NEED HELP: M17x r4 8970M installation problems

Hi all,

My r4 went through its 3rd faulty 7970M and this time I was out of warranty so I decided to go cheap and bought a Dell 8970M hoping it might be a more reliable card. Unfortunately there are not many instructions/details on forums about this card but people have reported it to work. Anyways, I followed the basic instructions when it comes to replacing GPUs (wiped old drivers, installed new ones after replacing card). After installing the newest AMD drivers I attempted to use the 'Fn F7' to switch from my intel graphics over to the 8970M.

At first the PC booted up fine and was able reach my home screen but I'm still having difficulties trying to get this card to work. Whenever I plug my power cord in the PC crashes to a blank screen and on battery there are inconsistent crashes that lead to major graphical distortions which require a reboot. The computer is recognizing the card in HWinfo, GPU-Z and in Windows devices. I'm relatively new to the software side of installing these things so when people talk about vBIOS and "unlocked bios" or "flashing" I don't really know what any of it means. I'm using the Dell A12 Bios currently and I'm assuming it's "locked" since I don't have many of the options in my Bios that people talk about (PEG, iGPU).

I dropped a decent penny on this card and now am in way over my head, so if anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it.