M18x R2 GPU upgrades

[Siplast]

Did anyone try the Quadro 5000 yet on m18x r2? I am looking into this upgrade. I currently run two 980 mxm in sli and I am looking to upgrade to gtx 1070. Really great that one of you seems to have upped to rtx 3080. Any info on the 3080 upgrade would be appreciated. Used to be at tech inferno and did the a11 unlocked bios a while back. Any info on above would be appreciated. Thanks

[Siplast]

Really interested in trying this upgrade for M18x r2. Not sure If anyone follows this topic anymore as it seems 2022 was the last entry. I will lay this out and see if anyone is still willing to jump in and help a newbie on this site. Really hope ssj92 might jump in as he seems to be the founder of this upgrade, what a great success and cudos to him. I understand the unlocked bios, the info mod for NVidia drivers and modding the heat sink. What I was  hoping to hear back about is whether there was a power lock at 50w or did the install go smooth. No black screens or error 43? I believe from what I have been able to glean that the vbios that comes with the xvision card limits the card to 115w and is more stable in this set up even though it has the potential to 135-150w. My understanding is that the set up was straight forward without having to do any further steps such as jumping the pins for backlight ( only needed to run peg but wont work on this system) and that the handshake is handled by optimus for the lvds display. I dont recall that any edid injection or registry fix's were needed. I am running a 3940xm with 2133hz ram at 32gb capacity. I use a standard oc of 4.4 on the cpu. Thanks for any clarification. 

[Siplast]

Long Live Sockets and Slots!! ( courtesy of Mr. Fox )

[Siplast]

Sorry, It would seem that I did not place this In the correct thread. I have now found the proper thread and gotten the answers that I needed. 

[Maro97]

On 7/12/2026 at 5:24 PM, Siplast said:

Did anyone try the Quadro 5000 yet on m18x r2? I am looking into this upgrade. I currently run two 980 mxm in sli and I am looking to upgrade to gtx 1070. Really great that one of you seems to have upped to rtx 3080. Any info on the 3080 upgrade would be appreciated. Used to be at tech inferno and did the a11 unlocked bios a while back. Any info on above would be appreciated. Thanks

You can send to @ssj92 a PM he try many gpus with AW m18x R2

[SuperMG]

On 7/12/2026 at 4:24 PM, Siplast said:

Did anyone try the Quadro 5000 yet on m18x r2? I am looking into this upgrade. I currently run two 980 mxm in sli and I am looking to upgrade to gtx 1070. Really great that one of you seems to have upped to rtx 3080. Any info on the 3080 upgrade would be appreciated. Used to be at tech inferno and did the a11 unlocked bios a while back. Any info on above would be appreciated. Thanks

Hello.

 

The RTX 5000 and RTX 3080 will only work in Switchable Graphics. So you need a modded BIOS to change the video's option to SG (Switchable Graphics)

 

Turing and Ampere GPUs do not have any LVDS PEG capabilities. They can only do eDP output.

 

Yes these cards work with iGPU SG, not in PEG on that laptop.

 

These cards work in PEG eDP only with the M17X R4 120Hz eDP version + backlight mod.

 

If you're limited by the iGPU, you can overclock the display to 75Hz using CRU software. But please be careful with that.

 

For the drivers installation, just use the NVCLEANSTALL software, it's easy.

 

For the cooling. For the RTX 3080, you need to find a custom heatsink for that offset.

 

I tested so much Turing to Ada MXM cards on more than 10 systems.

 

I do have one RTX 4070 MXM available, still has warranty.

[Siplast]

Thanks for the response! I have a11 mod bios by swick flashed on both m18x r2 already using peg for the 980m sli. I get the sg mode limitations. Found cicichen594 and he said he could do a custom heatsink for my project. I have actually been thinking of trying the xvision rtx 3080mxm3.0b. I also have the m17xr4 with 120hz edp and still have the old 60hz display, it is running 1070 . I was curious about what has changed in flashing vbios as it does not seem that it can be flashed like the old 980ms. Is it that a suitable vbios cant be found or that the cards wont accept it? Since I originally planned on the card mentioned above I read more on this site about problems concerning using this quadro rtx5000 on this setup that drew me to the 3080. I Read what ssj92 experienced with the same upgrade and other than the custom heatsink it seems straight forward?

I can mod inf. files but nvcleanstall sounds much easier and can eliminate unwanted bloatware? I have not used this before and wish I knew of It sooner. I recently saw and xvision 4070 on ebay was this your card?

[SuperMG]

2 minutes ago, Siplast said:

Thanks for the response! I have a11 mod bios by swick flashed on both m18x r2 already using peg for the 980m sli. I get the sg mode limitations. Found cicichen594 and he said he could do a custom heatsink for my project. I have actually been thinking of trying the xvision rtx 3080mxm3.0b. I also have the m17xr4 with 120hz edp and still have the old 60hz display, it is running 1070 . I was curious about what has changed in flashing vbios as it does not seem that it can be flashed like the old 980ms. Is it that a suitable vbios cant be found or that the cards wont accept it? Since I originally planned on the card mentioned above I read more on this site about problems concerning using this quadro rtx5000 on this setup that drew me to the 3080. I Read what ssj92 experienced with the same upgrade and other than the custom heatsink it seems straight forward?

I can mod inf. files but nvcleanstall sounds much easier and can eliminate unwanted bloatware? I have not used this before and wish I knew of It sooner. I recently saw and xvision 4070 on ebay was this your card?

Yes mine. The price is high because of the ebay fees.

 

Yes with NVCLEANSTALL you can remove the Nvidia bloatware.

 

The custom heatsinks can be adapted with your MXM card.

 

Yes I have a 3080 on my M17X R4 eDP 120Hz. Runs cool and great. Got 11300 in TimeSpy graphics. Ran the 4070 in m17x R4 and Dell precision m4800, got 12400.

[Siplast]

Great scores! Did you try out the 4070 on m18xr2 or the m17xr4? Or did you decide on a different card?

[Siplast]

did you try the 3080 on your m18x r2 as well? 

[SuperMG]

3 minutes ago, Siplast said:

Great scores! Did you try out the 4070 on m18xr2 or the m17xr4? Or did you decide on a different card?

Just on the M17X R4. It boots, displays and drivers install. In pure-UEFI. I don't have the M18X R2 because it's a LVDS system.

 

The 4070 would be great to be used on the M4800 as it's the a 15.6" laptop that can use a 1080p 120Hz display and has AVX2 support.

[Siplast]

I understand, when I bought mine I was not aware of the disadvantage of lvds.

[Siplast]

How did the 4070 run? 

[SuperMG]

1 minute ago, Siplast said:

I understand, when I bought mine I was not aware of the disadvantage of lvds.

Alienware 17 R1 120Hz and M17X R4 120Hz are good to go for the newest RTX Ampère and Ada cards in pure UEFI.

 

ATM, the RTX Turing also work in the M17X R3 with a modded BIOS.

 

Just now, Siplast said:

How did the 4070 run? 

The memory chips reach to 98C and the GPU temps is like 85C max. I don't use PTM7950. 

 

All the GDDR6 I have can achieve to 100C. The VRAM throttles at 105C I believe.

[ssj92]

7 hours ago, Siplast said:

did you try the 3080 on your m18x r2 as well? 

This is an old score but gives you an idea:

 

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (notebook) video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3920XM Processor Extreme Edition,Alienware M18xR2