shoving an mxm he into a m5790?

so i recently got an m5790, and the 1800x gpu in it is dying (pixel sized artifacts). i would love to get it on an nvidia card because i find them to be more reliable (i have a pretty large bin of dead ati cards, and only a few dead nvidias). the only other cards i have that work are an 8600m gt and 8700m gt. both have the he tab. the computer is more than capable of running them, but annoyingly there's a connection to a speaker or something right in the way of where the he tab needs to go. so here's a dumb question: has anyone ever sawed off a he tab to get it to fit into a computer that has clearance issues? and does it work?

on a side note, can someone link me to the proper touchpad drivers (win7 x64)? the old legacy alienware site went offline mid last year. i should've hoarded all the drivers on the site to save them for later. hindsight is 20/20.

edit: idk if the x1800 in it actually is dead, because the base windows update driver installed just fine, and it's running windows aero just fine now. ever since i rebooted it after putting 2.5gb of memory in it it has been nearly artifact free once it gets into windows 7.

on another side note, i'm really liking how this unit is performing so far. it's very snappy and has very little load times even with the old hard drive still in it. it has a t7200 in it, and so far i'm surprised. it's doing about as well with simple tasks as my m17x r2 which has a first gen i7 in it. color me impressed.

 

I am surprised you have had better luck with Nvidia MXM cards, for most those have been far less reliable compared to the ATI cards. How are you testing that cards are actually dead? Hopefully ones that you once had working in the notebook? If not, you can't just mix and match mxm cards trying them in one machine and determining they are bad. Just because the card fits does not mean the VBIOS on the card will be compatible with the laptop. for example I tried two HD 4850's in my M5750. Both worked in a M15x. However in my M5750 one worked while the other did not. Same with a HD3870, worked in the M15x but not my M5750.

If you were to buy a replacement I would look for an HD4650/70 as it's a cool running, decent performing, DirectX 10 card that will do better than the 8600m. A 4850/70 is the best the notebook will support but I doubt you will find one.

As far as the HE tab goes, 7+ years ago I saw a pic where some guy cut the tab off. The only thing he did was destroy the card. If you look at the tab there is usually a trace which is either power or ground (I can't remember). As I mentioned in your other thread, the spot where the HE tab would overhang in the m5750 conflicts with that connection you found. I believe the connection is for the Ethernet jack.

I didn't know http://support.alienware.com went down. That's kind of sad, it did work perfectly last year when I grabbed some stuff from it. I have a collection of m5750/90 drivers that I can upload to my dropbox this weekend. It should have everything needed.

My guess is the x1800 has issues when it heats up, similar to a RROD Xbox 360. If you ran a game or program to utilize the card 100% the heat would probably cause artifacts to appear.

I still use my M5750 a few times a year. It runs pretty peppy for playing era appropriate games or browsing the web.

 

Here is the only non-HE 4850 I have seen on ebay for sale. Just keep in mind it probably will not work in the M5750 with it's current VBIOS. You could attempt flashing the VBIOS from my working 4850 but you may end up just bricking the card as this is a green PCB version while mine is red.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ALIENWARE-M...776307?hash=item1a2610ab33:g:SlAAAOSwLEtYf6TN

 

i've tested all the ati cards in multiple machines. they all have varying degrees of failure, but they're all bad. some work fine in bios, but artifact a ton when loaded up with a driver. some have no display whatsoever. and one or two more refuse to install drivers. the only nvidia cards i have that don't work is the 8800m gtx from the m15x r1 and i had one quadro fx 1500m from an old m90 dell stop producing picture. the ati cards are a mix of mxm and pre mxm (old clevo connector). all mxms have been tested in a d901c, m17x r1, and m15x r1. all clevo ones tested in a d900t (p4) and d700t (also p4).

i took my unit apart and found out why it's so snappy for its age; the previous owner put in a wd black 7200rpm hdd. lucky me.
i will try playing some games on the x1800 to see if heating it up will cause it to artifact at all.

i eventually found the proper drivers on driverscape. they had it listed as the m5700i-r2 instead of the m5790. i think there's a similar naming thing with the m9750 being called the m9700i-r2. why does alienware have to have such a confusing naming shceme? you have the same unit having 2 different names (m9750/m9700i-r2). then you do the opposite and name 2 completely different products the same (m17x r1 vs M17X R1).

edit: what does the fan button do next to the power button? because it doesn't seem to do anything for me.
edit to edit: found out what it does! it cuts the processor speed in half to save power! it's like stealth mode before stealth mode!

 

So I loaded up bioshock, and while I was messing around with the resolution settings, it bsod'd. it comes up with a memory parity error. i'm not sure if it's because of the ram or iffy gpu. most likely gpu, as i could use all 2.5gb i had installed when doing all 3billion windows updates and it did it without any hiccups.
joy.

 

If you ever move to an SSD be careful as some brands work while others do not. I had to buy / return a couple until I found a working one for my laptop.

Yeah the M17 R1 & m17x R1 thing was always confusing.

The m5550, m5750, & m5790 all share the same motherboard so drivers should work for them all. The original m5700 & m5500 had different internals.

Yep it's a manual stealth mode button.

 

if i get that 4850 and flashing it to your 4850 bios bricks it, could i save it by putting it in the slave port of either the m17 or m17x and re flashing?

 

No idea haha. It would depend on a lot of things and just how far bricked it was should it happen. I have never tried to save a bricked card but having a laptop with two mxm ports is certainly a decent setup to try should saving be needed. That way you have video from the working master and are not doing a blind flash. If it works you will open the door for any of the other few remaining m5700-r2 owners as the other non-red pcb variants of the 4850 are much easier to come by than the rare one I found. All comes down to if you are comfortable spending the money and potentially breaking it. Even if you did you could probably sell back on ebay listing it as non-working to recoup some of what you paid.

 

i may try to do that, as the card in mine 1 isn't too good for gaming anyways, and 2 is dying. i may wait to see if the ebay listing gets any kind of price drop.
edit: even it doesn't work in the m5700-r2, i'd still get 1 4850 for my m17-r1.

 

You could always buy it and try it as-is. That's what I did until I found a working one.