Alienware 13 R3 w/ AGA (issues)

Hi all. Been a while since I've been on these forums.

Just got my new laptop this week, and AGA came in yesterday. Having a hell of a time trying to get it working

I popped my R9 290 into the AGA, and booted up. Initially was able to get into Windows with no issue - however I wasn't sure what drivers to use for the card. Tried the newest Crimson minimal package and the installer kept hanging while trying to detect the hardware. After some searching around I came across this:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/GPU-5003.aspx

Is this what I'm supposed to be using? It looks ancient but I couldn't find anything newer from AMD for this setup. I went ahead and tried it, and initially it installed, both my monitors synced and powered on. Then about five seconds later windows threw a BSOD. After the reboot, windows is now stuck with a blank screen and a circular loading symbol which never stops. I can see the mouse but nothing else. And the attached monitors will not sync. The only way to get windows back is to power down and remove the AGA cable.

I have tried multiple things:

- reseating all connections
- power draining the AGA
- removing all USB connections from the AGA
- reseating the GPU
- driver cleanup, removing all traces of the AMD driver(s)
- reinstalling stock nvidia/intel drivers

The strange thing is when I'm stuck with the blank screen, I can type in my PIN and hear windows logging in but I never get any output besides my mouse cursor.

I tossed an old GPU (nvidia) I had laying around into the AGA and boom it allows me to boot windows again. So it seems to me the AGA is not playing nice with my R9 290. But I don't know why as its supposedly supported. And the card was pulled from a working system (been using it for almost two years now).

Another thing worth noting, I cannot fully close the lid on this card. Here it is for reference (seems the heatsink design is too tall):

https://www.msi.com/asset/resize/im...3.png62405b38c58fe0f07fcef2367d8a9ba1/600.png

So yea, this is where I'm at. Its very frustrating to drop all this money and have it not work. I'm going to swing by Microcenter today and snag another card to test out my theory.

Sorry for the wall of text.​

 

You need to remove the Nvidia drivers - they are unable to co-exist with AMD drivers.

 

Thats not correct. The aga disables the internal gpu when connected and thus the nvidia drivers are not loaded

 

They are - they are the thing that disables the GPU - they also control Optimus. Trust me - try it. You'll see. DDU all drivers and install only Crimson.

 

I am using using the AGA daily and tested it with the 480RX while having the 980M inside of my laptop. It loaded fine.

 

Same here with my GTX 960m in my laptop and RX 480 (or R9 285) in the AGA.
This is more of a specific case with the R9 290. I do remember it working with the AGA before, but I don't know what has changed for it to not be compatible. Either way, you don't want to use that old driver. Use one of the more recent AMD drivers.

 

Ok, so I should definitely be using current AMD drivers? I suspected this. I picked up an RX 470, which has more of a reference design and it fits perfectly. Will try newest drivers again once my laptop is able to boot (BIOS flash went bad and now it appears the board is bricked - getting the dreaded 7 beeps). They're sending someone out this week to replace it.

Been a lovely first week with this machine

 

Just an update - board was replaced and I got the AGA working with my new RX 470 perfectly. I even got the tech to use arctic silver on the CPU/GPU instead of the garbage Dell supplied him. Very happy with the setup now!