Alienware m17xr3 and m290x

hello, i recently bought m290x for my alienware m17xr3. but i cannot get it to work.
i have unlocked a12 bios and set to peg in bios as the 7970m install guide.
when trying to start the laptop i get 8 beeps. my old video works fine, but i cant start this m290x.

any ideas? is it compatible or the problem is something else?

thanks in advance

 

Hi, just throwing this out there, hopefully someone knows better!

I wonder if it's the same issue the R3 has with 9xx NV cards? They need a UEFI compatible bios to POST (or POST on the Intel instead). The R4 bios was updated but not the R3.

Hope it can be made to work .

 

I've seen some user on Techinferno getting it to work but not without problems (fan controls not functioning). Though it should boot up fine

 

This is entirely possible, with Micro$haft pushing all of the OEMs to use UEFI as a condition of receiving WHQL certification, (not to mention the fees they collect for giving their blessing,) in order to usurp control over things like what OS will boot and ultimately dictate what end users can do with their personal property. Sooner or later this will adversely affect all of us in multiple ways, including blocking hardware upgrades that require driver mods because the use of unsigned drivers will be completely blocked, and by forcing the use of Graphics Output Protocol (GOP) without any provisions for VGA support.

Not being able to upgrade the M17xR3 and M18xR1 past Kepler is merely a symptom of where we are all headed with UEFI Class 3.

If the AMD GPU in question has a newer vBIOS firmware that does not provide VGA boot support that is compatible the InsydeH20 flavor of a Legacy/VGA-only system BIOS it will not be able to boot. If an older vBIOS is available that provides Legacy/VGA support, that might be the solution. Even so, he may not be able to flash it unless it is installed in another machine.

 

@Mr. Fox Well, I find that thoroughly depressing . Thanks for the info though, the writing on the wall is now becoming a stone tablet (sic).

Seems M$ are determined to turn the PC into a commodity for the general public, this is killing innovation, sad, so sad...

 

As the seller for the card in question, as far as I am aware, the batch it was sourced from should not require UEFI, as a similar card was successfully used plug'n'play inside an M17X R2 machine a couple weeks ago. I hope it may merely require a power drain, otherwise I will refund stelxz if the card is not of use to him.
It would be helpful if the card could be tested in another compatible machine, to figure out if it arrived DoA or it's an incompatibility issue.