M17 General Information Thread

step one complete

interesting fact the board for the alien head on the m17 seem to be built to handle RGB but it seem the project was never pulled through and some resistor as well as some leds were not soldered in the final version

 

this might interest some of you

Granyte and cie: Alienware M17-r1 Customized back cover

3rd update so aparently some m17 can indeed handle a Qx9300 withou stuter

 

anyone has a used m17 or m9750 batterie pack for sale?

i'm looking for one that would last like 30 min or less i wanna try to repack a battery but i don't feel like it would be smart to do it on my only pack left

 

wow, it's been a while... are M17 users still active and keep supporting the good old M17 ?

 

Of course they are!

 

Indeed they are

Even the newest MacBook Pro can't outperform the m17 @Crysis

 

This is the notebook that got Alienware where it is today. Making high performance but reasonably priced notebooks

Before the M17 they were all fantastically expensive for what you got

 

i'm still here and i will be for at least 2 years

 

2 more years with dual 3870s will get to be limiting though. I guess with 4850s it is doable

 

lucky me ;p and technicaly atm they work like 4870

 

Well ya, the 4850s and 4870s are identical except for power envelope (4870s are MXM3) and clocks.

And yes, lucky you as few people have 4850s (I know I was ready to kill for some when they were announced)

 

Yeah, they were definately good mobile cards at the time of the release, and they're still not awful now.
Certainly enough to play anything on if you're not going to kill yourself about lowering the res or settings.

 

BTW, besides the W90 4870s, anyone know where to get these if some are left?

(it never hurts to try^^ )

 

I am still mad ad me for not buying the dual 4850... sb had offered me to send him mine 3870s and me his 4850s... (and some cash )

Though the benchmarking I saw said that even my "low" setup outperforms the Pro in Crysis... bit it's a "now old game"

I wish sb would make me that offer again

 

actualy even when i buy a new game i still just crank the setting to max and enjoy a 60 fps but i guess the real test will assasin's creed revelations and ME3

 

Wow... you even have a high res screen... I guess it's the awesome CPU and the 4850s...

 

where can i get the Ati Driver 10.8 which i as tolled was the good driver for Ati cards
Please

 

When I purchased my notebook M17 in August 2009, someone in the forum offered me 2x3870 + $700 for mine 2x4850...
What will be the price for that now, ah?

 

Not even close, $700 + $500-600 from the M17 = Second hand m17x R2 with 5870 crossfire!

 

ya it helps alot the cpu change from a q9000 to a qx9300 almost doubled the frame rate on my most demanding games like starcraft 2 and crysis wich ran about 24-30 fps when maxed befor the cpu switch

and i know that if needed i can push the gpu and the cpu much further right now the cpu is stock and the cards are at 50 mhz oced (aka 4870's clock) how ever i would need to improve the gpu cooling

 

Man they have these battery packs all over the internet. I bought mine on EBAY for 65 bucks. Brand NEW

 

how do I overclock my 3870x2?

Latest version of ATi Tool doesn't work I keep getting "Kernel mode driver is not loaded".

WHen I use AMD GPU Clock Tool the changes I make never work. http://forum.notebookreview.com/ocz/325944-ocz-rebrands-m17-overclocking-guide-cpu-gpu.html It will only allow me to change settings for one GPU, not both!

 

just got some 4870x2 mxm 2.1 for my m17!

 

where did you get them!?! Can you try Bf3 pls!!!... it runs so bad on my m17 with the 3780x2...

 

purchased from someone on this forum. he's sold out though

i'll test BF3 when I get them, i never played that game. purchased the cards just for Diablo 3

 

did you get to confirm that they are working properly? Curious to see how it all goes

 

ill get them next week
should be fine, they're from the same M17 R1 and tested already, mxm 2.1

 

Your main market will be M9750 owners looking for an upgrade. The M17 already comes with these cards, so no one to "upgrade" to them. Could maybe sell one so someone can upgrade to crossfire, still have the other though

 

Will be interesting to see what temps you get those running at.

 

what temps are you getting with your 4870?

btw, here's a slave if you're looking for one eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices

its 1 gb not sure if compatible

 

I haven't seen it above 70c.
But with 2 cards it could be a different story.

 

I would expect that 2 4850s will get quite toasty in the M17/W840DI.....my 3870s when I had mine could always kick it into leaf blower mode......I recommend leaving the bottom off of the laptop when you can (when on desktop or a stand for example), this will help a lot with cooling and cost nothing to do

 

leaving the dust cover off is safe ?

also, even though they are 4870x2 i read that every 4870x2 made is 3.0 and if its mxm 2.1 they are just 4850 which are underclocked 4870s (even though they are sold as 4870 and gpu says 4870) . doens't this underclocking compensate for any heating issues?

 

4870 vs 4850 is moot, they are identical cards. Same core, same mem tech and amount. Only difference is clock speeds

Now, either of those could be put on MXM 2.1 or MXM 3. You need MXM 2.1 for your laptop. Alienware has sold 4850s for the M17 in MXM 2.1 and 4870s for the M17x R1/R2 in MXM 3.0b

 

I guess I have the 4850's then
Will install tonight (I think my doorman has it if was shipped UPS)

 

Having problems!

Installed the 4870 cards properly.

After booting up the cards were detected as 4870 and drivers were updated. After rebooting I'm getting a blank screen after windows loading bar comes up.

In safe mode, I uninstalled the drivers, ran driver sweep, and reboot successfully back into Windows. However everytime I update drivers it will give me a blank screen after rebooting.

I uninstalled drivers again in Safe Mode, rebooting, and am looking at GPU-Z.

Both cards are listed in GPU-Z, however, one card doesn't show any shaders or filrates. The other card shows all information. ATI Crossfire is disabled in GPU-Z.

Everything is installed correctly including the Crossover cable. This seems like a driver issue but I don't know how to get around it.
Does anyone know what's the problem and have any solutions?

 

Try an older driver?

 

Doesn't work.

 

What if you flash the 4850m vbios onto your cards?

 

Are you sure about the vbios? Table told me everything should be ready to plug and play.

How do I check. The gpu z has matching bios on the cards. I don't want to make things worse or do things unnecessary..

 

Are you running the most current version of the laptop bios?

 

Yes I'm using the most current BIOS for the M17.

Does this sound like a driver issue? I get blank screen after Detecting New Hardware and installing driver. Before that the cards are detected and runs but without drivers (1600x1200)

I almost want to reformat if this is clearly a driver issue. No matter what I do I cannot uninstall Catalyst 11.2 drivers (which have run fine for me) and windows will always re-update to those unless I manually install drivers more recent than 11.2. I'm thinking this may be messing up something.

 

It does sound like a driver issue.


Do you mind uploading a copy of your vbios?

 

How do I do that? And if this is a driver issue how is vBios relevant? I don't know much about vBios.

 

I concur, sounds like a driver issue

 

Any ideas how to fix this driver issue then?

Would a reformat work?

Installing and updating ATI drivers have been hell for me. I spent hours and hours updating and reverting drivers because they never work and feel this left a mess that may be causing this problem now.

 

ATI drivers can be a mess. I have had to reformat before due to them on my M17x r1 (when I had the 4870s in)

If you have a spare hard drive you can swap in, definitely do it.

 

Well it's probably not relevant.

But when I modded my vbios to give my card 1.2V (instead of 1.1) the notebook would show a very similar behavior to yours.

Again it's probably not relevant, but it would be nice to just look at your vbios.

It's very simple to dump your vbios, just open GPUz and click on the little black chip with green arrow icon.

 

Why would i need a spare hard drive? not sure what you mean by that

 

You can do a clean install there without blowing away your existing install. Just if you have a spare it is an easy test. I, for example, have a stack of spare drives I use for backups and troubleshooting haha (leftovers from upgrades)