M15x and GTX 560M

Guys,

I haven't been able to visit forum for a while, but I can see that some of our friends struggle with the modded drivers for GTX 560M.

So here it is, the latest one from Nvidia web site, I fine tuned it for our cards yesterday (like optimus disabled, 2 GB system ram share etc...).

301.42 - WHQL
https://rapidshare.com/files/3075675533/Nvidia.rar


Installation:
1- Extract archive
2- run Setup.exe under the folder you extracted.
3- I disabled reboot option (No issues so far) but you may consider restarting after installation finishes.
4- Enjoy.


P.s If you want to use latest beta driver intead, download it from Nvidia's web site and use the modded nvdm.inf provided in the rapidshare link. I realized that geforce drivers with revision 2XX and 3XX uses different inf structure, so don't mix them.

 

That .rar file doesn't work djan84, can you upload a working version please.

 

Thank you to everyone who has posted information here. I have upgraded my m15x with a nifty, new GTX560m. Diablo3 runs great. EVE online runs great, so does everything else I do on the computer EXCEPT, BF3. The game now freezes after about 1 minute. It didn't do that with my GTX260m. I ran a a stress test with FurMark to see if it was voltage or heat or something. FurMark runs just fine. I am using the latest Nvidia, non-beta driver, along with the changes from page 3 of this thread. Anyone else have issues with Battlefield 3? Thanks.

 

@svl7: Finally got some time to tinker with the VBIOS. The 085V rom works like a charm. It made my game faster in both battery and plugged in. It seems like it will work at even lower voltage as now it is stable (knock on wood).

Attached logs are for both idle and gaming.

How do I lower the voltage? What do I use? I very new to this tweaking thing.

Thanks for the help!

 

Looks way better, but it seems to be throttling once in a while. Do you notice stuttering during games? FPS drops?

About tweaking, I don't think there's a tool which supports the 675m, I tweaked it by hand with a hex-editor.

 

The throttling is as I have observed is from the temperature which I can't do much about except repasting. FPS drop is only a few seconds but goes back to normal right away. All in all it is a good experience. But will try to do some ways to cool it down.

 

Nevermind. Fixed it.

 

Hello, I don't know if anyone watch this thread anymore but just in case maybe someone can help me.

I know that I might be in a wrong thread but I'm a bit desperated.

The other day I was playing League of Legends with my clevo W860cu (not a really demanding game) and my screen froze with sound loop, I though it might be just a random crash from nvidia drivers. I had to restart and when I did windows didn't boot, it froze at the windows boot logo right after finishing loading. I though how weird, I tried safe mode and it worked. After messing a bit around I realised it was the graphic drivers which were causing the problem. So I reinstalled it.. formatted pc.. and still.. no luck, when i installed the drivers, windows won't start. Then I entered the bios and I realised it was full of strange artifacts. I tried to boot using Linux and random letters in the boot menu. So I guessed my GPU just broke for no reason. I openened to check how was it, if i could see any sign of burn or I don't know, something that might gave me a clue about what happened and then I saw the chipset of the graphic card with any or just so little thermal paste on it (but the vram memory blocks had a chunk of thermal pad each one(actually the heat sink had the chunks stuck on it but they just went on top of the memory blocks)). So now I'm looking for replacing my graphic card and hope I can use my laptop a bit more.

So I start looking on the internet and found some offers on ebay.co.uk. I saw this one NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M MXM 3.0 DDR5 1.5GB video VGA Card GTX 260M 460M upgrade | eBay.

Which says it can upgrade my old and broken GTX 260M with a GTX 560m.

Is it possible? and has it be done before? if I end buying it, should i buy and put thermal paste on the chipset to avoid breaking it again?

Thank's in advance.

 

You might wanna ask in the clevo forum if you haven't already. I'm not to familiar with sager laptops. This the alienware section after all.

Sager and Clevo

 

Ok, I have been tempted to wait for a good driver for my GTX 675M since I am not getting its full potential with the existing driver, so my next step is to install a GTX 560M and put back my old RAM. Using djan84's driver, the card works great on my laptop with no heating issues and maybe during very extended gameplay that it throttles due to heat. All in all a great help for all the bits and pieces of information I got from this forum. I am a happy gamer now but will be even happier if I could make the GTX 675M work. With the current drivers, the GTX 560M is faster than the GTX 675M. By the way thanks svl7 for the help during my quest for the GTX 675M upgrade, I will surely need your help when the WQHL drivers arrive.

The reason I changed back my RAM to 8GB again is that the BIOS doesn't recognize my RAM but in Windows I see that I have 16GB. I know M15x has this 8GB limitation but I am also surprised when I installed my 16 GB, and looked at the POST screen, it recognized it. Should I really give up on the 16GB RAM quest?

 

i havent had any problems with the 16gb of ram on my machine and have had them for a long time, i would keep them. what i would give up on is the 675m and if you do get it to stabilize it will not function as a true 675m. i tried the 580m(basically the same card) and have about the same problems your having

 

Hello, everyone!

I'm planning to upgrade the video card in my M15x to the GTX 560M. There's a lot of useful information in this thread, however I still have a question, before I buy the card.

On eBay I found the green one you suggested, but there are two types available: GTX 560M MXM 3.0 and GTX 560M MXM 3.0 b
This tiny difference made me a bit uncertain. I've spent a lot of time searching it on Google, but found nothing so far.

Do you have any clue about the difference between the "normal" and the "b" card? Do you have any suggestions which one to buy? Or it doesn't matter, both fits in the M15x?

 

Gentleman,

I recently the the 920xm, and paired with my 560m I upgraded to earlier this year, I notice throttling. The throttling itself isn't what bothers me really, I don't think there is anything I can do about it, and it only lasts for a few short seconds before my CPU kicks back up to normal clocks. WHat bothers me is while playing BF3, my 301.42 Nvidia drivers crash, causing the game to just freeze. I can still manipulate the desktop and task manager to end the process tree, but it's very annoying and I was wondering if anyone uses the 560m with a driver that gives stable gameplay with BF3. The 560m is a phenominal card and I can run BF3 at high/ultra settings, but these crashes have GOT to stop. Any help would be appreciated.

P.s. I've investigated common other BF3 crashes, E.G Sound drivers. I have uninstalled the Nvidia hd sound codecs and this still does not fix the problem. I alt-tabbed immediately after a lockup and saw the message in the lower right hand saying "blah blah your driver has just recovered blah blah kernel".

*edit* I switched to an old driver (295.73) and I've been playing bf3 with no crashes so far. Sucks I have to revert to such an older driver set to play my games but eh...least there playable again.

*edit 2* Eh..crashing again. Just takes longer this time. I really don't know what driver to use anymore..

 

I have a problem when gaming Crysis and Crysis 2, it seems that my videocard`s VDDC sometimes switches to 0.8200 v for a couple of seconds, and therefore my game lags until it kicks back to 1.0000 v, is there a way to force my card to stay on 1.0000v while i game? Temps are max 74 and im using 302.77 driver, and have tried 301.42 also.

 

Does anyone know exactly what to do to prevent this error?



It happens on BF3 and EVE online after a minute or so of play. I have a m15x with a geforce gtx560m from eurocom. I'm using the 304.79 drivers with the added lines from page 3 of this thread. Thanks for your help.

 

K000127390 card sold here : Aliexpress.com : Buy GTX 560M GTX560M K000127390 PGRAA LS 7191P 1.5G VGA Video Card Board for Dell Alienware M15X M17X M18X TOSHIBA QOSMIO X770 X775 from Reliable GTX560M suppliers on Nicole Kyong's store

States compatible, but only beeping on start
How do i get this recognized?

 

How many beeps do you hear? The number is a direct signal to what is malfunctioning. Dell was smart in that regard.

 

1 long beep, two short

 

As far as I know only the green GTX560M works with the M15x. The blue one is for ASUS laptops.

 

Looks like this blue one is from Toshiba?

 

Hi guys, I m new here, just registered here to ask a question. I own a M15x and recently bought a GTX 560m from here .

I replaced my GTX 260m with this and like other people i had trouble installing driver from nvidia site.
IMAGE :

I have edited my nvam.inf by adding a new line using the method here .
Below are the few line i have added:

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.13B7.1043% = Section125, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

NVIDIA_DEV.1251.13B7.1043 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M"

It ran well and installed my beta driver 306.02. I tried it with the 301.42 driver and it work too.

After the installation, everything seems ok, resolution is ok, the microsoft rating is ok(it gave me a 6.8 rating for my GPU).

But when i tried to run some game like skyrim, the framerate is really terrible, like 3 - 5 FPS. I can run it smoothly with my old GTX 260m on it.

Another thing was that I did the 3Dmark 11 test, it gave me a 3 - 7 FPS for each test. It gave me a very low score, stating that there is something wrong with the driver.
(Note: when i run this test i was on 301.42 driver)
IMAGE :

Ok another problem is I tried running GPU-z, and it shows my GPU as GT 635m(WTH!?).
IMAGE :

And so I tried running GPU Auto detect on Nvidia site and they show me that my GPU is GTX 560m(So which one is right?).
IMAGE :

I have also noticed framerate drop for my game(Mass effect and DeadSpace), both ran quite smoothly with my old GTX 260m.
After replacing it, they still ran well, but there have been random framerate drop in the game, which has never happen before.

I ran FanSpeed on to test for my temperature and when playing on skyrim, temperature is around 70+, so it should not be the problem with the temperature.

Any help here? I have already emailed my seller for help but he is away for a few days so i guess i try my luck here.

My Specs Are : i7 - Q820QM , 6 GB DDR3 RAM , GTX 560m 1.5 GB.

Any other information needed, please tell me, i will try to provide.

 

Interested how your fix turns out carnagesin as I'm thinking about upgraded my vid card. Also, did you do it yourself or did you get the a local shop to update it for you (i'm not quite confident on my hardware skills unfortunately)

 

back from the death :thumbsup:

make sure to try to cover all lines (sections, sometimes they are double) so you have to double them too - in drivers .inf file

If not happy Revert to an older driver

 

Hey guys I am looking to buy a good cheap upgrade for my Mx15 laptop. Currently I am have a 240m installed, and this 560m seemed like a good choice.

Anyways, will this card work in my particular laptop. I want to make sure before I purchase it.

MSI CLEVO Alienware M17x M15x Nvidia Geforce GTX560M Gtx 560m Video Card 1.5GB | eBay


Thanks

 

nice to hear it can be good&cheap

 

Urm i went to a local shop and ask them to change it for me because my screw are kinda f-ed up u see ( it was really tight and i try lots of time to unscrew it but i made the screw's hole even bigger :/ ) it's better if you get someone who know their stuff to work on it

Well I did research on it for a week and try all method but it didn't work out as well.

And finally i found a solution. For those who wanna change to the GTX 560m like me, I found a site which provided modded driver. I download this and installed it and guess what, it works! Although i still find trouble playing with skyrim(throttle all the time) but it works well with my other games like league of legend and Mass effect( 50 - 60 frames all the way! ). So far no problem with it, no blue screen no hang and stuff like that. I did a GPU-z check and i got this result - 560m and not the GT 635m!



So far so good, happy with the performance. :thumbsup:

However, i am unable to do the 3DMark 11 test as they stated that my driver is not approved by bla bla bla~ ( Forgot the rest of the message but who cares if it works )


EDIT: I am using throttlestop 5.0, game ran more smoothly when i disable turbo :/ any idea?

 

Well most (performance) issues posted here can be solved by just 1 clean good driver install: the old mod at the beginning of this post is nice.. although the inside structure of the inf gets more complicated nowadays. Those who dont let fool themself with this new drivers structure.. will find victory :thumbsup:

Here is how : 306.23 WHQL driver : modding nvcv.inf file.
It doesnt mattter which inf file but nvcv.inf was designed for oem cards, thats why I pick that.

Step 1. Download full & ORIGINAL 306.23 driverpackage straight from nvidia website, unzip and copy nvcv.inf from display.driver dir into a temp folder somewhere on your beloved system.

Step 2. Now we going to mod this file, so knock yourself out grab some popcorn, edit with notepad and scroll down to this section:

[Manufacturer]
%NVIDIA_A% = NVIDIA_SetA_Devices,NTamd64.6.0,NTamd64.6.1,NTamd64.6.2

[NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.0]

Add hardware ID, and VERY IMPORTANT for each section repeat this, as you can see added : 1 line for section 22, 1 line for section 25 and 1 line for section 85. (changes in red

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.5102.1558% = Section022, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_51021558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7100.1558% = Section022, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_71001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section022, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7101.1558% = Section025, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_71011558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section025, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7200.1558% = Section085, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_72001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.8000.1558% = Section085, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_80001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section085, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

Step 3. Ready yet? Oh no no no > Repeat for [NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.1] scroll down

Like this :

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.5102.1558% = Section023, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_51021558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7100.1558% = Section023, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_71001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section023, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7101.1558% = Section026, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_71011558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section026, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7200.1558% = Section086, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_72001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.8000.1558% = Section086, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_80001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section086, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

Added lines for sections 23, 26 and 86. Already a headache ?? Take it easy, only 1 more time, scroll down to [NVIDIA_SetA_Devices.NTamd64.6.2]

Like this:

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.5102.1558% = Section024, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_51021558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7100.1558% = Section024, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_71001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section024, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7101.1558% = Section027, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_71011558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section027, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7200.1558% = Section087, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_72001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.8000.1558% = Section087, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_80001558
%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Section087, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

Added lines for sections 24. 27 and 87.

Step 4. Go to the bottem of the inf to [Strings]
Add your hardware.

Like this :

NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7100.1558 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M "
NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7101.1558 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M "
NVIDIA_DEV.1251.7200.1558 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M "
NVIDIA_DEV.1251.8000.1558 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M "
NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M "

Step 5. SAFE Ur modded inf. and VICTORY :thumbsup: for those that can copy the modded inf over the existing inf in display.driver folder and run setup.exe

And remember: With each driver, new sections, different section nrs etc, so you need to do this mod once for each driver that your trying to install. Dont mix inf's of different drivers or you will end up in trouble. Also make SURE your OS is updated, cant expect top-performance from latest driver ON outdated OS.

 

Well easy for me, note we have DEV.1251.02A2.1028% and not DEV.1251.13B7.1043%
(advice to use only the original driver from nvidia website, so dont get lost in woods.. mixed up in different drivers.. if you dont know what it does stay on the safe side.. follow my updatepost to see how)

%NVIDIA_DEV.1251.02A2.1028% = Sectionxxx, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1251&SUBSYS_02A21028

Look closely @ values before the =sign and after the =sign. See the relation?
Thats right They are the same 02A2.1028% = 02A21028

 

oh crap how do i remove this post?

 

Thanks dutchess63 for the reply and help! Sorry for the trouble because it's kinda like my first time changing graphic card I will try your method once i am free this week Got lots of thing to prepare because i will be heading to taiwan soon next week

Opps sorry for double posting ,accidentally hit post reply how do i remove the post on top?

 

Hi everyone, my first post. After advice from this forum I upgraded my M15x from a gtx260m to a gtx460m. I had a few issues initially with a few critical kernal errors but solved this by adjusting the power usage in nVidia control panel to maximum performance instead of adaptive. No further issues since then.

I find myself religiously monitoring the GPU core temps and found that if I wanted to use the directx 11 settings that the card would run a lot hotter than the 260m used to. So I bought a laptop stand with additional fans and this seems to keep things cooler. My question then is for people who have upgraded from a 260m to a directx 11 card, what temperatures do your cards run at when running newish games on high settings?

My example is the Witcher 2 which has beautiful graphics and I have a mixture of high and medium settings. Card temp can sneak up to 86-88 degrees! Is this ok or should I sacrifice some graphics settings in order to allow the card to run cooler.

Thanks for answers

 

I've played Witcher2 and it is a quite demanding game per graphics, watch your temps using sw tools like Throttlestop, GPU caps viewer or GPU-z (all free)

Above 90C risky, but by that time ur driver resets anyway Try to cut down unnecessary tasks in the background

 

First off I want to thank everyone on this thread for the great info. After following the driver modifications I was able to swap out my ATI 5850 for an nVidia 660M. Needed the CUDA cores for Adobe Premiere.

The issue I have run into is that I can only use an external monitor right now. The laptop monitor is not being detected. Before I start re-opening the case I was wondering if anyone else had seen this? Should I pull the bios battery and let it reset?

Thanks again everyone!

edit :

Bah, removing cmos battery didn't help. I am on bios A09 currently... CPU is 740qm.

I am at a loss Card works great with external monitor... really wish the laptop monitor would show up.

Looks like displayport doesn't work either... grrrr..

vbios says it's a dell bios, perhaps someone has one for the 660 that fixes this?

 

Is that 660m from Eurocom ?? Can you boot into safe mode F8 to get ur laptop monitor back.. and did you try to swap drivers ? Upload ur modded .inf and vbios here - like to analyse those.

Read here from slv7 another proud M15x owner, I bet he got it working: NVIDIA Kepler VBIOS mods - Overclocking Editions, modified clocks, voltage tweaks

 

Yes, it's the one from upgradeyourlaptop on eBay. The post screen doesn't even appear so it's not a driver issue. If I put my ATI back in, the screen works again.

I will post my inf and vbios tonight.

Thank you so much!

 

Another source here

 

Thank you for the help and info!

The seller contacted me and will have their techs looking into the vbios issue. So I will stand by until I get something from them about it.

Just as a 411 for the upgrade and if it's worth it... My film render for a 20 minute project using my ATI card was taking over 8 hours with no grading added to it...with the 660, I added in grading,sharpening and some vignette...2 hours 10 minutes.... and the Adobe suite runs smooth in real time. Very happy with it from that perspective.

Thanks again!

 

And I am up and running with both monitors working!!! Haven't tried DisplayPort yet, but that s the least of my concerns right now.

Got the final piece, vbios , from this thread at techinferno.

[Guide] M15x with Nvidia GTX 660m

Thank you for the guidance and hope others find this usefull!

 

Just out of interest, is there only one generation of M15x?
So assuming my M15x that is 2 years (April 2010) old could also run the GTX 660m or did they update the motherboard at some stage?

 

There was an R1 and R2 I believe. Others could tell you how to tell the difference. I believe mine is the R2 because I have the i7-740 and the ati 5850 in it before putting in the 660m. I also think I read somewhere that the R2 was the first to offer the 460m in it so that might help.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...98617-area-51-m15x-r1-new-dell-gtx-260-a.html

Looks like the R1 was before dell took over and used a different mxm slot.

 

I cant dl from techinferno (no 5 quality posts there..hehe:hi2:
But Great it works 4U

Can you post benchmarks here? 3dmv 3dm11?
I like to compare vs 560m

 

Sure. I haven't done a benchmark using that software in a long time. Any settings I need turned on to make it valid for you?

edit :

3DMark Score P2369
Graphics Score 2225
Physics Score 4472
Combined Score 1944

I had settings on application choose for nvidia.

 

mmm that is kinda low no? see my signature (done with built-in 900p monitor)
I expect a little 10-15% upswing with 660m..or at least similar for graphics score. (see attached pic
just regular settings Performance are fine.. (actually that is what letter P means before each nrs score..

 

10chars....

 

No clue why it would be low. I don't game very much, but I am sure I have something set wrong lol

 

Allright thats my babe:thumbsup:

 

I see what could be my low scores issue, my GPU clock is 835 and boost is 950 which is way lower then svl7s screen shot. I will see about overclocking later and see what I can get the score up to.

 

Has anyone had success with a gtx560m and Windows 8 Pro? I tried yesterday and couldn't get it to work.

 

Looks like someone is selling some on EBay now for those interested in upgrading...

Card 1

Card 2

 

If you install the 560m, and don't do anything to the vBios, is the Displayport not going to work?!