Upgrading to a modern MXM Card on a Alienware M18X R1 - Possible solutions?

[Tcoil]

 DISCLAIMER: I do NOT know what I'm exactly doing, I am new when it comes to modding laptops. I am looking for help and guidance and to come up with the possibilities of upgrading before I give up.  

 

 I recently picked up an Alienware M18xR1, hoping to upgrade the components inside and make it work as close to a modern gaming laptop as possible by replacing the SLI 580Ms inside with something like GTX 1070m, or an RTX 3000m, etc. But choosing an R1 was a bit of an oversight on my part. Combing some threads, I have seen the most common conclusion that due to something with the vBIOS/MUX switching in the M18xR1 being different in some way to the M18xR2/M17xR4. I saw claims on a thread that someone was able to use a M5000M in a M18xR1/M17xR3 (according to ssj92) which gives the slightest hope it may be possible.

 

So far, here are my solutions.

 

• Replace the Motherboard in my R1 with a Motherboard from an R2 

 

Since the motherboard in the M18xR2 appear to have the layout, components and mounts, replacing the motherboard seems to me like a possible option. Pros would be having a better preforming CPU (I7 2920QM to a I7 3820XM) I have experience replacing laptop motherboards, so this would possibly the easiest solution for me. Cons are I have heard that Alienware laptops will only run if that specific laptop's hardware is being used, or something like that. It would also be a bit more on the expensive side as well...

 

M18xR1 Motherboard

 

M18xR2 Motherboard 

 

• Soldering a R2 Bios chip into an R1 Motherboard

 

This "solution" seems to be the cheapest and "easiest" so far. Replacing/soldering the bio chip wouldn't be difficult, although so far, it seems no one has ever done this before. Setting this up would be past my expertise as well, I'm not sure it work as the R1 uses Sandy bridge processers and the R2 uses ivy bridge processers, maybe this doesn't effect anything? I don't know. I also saw that the R1 cant be flashed with the R2 BIOS due to "size constraints" (according to Azther) Again, this is out of my expertise...

 

• Messing around in BIOS 

 

When it comes to messing around in BIOS of computers, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm someone who finds a YouTube tutorial that sounds similar to my problem and go from there. I would greatly need assistance with doing this...

 

• Simply replacing the GPU 

 

I would imagine there would a lot less questions about upgrading the GPU in an r1 if this was possible. Could there be a chance that I could just replace the 580M with say a GTX 1070m, route signal to the IGPU and do whatever process makes this card works, not matter how much performance you get out of it. Again, I imagine this isn't exactly possible... 

 

These are all the possibilities I have came up with so far when it comes to upgrading to a modern MXM card in an R1. Hopefully someone figures out a solution before I do or give up. Are any of these solutions viable in any way? I'm leaning towards the option of replacing the Motherboard.

 

Any sort of help with this, in any way would be greatly appreciated and I will continue with researching on ways to upgrade.  

 

 

 

 

Edited July 1 by Tcoil
Spelling mistakes

[panda_zzz]

As far as I know swapping a motherboard from r2 to r1 is possible, but you need a few things besides the board itself:
GRP9C - the motherboard itself,
YYFHR - Additional Reader Sub USB Board
M9T51 - SATA Hard Drive Connector
XVNKP - HDD Frame Bracket
I think that's it. as far as I remember the only limitation is that there is no space for mSATA in the r1 case.

[Tcoil]

Approximate cost of upgrade

 

Been a while. Thanks for the info, Panda. After doing some research, the cost to upgrade the laptop to what is equivocally an R2 is ~$622 CAD (Approx. $450 USD) This includes an RTX 3000 card and I7 3820QM. along with buying the laptop, the cost would be around $700 CAD in total. I could sell the leftover parts, but given how they may not be in demand, nor are they 100% condition, it is not likely they would sell (in my opinion) At this point, so far. It may be cheaper for me to buy an R2. Perchance an Alienware 17 R1, although, it wouldn't be as much fun to upgrade...🤔

 

Would love to know what you guys think!

 

 

[panda_zzz]

PNY/Adlink Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 does not work with Haswell generation Alienwares (17 R1 Ranger and 18 Viking) and if you want to do Ranger modifications you will have to look towards HP cards + modify the mxm connector + cooling system.

A bit more info here:

 

 

[TheSin]

Recently I played with M18X R1 trying to make GTX980M work in it. If we install the card into primary MXM slot, the laptop would stuck with black screen or Alien head logo. But after installation of GTX980M into the secondary MXM slot and populating the primary slot with semi-dead GTX780M, it suddenly started to boot and recognize both GPUs! After installing a fresh Win11 with modded driver I was surprised that GTX980M started rendering...

So, if you have both GTX580M and GTX1070M, you can try to repeat such experiment. It will be cool if Pascal card would also work this way!

[panda_zzz]

Still strange, because 980m works even in m15x which has a bios even older than m18x r1.

[TheSin]

Yes, I was surprised how easily it was to run it in the secondary slot. It works not perfectly  - we need to periodically re-install driver after reboot because Windows show 'Basic adapter' with error 'Can't load driver' (a strange glitch, probably something is wrong with the GPU itself). But it works - thanks to Win11 which allows us to explicitly select GPU for rendering in 3D applications.

I also tried to perform some HW mods to run the card with iGPU. I executed the following steps:

- Short drain and stock on Q39 to activate +5V and +3V power source of MXM slots

- Desolder UH7 and UH8 logic gates

- Solder a wire from pin 2 (VGA_ON) to pin 4 (MXM2_PWR_ON) of UH8 to make the card activate secondary onboard power sources

The last step we need is to deactivate reset signal. To do that, we should solder a wire to pin 4 (MXM2_RST#) of UH9. The most logical way is to solder the second end of the wire to  PCH_PLTRST# (for example, using pin 1 oh UH5), but we'll get beeping after soldering it. I guess, the laptop see the discrete GPU in the secondary slot and tries to use  it instead of activating of iGPU. But since there is no display connected to secondary GPU, it can't initialize properly.

But if we solder the second end of the wire to, for example, +LCDVDD (a display power source, it activates much later, after initialization of iGPU), we'll see quite interesting picture. In BIOS the system will show us initialized iGPU along with presence of MXM card in the secondary slot! A victory? Unfortunately... not completely. AMD GPUs (I checked on HD6990M and HD8970M) allow us to install driver without errors, the cards seem to work. But if we install any NVIDIA GPU (even officially supported by the notebook), after installing the driver we'll get permanent Code 12 error. I didn't find a way how to make it work.

[Maks0098]

14 hours ago, TheSin said:

It works not perfectly  - we need to periodically re-install driver after reboot because Windows show 'Basic adapter' with error 'Can't load driver' (a strange glitch, probably something is wrong with the GPU itself).

did you just install the driver manually through the device manager or did you modify the driver?

maybe you should try NVCleanStall

[TheSin]

20 hours ago, Maks0098 said:

did you just install the driver manually through the device manager or did you modify the driver?

maybe you should try NVCleanStall

Without modification the driver won't install at all. I tried all known tricks including uninstalling drivers using DDU in safe mode and reinstalling Windows. No effect. However, I noticed another interesting thing - in the Device Manager the card sometimes changes its Device IDs from DEV_1617 to DEV_13D7. After changing Device ID Windows requires to reinstall the driver. Both these IDs belong to GTX 980M, however, what's the difference between them? I have no idea why it changes - except for problems with the GPU itself.

Today I continued experiments with another interesting beast, which works perfectly in Clevo P150EM - NVIDIA P106M. It's a mining version of mobile GTX 1060, but its performance is closer to mobile variant of GTX 1050 Ti. It has no video outputs, locked NVENC and just 4 GB of memory. I tried to install it to the secondary slot of M18X R1 in pair with GTX780M in the primary slot. The results are quite exciting - it's possible to use this card in the Alien.

 

Spoiler

 

 

However, it works not perfectly

- Sometimes the system hangs on initialization before Alien head appears on the display. You need to force power-off the laptop and try again.

- Secondary VGA fan works strange, it looks like RPM changes from 100% to 0% in cycle. However, the temperature of GPU was far from dangerous values while this test

- GPU utilization is changing from 80% to 100%

[ssj92]

On 7/10/2024 at 8:57 AM, TheSin said:

Without modification the driver won't install at all. I tried all known tricks including uninstalling drivers using DDU in safe mode and reinstalling Windows. No effect. However, I noticed another interesting thing - in the Device Manager the card sometimes changes its Device IDs from DEV_1617 to DEV_13D7. After changing Device ID Windows requires to reinstall the driver. Both these IDs belong to GTX 980M, however, what's the difference between them? I have no idea why it changes - except for problems with the GPU itself.

Today I continued experiments with another interesting beast, which works perfectly in Clevo P150EM - NVIDIA P106M. It's a mining version of mobile GTX 1060, but its performance is closer to mobile variant of GTX 1050 Ti. It has no video outputs, locked NVENC and just 4 GB of memory. I tried to install it to the secondary slot of M18X R1 in pair with GTX780M in the primary slot. The results are quite exciting - it's possible to use this card in the Alien.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

However, it works not perfectly

- Sometimes the system hangs on initialization before Alien head appears on the display. You need to force power-off the laptop and try again.

- Secondary VGA fan works strange, it looks like RPM changes from 100% to 0% in cycle. However, the temperature of GPU was far from dangerous values while this test

- GPU utilization is changing from 80% to 100%

Now you have my interest because I tried everything besides hardware mod to get 980M working in M18xR1. 

 

The closest I got was the 4GB model vBIOS boots to bios but keeps restarting (boot loop). 

 

I have 980M in M15x and spare RTX 3000 MXM as well. Currently I have 880M SLI, I wonder if I should try RTX 3000 in 2nd slot and see what happens then. 

 

I do know 980M is BIOS/vBIOS issue since it works fine in M15x. No one ever solved the issue completely. Even today I would be happy to get it fixed. 

[TheSin]

15 hours ago, ssj92 said:

I tried everything besides hardware mod

Did you try the trick with putting 980M to secondary slot with Fermi or Kepler card in the primary?

 

 

15 hours ago, ssj92 said:

No one ever solved the issue completely.

Yes, that's why it's an interesting problem to solve. But even if we make 980M work in the primary slot, it won't allow us to use more recent cards due to old LVDS screen. So it would be great to find a way to activate switchable graphics mode. We have such option with an unlocked BIOS, but enabling it makes the laptop stuck with every card I've tried.

[ssj92]

6 hours ago, TheSin said:

Did you try the trick with putting 980M to secondary slot with Fermi or Kepler card in the primary?

 

 

Yes, that's why it's an interesting problem to solve. But even if we make 980M work in the primary slot, it won't allow us to use more recent cards due to old LVDS screen. So it would be great to find a way to activate switchable graphics mode. We have such option with an unlocked BIOS, but enabling it makes the laptop stuck with every card I've tried.

Getting 980M working alone would allow 980M SLI which I know isn't the strongest but it still is decetly faster than 880M SLI.

 

I got RTX 3000 working in 2nd slot with drivers but there's one issue. Every single app only uses 880M though. 

 

I originally tried seperate drivers (Geforce for 880M and Quadro for RTX 3000) but that caused error 31 for 880M and everything was super slow. 

 

Then I used 472.XX driver which supports both 880M & RTX 2060 (RTX 3000 Quadro is Geforce RTX 2060 equivalent). This driver shows both cards as working properly in device manager. 

 

However, everything uses 880M. Even in windows settings, both power saving & high performance gpu shows as 880M. 

 

 

Regarding switchable graphics mode..someone had told me, they changed the wiring on MB on M18xR1 to reflect M18xR2 schematics and they still could not get it working. It's either the way it's wired or some bios mod is needed. 

 

 

BTW @Tcoil you can re-use the sandy bridge 2XXX cpu in the M18xR2 MB. A few of us did that to save some $$ but being honest with you, it's better to just have a 3XXX cpu. On my M14xR2 I would get BSOD with 2XXX CPU but switching to 3XXX cpu fixed the problem. 

[ssj92]

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 880M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 (3dmark.com)

 

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2960XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 (3dmark.com)

 

Okay I got it working...using this info:

 

Resolved with registry edits (Windows 10 Pro 22H2):

https://imgur.com/a/09sNRdA

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DirectX\UserGpuPreferences, create a new string value which name is “DirectXUserGlobalSettings”, and set its value to “HighPerfAdapter=xxx” where XXX stands for hardware ID’s VEN&DEV&SUBSYS of your graphics card, which can be found in device manager.

In the case of my 7800 XT "HighPerfAdapter=1002&747E&78011EAE" while device manager displays "PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_747E&SUBSYS_78011EAE&REV_C8"

I had also made the following changes, which I am not sure are or are not required:

1.Navigate Regedit to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}

2. Identify the four digit subfolders that contain your desired GPUs (e.g. by the key DriverDesc inside)

3. Create a new DWORD key inside both four digit folders, name it EnableMsHybrid
Set it to a value of 1 for the performance GPU, set it to a value of 2 for the power save GPU

4. Reboot.

 

From: 

 

 

 

NOW the problem is....my RTX 3000 is only running at 55w instead of the full 80w. It shows 99% utilization the whole time. CPU utilization isn't too high so it shouldn't be a cpu bottleneck. I think the card is hitting the 2nd highest power level instead of the highest. 

 

[TheSin]

11 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Regarding switchable graphics mode..someone had told me, they changed the wiring on MB on M18xR1 to reflect M18xR2 schematics and they still could not get it working. It's either the way it's wired or some bios mod is needed.

I also think we need a BIOS modification in addition to hardware mods. As I already wrote, I tried HW modification, the system recognizes the discrete card and even allows to install the driver... but only AMD cards seems to be working this way. NV ones end up with 'Code 12' in Device Manager.

 

10 hours ago, ssj92 said:

On my M14xR2 I would get BSOD with 2XXX CPU but switching to 3XXX cpu fixed the problem. 

As I see, the hardware of this Alien is the same as in my Clevo W110ER - Intel HD Graphics with GTX 650M using Optimus. So, I guess the root cause of BSODs could be the same. There is some incompatibility with drivers for Intel HD3000 and NVIDIA 400+ drivers on Win10 resulting in a crash of the NV driver after boot. But if we roll the NV driver back to 391 version, the system works stable. However, I don't think this problem will affect M18x.

 

10 hours ago, ssj92 said:

NOW the problem is....my RTX 3000 is only running at 55w instead of the full 80w. It shows 99% utilization the whole time. CPU utilization isn't too high so it shouldn't be a cpu bottleneck. I think the card is hitting the 2nd highest power level instead of the highest. 

Maybe try to check this behavior in different benchmarks? Also you can try to use some registry hacks to fix GPU clocks on the highest values. Anyway, a working RTX card in such old laptop - it's very cool! Even when it works not using its full power.

[ssj92]

1 hour ago, TheSin said:

I also think we need a BIOS modification in addition to hardware mods. As I already wrote, I tried HW modification, the system recognizes the discrete card and even allows to install the driver... but only AMD cards seems to be working this way. NV ones end up with 'Code 12' in Device Manager.

 

As I see, the hardware of this Alien is the same as in my Clevo W110ER - Intel HD Graphics with GTX 650M using Optimus. So, I guess the root cause of BSODs could be the same. There is some incompatibility with drivers for Intel HD3000 and NVIDIA 400+ drivers on Win10 resulting in a crash of the NV driver after boot. But if we roll the NV driver back to 391 version, the system works stable. However, I don't think this problem will affect M18x.

 

Maybe try to check this behavior in different benchmarks? Also you can try to use some registry hacks to fix GPU clocks on the highest values. Anyway, a working RTX card in such old laptop - it's very cool! Even when it works not using its full power.

It's 55W in all applications I am testing. GPU-Z limit reason is PWR. The clock is very high but the power is too low. 

 

It's performance is still decent and allows the old M18xR1 to use ray tracing, dlss, hvec acceleration, etc. But if I can figure out the issue, then this whole thing would be 90% successful in using newer card in such an old system. 

 

Did you have any power issue with your gp106 card?

 

Regarding error code 12. Does your M18xR1 have the UEFI option under boot? I am running a newer modded bios made by an old forum member, it has a UEFI option, but I never enabled it because not sure if it breaks the bios. There's also ACPI version option, default is 3.0, but there's option for 4.0. Also try disabling as many PCI/PCIe devices as possible in bios such as high definition audio, card reader, etc and see if it helps with code 12. 

[TheSin]

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Did you have any power issue with your gp106 card?

There are some issues, however, I'm not sure if they are related to power management. The FPS and GPU load diagrams look like a terrible "sawtooth" for P106M. GTX 980M runs fine and gives near 6k points on 1080p Medium preset in Unigine Superposition benchmark. It looks like a normal result.

 

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Regarding error code 12. Does your M18xR1 have the UEFI option under boot?

Currently I use Swick1981's BIOS found on TechInferno. There is such option, but after enabling it Windows installation crashes after the 1st reboot. Ubuntu installs normally, but the driver for the card still can't be successfully installed. Probably GPU passthrough to QEMU-based VM can even make the card work, but I didn't try it.

 

8 hours ago, ssj92 said:

and see if it helps with code 12. 

I tried and it didn't help. Moreover, I tried such crazy thing as MXM hot-plug by manually disabling reset signal on the card in the different moments. No luck, even GTX 780M doesn't work. I think that BIOS doesn't initialize something that is required for NV driver to work.

 

[ssj92]

On 7/15/2024 at 8:35 AM, TheSin said:

There are some issues, however, I'm not sure if they are related to power management. The FPS and GPU load diagrams look like a terrible "sawtooth" for P106M. GTX 980M runs fine and gives near 6k points on 1080p Medium preset in Unigine Superposition benchmark. It looks like a normal result.

 

Currently I use Swick1981's BIOS found on TechInferno. There is such option, but after enabling it Windows installation crashes after the 1st reboot. Ubuntu installs normally, but the driver for the card still can't be successfully installed. Probably GPU passthrough to QEMU-based VM can even make the card work, but I didn't try it.

 

I tried and it didn't help. Moreover, I tried such crazy thing as MXM hot-plug by manually disabling reset signal on the card in the different moments. No luck, even GTX 780M doesn't work. I think that BIOS doesn't initialize something that is required for NV driver to work.

 

So enabling the UEFI bios option still allows laptop to POST? maybe I'll play with that. 

 

if I can figure out why the newer GPUs cannot reach full TDP then this could be a good workaround for people who want more performance from their M18xR1. Power wise I think M18xR1 is same as M18xR2 (better than AW18) but the BIOS has lots of work needed

[ssj92]

@TheSin this guy is running nVidia Optimus mode with Tesla M6 which is basically 980M:

 

Alienware M18X R1 laptop I7-2760qm 2.4-3.5Ghz 16GB 512GB SSD NVIDIA Tesla M6 8GB | eBay

 

If he can run in optimus mode without any hardware mods we should be able to as well. I might try RTX 3000 in SG mode in primary slot to see what happens.

 

Same guy is running GP106 in M17xR3 (same gen as M18xR1) in Optimus mode as well:

 

Alienware M17X R3 laptop I7-2760qm 2.4-3.5Ghz 16GB 512GB SSD NVIDIA GP106 | eBay

 

 

EDIT: I decided to put RTX 3000 in primary slot and run SG mode. Drivers install fine and no errors in device manager. 

 

However, nothing is using RTX 3000 as render device. Even after changing the windows setting to high performance "rtx 3000" gpu 

 

[TheSin]

On 7/21/2024 at 7:45 AM, ssj92 said:

this could be a good workaround for people who want more performance from their M18xR1

This IS a good workaround for people who want more performance from their M18xR1 - at least if we talk about GTX 9x0M. Yesterday I've got another 980M (this time an MSI one), installed it into the laptop in pair with GTX780M. The card works stable.

 

 

19 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Same guy is running GP106 in M17xR3 (same gen as M18xR1) in Optimus mode as well:

My M18X with installed P106M in the primary slot can't pass POST. I don't think the regular Pascal cards will work, but it needs checking.

 

 

19 hours ago, ssj92 said:

this guy is running nVidia Optimus mode with Tesla M6 which is basically 980M

Interesting. Hmm... My version is that his laptop has M18X R2 motherboard inside, but uses the case from R1. However, if this guy is really managed to run Optimus on R1 - it's cool.

 

19 hours ago, ssj92 said:

I decided to put RTX 3000 in primary slot and run SG mode

I don't have such new cards, so I can't check it. But... it was able to boot after enabling SG mode and running the card?! My laptop can't pass POST with any of my cards. Did you enable UEFI boot? And what if you try this trick with your GTX 980M?

Edited July 22 by TheSin
correct typo

[ssj92]

2 hours ago, TheSin said:

This IS a good workaround for people who want more performance from their M18xR1 - at least if we talk about GTX 9x0M. Yesterday I've got another 980M (this time an MSI one), installed it into the laptop in pair with GTX780M. The card works stable.

 

 

My M18X with installed P106M in the primary slot can't pass POST. I don't think the regular Pascal cards will work, but it needs checking.

 

 

Interesting. Hmm... My version is the laptop has M18X R2 motherboard inside, but uses the case from R1. However, if this guy is really managed to run Optimus on R1 - it's cool.

 

I don't have such new cards, so I can't check it. But... it was able to boot after enabling SG mode and running the card?! My laptop can't pass POST with any of my cards. Did you enable UEFI boot? And what if you try this trick with your GTX 980M?

 

If you have M18xR2 MB, you should be able to run everything even rtx 3000 in SG mode no problem. Did you flash M18xR1 bios onto M18xR2 MB? Maybe that's why you are having weird issues. We are using M18xR1 with original MB. 

 

 

I'm running SG mode. The card is recognized in bios and in windows and driver installs. However, I am unable to use the rtx 3000 for any rendering so far. Not sure why. 

 

I believe 980M will work like this too, maybe I'll give that a try.

 

I did not turn on UEFI boot, it's still off. All I did was turn on SG mode with 880M, then swap it out for rtx 3000. 

 

Is it possible for the laptop to work properly like this if everything is recognized in windows? Or do I need to do some sort of hardware mod as well? I guess the fact that the guy on eBay has M17xR3 & M18xR1 running SG mode with GP106 & Tesla M6 tells me there is some hope. Just need to figure out why I am getting DirectX errors on 3dmark and super position. 

 

In super position, it keeps trying to use the intel hd 3000. I believe this may be happening for everything. Explains the dx11 error since hd 3000 is dx10.1 but no idea how to get around this. 

 

I tried PEG with rtx 3000 now I just have black screen, no beeps, no post, so will try SG again. 

[TheSin]

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

If you have M18xR2 MB, you should be able to run everything even rtx 3000 in SG mode no problem

My M18x has stock R1 motherboard. I assumed that the guy from Ebay may have a hybrid of R1 and R2.

 

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Or do I need to do some sort of hardware mod as well

I think you have some driver issue. Perhaps a different driver version or reinstalling the system from scratch will solve the problem

 

 

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

but no idea how to get around this. 

What if disable HD3000 in Device manager?

 

 

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

I tried PEG with rtx 3000 now I just have black screen, no beeps, no post, so will try SG again.

PEG obviously won't work with RTX3000. However it's strange there are no beeps.

[ssj92]

1 hour ago, TheSin said:

My M18x has stock R1 motherboard. I assumed that the guy from Ebay may have a hybrid of R1 and R2.

 

I think you have some driver issue. Perhaps a different driver version or reinstalling the system from scratch will solve the problem

 

 

What if disable HD3000 in Device manager?

 

 

PEG obviously won't work with RTX3000. However it's strange there are no beeps.

Disabling hd 3000 makes RTX 3000 work in GPU-z render test. However , the performance is very bad. In superposition I was getting like 6-7fps on 1080p medium. I tried old driver and same issue. So you got 980M working in SG mode? 
 

that guy on eBay has native r1 mb. I talked to him. He said only dx11 works with gp106 and tesla m6. Dx12 isn’t working. But his GPUs do render fine. 
 

he said he uses an older driver. 426 is the last one that supported hd 3000 he said so maybe I’ll try an older GPU. 

[TheSin]

11 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Disabling hd 3000 makes RTX 3000 work in GPU-z render test.

This proves you have a driver issue. I tried to pair 980M with Radeon HD6990M in the primary slot, and got the same result as you with HD3000 and RTX card - drivers are installed, but renders only the primary card. It seems the drivers are too old.

 

12 hours ago, ssj92 said:

So you got 980M working in SG mode? 

No. I performed the following steps:

1) Reset BIOS settings by pulling the CMOS battery out

2) Installed GTX 780M, powered on the laptop and switched the "Primary display" setting in the Advanced tab to 'SG'

3) Saved the settings and rebooted the laptop; it stucked on the Alien head screen

4) Replaced GTX 780M with GTX 980M... and got a cyclic reboot after the Alien head logo appeared.

 

 

[ssj92]

1 hour ago, TheSin said:

This proves you have a driver issue. I tried to pair 980M with Radeon HD6990M in the primary slot, and got the same result as you with HD3000 and RTX card - drivers are installed, but renders only the primary card. It seems the drivers are too old.

 

No. I performed the following steps:

1) Reset BIOS settings by pulling the CMOS battery out

2) Installed GTX 780M, powered on the laptop and switched the "Primary display" setting in the Advanced tab to 'SG'

3) Saved the settings and rebooted the laptop; it stucked on the Alien head screen

4) Replaced GTX 780M with GTX 980M... and got a cyclic reboot after the Alien head logo appeared.

 

 

Did you try the registry edit I posted above? For 6990M plus 980M combo?

 

I'll try 980M with older 426.XX driver and see what happens. Your 780M should boot fine in SG mode so it seems you have weird issue. 

 

You can try registry mod for 6990M + 980M combo and then in windows settings choose 980M for high performance. I had same issue with 880M + RTX 3000 before I did registry mod. And also try 426.XX driver or older and see if that helps too. 

 

Seems like the 880M + RTX 3000 combo will be best for me at this rate, if I can fix the 55w tdp bug. 

[TheSin]

7 hours ago, ssj92 said:

You can try registry mod for 6990M + 980M combo and then in windows settings choose 980M for high performance

I am able to select 980M as a high-performance GPU, but in any case, all rendering tasks are performed by the HD6990M - exact as in your case with HD3000. After disabling the HD6990M in the device manager, the 980M starts to render, but with very low performance. This seems to be a driver issue.

 

8 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Your 780M should boot fine in SG mode so it seems you have weird issue. 

Probably BIOS\VBIOS combination is the reason? I could flash your BIOS version and check if something is changed.