M17x R3 7970m big problems! HELP Please!

Hi,

so after returning the last 7970m that I got off Ebay that seemed at the time to be DOA, I got another 7970m but am also having troubles with this one. First the BIOS wouldn't recognize it. After resetting it and doing CMOS drain like 10 times it finally recognized it. Then when I set the BIOS to PEG and disabled the iGPU I got 8 beeps. At this time I was like, man, second 7970m I get that is dead. So I cleared the CMOS again and left it in SG mode and it booted ok. Went to GPU-Z and device manager and both recognize the 7970m (of course not as such due to no drivers being there). So I tried installing the ATI driver pack that Dell has for the R3 and R4, and it went fine but still didn't really have acsess to the 7970m. So I installed the latest driver from ATI and got a black screen. So I shut it off (forced) and when I turn it back on I got the BIOS loading screen fine, then the Windows loading screen, and then black! I could hear it had turned on but nothing. Tried connecting to a external monitor, nothing. So I force shut it down again and when I booted it up Windows offered to do start up repair. So I did and it reset to a system restore point I had made just before starting to install the drivers (oh, I did do driver sweeper) and it went fine. I then thought maybe the driver was the problem so I tried an older driver. White screen this time. So I tried the modded driver. Looked like nothing was installed except CCC which doesnt contain any of the normal menus and when I look in the device manager I see the 7900m mod driver + the standerd VGA driver foor the iGPU.
Sorry for the extra long rant but if anyone could help me I would really appreciat it! Am I an expert 7970m killer? Or are both card DOA? Or is my R3 somehow under a 7970m curse? It ran both a 6970m and 5870m fine. Or is this simply a driver problem?
Thanks

 

Sounds like a driver issue. This is my procedure:
1. Reset everything in the BIOS regarding video options, meaning SG (not iGPU or PEG)
2. Install dell drivers
3. Install catalyst 14.4 whql driver. You will lose igpu support. reboot into bios
4. Set bios option to iGPU, install intel hd 4000 drivers from intel's site. Uninstall existing intel hd 4000 drivers first though, using device manager's uninstall process
5. reboot into bios, set to SG. everything should be working.

 

The problem is I can't find a dell drive that'll work for the R3. Any idea were I can find such a driver?
Thanks

 

use the R4 dell driver not the r3

 

But when I install the dell driver in the list of things installed there is no video driver listed.

 

I'm not quite sure I understand. You downloaded the driver and it just failed to install? Make sure its a clean install, left over AMD drivers can be a nuisance.

 

Can we have a link to the driver you are using?

 

I was using the one off dell website. I contacted the selles and he said he will refund me so I'll send it back to him. I think the card was to blame because when I put the bios in peg it gave 8 beeps even after I flashed the dell vbios.
Thanks for the replies

 

Not always the case. Sometimes the BIOS likes to act up....solving the 8 beep issue requires pulling th card out, turning the computer on to revert to iGPU, the installing the 6990m/7970M and turning it back on and installing proper drivers.