[Guide] Installing AMD Radeon Mobility 6970 / 6990 in your M17x R2 (Single GPU and CrossfireX)

I see from your signature that you are still running one 6970m at this moment?
Can you keep your 920xm and GPU on stock and benchmark furmark and prime95 at the same time and see how much Watt you pull out of the wall?

Single gpu = 7970m
Dual gpu = 6970m x2

Single gpu beats dual gpu in processing power @ 50% less power consumption.
Single gpu has a better "processing to power consumption" ratio then the dual gpu....hence twice the benefit compared to a dual gpu setup.

 

thought you were comparing 680vs7970 and it being twice as fast....was going to say your smoking something ^^ Also the 7970 is faster than dual 6990 so 6970 are not even close to equal

 

Hi guys. I hope you still observe this thread. Have you tried windows 8 x64 with crossfire 6970s? When i set in crossfire windows 8 stucks at windows logo. When i try any of the two gpus as primary (without the other installed it boots normally. The same with both gpus installed but not crossfire cable connected. I believe its a window 8 x64 driver issue with crossfire. I am the only one getting this? By the way this happens even after fresh format.

Please reply so as to know i am not the only one....!

 

I refuse to use any version of Windows prior to the first service pack. I remember the horror of Windows 7 back then... *shudders*

 

Unfortunately I haven't tried windows 8 yet either. Had planned to but still haven't gotten around to it. Good luck though and keep us posted.

 

Hi There,

I am new to these forums. I have a M17xR2, with a single Radeon Mobility 5870 and 8GB RAM - running windows 7 home premium 64bit.

I am wondering how difficult it is to upgrade the video card to a AMD 6990M? I would wade through the 500 odd pages in this thread, but I am hoping that someone who is a lot more technically minded than I am will be able to let me know

Thanks

 

First post should give everything. I would recommend a 7970 or 680 after next ten comes out so u can have an awesome machine

 

ok guys the issue i described above must be related with crap ati drivers released. ATI screwed up!. I have seen the same issue even on desktops. The only solution is format! And you cant upgrade drivers after that. I really believe that it must be a windows update conflict with ATI driver and crossfire configuration. My M17X was working fine till i just installed a new game (Metro last light) DirectX or something screwed up again. Graphics stucked when i was in crossfire and then the issue remained. I have to format again! Damned ATI.

 

ok guys it looks like one of my 6970s gone faulty or something. Does anyone know where i could find a new or like new clevo 6970?

By the way did you try play Metro Last light game? I always stucks my graphics driver and alienfx lighting.

 

nah i ahven't played the new one. 2033 was not really my cup of tea. You can check ebay for cards but again you are probably better off getting a 7970m that card is faster than 2 6990m


http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sop=15&_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=7970m&_mPrRngCbx=1&_udlo=57&_udhi=910

400-500 bucks for used-new dell 7970m

Someone at TI forum was trying to sell their 7970m so check over there you might find a member willing to sell theirs for less.

 

One 7970 is faster than two 6970s? Are you sure? ok but i should forget the crosffire. I havent done the two psu mod.

 

i said one 7970m is twice as fast as a 6990m not a 6970m ^^



ok almost as fast as a 6990m crossfire. With overclocks and give or take on the quality of the card you get. Plus you get no micro stutters that AMD xfire has. Now you can use a 7970m for a couple years and way for it to go to 200 bucks and buy a second one ^^. I wish my computer could SLI but oh well when i get rich i'll buy one

 

Hi
I have a question.
Does anybody tested the 780m on a m17 r2?
I think it will work on m17 r2 tough

 

Does reborn have an r2 or m18x? It should be fine since the 680 works from what I remember

 

well i havent seen new mobile gpus for long time. Gtx 780 would be a real upgrade to two 6970s... But thats what the price says too..

 

Kinda unrelated guys, but I was having more problems running out of power on my 480watt PSU setup. The clocks I was running at on the gpus along with a cpu overvolt, overclock, and TDP at 110 watts, I was tripping the breakers in the 480watt setup.

So I acquired another 240 watt PSU, built a new regulator board, and now have a 720 watt setup (3x 240watt PSU's). This has indeed solved my power problems. I'm able to run the cpu and gpu's at 100% load all day with no power problems. Seems like the regulators on the motherboard are much more robust than initially suspected. My next step is to do a hardware mod to my 6990m's to allow for overvolting - and this is where the 720watt setup should really shine. Just a teaser for now, I'll post some pictures later tonight.

 

Thats insane!!!

What were your temps at 110w TDP? Clocks on GPU's and CPU?

 

Temps on the cpu at 110w TDP @ stock voltage and x25 multiplier maxed at 95C with no throttling. At 75mv overvolt and x28 multiplier, it was bouncing off the 100C thermal throttle, but it was not throttling due to power - I might invest in asetek's water cooling setup for the M17xR2 if I can't find a better solution for temps.

The gpu's are clocked at 840mhz core and 1000mhz mem - this is the limit on the stock 1.1v. I'm in the process of doing a hardware mod to be able to change that voltage on a hardware level with a potentiameter. Someone else has done this before (I don't remember who) but they were able to get the cards up to around 950mhz before they ran out of thermal headroom.

At 840mhz and stock voltage at full load, my cards max out around 87-90C so I have some headroom for playing with the voltage before I need to cool them some more.

However, before, with the 480 watt PSU, I had to limit my CPU to 55watt TDP if I wanted my gpu's at stock voltage and the overclocks I had - otherwise the 480watt PSU would be overloaded and the breakers would throw. Now I'm able to run the cpu at up to 110 TDP (haven't tried higher - really no point unless I can cool it but I suspect it will be good all the way up to 130 watt TDP) in the same scenario without any power issues at all.

 

Suggestion....at that point you should have just made 2 330 watt PSUs and sold your 440w PSU. Also since you have over kill in power you might as well upgrade to the 680MX/780 and call it a day since your 6990s are just a massive waste of power at this point ^^ And also join or F@H team ^^

 

Agreed. A single 7970M will do what you want with less than half the power draw.

 

The problem is that the 330 watt PSU's actually have a maximum output that is much less than the 240 watt PSU's - multiple people have figured this out. It doesn't make sense tying 2 330 watt PSU's together because I'll be limited to roughly 500 watts, and it will be nearly twice as large as the current set up.

The whole plan is to go dual 8990m's when they're released in October or November - spending a grand on 7970m's now is a waste in my mind.

 

I haven't seen any news for the 8990M's, do you have a link?

Edit: Just seen this.

 

First I heard of them...didn't know they were even making one lol

 

It's all right here.

AMD Radeon HD 8990M | techPowerUp GPU Database

 

i just finished putting a 6970m in my rig, but i keep getting green pixels here and there along with in flash videos. Card? windows? vbios? any ideas as to what is causing it?

 

What about games ?
What VGA Drivers do you have ?
Did you reinstalled Flash properly to the newest version ?
What browser do you use ? Firefox/Chrome/IE ? - Reinstall ?
What are your card temps ?
What Thermal paste did you use ?
Did you applied Thermal pads on memory ?
Is the card new ?
Is the card used ?
What Vbios do you use ?


should i continue .... ?

 

the green pixels were a bios issue, figured that out by flashing the bios to A9. the video driver is 13.2 from amd. everything has been reinstalled, card temps are fine, but when i tried to play planetside today it turned off my entire system. the card is used, but it was refurbished

 

nevermind. the card just completely conked out on me

 

thats a bummer

Get 7970m ! -> cooler, quicker, faster, stronger !

 

can't afford it. really, really, really want it though

quick question though. how much power does a 7970m draw?
would i need to do the 330watt psu upgrade?

 

huh? is your PSU 330 watt? or do you need that much to run it?

 

it draws almost the same amount as 6970M ~100W

No, you will not need to do a PSU upgrade, Stock 240W is more than enough.

another thing is getting 6970M is now pointless.

If you look good you can get really nice price on 7970m on ebay, or directly from Eurocom.

And yes, get a NEW card. Or a card from a very good seller with good reputation ( NBR marketplace )

 

i apologize i completely miss read that. I have been reading so much about 7990 290 and so on i thought i read the 7970 as a 7990. I was thinking i was reading the F@H thread so my bad on the response. This is what i get for doing this all during class

Also what rig do you have? are you dieing to upgrade? i think some next gen GPU on lower die come out next year. That is probably when i will upgrade. If you have the R2 check if future GPU will saturate the bandwidth....i know 7970m xfire was getting real close to saturating the pcie bandwidth

flingin your 7970 died?

 

Yes it died during Web Browsing ( NO OC )....YOLO...---->GPU Heaven

Card had 18 months.....fair enough, but ideally i want to have the card working all the time so i can re-sell and get better one in the future....

So i bought another 2 x 7970m's to make CF..... second card arrives on Wednesday

 

it happens sometimes you get bad apples. Mine doesn't overclock well but runs fine

 

im fine with getting bad apples sometimes, but it appears that recently i have a garden full of trees with bad apples, also, people are stealing my apples (stolen 780M GTX- i have 14 flats in my building, guy from UPS left the parcel in the door letterbox so anybody could take it, and somebody did- ^%$!"£ )

 

ouch....yea i tend to get nothing but bad stuff but as of late i haven't had any....so i hope i don't jinx it :/

 

hi to all ^^ this is my first post hehe

i have a m17x r2 with a single 4870 and i try to upgrade to 6990 (buyed from ebay from a m17x r3)

after make a good & clean installation (new thermal pads phobia and artic cool mx 4) the pc lights up but i hear 1 long beep and 2 shorts beeps and cant go to bios or windows log (blackscreen)

finally i decide to back to my old 4870 while i find the solution ... and the pc works fine now

my bios is A10 original...is this the problem? or i need to flash gpu bios?

maybe i need another bios (unlocked), anybody can help me?


sorry for my bad english ^^

 

Man this was a a great thread. I still miss my R2 with 6990's. That was a quick reliable system.

 

Hey DR650...good to see you. Yes, my dual 6970's are still running strong, although I built a new desktop so my alienware doesn't see quite as much use as it did.

 

Sorry for bringing this back again but i'm getting tired of reading tons of threads. I want to upgrade my M17X R2 from ATI 5870m's to something faster probably the 6970m but has anyone solved the HDMI video/audio for this upgrade? I sometimes i connect to my tv using the hdmi it would suck to not be able to do that. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Well thats it for me, I've gone and bought a Gigabyte p25x-v2 cf2 with geforce 880m gpu

I'm going to de-spec my alienware r2, and let my son use it (just cant bear selling it) so will have 2 x 6970m & i7 940xm cpu going on ebay soon (PM if interested)

Had a quick play with the gigabyte, its smaller, lighter and much quicker so far but im sure going to miss my r2 as daily device.

 

As far as i know there has never been issues regarding single 7970M Dell/alienware type when it comes to HDMI sound in the R2.
This as long as it keeps it original VBIOS.

 

Hi, can anyone help me on this one?

I have an M17x-R2 which I've had a single 6990 installed for a while. I recently purchased a 2nd 6990 and have installed it. I am able to enter into crossfire mode using Catalyst Control Centre, however only the main card is being used when gaming/benchmarking. I switched the cards around but still have the same problem. Both cards have been tested individually and are working perfectly on their own. I've uninstalled drivers and reinstalled them, still nothing. Can only get the first card working even though they are showing as crossfire enabled in both Catalyst Control Center and GPU-Z.

I've kinda hit a brick wall now and am completely stuck! Any help would be appreciated - anyone else had this problem?

Thanks

PS. Both cards are Dell cards taken from M18x laptops.

 

Will screws with hex heads work?

Socket-head Cap Screws M1.6 X 4mm Socket-head Cap Screws - HeliPal

 

Hello .

1) Just wanted to know if anyone managed to fix problems that result on using dell cards (not clevo) on the M17x R2 . There are several good priced dell branded 6970m on ebay that im interested but i am afraid to stumble into issues explained by ichime on this post (crashes when hibernating , powering off, fans not working properly) .

2) "However, flashing the Dell/AMD versions will NOT fix the fan issue and will require a motherboard BIOS hack to fix this since it seems to be a slight hardware difference that is not recognized by the M17x-R2 EC"

Where can i get this "BIOS HACK" if i use Dell cards?

 

I never had an issue using the 6970M with the R2, you just have to get used to not being able to close the lid and having to do a hard shutdown every time you get off the machine.

It's not officially supported and I wouldn't recommend going that route if you haven't already.

 

And your fans spin 100% all time?

 

Well... that was back when I owned the R2, but no... I found the fan ran when it needed to. O-o It was blowing max speed pretty regularly, but it would slow down when I was idling.

 

My 6970's have been running great for a few years now. But then I'm using Clevo versions that I bought from Eurocom (fan control works great...I don't believe sound works from HDMI..but then I've never tried). I've since upgraded to a desktop as my main gaming PC, but still using my Alienware time and again. That and regular shutdown works as well...again this is with the Eurocom cards though FWIW