Installed 8970M into M17x R3, 8-Beep error code when selecting PEG.

Hey, hoping one of you awesome guys can help me out here. The 6990m I had previously died, so, I decided to upgrade to the 8970m. Installation was fairly straight forward, I'm pretty sure I didn't screw anything up there. However, whenever I try and choose PEG as my primary dispaly in BIOS (a08 unlocked) I get the 8-beep error code and no boot. Fixing this requires resetting CMOS.

- This is on a fresh install of windows 8, no Dell or AMD drivers installed yet.
- Have re-seated the card twice.
- Having to run on integrated Intel display
- GPU-Z or Device Manager can not find card.

Should I go ahead and try to install an AMD driver? If so, which one is known to work the best with the M17x R3 and 8970m?

This is quite a bummer, as I was looking forward to the increased power from this card. Really don't want to have to send it back, unless its somehow damaged of course. I've tried everything I can think off and would love some help for this issue. If I missed providing any important information please let me know.

 

Hi,

It sounds like a vBIOS issue.. You need to dig out the correct one from somewhere here on techinferno.. Alternatively contact someone like Eurocom and ask them for any vBIOS's they have... Look on techinferno too..

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-mobility-7970-m17x-r3-illustrated-guide.html.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-17-m17x/731752-ati-8970m-going-into-m17-r3-2.html

Also check this thread: M15x with AMD 8970m - Page 5

There's some info on the last post with how the guy found a vBIOS on Techpowerup vBIOS collection.. Do you know anything about what your 8970M is? Is it a Clevo, MSI, Dell card? vRAM is 2GB or 4GB?

 

I'll see if I can find the correct Vbios, I've read that version BR44964.009 has gotten the card to work in a few M17's. Problem is these things seem kind of difficult to track down. Google doesn't help at all, I will check Techpowerup like you suggest.

Also, this is the full description of the card, ATI Radeon HD 8970M 4GB MXM 3.0 VGA video card CLEVO P15xEM/P17xEM/P37xEM/P37xSM


Edit: Found the Vbios collection, now it seems I can't actually flash because the computer doesn't see the card installed.

 

May be you should ask the seller to do a vbios flash for that card.
Or if you have another laptop which can take clevo card use that to flash the vbios.
I do have a Spi programmer , if you remove the vbios chip and ship me , I can have it flashed to the vbios you want . It's so easy to do it with Spi programmer.

 

Any updates?