I have Alienware M17 from 2009 beofre Dell bought them, with a single ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 M88 XT (512MB), not 2x, no crossfire, just one. The laptop initially came with Vista x32 Home Premium but years ago it was upgradeable to Win7 x64 and had drivers, so for years I've been using Win7 x64 and the drivers for it without a problem. I use its recommended laptop resolution 1440x900. As of yesterday, I have some freezes. dots and lines, making applications and everything freeze. It happens when I try to load the graphics a little - entering a game that meets the requirements, playing videos, even sites that may have some animations may cause the dots to appear and the screen to freeze. It tries to restart display automatically several times but eventually the task manager and all freezes. I downloaded, reinstalled the older and installed the latest driver for it 8.57 from there:
but no change, every time I load the graphics a little, these dots and freezes start to happen. Is it the bios, the graphics card?
Also: Do you know which graphics cards will be compatible with Alienware M17 before Dell bought them? As you can see, the link mentions ATI 4850 Video Card but after this, I don't think I should go ATI anymore... I need to upgrade to at least 1 GB either from crossfire or not. Just to get a few more years of it before I consider buying a new system in few years.
