*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x R1/R2 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 1

The VBIOS right? Maybe because the flasher see's your system as an R1 and not R2. Not sure how to get around that if it's the case.

 

Yeah I have a tool box with 91% Isoproypl Alcohol, Coffee Filters, Artic Silver 5, MX-2, Compressed air, fujipoly thermal pads, etc

Now the only problem is... looks like the crossfire ports were removed from the damn graphics cards I have! Seriously no point at all in having two 5870s without crossfire. Going to send these s back. Damn. Should have bought from the ebay seller upgradeyourlaptop. He has m5870s, qx9300s, and crossfire cables. With best offer he can build an M17x R1 ultimate upgrade package for you. I'm still waiting on the QX9300 and crossfire cable I got from him, FedEx is slow to Hawaii.

 

What on God's green earth do you use coffee filters for in computer repair

 

Yes radji I am talking about the vBios . I have tried with lots of drivers and system do not want to flash. Can someone send me the rom of the newest vBios to flash my 5870 with ati_winflash tool. Here is my gpu-z screenshot

 

Good. It shows the same as mine.

Your VBIOS is the most current "Official" one available for the Dell 5870m. The next step I would recommend it for you to do a CMOS reset. That is, shutdown the machine, unplug it from the PSU, remove the battery, then open up the bottom compartment and remove the small button battery that's right next to the RAM. Then press and hold the power button for at least 30 seconds. What this does is reset the BIOS. Not the VBIOS but the regular BIOS. The GPU fan does take it's orders directly from the GPU temp sensor, but that order still has to go thru the BIOS. Doing the reset will make sure any BIOS fan settings that may have been "customized" to your old Nvidia GPU is now reset to default. You don't have to reflash the BIOS or do anything else extreme. This just resets the BIOS back to factory settings. After the power button hold, put back in the batteries and plug the PSU back in. Turn it on and see if the GPU fan responds properly now.

 

Thanks for the advice radji I have removed battery and have hold down for 30 sec power button and again fan is not spinning fast and card is overheating after 1 minute of tests. Gpu-z shows that fan spins at 100% but it is very low only 327 rpm .

 

Download HWinfo and install. Open the app and check sensors only and click run. In the window, click on the little fan button at the bottom. Set the GPU fan profile to manual and max it out at whatever it declares the maximum fan speed to be. If the fan doesn't spin up or you get an error the fan isn't responding, then the issue is either with the fan or the fan controller on the motherboard.

 

I have just installed my old GTX260 and with it fan control is perfect, it spins fast and card do not overheat but when I am with GTX260 HWingo do not detect my gpu fan , when I am with 5870 Hwinfo detects it but again do not responds. I have read that with HWinfo on MX17 R1 we can control only the CPU fan with both cards I can control only the CPU fan. Also at power up laptop fans speed as fast as possible then they slow down.

 

The fans are supposed to go to full speed at start up and then spin down after a couple of seconds.

EDIT: OK, this all doesn't seem right. You should be able to control your fans with HWInfo64 no matter what GPU you have installed. And all the threads I've looked at (and there are a lot!) have said the 5870m is basically plug-and-play in the R1. No one has reported any fan control failure. I'm thinking the problem is still with your motherboard. But do this: run the PSA (pre boot systems assessment). You run it by pressing F12 at post and selecting diagnostics from the startup options. Run thru all the tests the PSA gives you and see if it comes back with any error codes.

PS: What version of the system BIOS are you running?

 

I am running the newest 07 version. I have done full PSA test and there are no errors. I have checked lots of threads about GPU fan and no one was able to control it I have looked at the HWinfo forum and it is the same there. I have heard about full speed fans with crosfire 5870 but I have never expected to have such a problem with low speed while using just one 5870.

 

Oh, are you using a crossfire 5870m setup? I must have missed that somehow. Also, are you running the correct version of HWinfo that pairs with your OS? I.e. HWInfo 64 for Windows 7 64-bit?

Here is what I am going off of for confirmation of the R1's fan control: http://forum.techinferno.com/hwinfo32-64-discussion/65-alienware-fan-control.html

 

I am using only one 5870 I am using Windows 7 64 bit and Hwinfo 64 bit. Maybe I have to try with clean Win 7 install.

 

Lint free, my favorite item to remove thermal grease/paste.

Well, now my proc package got delayed another week, the 5870s are on there way back, and I'm looking around for a for sure matching set. Guess I'll be waiting another week or two to get this done!

Today I ran some benchmarks after playing Hawken for the first time. The 260ms in SLI were set all to low. Well after about 30 minutes, the system shut down. I let it sit for a bit then ran Vantage and GPU-Z logging. Card temps reached 110C, so I am very due for a cleaning and upgrade. Hoping the fans aren't dead!

 

Hi all,

I have a weird problem with my R1. I recently purchased an OCZ Vertex 4 128gb sata3 SSD and put it in the HDD1 bay.

Now the problem is, if there is no other drives installed plugged in with a working operating system, I could not boot up w7 at all. There has to be a drive with a working copy of w7 installed in HDD0 or plugged in via usb as an external drive.

If I remove the drives and just leave the SSD (with w7 installed in it ofc), it only reports back with PXE-E61 (and the other codes) No Operating system found.. This has me stumped.

Another time when I tried to boot, it had an error saying "cannot find BOOTMGR".

Help?

Walalang023

 

Really, I use lint-free cotton swabs I get from Fry's. $5 for a pack of 100. They've always worked great for me.

That shouldn't be the case. I am able to use the HWInfo64 for fan control with my R2 and I didn't need to do a clean install for it to work. Something just isn't clicking with all of this. Where did you get your 5870m card from. I'm just curious if you got it from someone who had it as the slave card in crossfire mode before, if there was something in the VBIOS that got changed to make it act like the slave card still as far as fan control goes. Of course this is just speculation and it would need confirmation from others. But the remedy might still be the same: reflash the VBIOS.

 

radji previous owner was using this card as slave in crossfire mode. I am unable to flash vbios maybe cause I am with R1 and Alienware bios tool do not want to start, you got a pm .

 

Thanks to radji I have flashed my 5870 with vbios then I have flashed R1 motherboard again with A07 bios, I have clean installed win7 and again fan is spinning slow.

 

Did you try the HWInfo fan control after you reflashed the card?

 

Did you read the R1 5870 thread by Dannyboy? You may want to search for it.

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS CM9 via Tapatalk.

 

Just found it...gimme a sec whilst I read thru it (I'm slow read...sue me!)

EDIT: Ahhh, so he needs to turn off hybrid SLI in the BIOS . OK, and he needs to make sure to install the Dell ATI drivers first and then update to the latest Catalyst driver package? Got it. :thumbsup:
You get all that?

 

I have red the Dannyboy thread . This is how I have done things:
1. I have stopped hybrid graphics and enabled integrated graphics
2. I have removed GTX260 and have installed 5870 - Win recognized only integrated 9400
3. I have stopped integrated graphics and then Win recognized 5870
4. I have installed first the Dell drivers then the newest from Amd .

Video card continues to work properply and to read temperatres right but fan spins low. When I look at monitoring software when temperature reaches 95% reading of the fan goes from 30% to 100% but actually it keeps spinning low. I tired to overheat Ati card then boot bios in bios mode fan was spinning fast till card have been cooled then fan start to spin again slow. I am not able to control fan speed with HWinfo or Saphire tool showed in Dannyboy thread.

 

Spins slow at 30% and fast at 100%? That's exactly how mine behaves. So we know the system is trying to cool itself. The message is just not getting thru to the fan control. I am officially out of ideas. Normally, I wouldn't recommend this, but post a reply in the DannyBoy thread describing your problem and what you've done to try and fix it. Normally you should start your own new thread and not resurrect a dead one, but that thread has a lot of context in it regarding your problem so it will cut down on the amount of information you need to post.

 

NVM.. Solved my problem. Turns out I forgot to mark the SSD Partition as "Active"...

Walalang023

 

Master


Slave


I finally have all my upgrades in the computer and managed to get into windows.

So I manually found the drivers for the primary card and it shows up fine as 5870 in device manager. The slave shows Code 10 failure to start and will not work with the driver. I manually installed CCC and it recognized the master card.

I am thinking it is a vbios problem, but after researching I found vbios should not be flashed before newest ATI drivers are loaded. Well, I can't install the old ATI drivers to the slave, which prevents me from enabling crossfire. The new CCC to be installed on top of the original drivers to ensure cfx is enable is necessary.

I think I need to flash the slave card to actually be a slave card though. What should I do?

 

Actually, if you look at the vBIOS version your cards are running, none of them is flashed with the latest one which is:
012.020.000.027.037640

You can find it here along with instructions on how to do it:
Driver Details | Dell United States

 

Told him that. He PM'd me asking for advice on how to flash. I got him stepped thru making a USB VBIOS flashing utility. The utility said update complete, but it had red letters saying 0FL01 as well. Here is what he sent me after he flashed:

Card 1


Card 2


*I don't want him to assume which card is the primary and which is the secondary so I told him the next step is to put each card by itself in the master slot and boot up to see if it starts correctly.

But look at the Subvendor and BUS interface for Card 2. That is not right. When I saw that, I thought maybe one of the cards he was sent was a MXM 3.0a or something. Any truth to that or is it possibly just a bad card? The error code given by ATIflash would correspond with the incorrect type of card being flashed though.

 

Can someone please tell me if following components can be used in M17xR2?
1) Samsung pro 256 GB SSD
2) PAN-UJ-265 Panasonic Slim Blu-ray Writer SATA (Slot Load). IF you guys have recommendations for other blu ray burners, please shoot.
3) DDR3 RAM 1666MHz 4GB (please link me if you can for a recommendation)

Any special software required for either component?

 

Yes. No special software needed.

Yes. You will need the blu-ray codecs to playback blu-ray discs. You can get those if you buy Cyberlink PowerDVD player (or their blu-ray equivalent).

Depends on the brand. My 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance works just fine. But you won't get the full speed out of the RAM. It's limited to 1333 MHz.

 

Thanks @radji

On another note, can I download the latest catalyst drivers and use them? Any special procedure ?

 

You mean for your 5870ms? Of course. That's what most of us do. If you initially installed the Dell drivers for the 5870m crossfire then you can update to the latest Catalyst drivers. There shouldn't be any issues. Just make sure to get the Catalyst Mobility driver package and not the regular Catalyst driver package.

 

+Rep for a very helpful person

 

Edited... never mind!

Sent from my Galaxy Note II

 

Should be under/above this thread.

Link here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/669251-official-alienware-m17x-r3-r4-owners-lounge-thread-348.html

 

I had a horrible time with my M17 last night . The LCD Inverter died but I switched my laptop on this morning and its working again . I knew the screen was ok because I shined a light on it and could see it working .

 

Dell Alienware M17x M15X ATI HD 5870 HD5870 1GB Laptop Video Card C8245 0C8245 | eBay

can i use the heat sink from my gtx 260m or should i look for one that comes with a heat sink?

what heat sink would be best paired with a 5870?

 

Yes. The heatsink from your GTX 260m should work with that card. Heat sinks are specific to the notebook model number. So a heatsink for the M17x R2 should fit all the video cards for the R2.

 

thanks RADJI

 

I upgraded to latest mobility catalyst drivers and it seems very......laggy. Dell drivers had better performance even though they are very old.

 

That noticeable, huh? I haven't updated to the 13.1 Catalyst. I'm still on 12.10. I think I will wait and see if the next release fixes the lag issues.

 

How is 12.10? Having any issues with it?

 

12.10 is working great for me.
haven't had issues so far.

 

Well after few day with Windows 8, I just found out that the Free sensor is not working, any idea of the new driver?
Regards

 

google it up by hardware id, i'm sure the manufacturer has updated the driver.

 

Maxslo is right, if you look around using the Hardware ID you'll probably find a Win8 compatible driver. In my opinion the free fall sensor is not worth looking for, I never install it anyway as it is not required in order to have a fully functional system. It serves only to shut down your machine if it detects a free fall to prevent damage to your hard drive.

 

I can't seen to get a modified Inf file to work with the latest nvidia driver 314

 

I thought you had a 5870m in your machine?

 

Anyone knows if MSI HD7970M works ok with M17x R2?
I've seen they go for a pretty decent price.

 

I think I remembered seeing someone using those cards in a xfire config with a xm processor. He was having some power issues with his delta 240 psu thou. I was googleing 330 psu mods and it came up in the forum.

 

im debating on whether or not i should just build a desktop. so with that, i have a few questions:

been reading a lot about a 660m possibly working on the m17x r1, but i have yet to find any confirmation. with further more looking around, ive been thinking if a 680m would work as well. its also difficult to find a 600 series card with a sli connector. which brings me to my question, is the 660m, or maybe 680m, is worth losing 2 260m on sli? would i need to change anything in the bios?

so my next question would be if its possible to upgrade the lcd screen on the r1 from 1440x900 to 1920x1080, or better?

my final question of the day is about the bluetooth card. i have been getting problems with connecting my phone to my laptop through bluetooth. i think the bluetooth card is busted and needs to be replaced. can i install a newer generation bluetooth card on the m17x r1? if so, that would be awesome.

thanks for reading.

 

Did he had any problems? i can seem to find any info on this :/