Alienware m17x r2 5870 crossfire freezing problem.

Hi,
This is my first post in this forum. However I have been lurking here for a while.
Recently I bought a used Alienware m17x r2 laptop with the following spec:
Intel I-7 920 XM
2x ATI 5870 in crossfire
6 GB of RAM 1333mhz

When the crossfire active the laptop will freeze whenever I use 3Dmark vantage, Heaven benchmark, mass effect 2, or even just watching video on youtube. When I disable crossfire it run 3D mark and Heaven, however it will freeze when I play Mass effect.
I tried to flash to BIOS higher than A02 to no avail. Everytime it will give blank screen during boot up. I managed to restore the BIOS by removing the second GPU.

Have anybody encounter this problem? I did diagnosis but it said that there is no problem with the hardware, so I assume the combination of BIOS and drivers are the main culprit. Is there any solution to this problem? I tried to search on the forum but I couldn't find any similar problem.

Thank you,

b0un7yhunter

 

the bios > a02 problem had been discussed before, the problem is your slave video card. it is version A00, and the fixed cards are version A01.
In short - almost everybody have this issue, and are waiting on Dell to replace the cards to the new revision.
I can't search (on my iphone) now but just search the forum for a00 and a01 and you'll find all the details you need.
Bottom line though - stick with A02 for now..
EDIT see here for example : http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/490277-m17x-r2-cf5870-wont-boot.html

As for the hanging - this is another issue, did you check your GPUs for temperatures ? i suggest installing HWiNFO32 latest beta, and running a benchmark with the sensors window open. The temps should be under 80-90 degrees on all the sensors.
Post your results here.

 

Thank you for your response. I just removed the slave GPU and run the benchmarking tool while having HWinfo taking the temp. It seems the temperature of the GPU is quite high and the program can't monitor the GPU fan's speed. The fan was running pretty loudly during benchmarking, but HWinfo say it ran at 23RPM only...
Is it really overheating issue? however the freezing happens when I run Mass Effect 2 even when I just boot up my laptop.

I attached the jpeg image of the screen shot during benchmarking.

 

Watch the GPU fan speed under the "Alienware" sensor, not the ATI sensor which doesn't control it.

 

okay, so the fans are working. And the temperature is still within "normal" for benchmarking. Any idea what might cause the screen goes blank during playing? I use the stable version of ati driver from dell. Removing the slave GPU doesn't seems to work either.

Thank you,

b0un7yhunter

 

update your Vbios ( video card )!
before i have the same problem with all games !!!
( only ubisoft games was working well )

 

to the OP have you managed to solve the problem?

I am encountering freezes/crashes while playing every 30 damn mins, the temp of both GPUs reach max 83-84 C not more.

EDIT: have the latest VBios installed