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

Will do tomorrow morning. Didn't have much time today.

 

while it was installing the AMD driver i got a BSOD system service exception...anyone know why? I booted to safe mode and under device manager t shows 6900's....ok so i booted back to normal amd apperantly only the driver installed but not the catalyst center or other stuff.....HWinfo shows them as 6970's ?......did i get scamed? i bought from pkhetan...

 

Does the system recognize both cards?

 

yes it does works fine... just that it reads as a 6970 how can i be sure they are not..?

 

What does GPU-z say for the shaders? 1120 or 960?

Are the stock GPU clocks 715mhz and 900mhz?

Cheers.

 

the sticker in the photos that you published showed clearly "BLACKOMB XTX", it's for sure a 6990M.

 

1120 at 715/900

 

I doubt you got ripped have a look at gpuz if you have 1120 shaders and clock speeds of 715/900 you got the 6990s
The problems is the software you have doesnt have the 6990 in its vocabulary

 

Cool all good man!

Cheers.

 

thanks did this just for BF3 ...i kept clevo's thermal pads because paste is just rly messy to work with on mem chips...the temps in idle are 42-45 semi active (web) 50's gaming 70's and OC also..night ppl

 

Nice! Can't wait to see some benches on the 6990's.

 

Me too! Grats Stealth!

 

come on stealth...cant wait to see if they work..

also roughly how much a pop were the 6990s?

 

I would love to try them in the M17x (R1) but don't have the funds

 

yes they work i have them on latest driver ill play around with laptop when im home..

 

Speaking of which, I never really understood the naming scheme with the AMD higher end mobile chips. If anything, the 6970M should have been the 6950M and this 6990M should have been the 6970M.

Also, my offer still stands, but will expire in September: If you live in the United States (preferably the east coast) and have a M17x-R1 (a spare one if possible) and would like to see if either the 6970M in CF or the 580M in SLi will work in the R1, send me your R1. I'll pay for shipping and handling and all that. PM me for more info.

 

I don't think AMD planned on making the 1120 shader 6990m until the learned Nvidia planned a GTX 580m, so they had to come up with a new name quickly.

 

Hey guys, did anyone manage to flash Clevo cards with Dell vBIOS without bricking them?

 

I flashed fine (but on the 6970's)...don't think it's been tried on the 6990s

 

What tools did u use? Could you guide me through the process (+1 rep )

 

update guys sometimes i have to manually disable and enable CF for slave card to not be stuck at 100-400 clock when needed amd also when i tried to play crisis warhead with both cards working laptop just shuts off and take my power brick with it.....i can play need for speed just fine...just crysis only giving trouble atm..

 

I flashed a Eurocom card with a Dell vbios with no problems . . . Eurocom cards are not identical to Clevo cards, but they are very close.

 

When I got my first 6970, I had that problem with Crysis you were talking about - however after a few days it just went away. . . .

The people at MXM upgrade were having similar problems too. Turns out there were voltage regulators (i think that's what they were) on the back of the card that were overheating and causing hard shut downs. They put a thermal pad on the back and it fixed the problem.

Here's a link:

http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/D900F.html

 

Try undervolting

 

Hi Aikmox,

I actually used the instructions posted in this thread...as below:

"Plug in your bootable USB stick containing the ATiFlash utility and the required VBIOS files.

Turn on your computer and log on to your boot menu by holding F12. Choose USB/Removable Media when presented the list.

Once you are in DOS mode, type in the following command in italics:

cd 6970m

Afterwards, type in the following commands in italics (wait for confirmation of successful flashing after typing each line):

atiflash -f -p 0 6970CX0.bin

atiflash -f -p 1 6970CX1.bin (for CF users only)

Restart your machine and install the latest AMD Catalyst drivers.

If all goes well, you should be able to log on to GPU-Z and/or HWinfo32 to verify that the card(s) are installed properly. For CrossfireX users, make sure that CrossfireX is enabled under GPU-Z."

More details are in the guide on the first page.

But I was able to flash the dell bios, reboot, and the flash the different modded clevo bios, and then ultimately reflash the original clevo bios, with no problems at all (I was able to flash them multiple times while attempting to sort out my crossfire cable, so didn't have any issues at all doing so)

Let me know if you have any other questions, it was a pretty straight forward process, and ichime has it detailed pretty clearly.

Again this was for a 6970, although a 6990 vbios flash should be the same I'd imagine.

Good luck

 

idk how to..

 

You've got to make a custom vbios using RBE

 

Hey Stealth,

Might try reading through this thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...tato-significantly-hotter-than-my-6970-a.html

it discusses some ways to under volt a 6990 card (as well as safe under volts, etc)

I think there is some discussion related to the 6970 as well, but I think the method to do it would be the same.

Looking forward to more updates

 

This explains al the little pads i saw under clevo heatsink...guess i gotta open this monster up again

 

I'm out of ideas with this SLi thing. I even tried an SLi patch to bypass nVidia's software blocks.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

i went back in to the cards added the clevo thermal pads and tape fan mod my temps dropd by 10c but.......now main gpu's fan spining at 65% and slave card is stuck at 100/400 with fan not working at all nor cpu fan not working also...did i mess up the crossfire cable?..maybe i messd up connecting something...nope everything seems to be connected fine

 

Hmm, Have you tried a Eurocom vbios? That's the only thing I can think of right now . . . I'll keep thinking.

 

i took a closer look and i found.....OS_MLK Audio Express card cable burned right at tip where it connects to a chip

 

Does CCC allow you to enable Crossfire? Does GPU-Z say crossfire is enabled?

Was the cpu and gpu fan running before you did the mod to the fan cable? If they were, then I'm thinking you may have accidentally messed that part up.

 

Could you post a few pictures? It'd help to get a better idea of what's happening.

 

I took some pictures the chip is fried too....looks like i wont be able to use headphones ill upload when i have a pc to use lol and yes CC allowed me to use CF

 

Sorry Stealth for the problems you are having...is this possibly the result of the 330w power supply?

 

Idk what it is i should have not messed with it at all after it was working...then i decided to try out a bench while O.C at 820/1000 was doing ok till it reached the GPU section..temps just started increasing rly fast i canceld it when they reachd around 9x celsius when i hit to reset clocks to normal it BSOD after that ive started having problems..well just 1 problen i fix the fan one (the extra clevo therm pads i removed from chips) but the main problem i have is the slave card stuck at 100-400 disabling and enabling CF fixes that but i have to do do everytime i turn laptop on.....now while CF is working how it should and both cards have syncd clocks when ever i try any game laptop it blacks out taking adapter also...

 

Did the thermal pads stop the hard crashes though?

 

Thanks for the guide!
I did all that but it didn't work as expected.

First, the M18x only sees primary card with both cards installed and connected with a CF cable, regardless of which card is primary.

Second, the system won't even post with only 1 card installed

Third, after flashing one card the system doesn't post at all (tried all possible combinations single and CF, resetting the BIOS, etc)

I think there;s something with the system BIOS
Back to the 6970M's for now...

 

I dont like the part where it says

"We had some issues in the past where we experienced some unexpected shutdowns. One of the possible culprits are these three DC/DC chips at the back. I added a patch of thermal material, which evacuates some heat to the motherboard."

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me at all....

In all seriousness though, I don't see how this would have caused the issue Stealth has experienced unless they get BLOODY hot or there was a short somewhere..

Also Stealth, you mentioned that the chip that fried was the audio card? Do you mean the onboard sound card? Can you play any sound atm? Pictures would be very helpful.

EDIT:: An after thought, would it be possible that the cards drew more power than the laptop could handle?

 

The guys at mxm upgrade put a 6970m in a clevo laptop before (cant remember which model) and for some reason the card was causing the laptop to crash halfway through 3dmark or something, so they put a new graphics card in and put the thermal pads on the voltage regulators and that fixed the problems.
I have no idea how the extra draw from the 6990 could have fried the sound card as it wouldn't draw power through the sound card or what ever it was any way, and how much hotter could it have gotten compared to any other graphics card?
Any way tomorrow night I should have the cards and we'll see if I get the same results.... hopefully not

 

Well where is the sound codec and surrounding circuitry?

But the motherboard is fairly large and can dissipate a lot of heat.

 

But you don't know what components you is adding heat and extra stress too. And the whole motherboard wont dissipate the heat, mainly the area around the points where contact is made. Also, after extended periods the heat may start building up and increasing overall system temps..

Maybe I am just too careful.

 

ok i got everything working turns out it was a bad cable i had connected to my A.C adapter i also reinstalled drivers...um about the burnt thing i found it was a cable and socket that connected the headphone/mic/usb+ SD cardreader to motherboard its a sperate board from motherboard im just not going to find out which ones dont work....im scared it might mess up something so im not going to touch the right side just my blu ray drive which is not part of tht cable that burnd....i havent tried crysis im scared also that might start a crysis for me..so far ive just been playin need for speed

 

Well, glad to hear it is working!

If you don't mind be asking, can you clarify what you mean about a bad cable being connected to your AC Adapter so this can be avoided in the future?

It would also be great if you could list your system specs and perform some benchmarks!!

EDIT: oh and another thing, are you currently running with or without the pads on the voltage regs?

 

I'm not quite sure why you're thinking the heat is being dissipated to the MB through the pads he put on the back of the cards. In the Clevo DC900F that was the case - however the Alienware M17x is a completely different machine. The only things underneath the video cards in the M17x are the aluminum casings of the cooling fans. No heat was being dissipated to the motherboard. . . .

As for the reason why the data cable got burned (still waiting on pics), I'm thinking it might have been due to an error stealth made when doing the fan cable mod - if he did in fact do that; I'm having a hard time following exactly what he is doing.

 

That is true, I was more so commenting on the description in the Clevo guide and how I don't think it would be wise. It doesn't really matter anyway.

I also am confused at this point..

Any more progress on the Dual 240 watt PSU?

 

Not at this point. It works, but the diodes I had ready access to weren't cut out for the task. Last week I bought better ones which should be able to handle the power draw fine and they should be here sometime in the next few days. As far as I'm concerned though it works.

 

Well I would be interested to see how it goes with the new diodes in terms of how hot they get.

Once you have a finished product, can you please post another circuit diagram and a pic?