m17x r2 5870m cf issue

Apologies if this has been solved before but looking all over the net for a fix. I bought 2 5870m cards of ebay to upgrade from my 4870m cf solution. So I place both cards in, update drivers and display works but no cf option. In catalyst it says check cf cable, but cable worked fine with 4870s. I checked and one of the cards is disabled in catalyst. Both are showing as up in device manager.

So I thought I'd flash the vbios. Primary card updated. Slave reported 0fl01 which I take means failed. Swapped cards and same result. Gpu-z confirms both cards are now running latest vbios from dell.

Now I read on here that 5870m has the same vbios in primary as slave. Does anyone know if it's possible to convert a primary card to slave as I think that is my issue. Or anyone know a possible fix? Drivers, vbios and catalyst are all up to date and I have cleaned my drivers using drivesweeper and ccleaner.

 

make sure your not in stealth mode. mine would show disabled when in stealth mode.

 

5870m can be swapped, they have the same V-bios.

One thing that you may want to try is a power drain. It is recomended when you change hardware. Remove the battery, open the bottom cover and near the CPU fan connector you will find the small connector for the coin battery. detach it, depress power button for about 10 second and then reconnect everything back. Once you power up your machine enter the bios since all the settings will be at default and you will have to update date/time and whatever were your previous settings.

Worth a try

 

Thanks for the replies guys. Tried entering and leaving stealth mode with no joy. Also tried the battery drain tip. Battery drained as I had to re enter system time in BIOS after the reboot but second adapter still disabled in Catalyst. If I had a spare cf cable I'd try swapping but I still think the problem is something to do with the vbios as I cant update either card in the slave slot but my 4870m works fine in the slave slot.

Any other ideas welcome.

 

Well it will take a little time but you may flash the vbios installing each card on the main slot, one by one. Are you familiar with atiflash?

 

I've never used it but can confirm in Gpu-z that both cards are running the same vbios as I have flashed both in the primary slot. Neither will flash in the secondary slot. Both give the 0fl01 error when in the slave slot. I am also reluctant to flash any non dell vbios files as I don't want to brick them. If anyone has a working 5870m vbios file could they upload and I will try a force atiflash and see if that wakes the card up. Truble is dell give you the files on an ISO and I can't extract the .Rom file.