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    ATI HD 3870 or HD 3650 in a Alienware m5750

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by protivakid, Jun 7, 2009.

  1. protivakid

    protivakid Notebook Evangelist

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    Hello,
    Alright so I currently have an Alienware M5750 which I just put up to the latest bios v1.19w. I bought an ATI HD 3650 MXM-II from an HP laptop and an ATI HD 3870 MXM-III from an OCZ laptop. Both cards are 512MB.

    Well I started with the HD 3870 and the laptop will power on and stay on however there is nothing on the screen or coming from the DVI port and no hard drive activity. I thought that maybe because the BIOS caps at 4GB of memory, my two sticks of 2GB each might be causing a problem so I tried just one in and the same thing happened.

    My next step was to try the 512MB HD 3650 and I got the exact same results which doesn't surprise me because the two cards came out around the same time.

    Does anyone have any ideas? I know 256MB version of the HD 3650 works just fine in these m5750 & m5790 laptops so why shouldn't the 512MB version if I even only run one 2GB stick of ram? Would there be any issue with maxing out the slot as in should I bother trying a 1GB stick of ram in only one slot? Or is there a newer BIOS than the 1.19w?

    If anyone can help me even get one card to work i'd gladly sell them the other card at a discounted price. Thanks in advance.
    ~Christopher
     
    protivakid, Jun 7, 2009
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  2. Charles P. Jefferies

    Charles P. Jefferies Lead Moderator Super Moderator

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    Yeah, try it with the single 1GB RAM stick . . . I don't know what else you could do.
     
    Charles P. Jefferies, Jun 8, 2009
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  3. protivakid

    protivakid Notebook Evangelist

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    Tried it with 1 1GB stick of ram and 1X1GB sticks of ram with the same result w/ both cards. As far as I can tell, in this notebook newer 512mb ATI cards will not work. I got a quadro fx 770m to kind of work however it had the 30sec start up issue so I sold the card.
     
    protivakid, Jun 8, 2009
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