M15x + ATI 5870 (MOD)

Yes it's the same card from what we've tested here. Some have flashed their 5850s to be 5870s with no issues. As T120ted said they are telling people out of stock right now.

Yes, I will post it here. I should have time over the weekend.

 

I have taken care of my 5850-5870 problem. I just ordered another M15x with the 5850 in it, lol. It was cheaper to do that then upgrade. Returned the other one. Came out to $1143 with 6gb, 720QM, screen upgrade, intel wireless upgrade & 500gb HDD. The tax is what always kills me. $93 for tax! Now my question is if I flash it to 5870 will the display port work with video and sound?

 

If the 5850 works now then yes. All you'll need to change with the flash is your core to 700 and memory to 1000.

 

Makes me feel all gooey inside. Now just the waiting again. still worth the 167 page read in my book. Thanks guys.

 

oh yeah 5870 is way worth it, welcome to the club.

 

Could it be helpful to get the DP-Sound work, if somebody stores the VBIOS of the Dell mobility 5870 and the Clevo mobility 5870 users flash their VBIOS with it?

 

hey guys, we can actually REQUEST for 5870 instead 5850 ( even though there's no such upgrade for M15X) from Dell when purchasing on our own discretion? Just wanna be clear on this.

 

No you can't request it, they won't allow it on the M15X. You can outright buy the card from Dell but you're better off getting a new laptop.



Also I just got my 5870 from babyhemi. It came in a little metal casing surrounding the card. I also grabbed some .5mm thermal pads from Dell (the kind they use on GPU/CPU cores) is there a guide to show where I need to place these thinner pads?

Thanks

 

I have the card installed but still applying the thermal pads. I've run into a little problem. I don't have any more thick pads for the area circled in red. Is there soemthing I can do? I have thin 1mm ram pads laying around can I stack them together?



I just tried to mount the Heatsink on the card itself and screw it on. the screws don't fit in the mounting Xplate thats on the card! do I do?!

 

Put the pads on the bigger chips that's the memory.

Regarding the bracket on the back you need to use the one from the card that came with the system. Get a small flat head screw driver and carefully peel it off. It's stuck on with an adhesive. Then put it on the Clevo 5870.

 

thanks I did just that, I have large long pads on my heatsink for the ram chips. I installed everything booted up laptop and it turned on and booted into windows but the screen went white and flickered white a bit. I cut the power at that point. I'm scared to turn it on again...

 

I just checked everything on the card. took it apart reseated everything made sure everything was done correctly. I've done this process many times for my 260m and have never had a problem. when I boot up I get the scroll + caps flashing LED's which means the video card is preventing the system to boot

I popped in my 260m, working perfect as always. I inspected the card, there's no damage that I can see, nothing looks or smells burnt. On the initial boot I recieved a series of beeps then the alienware head showed up, bootloader started, went into windows and then just a white screen. I discharged the power from the laptop tried it again and sometimes the m15x will shutdown before it even starts to boot or I get the no video led code after about 20sec. I tried it again everything that should be black like the bootup screen, bootloader etc is red... is going on?

Help? Suggestions?

Here's a pic, sometimes the boot logo is black other times it's red, sometimes it doesn't boot and tells me there an error with the video card via LED, is happening?

 

yikes, first time i've seen this issue. its booting up so there is life in the card. did you uninstall your nvidia driver before putting in your card? sorry i woud help more but i've nevered seen this issue. if it works with your 260, then it could just be a faulty card.

 

I haven't uninstalled the drivers, infact the drivers should not have any effect as windows hasn't booted yet.

I'm currently using the 260m as it's working 100% fine. I'm afraid the 5870 was somehow damaged during shipping because it wasn't in a anti-static bag and just wrapped in bubblewrap. the weird part is that sometimes there's no red at the alienware logo then the screen switches and the red comes up.

 

your right the driver should cause this, what happens when you try to boot up normally. but really sounding like a faulty card, i would contact the seller asap about it asap.

 

it would be worth uninstalling the nVidia driver, so that it is using the standard VGA driver. Then exit, install the ATI card and reboot. If that allows Win7 to come up, then the card is OK and you can try to install the Catalyst drivers.

 

I just sent a message to babyhemi, hopefully something can be done. I've never experienced anything like this before.

 

there is always a lemon

 

pulled out the battery, cmos battery, downgraded the bios, reseated all the thermal pads I can't find what's wrong with it, the card works but something causing a problem with it and I can't figure out what.

I tried out a 240m my friend had from his old M15X and it works just fine

 

What bios version are you using?

 

Its clearly the card...

If you tried another card and had no issues then yeah its the card...

During that boot screen there are no drivers being loaded yet so if your getting that Red screen there then its a hardware issue...

 

More than likely. I would make sure you are at the latest system bios version. You can also try reflashing the vbios of the card but as Quad said it's more than likely a bad card.

 

I downgraded the bios, from 06 to 05, discharged the system completely both battery and cmos battery, upgraded the bios to 06 again. I get so close to booting, infact I booted into safemode but then the red screen kicked in. I have a very weird feeling that something isn't making contact properly with the card...

The thermal paste doesn't get as disturbed as it does when I apply it on the other 2 cards that I've applied it to but then wouldn't that cause it to overheat and shutdown?

 

i'll be the 3rd person to say that it is the card.

OT: Just played TF: Cybertron war for two hours... lol...I almost threw-up from playing for soo long..

 

Dont spend anymore time trying to trouble shoot because your wasting your time honestly ...

The card is bad and it has nothing to do with how you have the heatsink seated...

I know its not what you want to hear but sometimes these things just happen and no amount of you messing with it is going to fix it ...

 

could try the baking trick

 

just return it, babyhemi got a doa warranty so use it.

 

Guess it's going back monday Well this is a kick in the nads, I'm probably going to be out yet ANOTHER 40$, 20 to ship it back and he's probably going to charge me to send another one.

 

I broiled my 5850 thinking it might come back to life...

 

lol well since babyhemi has the doa policy its a good thing for people who buy from him as there can always be a lemon in any batch of hardware. always is

 

I am very sorry about this ordeal. It looks like a bad card as was said. It will be free shipping a new one back to you. I will ASAP your replacement. Just a note here in the US it is 4th of July weekend so nothing really happens until Tuesday as far a business. These cards are all supposed to be factory tested before I get them, but as the saying goes if it CAN go wrong it WILL, at least at times it will. Thanks to all for your patience...

 

I have also had this problem before, adding coolpads to the memory side solved my problem. I've changed inap's picture.

In this picture is marked where you need to put the pads.

RED: 0.5mm
Yellow: 1mm

Marked red are dead spots in the heatsink, you need to expand the heatsink there with cooling pads, just make sure the heatsink is expanded with the equal height as the rest of the memory. I thought that it was about 1.5mm extra on the heatsink side

If it still changes from colors then its a faulty card.

For me this solves the coloring problems which I had on the card before. When everything was just running fine and only the colors change then it is probably a memory problem (heating or damaged). 3dmark also runs perfectly with that (but with wrong changing colors).

 

I used the stock memory pads that were on the 260m on the 5870 which I'm guessing are 1mm. I have a couple of very long .5mm pads from Dell laying around that I'll try tomorrow one last time.

Did you ever have a problem with the M15X not recognizing the video card and not allowing it to boot prior to changing the pads? At times I'd get the Scroll+Caps lock LEDs flashing with the Num lock solid indicating there's a video error. Or random powerdowns during boot (no discoloration on screen)

Thanks for your input

 

Yes I had that to with my GTX260M, the silver cooling paste was getting into the gpu's chips (under the foil). I removed the foil and cleaned the whole gpu with arcticlean. After that the GPU worked fine.

But I've never had it with the 5870 (which is now unusable because of a wrong flashed vbios), only it was getting too hot sometimes, the laptop boots but after 5-10 seconds it shutdown completely.

ps my stock coolingpads were 0.3mm which was a little too small

 

I'll give it a shot when I get home from work, everything in that picture you edited was covered except for the area between the 2 yellow outlined grey squares. I'll change the thermal pads on the ram to see if it makes any difference either.

 

Just got home from work, gave it a shot, didn't work guess I'll have to send it in.

 

i was wondering...i got a 5850 and realized that aw sent the same heatsink my 240 used. is that ok? is the 5850 the same card as a 5870? there was only 2 thermal pads on the card. also im getting 69c at load which is awsome lol. but hwmonitor wont read my temps only gpuz. thanks

 

yes that heatsink is able to work with the 5850

 

great job fixing the pic, yeah i posted this when i was using the stock pads, but thinner pads is the ways to go.

 

If anyone is interested with an ATI MR5870, here is my For Sale link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...dr5-dx-11-mxm-3-0b-clevo-w860cu-heatsink.html

Please PM me if interested. Thanks.

 

Shipped my card out today, going to take a good 2 weeks or so for something to be resolved. Hopefully the next one isn't a dud.

 

bayhemi a good guy, he'll take care of you for sure.

 

I've just installed my 5870 recently and have got it running with 10.3 drivers at idle temps of around 58. I haven't done any gaming or benchmarking yet, haven't found the time, but something has worried me a bit. I has the clock on 200/300 as I was just browsing and when I went to a youtube video I got a BSOD. Does it sound like it could be a serious problem? I thought it only happens when overclocking too much?

 

bsod??? do you have the latest flash player, also you can also disable hardware acceleration for the videos.

 

Yes I have the latest flash player. Should I have to disable hardware acceleration, has anyone else had to because of the same problem?

 

i've seen that problem on the 5850's, but haven't seen anyone with 5870 having this problem, i never had this problem ever.

 

Hmm... I don't know what to think. It hasn't done it since but it hasn't been too long yet. How would I check fr faults with the card?

 

10.3 are great for benching but not as stable as the 10.6, so maybe update the driver if you continue to have this problem.

 

I see, and what about the BIOS, I'm on A05. Should I update to A06?

 

i like A05 personally i find A06 make temps go higher.