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

Yes there is a difference, you take a bandwidth starved gpu design and double the bandwidth, it helped alot

Then they also made it more efficient on the way and added more shaders

Crysis benchmark went from about 38 fps with 5870s to 62 fps with 6970s

 

Ty scook! exactly what I was looking for.

 

Sorry about that... didn't understand what you meant

Good info, scook! Breaking the 38 fps barrier and achieving 62 fps in the Crysis benchmark is an excellent example that is easy to relate to real world results. Thanks.

 

Really? that is a HUGE difference in performance... .. I am still waiting for the Nvidia solution anyway.

 

and what makes you believe they will work? meaning power needs.

 

i'm so stoked to find this out! i need to come here fore often.

 

I really want to give it another shot. I almost tried it with two nVidia GTX 460Ms, but I didn't have the SLi cable (Single GTX 460m in the R2 had fan issues). I ordered an SLi cable from an M17x-R1 and I'm really thinking about saving up and trying this again, preferably with two GTX 470Ms or two GTX 485Ms. Problem is money; the amount I paid for these 6970m is about the same I'd have to pay for one GTX 485M or 1 and a half GTX 470Ms.

 

Save up buddy eheeheh. I would sure like to see how SLi 470s go in the R2 beast.

I might see if I can start putting some funds together to do some testing as well. Its a shame that mobile GPU prices never really go down or they virtually take forever to and by that time they are obsolete or yesterdays new lol. The 5870s are still very capable beasts however I'm starting to see signs of their max power not being enough anymore

Can't wait for anymore testing you do chief!

Oh yeh what was that 3d mark 06 score.....i never saw the posted up pic. TIA!

Cheers.

 

For some reason, I always get 13000-14000. I haven't figured out why yet and this is with CPU oc'd Crossfire on, etc. When I find a fix for this, I'll post the "real" score.

 

Here is one 470m for sale.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/computer-components/586143-fs-nvidia-gtx-470m.html

Cheers.

 

Ah true true. Hmmmmm interesting. I wonder what that might be about. Could be a power issue ey you reckon? But then again everything else is running and working fine. Perhaps the 920 turbo clocks aren't able to hit max while running 3d mark 06 on this occasion when coupled with crossfire 6970s.
hmmmmm................

Thanks for trying it out anyways!

Cheers.

 

Just wait till i get 6970s. Then you'll see the real score

 

Hahahaha LOL!

Can't wait man DR! Any ETA on those bad boys?
I'm looking at your current 3d mark 06 score and thinking hmmmmm.... Your actually not to far off the 25k mark. It seems the stock average score for the M18x so far is around 25k and one guy got over 30k

I guess our limiting factor in the end will be our PSUs..........it will still be interesting to see how far we can push our R2s for the moment though.
You and your DICE should put up a pretty good fight I reckon ehehe.

Cheers.

 

The reason is almost certainly your CPU. Judging from your Vantage score, it looks like it's either not overclocked, or throttling. What settings do you have it at? If you ran wPrime 1024 while monitoring your CPU temps and adjusted the heatsink screws to optimize your temps, you score should go up considerably. If you can OC the CPU to everyday settings with throttle stop such as 90/75 you should see a nice jump in score. 3DMark06 is so CPU dependant, that your graphics tests will scale with the CPU clock. The GPU is almost certainly not even close to being used at it's potential, because the CPU isn't feeding it enough.

 

so you believe nvidia 470s dont deserve the money in comparison with the 6970s? I am one step before ordering the 6970s too.

 

For me I don't know anything about the nvidia cards. If they performed better i would get them. Especially if they had voltage options. But the at cards are know to work. I don't want to put money into something that might or might not work. But id love to see them work. Thats for sure.

 

Me too I sure would like to see some High end Nvidia GPUs make a come back to the Alienware scene. So far its been all AMD/ATi. Nvidia GPUs seem to be either too expensive or injury prone and only used in other brands.

I would sure like to see how they go though.

Cheers.

 

Well, the 6970M performs significantly better than the 470M while costing less on average. Also, features such as CUDA and PhysX mean nothing to me. So I wouldn't trade my 6970Ms for them; I'd rather just save up, buy them, test them and resell them.

I'm just using Turbo boost, but even with throttlestop I'm getting below the 16k mark. I also see that the 2nd GPU is not even running even those CrossfireX is enabled and this doesn't happen with Vantage and 3dmark11.

The GTX 470M and the GTX 485M have voltage options; you can set the voltage to 1.03v for the 485M (up from 1.00v) at least via a VBIOS mod. However, the margin of overclock with these voltage adjustments on the 485M is the same as the 6970M without voltage adjustments (about a 25-30% core/memory overclock over the stock clocks). Also, the GTX 485 is faster than the 6970M in Vantage, while things are reversed in 3dmark11.

And although at this point in time I much prefer the ATi solutions over nVidia in the notebook side of things, I do wanna see the newer nVidia cards work just to see if the M17x-R2 is a truly upgradeable platform and if owners of these machines would have more options when it comes to upgrading their GPU. This is the last great 17 inch 16:10 Dual GPU notebook system built.

 

Has anyone had any confirmed success using Eurocom 6970m's? Ichime, says they should work with the modded Clevo bios, but has this been confirmed?

 

Anyone tried one Ati card for picture and one nvidia card for the rest of the stuff? I know it is doable on a Desktop just wondered about in a Laptop.

 

i was planning to buy those but the same doubt made me order the clevo ones

 

Eurocoms cards should work (Similar card that Aikimox sells), since it posts on the M15x. However, you'll need to flash to the Clevo VBIOS (the one in the download package) to get the fans to work and such.

But to play on the safe side, you can buy the Clevo card, or even the Dell cards from Dell Small Business (I think someone got them for about $430 + shipping). Just give them the part numbers.

 

ichime hav you tried further overclocking the 920XM with the 6970s, using evga tuning utility maybe? just to see how much power the 240W adapter can hold?

 

I've been looking, but can't find it - maybe I'm blind - can you tell me the part number for the Dell 6970's for the M18x?

EDIT: NVM I found it lol - I was blind.

 

I throttled my system to 90/75 with 26x across the multipliers, but it trips the system when I run 3d11 or Bad Company 2. Basically my limit is around 25x with no bclk overclock with no GPU overclock or Turbo boost on with GPUs OC'd to 820/1050.

It's possible that the 330w PSU would allow me to go higher (once we get it to work).

Like the ATi card for rendering and the nVidia card for PhysX? I'm not sure but I think someone did that, but then again, my system wouldn't post when I installed two different GPUs (1 5870M + 1 6970M), regardless of the order.

 

any news about the 330w psu support on m17x r2? how difficult or easy can it be to add support?

 

I still think it would be possible and safe to run two 240 watt PSU's in parallel. If I run into power issues when I get my 6970's I'm going to try that. The voltage being supplied to the motherboard will be the same - and that is all that matters when it comes to IC functionality.

All a second 240watt PSU in parallel would do is provide extra headroom past the original 240watts when more power is needed. You do have to be worried about too much current being drawn through the voltage regulators on the motherboard, but if they can handle a 240watt draw, then my educated guess is that they're engineered for at least 240watts + 20% or 290-300watts.

Using the full potential of a 330watt PSU on the M17x could be damaging I think - along with the possible 480watts provided by the two 240watt PSU's in parallel - but as long as the total draw is below 300 watts, then I'd be confident in the internals of the laptop being able to withstand it - with either the 330 or 480 watt PSU's.

Using the two 240watts in parallel would be the easiest solution as of right now to people's power issues.

Clevo actually does it on their X7200. If you get SLI GTX 485m's or CFX 6970m's you have the option of buying a second 330watt PSU and an adapter to use it in parallel for a total of 660watts.

Electrically speaking, there is no danger - as long as you don't draw much over 300watts from what I can deduce. The extra wattage is just overhead, and the actual voltage supplied to the motherboard doesn't change - and that is what is important; incorrect voltage thrown at IC's will fry them a million times faster than heavier current. The current will only increase as power draw increases and if 240watts is right on the line between handling it and cutting out, then max draw can't be much above that and still within the safe range of amperage engineered into the components.

 

so using two 240 watt adapters can also be damaging or not when over 200 watts are i use? this is not clear to me. Thus how to use two 240 watt psu on R2? any adapter to propose?

 

Not when over 200watts are being drawn - when over 300watts are being drawn.

Then again this is just based on my knowledge that the voltage regulators used in electronics (especially high end stuff) are over-engineered. And then you have to factor in tolerances which are almost certain to be 20%. So at the very minimum you have voltage regulators designed for 240watts plus a tolerance of 20% totaling 298 watts or ~300watts.

But coming from an electrical engineering standpoint, it would have been very stupid if Dell used voltage regulators (and other components) rated at 240watts - they would have used something with a higher rating. So in reality, the total power that could be handled by that laptops internals is most likely over 300watts - but definitely at least 300 watts, so using either a 480watt (two 240's in parallel) or a 330watt PSU would be fine as long as the total draw does not exceed 300 watts.

You would have to make a custom board to use the PSU's in parallel.

Eitherway, until support for the 330watt PSU is added, this is in all likelihood the only way to solve the power issues. People should open their laptops, and find the voltage regulators on the motherboard, look up their data sheets and determine their ratings before doing this - just as a precaution.

I'll most likely end up doing that.

 

Would you need a custom board if you were running two 240s in parallel but they shared the same tip?

 

It depends on how clean you want it to look, just a little soldering is needed.
The cord currently attached to our bricks should support this with no problem.

 

well i wont modify anything when it comes to hardware.

 

You could just splice the two PSU cables together - and that would work, but it'd look pretty ugly. I'd just take a small breadboard, solder on two female power connectors and route them to a single male connector. It'd look neater and you wouldn't cut up your PSU wires.

Plus you could switch between 1 or 2 PSU's if you wanted to.

 

That's exactly what I was trying to say
aarpcard, IMO the voltage regulators should be able to handle quite an amount judging by the amount of solder they have, but you're right better we look at some data sheets before we start pushing.
First thing I'll do when I'll have some time is look their specs up.

 

I already have two 240 watt psus but this whole process seems difficult to me.

 

Cool.

Come to think of it I have 3 PSU's that are ready to go.
Now all I need are a pair of 6970s or 580Ms LOL!

Cheers.

 

Could you share that part number with me? Are the 2 CF cards different (master and slave) or the same card? I called my Dell business rep and he came back with a quote for a 460M LOL. I think they may have quoted me this because the 6970's are out of stock. What would CF 6970s with cable cost USD?

 

Hi guys,
I'm currently sourcing all the kit to do this mod in my m17x. I have a quick question if you guys don't mind. I know that the xfire cable im getting will be too short, will the one i already have be ok? Its for a pair of 4870's in my m17x-r2. Can i just use this one or will i need to source a xfire cable specifically for a m18x/ 6970m combo from dell?

 

It will do just fine, Ichime used the same cable, make sure you read the guide carefully and rep the fella for his effort

 

Great!, yep will do. Thanks for the reply. Got a couple of weeks before the cards turn up to do my homework hopefully things will work out just fine

 

I decided to pull the trigger too on the 2 6970's. I'm in contact with pkhetan, i'll see if i can place the order on the next 2 or 3 days so hopefully when i'll be back home in july, i'll have the cards waiting for me

 

make us some benches then

 

Nice to see you join the ranks! Mine should be in soon hopefully this week or early next week. You know ill throw down some benchmarks

 

Hi guys,
I was so excited to see the 17X R2 can be upgraded to 6970MCF, I will try to do this when the 6970M is more cheaper. lol.
I have another question. If I overclock my 5870MCF with increased voltage such as from default 1.05v to 1.08v, etc.Is that OK? I mean only with the game not benchmark.I heard someone said if I do this, the picture will suddenly stucked, then recovery, then stuck again. Will that happened?
Thanks a lot!
(ignore my grammar and word using issues, my native language is not English)

 

Afaik people use to overvolt'em @1.1v and never heard of the issue you are describing. At which frequency are you planning to run them? you may not need overvolt at all. I have mine flashed @800/1100 rock solid without overvolt (for daily use, not benching. Over 825Mhz my cards need more voltage)

 

Just about time! I hate to have enough posts to get to PM someone, I need to PM this pkhetan fellow and check out the prizes

 

any news on the hdmi sound issue?

 

Keep us posted on how it goes for you, I'll be home for the 21st of july, the cards should be already there when i'll arrive. If you can, try to understand the max limit of cpu + gpu (if any) overclock you can achieve with the 240W PSU.

Meanwhile, any idea of where i can get the 330 PSU for M18x? I hope theWiz can pull the rabbit out of the hat and give us support for this PSU.

 

Ichime, have you figured out why on of the 2 cards doesn't seems to run using 3Dmark06 while with Vantage and 3Dmark11 there is no problem? Not that i care too much about benchies, as long as gaming it's ok. How is the system holding the 2 new cards?... i already want them baaaaaadly

 

I should be ordering at least one of the cards tomorrow - depends on how big my paycheck is. If I can only afford 1 atm, then there shouldn't be an issue buying another one in about 2 weeks, right? Do they have to be the same brand - i.e. clevo, eurocom, or dell - and do I have to use different vbios's when using single/dual card configurations?