Possible to alternate between 2 of the same mobile GPUs?

[Killsomecero]

Hi, long time since I've posted here.

Situation:
I bought this behemoth of an Alienware M18x a little over a year ago and it has 2 Radeon HD 6970M GPU's which I can choose to run in crossfire whenever I would like
problem with one of the 6970M's is that the fan is broken. I'm not sure how or why, but I spent 3 months trying to get it fixed with Dell and after they finally shipped it back the fan was still broken. I think my warranty expired by now and I've gone through too much stress against Dell so I don't want to even call them once again. Quite a shame spending 3500USD for a laptop for this kind of customer treatment.

My Question:
I was wondering if it was possible to alternate between the 2 GPU's or use 1 instead of the other because on the primary 6970 I literally can't run Guild Wars 2 on high settings with more than 6fps. When I run them in crossfire, I still get awful framerate.

Any solutions immensely appreciated, thanks in advance.

[Fisher]

Sue dell?

[Killsomecero]

Sue dell?

It seems like too much of a hassle. I really do want to do that honestly, but it's a very big company which is bound to have good lawyers..

[Freefall552]

Swap the coolers and run with one gpu?

[Killsomecero]

Swap the coolers and run with one gpu?

I honestly have no clue how to mess with laptop gpu's, iirc each has a weird wiring that hooks it up to the mobo, but I do think it's possible to swap them being that alienware puts room in their laptops for hardware upgrades. If you or anyone else has any experience with laptops/alienware laptops I'll try to upload a picture of the laptop from the inside once I'm back home.

[Freefall552]

I honestly have no clue how to mess with laptop gpu's, iirc each has a weird wiring that hooks it up to the mobo, but I do think it's possible to swap them being that alienware puts room in their laptops for hardware upgrades. If you or anyone else has any experience with laptops/alienware laptops I'll try to upload a picture of the laptop from the inside once I'm back home.

Try looking at youtube for a disassembly guide, it's usually easier than it looks. : )

[Killsomecero]

Fortunately I found the cause of this...thanks to everyone who gave suggestions, my laptop is running great once again (but unfortunately not as well, the overheating damaged some of it) I can still run games like bf3 on high now. once again thanks.

[waltsmith89]

sell your both gpu and if you comfortable with Nvidia go for 700 series cards they are pretty good compare to ati series cards, 780 is best.. or get titan series card :P

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