Alienware m17x r3 with Dell r9 m290x(HD8970m)

[Munchicken]

Hi,
I just got a Dell r9 m290x card for my m17x r3. I'm using the stock A12 BIOS. Had PEG set in the BIOS and on boot had a black screen. I cleared CMOS, most likely reverted back to SG and on boot had a black screen with 8 beeps.
I've seen people on here report that it is working for them. Do I need to use a different vBIOS? Or maybe the unlocked A12 BIOS with some settings changed?
Any help would be appreciated   Thanks.

[Munchicken]

Another episode of "trying to do things that weren't meant to be done"...

 

I was wrong about it switching back to SG, it stayed on PEG.  I tried a few more things today and will just summarize from the beginning here:

 

I have an Alienware M17x R3 with an AMD HD6870M.  I got a Dell R9 M290X to replace the 6870.  BIOS was set to PEG upon starting procedure.

 

1) Swapped thermal solution to new card & installed new card

2) Powered on, got black screen

3) Powered off, removed CMOS battery

4) Powered back on, got black screen & 8 beeps

5) Powered off & on a few times, same results

6) CTRL+ALT+DEL, rebooted, same results

7) Removed new GPU

8) Booted fine with no discrete GPU

9) Checked BIOS, was still set to PEG

10) Set BIOS to SG

11) Reinstalled new GPU

12) New GPU shows in BIOS - ATI GFX

13) New GPU shows in Device Manager - AMD Radeon HD8970M

14) Intel GFX driver had a bang - Code 31 could not load drivers

15) Rebooted, same results

16) I'm using the Dell Intel driver - 8.15.10.2342 (it's old, but it allowed me to use HDMI-In with the old card)

17) Rebooted, now both cards have bangs

18) New card's driver says Code 12 cannot find enough free resources

19) Tried to auto update drivers, same results

20) Uninstalled both devices from Device Manager

21) Rebooted

22) Both showed up under Other Devices with no drivers

23) Reloaded drivers, Intel driver works, but same results with AMD driver

34) Had read somewhere that the integrated audio might interfere with some of these cards, so I tried disabling the onboad audio in BIOS, same results

35) Listed devices by connection in Device Manager, saw that AMD High Definition Audio Bus was on same controller, so tried uninstalling that, same results after reboot

36) Enabled show hidden devices in Device Manager, saw old 6800 series driver still there, but showing disconnected

37) Uninstalled old card's driver, rebooted, same results

38) Ran GPU-Z, shows vBIOS 015.046.000.014.045579

39) GPU-Z did not show any sensor data

40) Ran HWInfo, shows GPU fan at 35%, but I have not seen the fan come on at all

38) Set back to PEG in BIOS

39) No black screen this time, was able to see the OpROM screen for RAID controller

40) Right after that, got corruption/artifacts on the screen (several vertical blue lines with some scrambled looking text)

 

Suspect the artifacts/corruption might be due to heat, since the fan does not seem to be working.  Will let it cool off and try again later.

 

Here's some info on the resource usage shown in Device Manager:

HD8970M - PCI bus 1, device 0, function 0

I/O - 0000000000006000-00000000000060FF

Memory - 00000000A0000000-00000000AFFFFFFF & 00000000C8400000-00000000C843FFFF

IRQ - (PCI) 0x00000007

[Munchicken]

Continued...

I let it cool down, since I thought heat might be causing the corruption on the screen.  And repositioned my external fan to help keep it cool.

 

Rebooted, still got corruption after the RAID opROM screen.

 

Remembered that I had been using a different charger for testing that had been causing an error on boot - not the factory charger yada-yada, press F1 to continue.  So I thought this might be that screen and pressed F1.  Yep, that worked and it started loading Windows.  All the following screens were ok.

 

In Windows, no driver was loaded and the device was listed under Other Devices.

 

I chose to reinstall the drivers.  It said drivers successfully installed.  But then went to the login screen (no reboot).  After logging back in, I noticed a message in the notification area saying the video driver had failed to start.  So I checked Device Manager.  But the driver was loaded and said it was started properly.  Perhaps that was from the first time and it had re-started since.

 

The GPU fan never did start turning, so I had to use HWInfo to control it manually.  This worked fine.

 

I tried a few apps and games, all went well.  I got awesome frame rates compared to the old card.

 

I think everything is going to work out ok with it, I only had a couple of concerns:

1) Once when I rebooted, I hit F2 to go to BIOS, the BIOS Information page was completely blank!  Bizarre, but only happened once, during early testing.

2) The fan not turning, although HWInfo manual control seems to work fine.

3) The scrambled screen on boot after the RAID opROM loads.  If there is an error, it will be unreadable.  However, if I switch back to SG, I should be able to read it.

4) My external monitor's resolution is reported a little shy of the max.  This is likely a driver problem and I will fiddle around with it later.

 

So the HD8970M / R9 M290X does work in an M17x R3.  Takes some effort & frustration, but works in the end

[boboe74]

Very useful topic