ATI Power Play crashing

Over the past week or so I've been having some issues with my M15x either not booting up when the AC adapter was plugged in or freezing when i plugged it in if i booted off of battery. I narrowed the problem down to being my GPU (which is a AMD Radeon 5850m) so i reinstalled drivers as well as resetting the power plan to default, and it did allow me to run the machine while it's plugged in, but it now suffers from some performance issues. The clocks max out at 300/400 @ 0.9volts now, opposed to the usual 625/1000 @ 1volt. I'm fairly sure the change is due to the ATI power play setting in the power options being set to "maximum battery life" instead of "maximum performance", but my issue is that whenever i try to change the setting, the computer crashes in a similar manner to when I'd plug it in before. I've also tried disabling power play, as well as using an overclocking tool to set it to the default values, but it still freezes. Any light anyone could shed on my situation here would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Jason

 

Hello Sgt. I'll like to know some details before anything
Which one is your Bios version?
From where are you getting the video driver from?
Is the computer in Stealth Mode? What is Stealth mode? | Dell
Thanks

 

Hi Frank
The system is currently running the A09 Bios.
I'm using the 12.4 mobility drivers from the AMD support website, seeing as how there aren't any for my card at the Dell website anymore.
I've had issues related to stealth mode before, so the first thing i checked was whether or not it was on, and it's definitely not.
Thanks for taking the time to try and help me out!

Cheers,
Jason

 

You are welcome! I got this two links for the M15x on the Dell website:
5850 Video Driver: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]
5850 Video Bios: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

Maybe flashing the Video Bios(VBios) and then installing this driver
Make sure you erase everything regarding the old driver before doing this.

In steps:
1.Uninstall the previous version(restart) *maybe using this: Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper *get the installer one
2.Install the Video Driver(restart)
3.Flash the VBios(restart)

Let us know

 

I have the same problem in the past few months.
I got the same Alienware model as you. The only workaround I've found is in Windows Power Options, changing the ATI Powerplay Settings when Plugged in to "Maximize Battery Life", but this throttle down the performance.

If you find a way to fix it, please let me know.

 

Change that back to Maximize Performance, that should give you no throttle issues.
Did you tried any of steps on top?

 

If I use the "Maximize Performance" option, the Windows 7 freezes and I have to hard turn off the M15x.
I've already tried a mix of Drivers/Firmwares, including the ones you posted. Formatted the HD 3 times, using the Factory Defaults and a clean Windows 7 install.
Last days the problem got even worse, and every attempt to install a new ATI driver makes the SO Freeze.

I think this is not a Software/Driver problem anymore.

 

I am having the exact same problem on my m18x running 7970m's! What did you end up doing?

 

I'm still using workarounds.
To solve the throttle issue (since the VGA works in lower gpu and memory frequency in "Maximize Battery Life"), I'm just using an overclock tool to make the VGA run at the same speed as default.
There are many tools that do this, but I prefer the "AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.8".