5870M Crossfire Cable... 2 different types?

I bought a new 5870M for my M17X R2 along with the other things for the upgrade to crossfire ( 240w PS, slave heatsink, fan, etc.) now on the cable i noticed that the two cards have different cable requirements it seems. Are the two ends of the crossfire cable different? I would think not but they definitely are different. Has anyone seen this kind of plug in for crossfire for the green 5870 or did i buy a worthless card?

 

Howdy newbie. Welcome to the forums, where the breadth of our collective knowledge will put any overseas phone support rep to shame.

As for your issue, that green card doesn't seem right. Maybe it's an older revision (or different vendor version) of the 5870m or a different model GPU on the MXM card. Have you installed the green card and installed the drivers to verify it's a 5870m and that it works properly. That would be step one. Step two would be to download the GPU-z utility and see what subvendor it says the card comes from. I'd be shocked if it was Dell. The red card is what my 5870m looks like.

 

I figured it out after some more research. The card seems to be pulled from a Clevo x8100 that is why the crossfire cable hook up is different. The card is definitely a 5870M and MXM 3.0 so it will work in the Alienware if I run it as master. Cannot hook the two up in crossfire since the are from different manufactures and the crossfire interface is different though.

Thanks for the reply and I am sure I will be posting more in the future this is a great site.

 

Can't you just flash the dell vbios over to the clevo card? I want somebody else to ring in before you try anything, but I don't see why not.

 

It's the physical Crossfire connector on the green card which is different than the one on the red card. The one on the green card is wider than the one on the red card.

 

This is definitely true. On the older Alienware models (R1-R2) the video cards xFire feature is a lot more complex for setup and needs to have the exact parts provided. If you need a DELL card send us an e-mail to [email protected] and we'll be able to help.

 

Ok, so I have two of the green cards.

Does anyone have any idea where to get the crossfire cable for those?

Edit:
I found this, a Clevo x7200 replacement xfire cable
...but I also found on other forums information saying this cable is too short to be used in m17x. From what others say, the red cards can successfully crossfire in other laptops, but the green cards are unable to do so in the M17x due to the design. I have no idea where I could get a longer cable.

This was on ebay, is this the one for the Dell cards?

I have a feeling I wasted a lot of money. Might have two 5870s going up for sale if I can't find a solution.

 

What is the subvendor? Clevo? You can possibly find out the subvendor with GPU-z. But if the seller flashed a different BIOS on the cards, then it may not show the subvendor. Another place you can try is mxm upgrade. Send the a photo of the green card compared to the red card and ask if they have or know which crossfire cable the green card takes.

 

The cards are still on there way to my apartment from the seller, I'll do that when I get them. I've been googling around like an idiot for a couple hours now trying to track down the crossfire cables from every laptop the 5870 combo was available. Not too much luck sadly.

 

Like I said. Hit up MXM upgrade. Even if they don't have what your looking for, they should know WHAT you need.