M17x r2 cf5870 wont boot

From what I can infer, the problem has only affected machines where people have upgraded to dual 5870s themselves. They have ordered either both cards, or just the secondary, from parts stock. That contained incorrect cards in the secondary stock, which was the cause of the problem.

I'd assume that all laptops coming from the factory will have some sort of basic testing done, and they will replace the guts if the system does not immediately boot.

 

Ah secondary stock. Cheers That should be okay. I have a few friends and family ordering the notebook now. I was looking into it myself as well.
Cheers.

 

Sorry, I should have been more clear. This does not affect new systems shipping from the factory. This is service and spare parts stock only. We're working to get A01 parts into these hubs ASAP.

Thx.

 

Oh, Thanks Brian for getting back to me. That's good to know. Cheers.

 

The 4870's that were sent to me were both A00 cards. I can boot with any bios on these. Is it the REV# were looking for? Can someone post a pic of what were looking for? Both my 5870's and 4870's both cards say A00, so I must not be seeing the correct number.

 

hi,

im from australia, just got the 2 pieces of 5870, technician from dell came over to install the card. The system was not able to boot and he said my cards were stuffed. Seems Dell over in this region has no idea that this problem is going on, Is there a fix for this without having to go through with dell technical support again ??
Can i boot my system in A02 and install the new beta drivers which include the vbios update. Does that fix the master , slave issue ?

thanks !

 

yes.. run the system without the secondary card and wait for erawneila to update this thread with confirmation of a fix, or depot the system and wait another month or two for a replacement system.

4870 cards are not affected.

it's the green sticker on the back of the card, cant miss it.

 

Cards are en route now! Current ETA is early next week. I'll keep you posted.

 

cool !! any idea when or is it ever coming to oceania ?
how physically different are the cards anyway ?
are we talking about RV546 A01 ? is this the slave card ?
do we have to replace the master card at all ?

thanks !

 

How do you Flash the gpu bios on the second card to SLAVE not master. +1 Rep

 

Well dont do it, it wont work, if you read further, there are also physical issues in the slave card that doesnt allow it to work with a05 and above. So we will need to wait for revision A01 of the card

 

You will have to find one of the walk through threads that explains it. But plenty of people have done it to 'lock in' over clocks on their cards. Instead you'll just be writing the slave bios to one of the two masters, make sure you only slave the 2ndardy card. System probably wont boot with two slaves.

 

so in lieu of reading through the countless 5870 threads, did the new vbios fix the problems?

 

yup.. it seems our prayers really have been answered.

 

not for me, new bios didnt help with anything... guess i need to wait for the a01 cards

 

the vbios fixes the problem with the drivers. It will *not* fix the cf no boot. Only A01 cards will fix that problem.

 

i do apologize, i thought we were discussing the no boot issue

 

The cards are en route now (from China). Any day now... I'll post here as soon as I have confirmation that they are in the service hub.

 

any idea when will australia / asia pacific get them ? haha

 

does, late this week sound about right? In any case, that sounds great. Thanks.

 

The A01 cards are slightly different (hardware wise) than the A00 cards. There are no performance improvements as a result of this change though.

 

Good news - the A01 slave cards have arrived! If you are having the no boot issue due to dual A00 cards, please call support and have them send you an A01 card!

Thanks.

 

hi, i need further clarification as i am in australia and dell here does not know anything about this. So the new card i need is RV546 A01 ??? so i need to replace the master card as well ?

 

Brian, are the A01 cards supposed to acutally say A01 on the stickers on the backside of the card?
I've sent my laptop to depot and it came back with a A00 slave card, and the card Dell just sent out to me says A00 as well.

 

Do you still have a problem with them? I also have 2 A00 cards, but both with different serial id on the back. I think you should be good. Don't let yourself get too confused on the A00 A01 labeling, if it works.

 

No, it doesn't *really* work. They screwed up the computer is some catastrophic way at the Depot so I can't tell is going on. Have a system exchange otw though, so I'm not concerned about it anymore.

 

I'm having a blonde moment, how do I check the gpu card version?

 

GPU-z?

Is that what your looking for or something else?

It should be A00 rev if you got yours shipped new with your notebook from Dell.

There will also be stickers on the gpu cards. part number and rev numbers.

The A01 rev card is only for those who upgraded their gpus from 4870s. So they need to use an A00 and A01 rev card for the slave due to some booting issues.

eheheh blonde moments. I have them all the time eheheh
Cheers.

 

the only way is by verifiying the serial numbers on the stickers on the backside of the card