GTX 970M installation, and thermal pad concerns.

[Jibb]

Hello! I am getting a GTX 970M in the mail next month, and was hoping to upgrade my current GPU in my Alienware M17xR4 (660M) to the newer 970M. I have a couple questions as to how I am going to make this work properly though, as I have read threads around the internet say that the 900 series cards were made compatible with the M17xR4 BOIS and Nvidia Drivers a while back, and threads that state a modded BIOS and config file is necessary. So what gives? Additionally, what would be the correct thermal pad width, and placement on a 970M card? I am assuming the card won't ship with new pads, however I may be wrong. Thanks for the help!

[Bombastinator]

51 minutes ago, Jibb said:

Hello! I am getting a GTX 970M in the mail next month, and was hoping to upgrade my current GPU in my Alienware M17xR4 (660M) to the newer 970M. I have a couple questions as to how I am going to make this work properly though, as I have read threads around the internet say that the 900 series cards were made compatible with the M17xR4 BOIS and Nvidia Drivers a while back, and threads that state a modded BIOS and config file is necessary. So what gives? Additionally, what would be the correct thermal pad width, and placement on a 970M card? I am assuming the card won't ship with new pads, however I may be wrong. Thanks for the help!

I had big problems with a gigabyte windforce gtx970 g1 when I updated from 8.1 to 10.  They were so bad I bought a 580 to solve the problem.

 

This modded bios and config file is new information for me.  I am very interested in what you know about this.  If I can get my 970 working I can take this 580 back.  I was hoping to subsist on the 970 until I found out more about the console games.

[Jibb]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

I had big problems with a gigabyte windforce gtx970 g1 when I updated from 8.1 to 10.  They were so bad I bought a 580 to solve the problem.

 

This modded bios and config file is new information for me.  I am very interested in what you know about this.  If I can get my 970 working I can take this 580 back.  I was hoping to subsist on the 970 until I found out more about the console games.

Yeah i'll have to keep you posted here. I am also on the Alien Owners forum, where they have some more extensive experience in regards to the matter if you'd rather get a larger idea of what is supposedly required to make the switch to a 970M: https://www.alienowners.com/threads/looking-to-make-an-upgrade-to-the-gtx-970m-card-in-my-old-alienware-m17xr4.8102/ , here I am asking for help on that forum, and one member seems particularly knowledgeable about the subject. Essentially what seems to be the main issue with using these newer series Nvidia cards, is that Nvidia never REALLY built in driver and BIOS support for them, despite the fact they are working with the same memory ports, and share allot of identical architecture. So what ends up happening is that the BIOS either A) refuses to detect a card is inserted if it's a modern GPU, or B) it detects it, but drivers for the card specific to your computer don't exist properly. Or C) All of the above. So the supposed remedy for these situations can vary based on the result you get from your computer with the card inserted. If the Bios detects it, but cant install the right non-existent drivers, you have to manually install modded drivers yourself online. If Bios doesn't detect the card AT ALL, well, then you're looking into unlocking you BIOS which is a whole other thing. So yeah. . . upgrading to 900+ series cards can either be a smooth transition with only the need to download custom drivers, or a trainwreck where you are modding the core OS of your computer to even acknowledged the fact the card exists apparently. But you know about as much as I do really.

 

Note: I am looking to install the 970M 6GB version, which may vary from what you are dealing with.

[Bombastinator]

Yeah, looks like a driver issue for me.  The OS was literally turning off the monitor in the middle of boot.  I could get to bios fine, I could run some other OSes fine, but if I used an OS that pulled Nvidia drivers off went the monitor.  I did manage to find some drivers from 2017 on the manufacturers site and I could load them, but then win10 would update them and bang, same problem.

 

it is a different card.  It’s not an “m” it’s a regular ol Gtx970 desktop card.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Bombastinator
Addendum

[Jibb]

On 12/19/2019 at 8:22 PM, Bombastinator said:

Yeah, looks like a driver issue for me.  The OS was literally turning off the monitor in the middle of boot.  I could get to bios fine, I could run some other OSes fine, but if I used an OS that pulled Nvidia drivers off went the monitor.  I did manage to find some drivers from 2017 on the manufacturers site and I could load them, but then win10 would update them and bang, same problem.

 

it is a different card.  It’s not an “m” it’s a regular ol Gtx970 desktop card.

I come baring hope for you, hopefully. I got my card yesterday in the mail, and after 7 arduous hours of screwing with the thing (I counted lol), I got games running on the new 970M 6gb out of my Alienware M17xR4. I ended up taking a totally different route than using modded drivers, and by happenstance - it worked out in my situation. Let me walk you through how I pulled it off in a step by step walk through of what worked:

 

1 ) I shut down my PC

 

2 ) Ripped it apart after grounding myself out, and modded the card in. I say 'modded', because I had to do some tinkering with the heat-sink from the 660M to get it to fit the 970M, so hopefully (Fingers crossed) the thermals hold up. So far - I am holding about 50-70C at medium operation which isnt TO bad.

 

3 ) From there, I put everything back together, and booted the computer up.

 

4 ) I was stupid and missed the BIOS button and it tried going to windows (10 x64), and crashed. Windows said something akin to: "Something went wrong, we will now compile a error report and restart the computer."

 

5 ) I hit 'Ok' and it restarted.

 

6 ) I hit F12 in time this go, and took a look to see if BIOS was picking anything up under Display Adapters, and in fact, a 'Nvidia GFX' card was detected under graphics adapter 1 which was a breath of relief.

 

7 ) I entered windows and got to the Home screen, which wasn't a MASSIVE surprise as I have Auxiliary Integrated Intel Graphics hardwired into the Motherboard in the event my Secondary GPU fails.

 

8 ) I went to the 'Device Manager' application in the Windows Start Menu search bar to see if Windows was noticing the card properly. It wasn't.

 

9 ) Under 'Display Adapters' I could see that my Intel Graphics (Integrated) were there, but under that was a "Windows Basic Display Adapter" device, which I assumed was the miss-labeled 970M.

 

10 ) I went to the 'Properties' tab for the Windows Basic Display Adapter, and hit the 'Drivers' tab, followed by the 'Update Drivers' Tab, followed by the 'Automatically find the best drivers' tab. 

 

11 ) Somehow windows found an older 2015 driver for my card, and installed it. I returned to the Display Adapters tab in the Device manager to now see that my Nvidia Geforce 970M card was listed loud and proud under the Intel Graphics.

 

12 ) Now, for the ghetto 'Not so sure how this works, but it's working sorta' part. From here: Nothing happened. No games would even use the card. What I ended up having to do was go inside the Nvidia Control Panel through a right click on the Desktop (It came automatically with the Drivers Windows downloaded, and any other version online would not even open), and entered the '3D settings' tab, and set the the Global Preference to 'High Performance Graphics Processor', before hitting 'Apply' and exiting out.

 

12.5 ) Still, nothing happened. The odd fix, was to go into the 'Graphics settings' under the Windows Start menu, hit the 'Classic App' option, then the 'Browse' tab and locate each game I wanted to play's executable (.exe, Application, ect), and hit 'Open', which would add it to the windows App list. From there, I would hit the 'Options' tab, and switch it to 'High Performance' under the 'Graphics Proccesor' section provided, then hit the 'Save' button.

 

13 ) Done. I did this for every game in my Library, and somehow, they are both detecting, and now using the 970M card for their graphics processing. 

 

I can't say whether or not this will work for an OG 970 PC card, but for me, with a Laptop - this works. I am sort of limited to only this driver, as no matter how many different Nvidia drivers I got off their site - none of them worked. Only the one Windows somehow found for me functioned. Will it be a little tedious manually adding each new game I want to play to the Windows Graphics setting's App section? Maybe a little, but the pay off is a new graphics card that proforms about 75% better than the 660M which is well worth it in my case. 

 

I wish you luck! Maybe this will help you in the future.