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

For those of you who are considering getting a "backup" crossfire cable for this project, I ordered one from pchub.com using the link below:

Dell Alienware M17x Various Item

I paid regular shipping (not expedited) and it arrived in about 10 days.

It's a bit pricey, but since this tends to be a fairly difficult item to come by, I thought I'd share. I received mine on Saturday, installed it (replacing my existing one which is working just fine) and it came right up. No problems at all, and it comes with a 1 month warranty.

Since this is the only time I've ordered from them, I can't speak much about them, but if anyone is looking to have an extra crossfire cable, this is one way to go.

*Edit* Looks like the link was down earlier, but it's back up now

 

Thanks Greywolf! I am thinking I might grab one of these in case I need to switch back to the 5870's for warranty purposes...

 

so douse, any eta on when your 6990s arrive?

 

Not as of yet

We are waiting on the Banks to let go of the money and transfer it already!!!!!!!

 

Man, I wished I waited a few more weeks and wasn't in such a hurry to get 6970s. I could have gotten the 6990's for the same price since the 6970's price has dropped. And to boot I got some bad cards that allowed only a few bench runs before going kaput. Thankfully they're on the way back for RMA. Still though, would have been nice. I was just in a hurry lol

 

Bugger, didnt know you had troubles with your cards

We have yet to confirm that this works, so dont be devo to soon!!

 

thinking of the extreme overclock you usually apply to achieve those scores i am not sure if the cards were really faulty

 

lol, true, but I was having issues with the slave, and the most I hit was 800MHz on the core. So didn't go crazy. It was causing issues when the slave hit 3D clocks. Started off intermittient and thought it might be drivers so I reinstalled a few times. Then I started swapping cards in the slots. Turned out the slave would just shut down the system with a BSOD when in the master slot and it hit 3D clocks. In the slave slot it would just error out and shutdown the program.

Now if you said that with my 5870's I would believe you Took those puppies from 700MHz up to 1010MHz core. 6970's, 680MHz to 800Mhz. 800MHz was as high as I ever tried. They would have been great overclockers though, at 800MHz I hit 24381 Vantage GPU.

 

well in the case of 6970s the blue screen could be just because of lack of power supply? i actually almost never overclocked the gpus , the 5870s or 6970s during benchmarks. the reason is i am not keen on those stuff and i always got blue screen when i tried to so i had to do something special using extra apps that i never used however i got flickering on 5870s after the last cleaning of my machine. something must thave caused antistatic charge because they used to work perfectly in crossfire.even now when i use them one by one i dont get flickering. This was the main reason i updated to CF 6970s

 

Nah, it was doing it when I just opend Vantage, Sitting at the desktop it would be fine, open vantage and it would BSOD while scanning system settings. I also had it plugged into a killowatt meter. It would be at like 120W and BSOD.
I think it might have been the whole system going bad. The mobo died on me a few days later. It took out my last remaining 5870 with it. One 5870 was however dead on my account, I put it up for storage and it got a little moisture in the corner. Enough to erode a few solder points on a chip. In a week everything went to crap on me. The mobo and GPU's were probably due to the stress, the 6970's though were just wonky. When I get my system and GPU's back though, then it will be time for some extreme clocks lol. Just too bad I can't play with voltage.

 

It's times like this I love living in Arizona...moisture? what's that?

 

i got this too when tried to overclock the 6970s through the CCC. i doubt this has to do with your system.

 

Really sucks man. I thought it was bad enough having my mobo go on me.

Anyhow, i doubt the OC killed the 6970's. My everyday gaming OC is 830mhz. I have gotten it stable to 850mhz in 3D mark - no higher. It's not stable in games much past 830 though. I don't think 800mhz would have been pushing them to the point of failure.

 

It would work, and run a bench if the slave card was out of the system completely. If it was in the system at all, it would BSOD in the master, freeze in the slave. The master card would work no problems. Crossfire worked. When the system ran all together it worked great, when ever it decided to work.

 

Maybe they'll upgrade you (us) to the 6990's for our trouble....we can dream can't we

 

Yes we can, and I hope they do. Though if I got that lucky, Dell will replace me with an M18x and I'll have no use for them. Though if Dell does that, I'm going to respectfully request the 580s, since they didn't offer Nvidia when I purchased, and I went for the top end. Though it'd be nice to have a pair of 580Ms as well as 6990's. I'm day dreaming lol

 

Hey Everyone,

I received my ‘energenie’ power monitor today and I have been collecting some information relating to the power draw of my m17xr2.

The first few tests I did were to find out the how much the 920xm draws. All tests are done with stock voltage and fans at full.

Please remember that these are rough figures.

Prime95 @ 8 Threads, 80 TDP / 75 TDC, holding 21x across all cores:165 watts

Prime95 @ 4 Threads, 80 TDP / 75 TDC, holding 22x: 145 watts

Prime95 @ 3 Threads, 80 TDP / 75 TDC, holding 23x: 134 watts

Prime95 @ 2 Threads, 80 TDP / 75 TDC, holding 23x: 115 watts

Prime95 @ 1 Thread, 80 TDP / 75 TDC, holding 26x: 100 watts

Just for curiosities sake, I did a Prime95 @ 8 threads at stock clocks:140 watts

Next I did a couple of Furmark runs….always at max settings.

Clocked CPU with clocked GPU’s: 255 watt

Stock CPU with clocked GPU’s:245 watt

Something interesting that I noticed was that turning the monitor brightness up and down saw a fluctuation of 10-15 watts.
Another thing that was especially surprising (and worrying) was that when power draw exceeded 250 watt, it would briefly drop to 230 watt, and this would be noticeable by a very very VERY brief drop in fps. So I dropped the brightness down to bring the power draw to slightly under 250 watts, and the power fluctuation stopped. It is almost like either the mobo or PSU is trying to reduce the power draw.

I recall someone saying that with the 6970’s, in games there would be a slight persistent hesitation. This would be attributed to what I have found.
So, in an effort to reduce power consumption, I ran Furmark using an external monitor (1920x1080). This saw a max power consumption of 235 watts.

3dMark11 tests saw 180 watt – 200 watt for graphic tests. CPU test saw around 170 watt and combined (CPU and GPU) saw 220 watt.

I did a game test, and I decided on the game that gives me my highest temps which is Bad Company 2. This resulted in power consumption hovering around 200 watt with spikes around 220-230 watt.

And finally for a good old laugh I did an 8 thread Prime95 AND Furmark run
This saw power consumption bounce between 260 to 290 watt I did run this till all fans kicked up, but not much longer than that!!! The PSU did not trip, but we once again see that power fluctuation I noticed it before.

I have not done tests with the 5870s at stock voltage, as I cbf’d flashing the vBios.

These results, at least to me, are a little worrying with the pending 6990’s. There will be no room for clocking, and if all else fails a down clock on the vid cards may be in order. Failing that, use an external monitor and maybe remove my secondary HDD.

Oh and btw removing the battery made no difference, but I would still recommend it as if the lappy did decide to do a top up charge I would put money on the PSU tripping

Sorry for the long post

 

Yeah and someone posted here the 6990s are significantly hotter than the 6970's. So the 6970's might be the only choice if using the stock 230w.

 

Well my system is officially on the way to the depot.

 

So sounds like it's up to aarpcard to come up with our dual power solution

 

We need the 330w psu

 

or that too

 

So douse any idea when you'll be getting your 6990's in?

 

Still no eta.

I think our saving grace will be the fact that both my 5870's are over voltage AND over clocked, so hopefully the difference wont be that massive compared to a stock 6990.

Oh, and Furmark power draw is never replicated in games....so in real world applications we should have a bit of room to move....at least till another power solution becomes available.

 

That explains why there was no reply to my email. :laugh:

 

Bugger

It does appear to look that way, the only worrying thing was the power fluctuations...hopefully this is just caused by the PSU and will go away with a larger one...

 

Hey Cpt,

Meant to ask you...did you end up doing the cable modification on the crossfire cable? or did you just use Dr's fold technique?

Just curious

 

I did the mod, didn`t felt confident on folding it becouse it was looking like it could have been broken becouse it was going to be bent too tight.
I'm writing from mobile, while testing the cards for stability @0.96V. Just oc on the cpu, is intrsting that each time i bump up cpu freq. I get consistent increse in gpu vantage score. I'm now @21500gpu stock clock and quite a bit undervolted

 

Awesome thanks for the update. The cable mod was much easier to do once I opened it up and started doing it, I think my biggest concern was looking at the guide without physically trying it. The guide is great and explains everything, and once you open the laptop up and do it you find out that it's really easy to do.

Awesome about the vantage score and even more so about undervolting. How hot do your cards get now that you are undervolting so much?

 

gaming brings the cards anywere between 67 to 71 degrees, my slave tend to be a little warmer, with 2 to 3 degrees above the main card on thermal diode and shaders, but it doesn't bother me.

The laptop has never been so silent when gaming

 

Wow, that's fantastic...that's about what my 4870's run currently. I'm impressed.

 

Does the Clevo x7200 use dual psu's? Maybe we can copy that in the m17x?

 

the connector is different

 

If I was to wire 2 female connectors to a male connector would that work? the psu's wouldn't try to charge each other?

 

Hey all,

Just noticed that pchub.com is currently out of stock on their crossfire cables. So I hope all the folks who were planning to order them were able to get them. Not certain how often they restock so probably worth checking on a regular basis if you are still looking.

 

i maybe bought last a crossfire from pchub.com yesterday, ,i want to follow this guide upgrade m17x from one 5870m to 6970ms crossfire .

 

In THEORY it should work but no one has done it...voltage and current should be fine, as it should only draw as much current as it requires from both adapters.

The question is whether the hardware ID will be different as a result of two PSU's giving the same information.

I cannot stress the importance of using two of the EXACT same adapters...

 

Ok thats good just needed someone to confirm my own thoughts I will try it when my 6990m's come and we'll see what happens

 

Sweet! Let us know how it goes!!!

I have been reading a little more in to this and appears to be some agreement to use diodes in order to ensure that the voltage does not feedback in to the other PSU (as you have mentioned). To be safe I would recommend doing this.

As much as I am keen to see your results, remember that this hasnt been tested, so it is at your own risk...

 

you could go on ebay and buy the crossfire cable. There are literally hundreds of them on there. Now whether or not you trust getting them off ebay is another story but I would go ahead and do it.

 

I wasn't able to find any crossfire cables on e-bay, but good to know they are out there for folks who are still looking to buy one.

 

7007, how did you search for the cable and find it on eBay? The only ones I see are the ones you get when you buy the slave card. That is ok if buying a new slave.

 

Are the R1 and R2 GPU heatsinks the same? I'm looking for a spare set and see lots of R1 heatsinks.

 

The GPU heatsinks are the same, but the CPU heatsink isn't

 

Thanks ichime I will pick some up.

 

ATI/AMD RADEON CROSSFIRE BRIDGE/CABLE (7.5cm) | eBay

here is one of many. I just look up Hd radeon crossfire and some pop up unless those are the slave cables that you were talking about.

 

Uh yeah those are for desktop cards not mobile. The mobile ones are much longer and have predefined shapes.

 

Update on the power supply issues. I made a custom board to link the two PSU's together - I don't have access to a camera atm, but when I do, I'll take pics.

Anyhow, I don't have a killawatt meter so it's hard to test these things. I plugged in the HP 19v PSU after booting with the M17x PSU. There were problems identical to if only the HP PSU was plugged in. So no dice.

However, I finally broke down and bought a second M17x PSU from ebay. It's on it's way and I'll test with that. My gut says it will work. My current M17x PSU is a bit beat up so if it doesn't work, I won't be out much.

 

What Malignant said...if you look at the first page of this thread, the long, curvy, blue cable is the crossfire cable that is used for the alienware system. And unfortunately are very very difficult to find or purchase as most on this board will attest to.

 

Hey Aarpcard!

Fantastic! Really looking forward to how it turns out.