*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17x-R2 Edition Owner's Lounge - Part 2

no luck for me. why everything happen to me?



this is while was trying to update dell drivers with 10.3

 

hey mfractal your screen of ccc looks different than my10.5?

 

mfractal can you upload the vbios of both of your 4870s please? i want to compare with mine ones

cant find can else may matter

 

You can still get the A02 BIOS on the Dell Support website. Here is the link: Drivers and Downloads - Public Sector - A02 BIOS

 

Aristotel, I haven't been able to install the new drivers (or any drivers other than Dell provided) on my machine either. I installed CCC from the Dell site (and all the other drivers that come with it, save the GPU driver) then use the Have-disk method to install the GPU driver through device manager. I have not tried 10.5, I am still on 10.4.

 

i might have installed the 10.5 beta by accident

gpu-z can't save the vbios - says :

is there any other way to save the vbios ?

 

ATI winflash2.0.1.11

always use this one. just select each gpu and press save. then upload the two vbios files.

 

i have all the bios files from A00 to A05. i just try to understand whats the fault before thinking of bios.

 

there you go :

Master 4870 Bios
Slave 4870 Bios

 

BIOS ver A05

Video BIOS: 011.022.006.000.034989


BTW, does anyone else have different clocks on Primary and Secondary 4870's @idle? For some reason my primary doesn't downclock itself.

 

Do they have the A03 up there as well?

 

Not here. Clocks are the same on both cards, downclock also OK. (10.4 & Bios A05) I had that problem back when I was using the beta 10.5's from strags.com

 

I haven't seen this. I'm also on A05 and 10.5 drivers. I want to give the A03 bios a try though.

 

Man, they really need to get cracking on a new BIOS (just like A05, which is my favorite so far) that fixes the fans full blast when coming back from sleep, off, and hibernate.

 

As far as iam aware they never released A03 to the public was only internal .

 

That sucks, I would have liked to have tried that one.

 

All I can find on the Dell site is A02 and A05. Unless I am mistaken, there wasn't an official release of A03/4 BIOS for the R2. I think Joker might have had a prerelease that eventually turned into the A05, but beyond that, I don't think they were ever released to the general public.

I am using A05 BIOS and 10.4 ATI drivers (which I had to install directly through the control panel) with the CCC provided by Dell. I get a little bit of micro-stutter in games and in one other game, I get a wavering/water like effect. I do believe this to be from the game not being a CrossfireX compatible game, but I am not 100% sure.

 

it seems i found a way to install the 10.5 on 4870s directly!. it may work on 5870s as well.

the way i used is complicated and i spent too much time.

if anyone wants it i made a pack containing setup files of dell but drivers from 10.5

installing includes manually running setups (for ccc, install manager, and have disk method -use inf inside folder to update ati hmdi audio driver and 4870s -maybe 5870s driver) . you have to uninstall dell drivers for ati hdmi audio and 4870s first using device manager

if anyone interested i can post it. and then a guide

here are my results



i can see catalyst control center is even newer from mfractals one.

 

Come to think of it was no A04 public release either A02 then straight to A05.

 

i have the same video bios

 

No problems downclocking i am on A05 & official 10.4.

 

My system orginally shipped with A04. I have a .bak of it if anyone would like it.

Also look back at page 209 of this thread as there was some discusion there about this version.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...n-owners-lounge-part-2-a-209.html#post6216547

 

Could you guys tell me your clocks on both cards, when idle?
I see a constant :
Primary - Processor 550MHz, Memory 875MHz
Secondary - 200MHz, 250MHz

This doesn't even change during games, and that's why I have the horrible tearing of the image. The tearing appeared 2-3 days ago alone with the stuck clocks.
Just reflashed the BIOS A05 - no effect.
Also tried re-installing drivers and power drain.
The problem started after the last dust clean-up.
I re-seated all the cards and cables 5 times for the past 2 days with zero result.
Clueless.

 

First thing I would do is try 10.4 drivers.

Btw, both cards idle at: 200MHz, 250MHz

 

you are talking about 10.5 installation? you can try my way if you wish.

 

GPU Core 250
GPU Memory Clock 200
Idle clock

 

For some reason I doubt it's a driver issue. But I'll give it a try.

BTW, thanks guys!

 

weird, how are you monitoring the clocks ?

 

i used hwinfo32 and on video adapter it says for both cards..
main processor clock :700mhz, memory clock 1000mhz
but the other card shows processor clock at 300 and memory at 400?
why is that?

 

Yeah, I figured out that Hwinfo32 doen't show the correct clocks. GPU-Z shows them fine, so my cards downclock ok
But then I have even less clues as of why the image tearing occurs in games.

 

i get some texture flicking but only in some game, like splinter cell, it cant just be the CF as farcry 2 SPlit second all work fine on cf! i think its just driver related, also how do u see both cards on gpuz?

i can see gpu clock, 7000 and memory 1000
is default clock the 2nd card?

 

at the bottom you can see a drop down box, go from the first to the second card.

 

alright maybe you guys can help me since no ones looking in the stickyed thread this seems low for my vantage score and in the other thread 3dmark06. any suggestions?

 

got it=) mines at 100 , and 150 on both! i think theres a patch for splinter sell screen flicker on some textures, ill try it and see! what games is it happening to you on?

 

Make sure that you are in high performance mode in windows under power options and also set everything to high performance in Catalyst Control Center then try it again

 

Can you run hwinfo and then the benchmark? Did you reformat your system?

 

which games are affected ?

 

one of my cards keeps going up to 700 on core clock, now and again browsing the net, is that normal?

now it makes sense when my fan goes up and down randomly it matches the GPu card it goes up to 700 then down 5secs later ever so often when browsing etc? is that normal?

 

All. this is how it looks

 

I am quite sure it's a sign of a bad slave card/cf cable. I remember a lot of machines were arriving like this from the factory on the first r2 batches. Some resolved it by reseating the cf cable, others were issued video card replacements. I even remeber joker posting videos of the flickering that was fixed by a02 bios vs this flickering. I know that you have already reseated the cards and the cf cable a couple of times, but I'd try one last time and after that call Dell for cards replacement (maybe they run out of 4870s and give u a pair of 5870s )

 

The funny thing that I had the same issue back when got this system and the secondary+CF cable were replaced. The problem was solved. Now, it's back.

 

Aikimox, you sure you aren't vying for some dual 5870XF action? I remember you hinting at it.

 

I can make a few more videos if you don't believe me. In fact, I decided not to switch to 5870's at all. My replacement will have the same specs.
If I was into the 5870's would do it when the 4870's are no more
I'm really puzzled with the issue right now.
It reappeared right after the last dust cleanup.
Is there a chance that a static charge could get to the CF connectors and create some EM interference?

 

highly impobable but I don't see any logical explanation. Makes me think twice before opening it. With cf off all is good right?

 

It's possible static discharge could've killed the cards. Were you grounded?

 

Nope As usual, I was touching a bare metal every minute while working on it. In all my 15 years of IT I never killed a card with statics and never grounded myself. But I guess there's always a first time.

With the CF disabled it works fine.
Sometimes (with CF ON) it disappears for a few min but never entirely.

 

Me neither, never bothered to ground myself and never had a problem. While in theory I understand I could kill something with static electricity I guess I am waiting for my first time to do something about it. Aikimox, could that be related to the mod of the cf cable you've done? Hard to believe, just thinking out loud...

 

I don't ground myself with a bracelet either. I just touch a metal object and continue working on a table. Well like mcfractal mentioned, your xfire cable mod could have caused problems. Who knows.

 

Hmm, could be. All I did was trying to keep the cable away from the heat pipes. I might get another CF cable just for testing purposes.
Anyway, this is very interesting. I'd very much like to get to the bottom of the problem to find out what caused it to begin with.
If you have any suggestions of what else I could try - let me know.
So far, I went through a bunch of different drivers just to confirm - not a software issue.
I'll open the system again in a few, to re-seat and double check all the connectors , but with a little hope.

 

so i was just playing this game alpha protocol, and all of a sudden the m17x just shuts off. like i held the power button down. the game was playing kinda buggy it seemed. then i pressed the power button, and i booted, but it stopped before post to tell me that my adapter is a dell adapter(lol) i press F1 boots, battery shows 61%( i have never used this un plugged ever) and NOT charging.... so i unplugged the power adapter, plugged it back the message before windows boot doesn't come up, but in windows it doesn't show charging again, so i reboot same, reboot same, reboot, at first it doesn't charge then it shows charging. !? has anyone else seen this??