Clevo P180HMx Sager NP8180 Display Probs with 6990m

Hi All.
New to the forums. I just received my Sager NP8180 with Crossfire 6990M's.

Pretty decent machine but I cant get my Dell U2711 displaying at the native 2560x1440 res with the Dual Link DVI, or with HDMI (I should be able to force it, I was able on my old GTX460m).

I have been reading everything, everywhere and the only thing I can find is a link in the alienware M15x which talks about flashing the vBIOS of the cards...

Really hoping you guys can shed some light.

Please help!

Thanks
Lyndon J

 

hi lyndonj welcome to the NBR forums!
What is the max rez you are getting at this time? Have you installed the proper drivers. Usually when you get resolution issues its because the drivers.

 

Hi Hutsady.
Thanks for the reply

My resolution is currently maxing out at 1920x1080 - rather than 2560x1440.

That said, Catalyst Control center is showing the maximum reported resolution as 1680x1050 in the flat panel properties part of catalyst.

I have installed all drivers, have the latest dell monitor driver - and have catalyst control center and the latest AMD driver installed.

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The post I was talking about (last post on that page):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ed-know-upgrading-problems-solutions-222.html

Talks about flashing the vBIOS of the card. Wondering if that is what is happening here.

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Bought this machine from HIDEvolution... great when they are making a sale but seem not to have replied since....

I will try some of the older catalyst drivers later today. See if I can get it working, though I suspect there is something else going on here.

Cheers
Lyndon

EDIT: Spent the past 4 hours downloading drivers and trying everything. Tried the new catalyst drivers, didn't work, downloaded the latest drivers from Sager, didn't work, downloaded Dell 6990m drivers and forced the system to use them, didn't work. Tried combinations of monitor drivers/graphics drivers... all didn't work

If anyone can shine some light I would be most appreciative.

 

Seems they do not support DVI-Dual Link:

"Hi Lyndon, the AMD 6990M GPU does not support Dual-link DVI output.

Allen Zhang
Sager tech support
1-800-741-2219
1-626-964-4849 "

What a ^$#$*& waste of time. Anyone want to buy a Sager NP8180 with dual 6990m's?

 

There are a lot of people who still want the P180HM, so it should be easy to sell. Try the: NBR Marketplace

 

thats BS, the gpu itself DOES
right in specs AMD Radeon? HD 6990M Graphics

2560x1600

I run that off a single 6990 in my husbands M17x r3 it must be how Clevo implemented it or the duallink dvi port

 

I think you can get these cards to run if you flash them with the Dell vBIOS - if the cards have the clevo vBIOS they wont work.

But that kind of stuff is well over my head.

(See the link in the third post)

I am currently trying to force the resolution via HDMI to DVI-D (I have done it before with a GTX 460M) but AMD's software is not as good as Nvidia's in this respect.

Looks like I might be able to do it via this method...

http://www.wsgf.org/article/force-custom-resolutions-amd-gpus

Will post my results...

 

Update time: Conclusion - NO the 6990M CANNOT do higher than 1920x1080 (well)

I managed to get both the HDMI and the DVI-d displaying 2560x1440 to my dell U2711 screen:

BUT

When i have it set that way I notice considerable lag on the screen. As in, drag something across it and you hear your mouse move before you see the movement

Its useable, I played a level of Dead Space 2 like that but it is noticeable. I'll just keep my desktop and sell this machine.

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I managed to make it work with AMD ADL_SDK V3.0 - forcing a custom resolution on both the HDMI and DVI.

As there are no good tutes on this (that I could find) I will write one and post the link in this thread shortly.

For reference settings I forced were (I got the numbers from my deskop HD 6870 connected via Dual Link DVI):

AdapterIndex 1
DisplayIndex 3
TimingStandard 16
PossibleStandard 15
RefreshRate 60
Width 2560
Height 1440
TimingFlags 8
HTotal 2720
HDisplay 2560
HSyncStart 2608
HSyncWidth 32
VTotal 1481
VDisplay 1440
VSyncStart 1443
VSyncWidth 5
PixelClock 14850
HOverscanRight 0
HOverscanLeft 0
VOverscanBottom 0
VOverscanTop 0

 

Bought myself an Alienware M18x instead - fantastic machine.

I will not buy a sager again in the future, the support just isn't there and for the extra $300 you can get an alienware with good support, the sounds better, screens better.

Lessons learned - dont be a cheapskate.

 

Please don't bash what you don't understand. And all the well-known sager resellers have very good support, much better than anything AW has to offer except in-home service. The clowns you bought from shouldn't be the basis of your opinion.