Frustrated M17x R3 owner

Ok the situation is I bought a 6990m from upgradeyourlaptop on ebay. First I had compusa install the card but the paste they used was horrible and the temp was going up to 103C. I then bought IC Diamond from upgradeyourlaptop and new pads and installed it myself. The installation went very smooth until I turned on my computer and the computer didn't even read the 6990m. I tried to install 12.3 driver but kept getting an error during installation message and the driver wasn't even working. Also I couldn't use catalyst control either. I spent altogether 8 hrs on the phone with dell support to see if they could help me with the drivers. When I used driver sweep to uninstall all of the AMD driver components and disable the integrated gpu driver to reinstall those drivers as well my computer would turn on but the screen would go black. I know the card works in my computer because its the same model that dell sells although cheaper. I want to upgrade my gpu and right now I have a card that just a paper weight. What am I doing wrong and is there a thread that covers this sort of problem. Basically my computer is not reading the card at all which means i'm running on the integrated gpu rather than the discreet gpu right? Right now I went back to my original gpu which is the 6870 and it works fine. This is of course after I reinstalled my OS to start from scratch. But I am determined to get this damn card to work properly in my computer. PLEASE take pity on a noob like me and help.

 

Did you think that maybe your card is defective? Get a hold of upgradeyourlaptop and see if they will send out a replacement.

 

I don't think the card is defective because I worked at one point when I first had compusa install it but the paste was not good enough so the temp was getting to high

 

Perhaps it got fried then.

Have you tried reseating the card after you repasted it?

 

What do you mean reseating the card.

 

Take it out and reinsert it. Make sure you have the proper fit.

 

While you're at it, after the card is removed, clean/polish the contacts with a soft clean cloth. It's easy to pick up a little grit or paste.

 

Yes I did do that twice just to make sure its right and it is. The card is the blackcomb XTX HD Radeon 6990m which is the same one that you can purchase from dell. When the gpu was reading as a 6900m it worked fine for the 3 hours I was playing BF3 but afterwards the screen would just go black which leads me to believe its a driver issue. Also when I re-pasted the gpu I had no temp issues at all. It reached low 70's max. Thats why I don't think the card is defective. Plus I did a diagnostic and the computer read the gpu as working properly.

 

Have you tried a clean install of the Dell drivers for the 6990M (R307094)? Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]. If you can use those to restore normal operation, you can upgrade to the more recent AMD reference drivers later.

Which drivers are you using for the 6870 right now? What are you using to monitor GPU temperatures?

 

I'm using the dell drivers for the 6870m I haven't even tried to upgrade these drivers for fear of having to go through this nonsense over again. The first driver I installed for the 6990m was the dell drivers. When that didn't work I went to the AMD website. I also used the mobility driver from one of the threads on this site but that came out as installation error as well. I also need to mention that I had bought a i7 2920xm ES which I had also installed with the newest intel drivers. could that have any affect since its an ES and not a QM or OEM.

 

Those 2920xm ES's are pretty solid, so I doubt that's the problem. If the card is well seated, the Dell drivers won't work, the temps are good and the 6870M works, then I'm afraid that there's not much left to be wrong except the 6990M card itself.

 

if you got any paste on the pcb, you could have messed it up. Try reflashing your bios or even reflashing the vbios

 

What is the pcb and how do you reflash the vbios.

 

pcb is the circuit board of the gpu itself. try updating your system bios first or reflashing it. Maybe even reset the bios to defaults and power off the laptop, take off the battery, and hold the power button down for 30 seconds, then try it. vbios would be the last thing i would do. maybe do a clean install of windows, could be a software issue, eliminate all the possibilities

 

Have you tried a bios reset? Just a thought as I went through similar issues when I upgraded to my 460m. I got my motherboard replaced by dell for an entirely separate issue and the card ended up working fine. Not sure what was wrong.

 

I did a clean install of windows when I put the 6870 back into my laptop. I didn't get any past on the pcb as far as I know. I checked last night to see and there wasn't anything visible. As far as reflashing dell helped me do that when I was on support with them. Maybe it is the card but its been after 30 days so I can't return it now. I think I just threw 400 plus dollars down the toilet. I feel awesome.

 

Did you try the Fn+F7 by any chance to make the computer recognize the Video Card? Perhaps this setting got changed in the BIOS. Also you can try updating your computer's BIOS to the latest version from support.dell.com and entering your service tag, if after all this troubleshooting the computer keeps having the same behavior you should definitely get a hold on the seller's since it seems that it got wrong. #IWork4AW

 

Do you have a friend or something that could test the card and see if it works?

Sent from my Galaxy S2 using Tapatalk 2

 

I had a similiar problem when I ...it's a long story. Basically I just reinstalled windows from scratch. Problem sloved. There are guides with driver install order if you go that route.

 

Ok I got in contact with upgradeyourlaptop who sold me the card and they have agreed to take back that card just to see if it is defective. It has been over 30 days since I purchased the card so I wasn't expecting a replacement or refund but I wanted to see if the card worked for them. They told me their engineers will look at the card and if it is defective they will resolve the issue. Compared to dell these guys have great customer service. I'm just happy they will at least take a look at the card even if they don't replace it. As far as a clean install of windows I did that in order to reinstall my original GPU which was the 6870m.