AW 18 Dual R9 290X Drivers Issue

Good morning,
I picked up a AW 18 with dual 290x Radeon cards from a member here. It currently is running in crossfire and is running windows 10. It seems I can't get the drivers right on this thing. I still am getting driver crashes etc from the drivers that dell provides on their site. I'm currently running 15.200.1045.0. When I upgrade to the latest drivers my laptop only boots every other time. When it boots though it seems fine but the following boot up it will freeze.

So my question is
What is the best driver for this setup? The driver i'm using is from 2015 but it says it is windows 10 dual 290x compatible. Trying to get past this frustrating issue.

 

Have you tried FRESH INSTALL via Amd Clean tools?

 

Yes. Multiple times with multiple drivers. The windows install is fresh as well.

 

I have the same setup as you with windows 10 and works great.

Drivers are downloaded directly from the AMD website (don't bother with dell drivers).

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/mobile?os=Windows 10 - 64

With regards to every second boot up failure - check you have fastboot disabled in both windows and the bios - that causes the 'every second boot' failure for me. Took a while to work it out, but once turned off it boots great every time. Boot times are slightly longer but worth it for reliability.

 

Ok disabled fastboot in windows. I don't see fastboot in my bios. it is currently in uefi mode for booting. Mind expanding on the bios option?

 

So this mobo doesn't have fast boot as an option. I did a safe mode removal of the old driver and updated to the one listed. The games play fine. Videos on the other hand, like you tube, stutter. Little short stutters. It seems as i typed the keyboard is stuttering as well slightly. weird.

In game stutters for Diablo 3 as well.

 

No other driver recommendations?

 

Under 'Boot', change 'Windows 8 Fastboot' to 'Disabled'. I am running A12 Bios though, if yours is an earlier version it may not be the same.

Also, I would try disabling the Display adaptors one at a time in the device manager to rule out one dodgy video card in the mix.

 

So I don't have that option. I'll see what BIOS I have. Should I update to 12?

 

A12 seems to work fine for me. I'm not aware of any major issues except the fan tables are average and it's not unlocked (this is the same on all of the bios revisions for the A18 though).

Also, I failed to mention, when using the drivers I linked to, the only issue (if you could call it that) is the device manager shows each video card as a HD8970M (basically the same card). No problems though, this does not negatively affect the cards at all.

 

I did see the 8970 issue yes. Can you link me a12 BIOS? Trying to get this thing working 100%

 

http://www.dell.com/support/home/au.../product/alienware-18/drivers/advanced?rvps=y

 

Just got home and checked. It has A12 on it already. No option to disable fastboot in the bios. Really weird. I run windows 10 on the machine.

 

Well I appreciate the 2 folks who responded. Still same issue and I know I'm not the only one who has had this happen.

 

Wish I could help man, but the R9 M290X CF config is rare, nobody really has it, so we have no idea how to even start to help

 

I was under the impression that some of these laptops shipped with this config.

 

Some, but not many, and few that did often were dumped in favor of the 780M config

 

In Australia, the 290 was the only option for a while.

 

8970M name in device manager is not a issue. This card is a rebranded 8970M that is rebranded 7970M and that's it's true name.

8970M also has different crossfire connector that is nearly impossible to get so better treat your one carefully.

AMD drivers are worse than it's Nvidia counterparts even if Nvidia's got lower in quality last year. Crossfire profiles are not importable and you will be forced to install new driver (with all of its bugs) to get new Crossfire profiles. That requirement will also cut you off from Crossfire profiles if AMD will stop supporting it in drivers.

I had two AMD cards and drivers were awful. There were major bugs like if you set something in driver then Crossfire got turned off and you needed to reinstall whole driver. Situation is only a bit better now.

 

So should I just throw my 980m in this laptop? Is it true the 290m and 980m can use same heatsink on the aw18?

 

So basically what you're saying is the drivers for these cards in this laptop have issues from the factory? I ran performance tests with zero issues. With the latest drivers I get jerky online video streaming, is there a setting to fix that? Ive also read a slight overclock fixes some of this mess?

 

I can tell you mine work great with 0 issues. In saying that, the performance of the 980m's would be my choice if I had the option of either type card.

 

It would be a single 980m. I have it already, just need to install it. Wanted to make sure there is nothing else I need to do, swap heat sinks and go. I tried again to install the recommend drivers from AMD. Stuttering and when I boot I can hear some kind of beeping sound from video cards.

 

Yeah, I would swap both my 290's for one 980m. I have considered it seriously lately.

Not because the 290's are problematic (mine aren't anyway) its just that there's similar performance but no crossfire to deal with. Possibility of buying a second one when the time/price is right.

 

Are the heat sinks compatible? IE can I use r9 heatsink on 980m? I've been told yes but I haven't disassembled yet.

 

Sure but you have to do a little mod before installing it on a 980M. Just remove the heatsink black plastic located where gpu chip would be in contact, thus increasing the cooper area because the 980M chip is a little bit bigger than AMD ones.

 

Is that the only mod necessary? Seems easy. Thought I fixed the flickering issue, I was wrong. I disable ULPS as I read was a common issue with these cards. No dice.

 

Yes this is the only mod to be done, presuming you already have the right 100w heatsink from the 290X and make sure the thermal pads are making good contact with VRM and memory when install.
Sorry, I just realized you have an Alienware 18 not a M18X-R2, the heatsink pic is a R2 one.

 

I have the 100w heatsink on my aw18. On my m18x r2 I have 100w Nvidia heat sinks. I want to run the 980m on my aw17, and an r9 or 2 on the m18x r 2