Where can I purchase a HD 3870?

I have scoured the internet for over couple hours now and I have been unable to find where I can buy a master HD 3870 or slave HD 3870. I just purchased an AW M9750. I was told that it was compatable with HD 3870 or with 7950 GTX. Heck, I cant even find where to buy those graphics cards. Any help about where to purchase laptop graphics cards besides Ebay would be greatly appreciated. Thanx!

 

maybe ask either XoticPC or KillerNotebooks they sell laptops with the 3870 maybe they can get hold of some for you

 

...Doubt the 9750 is going to get 3870 support. Also I could be wrong, but I thought ATI did away with the whole master/slave system for crossfire? It's now like SLI IIRC in that you just need two of the same card. Anyone, feel free to step in and confirm/deny any of this info.

 

I was putting some AS5 on my GPU's just this afternoon. They are marked Master and Slave. They looked exactly the same though.

 

I can confirm that. I recently read an article about Crossfire and CrossfireX... the original Crossfire needed the special master card, but since they've moved to the newer revisions, now referred to as CrossfireX, they've done away with the whole master/slave concept.

as for the 9750 powering the 3870... I recommend to do some searching on the forums... I think someone tried it already... I don't think it worked... but whichever...

From what I can recall they hit an error where the system wouldn't get past POST. indeed the system would START with the card inserted, but either the northbridge, or the BIOS would crash before it would load anything. If I'm recalling correctly, he was able to access, at most, the configuration dialog for the BIOS, anything bigger than that, just squashed the system and it wouldn't boot.

No idea why.

Maybe if someone was to get a reference version of the BIOS, compile it and flash it (a risky proposition)... they could try it, and maybe have some limited success.... who knows?

Edit: thread about it is here. The reference system was an m9700, not the m9750. The slots for the m9700 and m9750 are the same (MXM III), which is the same for the 3870. the m9750 might not have the same bios limitation as the m9700... though it's unlikely.

Unfortunately, the 3870s seem to still be stuck in the "Master/Slave" orientation for Crossfire... So be sure to watch out for which one you're buying.

 

the whole m9750 and hd 3870 issue has been confirmed by a member, and it does in fact work. they don't have physical crossfire setup, but more of a 3870X2 setup. it does in fact work.

 

Looking at the chipsets, I'm not entirely surprised. with the electrical compatibility due to them both having the MXM III slot, and the raw capabilities of the PM945 Chipset used in the m9750, (as opposed to the nVidia SLI chipset in the m9700), there should be a capability to make it work.

Crossfire would be the big issue... It could be debated either way, the cards could cause a lot of collision with eachother on the PCIe 16x lanes, or they could share it, and both effectively have an 8x solution (like what the PM45 Chipset does in the M17), They could not be able to talk to eachother, or they could work perfectly, perhaps they'd share the PCIe 16x lanes, both to talk to the system, and to eachother...

It's all variant on how the cards interact with the system, how the system board is wired between the MXM III Slots and the Chipset, and how the chipset handles the cards.

I would suspect that a single 3870 should work, due to the fact that the Intel Chipset would be indifferent. Provided that a suitable heat sink solution can be found/installed, and the power requirements (which I've heard are the same) are properly met.