Did Dell Accidently Give me a free 5870!?!

I just received my refurbished m17x in the mail. Upon opening it up and messing around, I noticed the ATI Control Center open up to the Crossfire customization page. From there I can click the box to "Enable CrossfireX".

I looked in the components (I am new to Windows after a long haitus) and under devices, then hardware tab, I get two listings for a Radeon 5870. One says "PCI Bus 2", the other says "PCI Bus 3"

What's going on? Am I a moron?

Also under the devices is literally like 8 listings of my processor. Is this normal?

I am worried because IE is flickering, and my mouse cursor is not smooth as it scrolls along the screen. It is jaggy. Is this a driver issue?

Help!

 

Looks like you have a 5870 setup, if you only paid for a single GPU, than I wouldn't complain. Lucky you! The 8 CPU listings is because you ahve a quad core cpu, and because the core-i cpu supports hyperthreading, it lists one cpu for each thread. As far as the otherstuff, I'm not sure on

 

What were the spec's of the one you ordered and the specs of this one? Run the service tag number on the Dell support page and it will tell you everything. Before you download any drivers you need to know exactly what you have so you dont mess things up. The mouse may just be a driver issue.

 

Okay. So I installed the latest catalyst drivers from ATI's site, 10.6. I closed my laptop, and then when I opened it the screen was black.

I had to do a hard reboot, and now, it will start to load windows, but then screen goes completely black. What gives?

 

10.6 isn't compatible with 5870 Crossfire at the moment. There are work arounds but I believe it's not stable. We need to wait until AMD releases 10.7.

 

Update: I checked the system tag info on Dells site. This is what came up:

Module, Card, Graphics, 5870, Parker, DUAL, Mid-Life Kicker

There is nothing else regarding the video card.

I ordered this as a refurb with a single 5870. Did I luck out with TWO??

 

money wise ya.. but some units have issues with the drivers. Seems your best bet is the Dell drivers. There are some posts about it on the Forums.

 

Nice score, though if something ever goes wrong with the second card I doubt dell would fix it.

 

A guy with an M15x also got a "free" 5870. He ordered a 5850, and he received 5850. Maybe they're overstocked with 5870s?

 

Well, it's official. I received a free 5870 from Dell, so now I have crossfire. It's been a bad week for me too, I feel like I got a little luck thrown my way here at the end.

I am surprised.... It is a refurbished system. When I was searching for one on Dell's Outlet store, I didn't see a single m17x with Dual 5870's, even at the upper price brackets. I nabbed this one for $1,600 with the 15% off coupon. Here's the sloppy breakdown of the specs:

i7 820
4 gig ram
500 gig HD
Single 5870 (now crossfire, apparently)
LED screen
Intel Wireless Card.

 

Nice grab pat on the back for you!

 

Interesting, because there haven't been ANY crossfire 5870 setups in the Outlet. Apparently, they have some! How is the condition? Does it look like a brand new system, or are there signs of use??

Also, for some reason, Dell has taken down all the i-series M17xR2
s from the Outlet for over two days now. All that is there is Core2 units. There were over a hundred (I check multiple times a day) and then, they were all suddenly gone. I thought they might be back, but now I'm not sure when...

 

I know, I never saw any either. This one was not listed as a dual, but it definitely is. Ran GPU-Z and it totally confirmed it.

Also, I know what you mean by the fact that there were about 170+ on the outlet store, then magically down to only about 40, all core 2 units. This happened on Thursday, in the early afternoon - I was checking throughout the day because I thought I might get another. I think I know why this happened: There was a 15% coupon, and I am sure everyone was using it. I think Dell got wise to the fact that they were losing more money than they needed to on the deal, or at least figured they could sell the newer systems after the deal expired. I'm sure they just put up all the older systems, most with the 260M's so they could offload those, then put back all the ones with the newer components after the deal is over. Shady, sure, but its what I have come to expect from Dell.

Luckily I was able to get one before Dell pulled them from inventory.

As for the condition, it is absolutely perfect except one small nick, about 1x1 cm. It is really that small. It is on the right side by the lit up grill on the base. It's not noticeable unless you are pouring over it for imperfections like I was when I received it!

 

Yes, I've been on a buying spree for M17x's at the Outlet over the past couple of weeks, and sometimes find some really good buys that help me make extra $$$ (to subsidize my own M17x!!), and in fact, the current coupon is 20%. But, they've had a m17x-specific 20% coupon for almost 2 weeks now, almost like they really want to clear out inventory of the m17x.

If they felt they were getting a raw deal, they could just terminate the coupon code and do a new one to exclude the i7-series.

Who knows. I hope they put them back soon. Just before they went away, I scored an i5-540 RGBLED 4870 Crossfire for about $1200. Seemed decent for all that goodness!

 

Where does everyone get these coupons for 20% and 15%? I can never seem to find any dell coupons.

 

I bought my M17 for usd2,300... and has lower specs than you, you even got a free 5870... congrats, lucky u, not so lucky me....sigh... where's my luck?

 

yeah, nice setup. congratz on the grab!

 

Either sign up at Dell.com (Home & Home Office Section AND Small Business Section), or also keep an eye at Dell Outlet's Twitter site. They frequently have coupon codes.

 

Nice find. If you want hard physical evidence, I'd shine a flashlight up through the fans. If you see a red card, thats the GPU. Nice price on a great system!

 

Really? Wouldn't that be the same if it were Xfire or not? I did this and saw a red card. Is that the spot for the second 5870?

 

Look through both fans. If you have one card, than you'll only see the red card on one side(left side). And if you only have one card, you will only have one fan and one heatsink. It will be on the left side of the laptop near the `123 keys. If there is only one, then you won't see the red card on the other side and there wont be a fan there. Red on both sides=two GPU

 

Hi...
But i have installed the 10.6 catalyst...
and nothing goes wrong with my laptops...
I'm using crossfire dual 1 gb ATI RADEON HD 5870...
and i'm playing Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2...???
And i using i7-920xm...

 

Hmm.. Guess you are one of the few people that bypassed 10.6. There were only 2 or 3 people here that have installed 10.6 without a problem. Rest of us is stuck with 10.5 as 10.6 was giving us BSOD and black screens when loading up games.

 

Wow...
Thanks...
Glad to hear that...

yeah, i download ati catalist 10.6 from ATI AMD Web..
and i download the catalyst profile 10.6
and i installed both driver...
and its working fine...
i play Call of Duty modern warfare...
and no problem...

ow yeah, one things...
i cant use full screen to play call of duty...
I mean, i cant play the games with the whole screen...
and i try to find the video setting in the games...
and the modern warfare doesn't let me play full screen (the whole screen)
is this normal ???
can somebody explain it ?