780M. Take them out, run the same config with only the intel hd 4600 and see if the freezing persists.

 

UPDATE:

I took out the secondary card and put it in the primary slot. The little freezing hicups I was getting are gone. Looks like the primary card was not working at all and the system was running on onboard graphics.

UPDATE 2:
I can play Paladins and Titan Quest and other non intensive games just fine but if i crank up graphics in Dying Light or Squad I get artifacting, promptly followed by a crash to desktop with a windows message "display driver stopped responding".

So it looks like the secondary card is on it's way out too now, right?

 

i think your card are getting hot ? try the other card in primary or maybe the slot has a problem try only the secondary and leave the primary empty ?

 

UPDATE 3:

OK, I bought a used 780m on ebay. Installed and everything is working great again in SLI! So glad to have my rig up and running again!

The only weird thing is the second card runs about 7 degrees hotter than the primary card. I don't remember if that was the case with my original setup but whatever. Temps max at 75 on the first and 82 on the second card with my laptop cooler.

 

Just as an FYI, my secondary card runs hotter than my primary too, about 2-4 degrees Celsius.

Not sure if this is due to the difference in the ASIC score. My primary is at 75% and my secondary is at 75.3% (GTX980m). But I believe it is an engineering defect, meaning the secondary card is not cooled as well as the first.


-imest