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    Pre Dell M17-R1 ATI 4850x2 crossfire big problem/dilemma

    Discussion in 'Alienware Area-51/Aurora and Legacy Systems' started by pkkilleru, Jul 7, 2013.

  1. pkkilleru

    pkkilleru Notebook Guru

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    After finally getting my master card ATI 4850, i reflashed my slave card with it's slave bios and installed both. Temperatures are good without a cooler pad except for the slave card...

    Here is what happens: when i flash the slave card with the master bios and run it alone, the temperatures reported by the diodes are normal 50-70 C but when it runs along with the master card, windows installs it with an exclamation mark and the default Microsoft driver, when i load this driver 13-1-legacy_vista_win7_win8_64_dd_ccc or the one from the Alienware website (haven't tried others), they install just fine, except the slave card GPU and Memory frequencies stay at 500 MHz and 800 MHz respectively (full throttle) making the diode report temperatures between 115 and 120 C at which point the laptop shuts itself down. Why does the slave card stay at full throttle?

    The issue occurs even if the crossfire cable is not connected, i have the zfactor .029 bios but i have tried with B14 as well and with B14 SLIC 2.1.

    I have been reading something similar in this thread, even flashed the slave card bios rom provided by granyte. I am also experiencing BSOD's when windows is booting just like explained in the above thread.

    Obviously it's not a hardware issue, since the card runs just fine when it's flashed with the master card bios, i am at a big loss and tremendously frustrated.

    I have invested so much time and resources in this project and i hate to see it FAIL like this.

    What could be the problem? What would be the solution?

    Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

    EDIT: Here are some GPU-Z and atiwinflash screen shots showing the comparison between the master and the slave card. In the fifth picture you can see how the default driver installed by windows reports temperatures in GPU-Z.
    Also, why does atiwinflash (picture six) detect the slave card as the active one? o_O

    1.gif 2.gif 4.gif 5.gif 6.gif wflash.gif
     
    pkkilleru, Jul 7, 2013
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  2. pkkilleru

    pkkilleru Notebook Guru

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    Looks like the driver from Alienware website cures the full throttle issue but as you can see in the attached screenshot, the diode still reports high temperatures which leads me to believe it's a hardware issue, oh well... i guess i need another slave card :( sigh...

    I also tried flashing both cards with the master bios, and to my surprise they work together except for atiwinflash which cannot detect one of the cards

    bummer.gif
     
    pkkilleru, Jul 8, 2013
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