Lost both GPU some help and advice please.

Hi and so glad I have found this forum and thanks to all that read this.

I have an Alienware M18x R2 it had dual gtx 675m gpus sli with triple pipe heat sinks. WINDOWS 10. A14 bios.

About 6 months ago one gpu failed and that was removed and it's been running on a single card until yesterday and the other card has died now too....RIP. It is now running on integrated Intel only.

I'm recovering from lung surgery and serious illness and spending most of the day in bed and playing my beloved Elite Dangerous is the only thing keeping my sanity but can't at the moment. I have managed to strip down my machine to test and confirm, then remove the faulty card.

So here's the bit of help i need.

There are so many models of cards after mine I'm thinking I might as well get a little upgrade while I'm at it but I can't be spending too much time on my feet bending over a laptop and stressing about with bios and drivers etc. I'm after the best card i can get pain free with just swapping heatsink over and plugging it in. Not too fussed about having single card as long as it runs Elite Dangerous, which my single 675m did (despite that it doesnt meet their requirements though but it worked) on low settings. it's just to get me through as I'll worry about a better upgrade path when I'm well again.

Is it the 880m all all below it ?

NB. A14 bios and Windows 10


Many thanks in advance.

 

First of all - I wish you all the best in 2020 and speedy recovery!

Regarding the video card, I recommend GTX 970m since it is a plug and play card with more than enough power for your needs.

Edit:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GeF...=12398522246714720c9d04114d81aded12f3d53877a9

 

many thanks sqjay simple but it's helped out a lot thank you

 

Given their price is almost equal, just go all out to the 980m.
970m vs 980m:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-GTX-970M-vs-GeForce-GTX-980M_5965_5964.247598.0.html

Its around 20/30% faster than the 970m.

 

Does it matter that some say "clevo" as I'm not sure what that means. A!so some seem to be marked up as MSI does that matter as well ?

Also, the 980 is not plug and play from what I have read, is that true?

 

Well I bought a gtx 970m and it arrived not a mark on it, heat plate not a blemish looks new. but plugged it in and fails post with 8 bleeps, unplug and boots fine


Is my card faulty or do I need to flash the bios away from A14 so that this card is recognised as I was led to believe the txt 970m was plug and play

 

I didn't think the 900 series were plug and play. You will probably need the unlocked A11 BIOS and a modded driver.

 

Ahh, ok before seeing this i created dos usb device and flashed to unlocked A11 bios sucessful. I see sv17 mod too left in bios. Switched on and then 5 bleeps not 8. I read somewhere to reset, so I removed cmos battery, pressed power button for 30 secs, arced pins, reconnected battery and power, rebooted no bleeps at all, however gpu not seen in bios nor Windows boots fine with integrated

 

You usually get the 5 beeps the first time after doing the flash. It sorts itself out after that. Jumping the pins will reset the BIOS settings. What Video mode are you on in the BIOS? If you go to the second Advanced tab you can take a look. It will show either PEG, SG or iGFX.
Also, does your BIOS show NVIDIA GFX on the main screen or just Integrated?

Also, I did hear that you no longer needed a modded driver with the 900 series but I've heard from other people saying that they still needed to run a modded driver. I'm not sure what the truth is since I don't have one of those cards.

EDIT: With my 1070 I had to run in SG mode but I think you use PEG with the 970/980M. I'm not certain though so you may want someone else to confirm that. With SLI, the machine can't run SG (optimus) so you either have to be on the Integrated graphics or Dedicated (Nvidia). Usually you'd have to press Function F7 (I think) to swap and restart. If you were to look in Device Manager you would only see the GPU currently selected instead of both like you do on SG. If your BIOS only shows the Integrated Graphics then I'm assuming you are on the wrong video mode. Switching to PEG should fix this unless your GPU is dead.

 

Also, mess with your BIOS settings at your own risk. You can usually fix most issues by jumping the CMOS pins but you never know what could go wrong.

 

Only using a single gpu now.

Main tab
integrated graphics , Intel ivy bridge
discrete graphics 1, not detected
discrete graphics 2, not detected

second advanced tab, and under video configuration
special features enabled
primary display IGFX (I'm guessing as the new card not detected)

OPTIONS UNDER VIDEO CONFIGURATION for primary display are

Auto
IGFX
PEG
PCI
SG


Trying PEG now,

 

*edit*

 

Ok so since it's set to iGFX it won't detect your NVidia GPU at all. If you set it to PEG and restart then it should switch over, hopefully. It may show up in the Device Manager as Microsoft Basic Display adapter until you install the correct driver

Ahh there you go, SG will work for you then. I wasn't 100% on that one

 

As I have the laptop still open i feel heat on the heat sink really good, also Microsoft basic display adapter is showing in device manager......nice

So do I use nvidia experience to install drivers or avoid ?

 

I just right clicked on device manager and searched its now installed drivers for the gtx 970m

 

Firstly I would try to download directly from Nvidia and see if it's actually true that they have driver support now for the 900's. If it fails then you'll have to use a modded driver

 

Awesome! Just check the driver date to see how old it is

 

Just rebooting after install will check date then,

also should I really be using SG rather than PEG


sitting on my desktop looking at the nvidia control panel gtx 970m version 353.82

In dev manager
Driver date 07/08/2015

 

Well if PEG got you running on the 970M then it sounds like it worked.
This will mean that the machine is only running on the Nvidia card so if you're running on the battery only, you won't get much life out of it before having to recharge. SG mode should allow the Intel graphics to take over when it doesn't need to use the Nvidia card. SG is usually disabled on the M18x because of SLI but I think it works when you're only using one card. I have my 1070 and Intel listed in Device Manager now that I no longer have SLI 780M's.

EDIT: Other people may have better information on this though. I've only just swapped to the 1070 so I'm not sure how well the Optimus works now, or if it even does.

 

Ahh I thought it would be an older driver. I came across something similar last week with a guy on another forum. It was a 2015 driver as well. I think if you try to get a recent one from Nvidia it will fail.

If you're happy as you are then you can just leave it. If you want to try to get a recent driver then you may want to learn how to mod a driver. It's actually not hard and we can help.

 

I'm going to see how it is for now, going to put it back together and try elite dangerous then to bed as it's late and I'm almost worn out


many thanks for your help, I am truly thankful and to this forum

I'll report my findings tomorrow

 

So to round up my recent exploits.

After installing the card i tested Elite Dangerous. All seemed fine. Performance was good, better than when i had dual 675m cards and had no problems running my dual screen set up with the HDMI port.

I put the laptop to sleep until the morning. In the morning i powered on and i could see the desktop resolution was lower so right-clicked desktop and the nvidia control panel was missing. The GFX card in device manager had the exclamation mark next to it. I rebooted at this point, and that problem went away, it was back to how i left it. I am not sure if that repeats at this point as i have always shut down instead of "sleep" from there on with no issues. I tested SG mode by rebooting and making that change, but lost my second screen using HDMI. Windows wouldnt detect the second monitor. So i switched back to PEG and that resolved immediately. I installed GEForce experience, and looked at driver updates, it reported that i had already installed the latest version, but there is a little contention;

Device Manager properties of the driver : version 10.18.13.5382 Date 07/08/2015 (Not sure if this is dd/mm or mm/dd)
GeForce Experience : Version 353.82 Release Date 07/14/2016 (mm/dd/yyyy)
I used GeForce to Optimize my settings and have done further testing.

So now i have a perfectly running machine that doesnt seem to have any problems. Job done and thanks all and i hope this may help someone else that finds their way to this configuration.

Summary for using a Gtx 970m on M18x R2
You definitely need to flash the bios to A11 unlocked from a dos prompt. I was on A14 and i removed the gtx 970m to do that and installed after flashing the bios. (8 bleeps became 5 and then fell silent).
You need to immediately make the change to PEG and restart.
Right-clicking the Microsoft Basic Display device and choosing update driver did indeed install the correct driver using online.
You can use GeForce Experience without issues.
You can use a second display using PEG without issues using HDMI

Also, during assembly, i took the opportunity to reseat the CPU as well with fresh thermal paste, and hardware monitor is reporting considerable, over 25C temp reduction from when i last looked. The fans have been on max once for a very brief time during yesterday, It is quiet as a mouse right now and i am very happy.

I assume if i wanted to go to 980m or higher i could easily from here

Cheers........

 

Awesome. Let us know if the problem comes back. Did it say Error 43? It could have been an issue with the driver.


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Next you’ll have to throw a second card in her and get SLI back


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After running now for some time, its running great. The sleep issue only happened the once, on the first occurrence. It can sleep and wake at anytime.

 

Good luck with your recovery

 

take the battery out and the cmos one to remove the ram and drain all the power ...if u have a reset button use that to .it fixed my AW18 gpu issue