*Official Alienware M18x AMD CrossFire Discussion Thread (re: Dell/AW Conference Call)*

I'd do this ^

 

i am still getting more done with this machine...but that slow sata port is bugging the hell out of me. got past the sleep issue which as shaden mentioned... a very big one for me!. and i also noticed that i cant run the usb 3.0 card i bought from a forum member. i can only run flash drives and or mouse. wth? as soon as i plug in any real drive...it drops out of existence. smh.

 

HOw'd you get past the sleep issue John again ?

 

when i pulled the defective card...the sleep issues went with it. wonder if that was an indication of problems to come.

 

hrm, does that suggest one of my cards is "defective" ? I thought the convo indicated it was an AMD issue ...

 

my amd setup never worked with sleep mode.
my nvidia setup wakes fine, now that i removed one card.

it's really hard to say what the cause is..

 

Man, I guess I'm lucky or something - my dual 6970 cards seem to run BF3 and Skyrim just fine. No crashing (knocks on wood) or noticeable slowdown. Sure, Skyrim COULD be running faster, but I'm using drivers that don't have any optimizations in for it. No overheating or anything so far.

Are there issues with the newer M18x systems that the older ones ("older" - sigh...not even six months old) don't have?

 

The Nvidia solution is awesome and worth every penny. I am pleased to say that I have no software/hardware problems with this system. Hang in there, your almost there!!

 

yep. i would have pulled them amd's and put the single 580 in. then put the system back together with only screws holding the screen/powerbutton/hard drives and wifi in place. then wait for the second card. then when it comes...takes all of 10 minutes or less to pull it apart

 

Shaden - hey bro... were you having the same issue before upgrading your CPU? I don't remember this being something that was causing problems for you with the 2630 CPU, but I may have not been paying close enough attention to when you first commented about it.

While I have disabled all sleep and hibernation features on my M18x because I do that on all of my systems, I used my M18x for a week or so and had zero issues with waking from sleep. I also did not recall having any issues waking from sleep with the AMD cards. I would have noticed because had it not awakened properly before I took the time to disable those features I would have been highly agitated instead of mildly irritated.

 

Second one's been ordered so hopefully it'll get here fast now that they are supposedly in stock. I don't want to have the computer half opened since I use it daily for work and I need it in one piece. I can manage with these 6990s until the 2nd card gets here.

 

umm...it will be closed?
mine is completely together waiting on the second gpu, which i gave up on. and i carry this thing around every where since i bought it for work.

 

Hey, let's not mug AMD....

....I mean the 5850m in my M18x is running like a champ!

 

My left trackpad button decided to collapse and I barely use it. So I ordered a new palm rest & keyboard assembly. It was suppose to be here today but FedEx lost my shipment. So they want me to give them some time to try and locate it.....lame.

The good thing is, I contacted my rep to inform him of this failure and he told me he is off for the next 2 days. He assured me that if it isn't resolved by tomorrow morning, to shoot him an email on his days off and he will take care of it from home. My rep is awesome!! Thought I'd share.

 

lol knowing my luck the palm rest will go flying off. That long wait was a killer, I just hope this 2nd one doesn't take long..

5850 in an M18x, now that's just wrong.

 

How and why did you end up owning an M18x with 5850M?

 

My M18X was dispatched yesterday so hopefully includes a fix and latest drivers. I'll be installing and playing BF3 as soon as it arrives so I'll let you know how I go on. The only 6990m AMD drivers available for download from Dell is R307094.exe release date 29/07/11 so will compare installed drivers on new machine.

The Crossfire 6990m option is also available again on the Dell Uk website for £450. The 580m sli is still £1020 though, £560 difference for a small performance increase is ridiculous.

Further proof of rip off UK is £416 for 580m sli upgrade in the states compared to £1020 over here, I can't really see the justicfication in such a price differential between countries. Maybe Dell knows no other laptop providers in the UK do the 580m sli option and realise they have us over a barrel and can charge what they want.

BTW thanks to everyone for the info on here, at least I'll know what to look out for when I receive my laptop.

 

but maybe it's(580sli) worth all these hassle with the 6990s?

 

5850 in an M18x would be sweet for benchmarking Little SB Action to give it that extra umph

 

Wow. A lot to catch up on. Big day today. And away we go...

The AMD reference driver question is a good one. I'll pose it to Louis as I know this is something he's been working on with AMD.

Stevie answered this one for the most part with the Titanic analogy, which is really accurate. One specific addition I would make is that sometimes there are broader PR and legal concerns. For any given scenario, I can lay out a few standard reasons why we would want personnel specifically trained in corporate communications to speak on a particular topic. It's unfortunate in many cases, but that's the way it has to be sometimes. However, your point about how to treat people with respect and dignity is well made and taken. We can always help our team mates out with how to relate better to our valuable customers.

I will need to verify your case notes and add "customer wants to take advantage of Nvidia price cut" to justification for the exchange request.

My thought: wait until Friday...

UPDATE:

We believe we will have a BIOS update ready to post very soon. Dell highly recommends owners of Alienware M18x PCs with AMD 6990 GPUs in Crossfire configuration experiencing sudden system shut down after cold boot update to BIOS version A05 when it web posts.

 

That is great news Dell-Bill_B,

Will it benefit and be safe for those of us with 6990Ms and aren't experiencing the issue to update to Bios A05 as well?

Also any news on the drivers? Will there be a Vbios update as well?

Thanks heaps man!

Cheers.

 

I have not seen the change log, but my guess is if you are unaffected by this issue, you won't need this update. However, it won't hurt anything. I owe you driver news and will get that to you as soon as I can.

 

Hmm
I'm receiving another same exact system tomorrow.

I don't want to install everything over if the BIOS fix is coming.

 

can you do this now? because they already authorized the return.
side note:
and im still not satisfied with it dropping out of sata 3 speeds.

 

And again, dear Dell-Bill_B... with your open mind, you catch my intention the right way...: "The mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work unless it's open." (A. Einstein)

 

I was joking. It was meant to scare you, but it failed.

 

ok, you got me.

one can hope though...haha

 

YaaaaY!! New parts arrived today, late. Everything's back to brand new condition. The one thing I've noticed with replacement palm rests is that they never fit as good as the original. No matter what you do, they are always uneven above the right or left speaker grill where the chassis meet. Luckly the trackpads buttons are exchangeable and my original palm rest is free of defects.

Bill? Have they fixed whatever they broke in the A04 BIOS that causes high DPC Latency with 580M SLI in A05?

 

Just swap your HDDs and send the new HDDs back with the replacement system

 

Great news Bill, thanks for posting it up...repped!

 

No clue. I have not seen the change log, but I can ask Louis.

 

Bill

Wow thats great news. I've been following this thread closely. Lets hope the new bios fixes this problem. We should make a new thread on the new bios, even.

 

Thanks for asking.

 

While I and most others can appreciate a light hearted poke at humor, its time to push the thread back on topic. Further OT posts will be removed so please let it go and get back to the topic at hand... AMD & the M18x.

Thanks guys.

 

I recieved my second replacement system with same spec today.

Just swapped the harddrives, and ran few benches to see any sign of thermal shutdowns.

So far so good!

My thermal shutdowns were totally random after reboots (not cold boot).

We will see how it goes.

 

For anyone who didnt see, I posted up Dell's new AMD driver over here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...md-driver-release-scheduled-dell-shortly.html for anyone who wants to download it. (1st post)

Initial reports are that its good. Brightness is not working as per usual but there are some slight performance gains over 11.10 whql. The driver itself is not a fix for thermal problems - that will hopefully be addressed by the A05 bios release....availability tbc by Team Dell.....

Anyhow, test it out if you like.....

A big thank you to Bill and Team Dell for rolling out a new AMD driver for us all.....thanks guys!

 

All this hype and they can't even get brightness controls working. I don't know why I'm even surprised here. I'm moving to team green at whatever cost.

 

For those that need the Brightness Control and for them it's dificult to wait until Dellienware solve the issue (wich I'm sure they will), please take a look @ my other post in another thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/607421-what-users-want-m18x-r2-43.html#post8118338

...and smile!

 

Nvidia reference drivers already have our system ID already embedded into the drivers. I think AMD is lame for allowing release after release after release of drivers without adding the info necessary to properly configure the driver to work with our m18x.

The grass is greener on the green side.

 

This is exactly why fanboys exist. I for one will be having an operation soon to change the color of my blood to something sexier

 

yeah. and the funny thing is...dell already has the fix. it's amd dropping the ball on brightness control.

 

^^^this is true^^^

 

8.93 drivers seem to work great for me. I read it was recommended to use Hwinfo in this thread to help with cooling issues on the AMD cards till a fix is found. Hello Everyone HWINFO Fan Control #1 for Alienware Laptops. We need a few final testers most stable method yet! No risk. NO BSOD's thus far. We need the Alien nation to test this new beta coming in near future. seems there's a solution for the fan control issues on Alienware Laptops
Build 1451 currently in this thread

Alienware Fan Control - Page 13
It utilizes Dell EC instead of Compal EC helping fix issue privy to certain models and even images for config are posted.


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Note from NBR Moderation Team -

BIOS Modifications, VBIOS Modifications and other system level tweaks
(including modded fan control methods) can potentially cause damage to
your system.

If you brick your system or cause damage, chances are very high that
your warranty will be useless.

Know what you are doing, you are responsible for your actions.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

was this before or after the speedfan?

 

Before or after... Hwinfo fan control has improved for those who previously used it on their Alienware laptops and had experienced lockups.

 

meaning the makers of speedfan did the dell ec is what i was asking about. sorry for the confusion.

 

Any timeframe when we will see the new Bios download available?

 

Just an FYI. The replacement system with same spec seems like it doesn't have the thermal shutdown problem.

I'm pretty happy with it. It's only on the second day, but I hope I don't have to go through the tech support again with this.

Good luck to you all.

 

WOW, that is AWESOME NEWS. I am super excited to hear it and hope the same for you, bro... and everyone else as well. I'm looking forwarding to hearing confirmation after further testing that your replacement has none of the overheating, fan and thermal shutdown issues.

 

AMD really pushed me over to the green side this generation. Nvidia really has their act together. I guess now that AMD has the next round of consoles all sporting AMD GPU's they can just sit back and relax.

I'd really hate to be stuck with AMD this gen. The nice thing is, we have Dell watching our back and providing support where AMD doesn't.