Upgraded M9750 To Hd3870!

Well I got my friend (he's got the M17) to order this one from Alienware EU, they seem to be a lot more willing to sell the parts than Alienware US

 

I will have an answer on that monday or tuesday... but I will cross my fingers.

they told me it was possible... even for owners who don't have compatible laptops... which is don't rally believe...

we shall see. I'll keep you posted.

 

Nah i tried them direct, they just kept asking over and over for an account number for the m17.

 

threw up some benchmarks.

 

I saw that

Really worth the to look at! Pleasure of the eyes!

Really looks like Ichime's CPU was the bottleneck for his scores.

What about temps Dondadah?

 

well in my whitebook. my temps vary. i averaged 81/85 on a average day. i don't know how the cooling in the m9750 is though.

after doing so mods. i did get it down to 75c on both gpu's but i did have a A/C on at the time.

 

Wow Simon, I got the EXACT same score as you.
I've been having heat issues with mine however. The temps were spiking from idle temps of 45-50C to 90C+ in a matter of a few seconds! So far I've had to add a 0.5mm copper shim under the master card and a 0.7mm shim over the northbridge chip which has made contact a lot better.

Second thing I had to do was to force vertical sync in the Catalyst Controller which have kept my temps under 85C for most games. So far, only Batman Arkam Asylum really pushes my cards to over 100C, but most everything else I've tried tops off at 88C.

Also, I've noticed HWMonitor only report the first cards temp but lists both out. I've had more accurate readings using GPU-Z and openning it twice, however for some reason, it crashes out after awhile in Windows 7 64 and forces me to reboot to turn it on again.

Games I've tried so far:
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty WaW
Bioshock
Street Fighter IV
Far Cry
Batman: Arkam Asylum Demo
Doom 3
Prince of Persia
Unreal Tournament 3
The Last Remnant
Defense Grid

Everything is as smooth as butter and a DRAMATIC improvement of dual 7950s Sli.

 

I can't imagine what will happen to me :

going from single 8700m Gt => HD 3870... and when i get another one, HD3870 x2!

 

where can i buy one of these cards???

i search ebay and stuff every few days and i've only caught attention to a guy selling one card for 500 USD, and then another guy selling ''sli 3870 for 100 USD" who wouldn't even show proof of the cards.

i've had no luck...

i really don't want to get rid of this notebook - it does everything fine except it's seeing some weakness now while gaming.

 

Will Alienware not sell one to you? They're offering them in the Area-51 m15x Refurbs.

 

i'm trying to ask them, but other users have said Alienware deny sales to m9750 owners for some reason.

 

If you upgraded your M9750 with 3870s, mind doing a quick run of Vantage? I wanna see how well Crossfire Scales on an SLi chipset. It's interesting how these cards are able to do this. Makes me wonder if someone can get a hold of uber-rare MXM 2.1 4850s and try them out on a Clevo D901c or even a Generation 1 M17x seeing as they're selling the barebones for aroud $600.

 

I'd run vantage but I don't have a code to allow me to run it more than once =/ PM it to me and I'll do it for ya

 

>.> and where did you see this?

 

They're on ebay (I used keyword: M17x). 1st Gen black M17x for $550 (no keyboard) and the rare silver version with skullcap for $600 (with keyboard). I'd link them directly, but I think it's against posting policy. They're still there though. And the screens are 1920x1200.

Very tempting, yes. If I had the extra cash (and time), I'd probably buy one and create a frankenstein.

 

Nah its only against policy to put links in your sig for that stuff. The only M17x parts I saw were, just lcd's with motherboards. >.> not much of a barebone.

 

ichime, I tried running vantage twice last night but it seemed to hang at the end of test as it was posting results. I could alt-tab and return to the desktop but I would get an error everytime. I'll try again tonight.

 

You can run Vantage on XP? As far as I understood you couldnt run vantage on XP as it used Directx 10?

 

No, I'm actually running windows 7 RC 64-bit and have been running Win 7 since I changed over to the 3870 cards. I really need to change my sig to reflect that.

 

Could be a quirk in Windows 7 then

 

i'm installing my HD 3870 --> the computer boots, but the screen shows no picture.

the card is the master card, or at least it has the 'Master' sticker on it

(i can post an image if that helps).

any idea what the issue is? perhaps, it could be a slave card, any idea how to tell besides looking at the sticker?

 

Boot into safe mode

You have no driver

 

Upgrade to the VISTA BIOS. I'll email it to you if you don't have access to MyHive.

 

Also.. did you place your Master Card in the center of your notebook? I'm not sure it will boot correctly if the Card is in the other slot (the one that shares a heatsink with the CPU).

 

yes, i put the card into the primary slot in the center. i'm going to upgrade the bios right now

 

the computer is booting - i hear it get to the stage where is prompts for a password, though there is still no picture on the screen.

i've updated to the vista bios and i've rebooted in safe mode.

i don't even see the splash logo (nor have i throughout this whole process).

any suggestions?

 

Crap.. you might have a Slave card then..

 

with a master sticker on it

how can i tell other than that stick if it's a master or slave card?

 

You could try the following:
- Put the Parent 7950 (or Daughter, dunno which really is primary) in the Center MXM slot and see if you boot up fine
- Install the 3870 into the slave MXM slot and boot up if possible
- Check BIOS with GPU-Z

I have both bios and can compare them for you.. I'm just not sure which card is which at the moment.

 

ok, i'm going to do that real quick - i'll post back when i'm finished and i'll read you my bios information



sorry for the large image...

 

Okay, I'll take out my slave card tonight when I get home from work, boot up with a single card and let you know what the bios is. I need to redo my paste for the slave/cpu anyways.

Expect a post in the morning

 

i tried installing the ati card to the secondary slot, and the nvidia card to the primary slot, and gpu-z will not detect (nor will the system) that the ati card is connected to the MXM slot.

not very sure how i will go about finding the vbios.

is it possible to boot this in base-video mode (VGA mode?) with just the ati card?

 

I have both bios .bin files sitting on my desktop.. Installing them will be a whole other issue. If you're lucky, your bios won't be locked. Unlucky.. and well.. I guess you're hosed.

 

The 3870's were locked some how


If it's not detecting the card might be faulty ... To enable VGA mode boot up and press f8 it's a option there

try a external display as well

 

the thing is, when i turn on the computer with the ati card, the screen turns on, and the monitor is black. i cannot view anything, though, occasionally i do hear the windows login page start up.

would VGA mode allow me to perhaps boot at all?

 

Does the bios show up ? Post anything ?

 

nope, the bios hasn't showed up once.

 

I had this exact issue when I was trying to enable crossfire on my system. A single 3870 master card worked fine, but I would get a blank screen whenever I installed the Slave card. No POST and I could also hear windows boot normally. I only solved this by flashing my BIOS to the Vista BIOS version.

I had no issues with a single card installation, old XP BIOS or not. I plugged it in and it worked without a hitch.

Master BIOS: ~60kb in size.
Version: VER010.081.001.000.030047 BR30047.M01

Slave BIOS: ~40kb in size.
Version: VER010.081.001.000.030047 BR30047. S01

 

how can i check the vbios with it being unrecognizable to the MXM connector?

it won't detect it at the secondary slot, and when it's in the primary slot it won't boot.

 

Might be faulty .....

 

I'm pretty sure a slave card wont be detected with an nVidia master card as it is my understanding that with the ATI's in this system the Master HD3870 when connected with the XFire cable then the master card drives the slave one.

 

i'm at work right now... but i flashed the bios this morning before i left, so i'm going to give it one more shot. if it doesn't work i'm sending the card back, and then i'm on the hunt again for another 3870

 

Use ATi Winflash and let us know what it says under the "System Video Devices" box (top right of the app).

 

Cool to have all these people with HD3870 enabled m9750s!

Levenly where did you get your HD3870?

Grey, what is this about the Vista Bios for the m9750?

Can you send be that bios and both HD3870 bioses please.

Good luck Levenly!

I'll hopefulyl be trying the same as you in a couple of days..

 

i bought it off Ebay from a store in Texas. i'm working with a rep from there, and if it doesn't work i'm sending it back.

is the only way to flash the vbios on the cards through windows? i mean, is there a possible way of reading the card with the 7950GTX slotted in the primary slot, and the HD3870 in the secondary?

 

you can flash in dos ... still windows but still

if you boot into dos with it in secondary you can try to force flash


then if it doesnt work its broke and simple as that

 

about booting into dos...

how would i force flash the card?

@ ichime - can i use ATIwinflash with the card in the secondary slot?

at this moment, when i boot into windows with the 7950GTX in the primary slot, and the 3870 in the secondary slot, I am unable to locate that there is hardware that is connected to the secondary slot, however, i get some VOA (or something.. i can't remember the exact thing, but it said it was for amd64 bit technologies... i never noticed it before under the device manager until when i had it plugged in) hardware listed at the very bottom of device manager.

so, would i be able to get to the secondary slot?

i'm trying to do everything i can to see if the card is working or not. these cards are hard to come by and now that i got one i want to make sure to exhaust every option before sending it back...

 

Winflash should be able to flash the secondary card if it can detect it. The reason I asked is because that 3870 could have been a slave card. Depending on what it says under DeviceID for the card, we can tell if it is a card with a slave BIOS, or if it's a dead Master GPU.

 

There are two BIOS for the m9750: 0C03 for Vista and 0F04 for XP. The reason why I bring it up was I could not get the slave card to work at all with the XP BIOS installed. I tried for several days and had just about given up before I decided to give the BIOS update a shot. After updating to the 0C03 BIOS, my system booted normally.

To summarize:
0F04 BIOS - Should work with one 3870 Master card. If a Slave card is present, system will boot but with no video (no POST, no external video, nothing)

0C03 BIOS - Works with single or Crossfire 3870s

 

would winflash be able to detect the GPU if it seems the device manager has not?