M15x GPU Thread: General Discussion on Upgrades, GPU Troubleshooting & Repairs

I just wanted to check with you guys first. Would this 980M work? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Fre...6.html?spm=a2g0s.13010208.99999999.269.TajWkK

 

has no x bracket, you will need to source an appropriate one yourself. I have a 970M for sale for 270 shipped including x bracket if you want to go that route. @King of Interns and I have both tested the 980M in the M15x and it was just way too hot and power hungry to live with. 970M is the best way to go. I have mine undervolted to 0.95V (down from 1.00V) and it works wonderfully.

 

Hello, Raidriar. I would be interested in buying the 970m from you for that price assuming there are no problems with the card. It sounds like it's all set up to be installed. Would you be able to ship it to me in Osaka, Japan? My wife would be happy that I'm not spending $400 on the 980m. Please, send a message to my inbox and we can discuss the details. I don't seem to be able to message you that way.

 

Japan will increase shipping cost from USA to 300 including shipping, yes the card works, you will NEED clevo screws to use the xbracket since it is a clevo card.

 

Haven't been online in a long time. I sold my AW 17 r1 Ranger recently to pay for my geforce 1080 for my desktop now i'm left with my wife's m15x until my power supply comes back from rma. my qyestion is this. can someone point me in the right direction to go about installing the geforce 765m i bought for this laptop a while back. I haven't done this in a while so i'm rusty and I don't wanna screw up my wifes laptop.

 

I got myself an Nvidia 980m. The highest I've seen the temperature go on stock clocks is 76C in a 31C room. It's leaps and bounds better than my AMD 5850m. I've noticed it clocks itself down during benchmarks, though. It's usually between upper 800s and lower 900s on the core. Odd, since it's usually pretty cool. I'm just running it on the stock vBios and I have the latest drivers. I got a Firestrike score of 6,920, which seems a bit low. The voltage is usually lower than what I've read. It runs between 0.8430 V and 1.0370 V according to GPU-Z. Is power throttling possibly to blame?

 

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This is why I don't play with the 980M in the M15x. It will never hold max clocks in the M15x, especially with the 920XM because there isn't enough juice to go around for both the CPU and GPU. The reason your temps are good is because the 980M isn't running at full clocks. if you clock the CPU down to 1000-1200Mhz you can run the 980M full clocks but it will likely burn out since it becomes a blast furnace in the m15x. M18x barely keeps it cool.

 

I'll give it a shot and report back. I've already tried stock 920xm clocks and power and didn't notice any differences on the GPU clocks. Even if I can't get it to maintain full speed I'm happy because my 5850m actually burnt out and needed to be replaced anyway.

 

I tried setting my CPU multipliers to 9 and my voltage to 42 and there was no effect at all on the GPU.

This screenshot below is with the CPU on 23, 23, 23, 23 and the voltage set at 90 (not my usual settings).

Afterburner is reporting that the GPU is power throttling in both cases. There is no difference in GPU power draw or heat in either case.

 

I had same problem while been using 920xm x24*4 with all this cards 6970m/6990m/k4000m also with OC.
I think the reason of this just a ****ty bios or some kind of an safety limits. My M15x burnt 2 mobos from 2010 to 2017 while been used with 920xm oc'ed and 100W gpu oc'ed.
In total, M15x boost normally only with center pin cut out on PSU connector (Dell Precision's 210W PSU) and battery not attached. Also can buy angled psu adapter and cut center pin in it.
P.S. sorry for my bad English.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UTGVvyP0e6NV8sFBafeMP9SvxusKi5l6/view?usp=sharing

 

I have a 240 PSU and right angle adapter without a center pin already.

 

MB try to press few times Stealth-mode button?

 

It's definitely not that.

 

I used to have a 980M. I would recommend sending Prema your vbios plus a small donation (10 dollars or something). He will then tailor tweak your bios for best stability. The issue with 980M is that it sucks a little too much power. The M15x was built during an era of 75W TDP cards so it struggles with 120W TDP cards like the 980M (this is what it is at full bore without an undervolt). Anyway once power consumption rises too high the mobo cuts the amount of power available to protect the power circuits.

With Prema's help however you will be able to have your card running full bore at stock clocks stable. However do watch temperatures as the M15x heatsink can barely cope. Forget ever overclocking this card.

Heading to Jpn this weekend for a month. Looking forward to catching up with friends and family

 

If you're in Osaka, let me know. We never got to hang out last time. The weird thing is that my GPU seems to be drawing way less power than everyone else's did. That being said, I fried my ratty 150watt PSU today. Ha ha. It had been getting really hot ever since I installed the 920XM, and to be honest, it was in really bad shape anyway. I just used it for work. This morning I wanted to test Furmark and the PSU disagreed.

 

Indeed? I will land there Sunday morning. Will be in Kobe for the first week (old stamping ground) so there is potential to meet up for sure. Send us a PM if you are interested and we take it from there.

 

After playing around with some Valley Benchmark, it looks like the power draw is pretty high. Core voltage is 1.037 at the highest (rarely hit that), but watts went up as high as 94.778. That's with my CPU on 72 watts through Throttlestop. I can't download from Tech Inferno yet, but when I can I'll try Slv7's vbios.

 

I want to visit japan but I don't know a lick of japanese other than hello and thank you

 

So, I thought I would update you guys about my experiences with the 980m. First, I'd like to show you what this laptop started with. i5 540m and 5850m. The i7 920xm didn't actually change my Firestrike score.

Now with the 980m and Slv7's vBIOS.

To achieve this score I had to use a 240W power supply with pin removed on the right angle adapter. I have the clocks set to 1113 on the core and 2505 on the memory. Voltage is 1.0mv, but the power limit is set to +53%. The CPU had to be set at stock voltage to allow for the GPU to draw this much power. The 240W power supply kept tripping if I overclocked the CPU even the slightest or increased the power limit any more. My temps were still pretty cool. There was still some power throttling even with these settings, but it was very mild and would resume it's 1113 speeds soon after and never dipped below 1000 at the lowest. After reading several other posts on various forums, I've concluded this is the best that I'm going to get on this PSU.

I've noticed since flashing this vBIOS my voltage and clocks are constant even when doing non-intensive GPU tasks. Has this been the case for you guys?

 

Even though the GPU is a bit power-starved with these settings, HWINFO shows the card drawing 115.885 watts during the benchmark.

 

Hey all, So i got myself an m15x for a super good deal. It came with both a 460m and 7970m. Neither cards had thermal pads on them and the previous owner said a computer tech upgraded it for him. The 460m works fine but seems to over heat but I've been trying had to get the 7970m working. Currently I have the 460m bracket on it that has been sanded down. I have a problem currently where when the 7970m is installed, the scroll and caps lock buttons will repeated flash with the num solid. I'm not sure if this is due to the BIOS not being updated, using the 460m bracket or perhaps the 7970m is just faulty. Any help ya'll could provide would be super

 

Take a look at this article - https://www.dell.com/support/articl...and-m15x-system-leds-hot-topic-358462?lang=en

 

Yeah, so its the video card im presuming, the thing is would this be caused by a faulty card, drivers or a backplate or maybe vbios

 

Probably backplate, vbios or most possible just faulty videocard. Drivers don't initialize until windows core already loaded, your M15x just not passing POST cos have faulty hardware onboard.

 

I've ordered a proper x bracket and also bidded on a 980m but is there any other way to test the 7970m in the mean time?

 

I run my 940XM 27/27/27/27 on Throttlestop.

Also my 980M is flashed with svl7/johnksss vbios (Prema runs too hot).

You need a dual PSU, it's pretty easy to make. I made one with no soldering required.

If you look on Techinferno the instructions are here:

https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/3207-tutorial-dual-330w-ac-adapter-mod/&

All the parts you can get on eBay, the most costly will be another 240W PSU.

The 980M tripped my single 240w PSU *every single time* benching, there's just too much power taken by the CPU/GPU.

This why 970M is favored top card for M15x. But there is 12-15% performance to be gained if you can install 980M correctly.

Looks like your 980M is just power starved with the lower 3dmark scores.