ÊtaPegasus

A quick question for all the benchmark holics, what would be the "best" upgrade for the 17 R1 : - Standard Gtx 1070 for under 300€? @Naberius what is your feedback on yours? Who was your vendor on eBay? - Quadro P5000? Quite expensive, almost double the 1070 price (~550€), can't see how te 16Gb of vRAM are worth 250€ ^^ - HP Quadro RTX3000/4000?i found an RTX 3000 for under 300€. Can someone explain what chassis modification i would need? Doe the heatsink need to be modified too? Thanks for all your feedback!

The upgrade is pretty straight forward, i did install Gtx 970m, Quadro P3000 and Quadro P4000 without a hiccup. The only thing mandatory on mine was to disable win8 fast boot and legacy boot. Here is a link describing a way to to do it : https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/gwk5zj/upgrading_your_m17x_r4_and_17_r1/

Hi, never heard of this Part Number (C02) but on the old thread on NBR, it was stated to avoid the C01 revision of the panel (see the link : https://archive.ph/0HLPD)

Just a question for @sliderfra : you claim that you tested your PNY RTX 3000 in a AW17 Ranger and it is working, can you share your specific configuration : - SG mode? - driver version and driver installation method - heatsink model (oem or 5 pipe copper) and pad placement - testing methodolgy - vBios version - sBios version In the meantime, @ssj92 can you confirm that the resistor mode isn't the solution to our specific problem? As for the HP version vBios crossflashing, i do not own a programmer (yet, maybe you can point me toward a good one?) and i'm not comfortable doing it but i'm willing to learn.

As promised, here are some benchmark comparison between Quadro P4000 and Quadro RTX 3000 : - AW17 with i7-4940mx @4,0GHz/1,08V | 32Gb G.skill Ripjaw 1866MHz | Nvidia Quadro P4000 | Honeywell PTM7950 on both CPU and GPU | Clean and debloated win 10 - M17x R4 with i7-3630qm (stock paste from 2013, lot of dust) | 12Gb DDR3 1600MHz (stock RAM) | Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 | crappy win 10 install The results are pretty good GPU side and i see almost 30% improvement on GPU score with RTX 3000 over Quadro P4000 (i think the gap will increase with a better CPU, RAM and clean cooling). The complete comparison can be found at the link below : The complete results can be found at this link : Result (3dmark.com). For now i'm pretty satisfied about the RTX 3000 performance (especially regarding the price i paid --> 100€ ^^) and i want to max out the M17x R4 with i7-3920xm, 16Gb of 1866 G.Skill DDR3 to see if it can compete with the AW17 !

I just finish some rapid testing (10min of GPU-Z test) in my new M17x R4 and the RTX 3000 behave normally!! The PerfCap reasons are "Pwr" when hitting 80W then "V.Rel" but there is no throttling on GPU Core (1860MHz) nore Memory (1750MHz) while maintaining under 65°C (and 75°C hotspot) with stock heatsink (with lot of dust inside, the laptop has never been opened before and i didn't clean it yet ^^), stock thermal pads and meh thermal paste application. So there is another proof (if one was needed) that there is an incompatibilty between the PNY Quadro RTX 3000 and my Alienware 17 R1. The last thing i will do is to try again on the AW17 R1 with a stock heatsink because when looking back at schematics, i wonder if my 5 pipe copper heatsink from Cicichen isn't blocking some thermal sensor readings since the geometry is different from the original. After that test, i won't have much more to experiment except if @Falinov is kind enough to explain how the resistor mod works and how to do it =).

If i understand you correcty, the PNY/Adlink RTX 3000 might have some vBios power table compatibilty issue with newer Alienware only? Can it be linked to some old thread reporting people on newer AW17 had power throttling on GTX 1070 and some never fixed the issue? Could the hibernate bug work here? In the meantime, i managed to get another M17x R4 in good condition for 200€ so i'll report back this week as soon i have time to experiment and see if i have the same behaviour with both Alienware generation.

I'm not sure if this could work because my PNY RTX 3000 has a device id "DEV_1F76" and as i understand in order to get the driver to recognize the unsuported GPU i have to add a line in the inf mod (or with NVCleanInstall) with the the same device id.... Am i understanding this correctly? In the meantine, what bothered me is that there is no template in NVCleanInstall for a 1F76 GPU in a Dell laptop, but SSJ92 clearly stated in his video about NVCleanInstall that is shouldn't matter and many other people have installed this PNY RTX 3000 without a hiccup.

I know that thread and that's the first thing i tried XD but no luck!

Maybe a long shot, are you using Optimus Jerryzago? If so, what Intel HD driver are you using (i use the latest one from Dell website)? Are you on unlock bios (mine is stock Dell A14)? I looked into older threads about upgrading to Pascal graphic card on the old NBR forum and TechInferno and i came across a few threads talking about random power throttling with high wattage GPU (1070, Quadro P5000 and even 980m). The solution was to run them in dedicated mode or to use a hibernation sleep bug to resumue power throttling... Could it be a wrong combination of locked bios settings + optimus not working properly?

This means that there might be an issue software side between my Alienware 17 and my RTX 3000 or the RTX3000 is defective. I'll try to take the time to test it with a multimeter and report back. As for @gabrieloj request, i'm sorry i don't have any schematics for the GTX 980m to help you.

I already tried all those settings individually then all at once, and nope, no effect at all on the throttling behaviour nor the performance of the card.... Thanks for your help, but for now, i think the card will stay in a box until i have a second pc to try it ^^

This is indeed what i came to think as well ^^ But as many others on this forum got the same card from the same reseller (PNY) on ebay and got it working i thought i was safe. Maybe i got a bad sample.... For now, i took it out the Alienware, put the Quadro P4000 on again and it works like a charm! What surprises me is the performance gap (in the wrong way) : even without throttling, the Quadro RTX3000 pulled almost 80W at full boost to keep 60fps on The Elder Scrolls Online at ultra settings and the Quadro P4000 pulls only 45W to achieve the same result on the same area.... I really don't understand, is this a driver optimization issue? Or my card is a dud? Nevertheless, to figure this out, i bought another Alienware 17 Ranger for 130€ with an allegedly "non working internal display", i'll see if i have the same behaviour on the 2 laptops.

Thanks for the documentation! Looking closely to it, i found several interesting things : - 1st, the thermal policy says that after reaching 97°C, the card will throttle itself by 87,5%!! Wich is consistent with the throttling occuring on the memory side (1750MHz base vs 202MHz throttle). Though, the documentation talks about GPU clock and i don't know if it refers to Core clock or Memory clock? Other hypothesis, the throttle mechanism appears on wichever one exceed the temperature? In wich case, i should look closely to my vRAM pads? - 2nd, the power management says that if the current exceed 10A, the card should throttle - 3rd, the ambient measurement location are as follow in the figure below with really low temperatures threshold (65°C average on the 3 sensors and 75°C max on one sensor). So now i have many things to reconsider : - 1 or more vRAM chips report temp as high as 90°C and then throttle the card --> I have no sensor in GPU-Z or HWinfo to confirm. - My battery (wich is suppose to be an OEM replacement with the right sticker) doesn't hold perfectly the power delivery and/or the 240W power supply isn't enough --> I rule out this power delivery issue since sliderfra has the same problem with a 330W adapter. - The ambient sensors are detecting high temps locally that my heatsink can't evacuate (maybe the 5 pipe heatsink is counter productive here) --> This is coherent with the time needed to Pwr+Thm throttle on a fresh start (after 1 hour cooling period, take almost 1 min to throttle) and a pc used then stressed (take 15-20s to throttle). I put pads on the pieces pointed in red earlier but that didn't change anything... Any ideas?

Would you mind sharing those schematics? 😃 I'd really love to take a look to better understand how the card works! As for the GPU hotspot, the log indicate a maximum of ~80°C just before throttling appears. Since the limit is set to 87°C according to GPU-Z i imagine this wasn't the cause of throttling.

Okay, i'll repad the card just to make sure. In he meantime, i took a look at GPU-Z log file recorded while playing The Elder Scrolls Online in ultra settings then high settings and i plotted the results in the 3 graphics below : From what i can see : - The GPU temperature isn't the main factor here. - Every time the power draw reach ~78W or above, there is Power+Thermal Throttle on GPU clock + vRAM Clock for ~6s - The jumps in power condumption are linked to the loading of different area in the game. - After i change the settings from Ultra to High, the power draw never exceed 65W in peak and 40W in average and no more throttling! So i guess there is something wrong with the card cooling since every time i reach high power draw the card throttle, something overheats locally and recover very quickly afterwards? Can someone point on the card which component are the VRM and what are the little component i didn't cover with thermal pads? TESO log file.ods

Well, another issue appears now, the card seems to power/thermal throttle to ~40W with the vRAM going as low as 200MHz. Periodically, the card will throttle the vRAM then recover and again and again. I don't see anyhting strange in the sensors' readings, albeit with GPU-Z, MSI Afterburner or HW Info : the card doesn't exceed 60°C... I remember seeing this strange behaviour in sliderfra's topic but i don't see any solution. I did try to put a cooler underneath the laptop to see if it helps but it has no effect at all. I took the card out the pc again and realized i don't have thermals pads on the pieces circle in red, could it be the culprit?

I just received the 240W power supply and you were right, this was the issue all along! The GPU-Z test now shows the card boosting to 1800MHz sometimes and pulling 80W constantly! Thanks again for the answers! I'll post some 3DMark results comparing the Quadro P4000 et RTX 3000.

Thanks for the advice, i just found a 240W power supply for 15€ and i'll get it in the next couple days! I'll keep you in touch to see if that's solve the issue. In the meantime, i'm thinking about the strange behaviour of my Quadro P4000, especially on the new games (Elden Ring and Resident Evil 4 Remake) where the card never stayed at 100% utilisation and was jumping up and down in power consumption. Could it be the power supply wasn't enough and with my 4940MX the card was starving?

Thanks for the replies. I tried to change the nvidia control panel settings back and forth and no luck, it doesn't change anything. I noticed that i was missing OpenCL and CUDA when i switch to"dedicate GPU to graphics only". I tried to install the driver again via NVCleanInstall and no luck. Though, looking at your screenshot aldarxt, i see you have Physix enabled and i don't. Maybe i do not have the right driver for this card? I am actually using this one "537.99-quadro-rtx-desktop-notebook-win10-win11-64bit-international-dch-whql" from Nvidia's website. To those who installed a PNY/Aetina RTX 3000, what nvidia driver are you using? Are you also in SG mode? If, so what intel HD driver? I am also using a 180W power brick, that could be the culprit?

Hello everyone! I'm a long time reader of NoteBook Review and NoteBookTalk as they are a great ressource for laptop modding. I recently managed to grab one of the PNY RTX3000 on ebay for 100€ (a bargain!) to replace my aging Quadro P4000. The installation goes fine since i have the 5 pipes full copper gpu heatsink from Cicichen and i carefully cover with thermal pad every part necessary. After having some trouble modding the nvdmwi.inf file i finally get it to install properly and now start the trouble. My issue is the following : - My GPU core won't boost higher than 945MHz (wich is base clock) and won't consume more than ~30W - The PerfCap Reason is "PwrThm" while on battery (see the first image) and only "Pwr" when plugged in while doing the GPU-Z test (see second image) - While gaming, the limit reason in MSI Afterburner is "No Load" and GPU-Z says the card is in "Idle" while reporting almost 100% utilisation. I spend the last few days testing mutiple things : - Revert the bios to default and revert my cpu overclocking --> no effect - Tinker with the different driver parameter : prefer high performance, dedicate the graphic card to gpu intensive task etc --> no effect - Activate/Deactivate GPU Hardware Scheduling --> no effect - Windows 10 fresh install on another ssd --> strange results as the PerfCap Reason changed to "idle" everytime but same clock speed (~945MHz) and power consumption (30 to 40W) - Plug out the graphic card, verifiy thermal pad placements, reseat the gpu in the MXM slot etc --> no effect I carefully read all the other topic on this subject bt didn't find anything helpful for my case. If anyone has any ideas i'm all ears, otherwise i might just put back my venerable Quadro P4000. Thanks in advance! Edit (25/02/2024): After gathering the experiments from many people and making many test, the actual conclusion to this topic is : - The PNY/Adlink Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 doesn't work with the Haswell generation Alienwares (17 R1 nor 18 Viking) - The same card works flawlessly on previous generation Alienwares M17x R4 and M18x R2 (for more info on M17x R4 performance, look into this thread and for M18x R2 look into @ssj92 threads) - The issue doesn't seem power related (even though 240W is the bare minimum to make this card run, see my experiment below) as some user reports having the same issue with either 240W or 330W power supply. - The resistor mod was tried on the M18x R2 by @ssj92 and didn't help in any way stabilizing the Thermal+Power throttling issue - As the HP variant of the Quadro RTX3000 (and above) are reported to work flawlessly on either Alienware generation an attempt to flash the HP vBios was made by @ssj92. The vBios flash was unsuccesfull as the vBios chip wasnt recognized by neither Nvflash nor the external programmer. So far, the best easy upgrades (without chassis or heatsink modifications) are Nvidia Quadro P4000/P5000 or standard Gtx 1060. I know there are some standard form factor Gtx 1070 but their reliability seems questionnable. Once again, thanks a lot to all the people who took the time to look into my issue!