I just tried toggling, you got my hopes up with that! Still a completely blank screen even with monitor. It's frustrating, I can hear vista boot up and I can even blindly log in. I wonder if the author of this thread used the stock
powersupply? I give up. Thought it would be easy to emulate his results.

My experience with the m9700, 7900 GS and 7950 GTX.

First of all, to address the issue of daughter and parent cards. The Daughter card is the Master. Goes in the slot next to the CPU and works if there is nothing wrong with your notebook or the way you installed it. The Parent is the Slave. Goes in the slot away from the CPU and is needed for SLI. This does not make sense but it is how it works.

Performance with the 7950 GTX is not as good as 7900 GSes in SLI mode. 7950 GTX in SLI mode is worse than a single 7950 GTX in standalone.

I have been using the following driver from http://tweakforce.com/ XG_Mobile_177.92_XP_32bit.exe.

I am going to try different drivers to see if I can get better performance.

If anyone has any advice please let me know. I would really like to up the performance on my m9700.

I have been testing the m9700 with the 7900GS and 7950GTX in single and SLI modes. I have come to a few conclusions. 1) The 7950GTX runs too hot for the m9700 in single and especially SLI mode; 2) The 7900GS in SLI mode outperforms the 7950GTX in single or SLI mode and 3) The 7950 GTX in SLI mode draws more power than the system can provide, which is probably why the system performs so poorly in SLI mode.

When I was running the m9700 with a single 7950GTX (3DMark06 4815) its performance was almost 500 points lower than the system with two 7900GSes in SLI mode (3DMark06 5298). The best 3DMark06 score of 4815 from the m9700 with a single 7950GTX was with the driver XG_Mobile_177.92_XP_32bit.exe from http://tweakforce.com/. I could not find that driver anymore but they have a newer one XTreme-G_182.06m_XP_32bit.exe that gave a score of 4810. This is an insignificant difference in my opinion. With the 191.56 driver from www.laptopvideo2go.com the best 3DMark06 score from the m9700 and a single 9750GTX was 4708.

The m9700 with 7950GTXes in SLI mode was abysmal. The best 3dMark score I had was 3467. This was 2 points better than a single 7900GS (3DMark06 3462). Even worse were the heat issues with the two 7950GTXes. The temperatures were 71 and 72 degrees Celsius. That is 10 to 12 degrees higher than the 7900GSes. This is just asking for overheating problems. Also, the power draw was higher than the PSU could supply. The battery could not charge with the draw from the 2 7950GTX cards. I have read the heat sink and fan from the m97590 will not work in the m9700.The other issue is getting more power to the cards. Not sure if the PSU from the m9750 would work in the m9700 but maybe it could.

The biggest issue was the heat. When running with a single 7950GTX the GPU was 60 degrees Celsius. This would not seem like an issue when knowing that the GPU temps of the two 7900GSes in SLI mode were 59 and 61 degrees Celsius, respectively. However, when I took the machine away from the laptops cooler and played a game the system fan came on at high speed and the laptop shutdown within 10 minutes of starting the game. This has never happened with the machine using the 7900GSes in SLI mode. The system did not shutdown with the 7950GTX from overheating when using the laptop cooler. To me this does not matter since the performance for the 7950GTX did not get the same performance as the 7900GSes in SLI mode.

It is not all negative news for the 7950GTX though. A single 7950GTX (3DMark06 4815) far outperformed a single 7900GS (3DMark06 3462). So if you have a single 7900GS, and cannot find another one, then getting a single 7950GTX would improve your performance greatly. Be sure you buy the daughter card if you get a single 7950GTX since that is the Master/Primary card. Please take measures to keep your system cool though. When playing games it will be mandatory to have a cooler for your laptop. Might need it for playing DVD’s but I did not test that scenario. When doing other tasks that do not require lots of GPU processing than a laptop cooler will probably not be necessary.

Pictures
http://img243.imageshack.us/i/7900gssli.jpg/
http://img4.imageshack.us/i/7950gtxsingle.jpg/
http://img148.imageshack.us/i/7950gtxsli.jpg/

3DMark06 Benchmarks (Idle Temps Celsius)
7900GS-SLI: 5298 (59/61)
7950GTX-Single: 4815 (60)
7900GTX-SLI: 3467 (71/72)
7900GS-Single: 3462 (N/A)

System
Alienware M9700
2x 7900GS in SLI mode
Windows XP Service Pack 3
100MB 7200 rpm HD