Hi,
Flashing bios is quite easy, there's a good tutorial here on the forum.
You'll definitely need modded BIOS if you want to install 1070 GTX in the future, as a fixed SG mode is mandatory for that one (no edp screen in AW18 unfortunately).
Original BIOS is default in PEG mode, which will result in 8 beep error and blank screen.
Alienware 18 Viking schematics_Compal LA-9332P VAS10 rX02 201119.pdf
Does it work in SG mode with the Nvidia card? I mean using the nvidia card for 3D purpose (not just 2D using intel iGPu)
There are many signal converter on the board (for IGPu, DGPu, HDMI, DP,...) so most probably the one dealing with DGPu signal is defective (the chip itself or some kind of cms associated). Could be hard to track down.
Oh does it? I tested RTX3k & 4k on AW18 and neither did. That's weird! But 3060m 12GB definitely does, although to a lesser extent than RTX3k from PNY.
well that's really weird?
Did you tweak anything?? Cause every other person that tried PNY RTX3k on AW 17/18 reported heavy throttling
Same happens with RTX 3060 12GB, but to a lesser extent (reduces core & mem frequency accordingly and not only mem frequency as the PNY RTX3k)
I've never seen any Pascal card (1060 / 1070 /p3k /p4k/p5k) throttle on AW18 / 17. Don't know about 1080 / Px200
there's no point using SLI / Crossfire cards anymore.
One is more than enough.
Fan control can be tricked on dell / alienware via hwinfo or speedfan.
Unlocked bios is not necessary but I strongly advise to flash it as it will give you hidden possibilities
Will most probably work on:
- Alienware M17x r4 and 17 R1 with edp screens
- dell m4/6700, m4/6800, precision 7710 / 20
- all Clevo lineup ranging from p771zm to P775tm (X170 may work too)
- msi gt72, gt73 series
- Hp zbook g1 to g6, elitebooks 8770, 8570
- other whitebooks or derived laptops with mxm