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

I have just started playing games rather then doing benchmarks and I have throttling too, only with crysis, warhead and crysis 2 so far, ut3 and cod aren't intensive enough
Basically I'll be cruising along then fps will drop (along with gpu and power usage) and slowly climb up again only to drop again a minute or 2 later, if I reduce screen brightness I don't get any throttling
I tried the modded bios, no change
Then I went on a thermal pad rampage
This is what I ended up with, I just did the biggest ones they seemed like the need the most cooling? What is that black stuff anyway?, I assume its for cooling bits and pieces on the mobo, can any one think of any benefit to running the computer with out it?
I redid the thermal pad on chip things next to the cpu
The silver stuff is aluminium foil folded up to support the thermal pad on the right hand side gpu or other wise one of the pads falls off as its not supported by the fan
Pics of the motherboard if any one can see chips that are more likley to need cooling or has any ideas for cooling let me know and I'll try them out (note on the last pic- the two largest chips and the large one with a circle on are the chips i put the thermal pads on)
Result: basically no change either heat isn't transferring though the black stuff very well (would it be ok to take it off?) or those chips are not the problem

 

LOL @ Thermal Pad Rampage

I would say the black stuff, being plastic, wont be transferring bugger all heat.

The plastic would be there for protection from the metal bits of the case, but I would need to open it up and have another look to be sure if it could be taken off. Assuming it doesnt make contact with anything, I dont see why not.

 

Hmm, beginning to think I should have stuck with 6970s

 

I did take it off, just wasn't sure if its safe to run it with out it? i will try without tomorrow see if there is any difference

 

Hi Kenny,

Have you attempted (or do you have access to) an external monitor to see if you see the throttling occur? Since you said turning down the brightness seems to stop the throttling, I wonder if it's back to being a power consumption thing. Also are you running everything at stock? overclocking? or does it make any difference?

 

And i'm really glad i went with 6970's. I must have missed something here... why people is sticking thermal pads all over the place ?

lol x2 at the thermal pad rampage

 

Did you put thermal pads on the DC to DC converters on the back of the 6990's? I did that and it stopped the throttling on my 6970's.

@ Douse, I am using the modded A10 bios. Also clevo provides full schematics for most of their machines. I have a full schematic for the x7200 somewhere around here. Idk if alienware does. Eitherway, I'm gonna take a closer look at my fried motherboard and see if I can find anything useful.

 

@CptXabaras Just trying to find out if the throttling that some of us are having is caused by a components getting hot

Yes I have put thermal pads on the dc convectors one of my pictures shows my use of folded aluminum foil to support the pad better

Every thing is stock (my cpu is stock at tdp 62w its an ES) no overclock or undervolt
Tomorrow I will try: external screen (I assume it will have the same result as dimming the screen), under-clocking my cpu (so its the same as ever one else's) I'll have another go at a gpu undervolt, and removing the black covering on the motherboard to get better heat transfer.

And DR650SE if it makes you feel any better I didn't get any throttling in any benchmarks

 

I would get that aluminum foil off of there. All it has to do is make slight contact with anything on the PCB of the gpu and you'll most likely have a fried MB and gpu on your hands.

 

Yes fried electronics did cross my mind when I thought of using the foil but I have supported it along its whole length and it is firmly in between the pads and the fan casing, I just cant think of any other way to keep that one pad on the dc/dc converter

 

Agreed!!!!

Kenny, how about placing a bit of thermal paste on the thermal pad to make it a little sticky and it should stay put when installing the card...

I dont know if this will cause any issues, never done it before!

 

Don't the 6970m's also have this problem? If not, maybe I will get them instead of the 6990m's. I'm not planning on building a dual PSU. Kinda still hoping for a BIOS mod that will unlock the M18X brick. Anyone heard from The Wiz about this?

 

I upgraded to the A10 modded, and it still throttles but actually throttles less!

FPS drops to 29/30/31 rather than continuously bouncing between 28 and 34.

The fact that the behavior has changed since updating the BIOS indicates that this may be actually something controlled by the BIOS!!!
The BIOS detects the adapter as 240watt, maybe Dellienware is on to something and it does more than just detect but also try to limit....

@Ghost, yeah they do but only if you are overclocking both the GPU and an extreme CPU.

 

I have the ones that were first used in a R2 from the OP of the thread, so they have been around for a while, and I have had no issues what so ever .;

They Rock, plug and play baby

 

I have been in contact with TheWiz, but told him due to my move that I would be unable for a while to give any time to the project. I finally just got my internet and cable installed yesterday so I will be contacting TheWiz tonight to give time to the project and testing. I'm not sure how much time he has, but maybe soon we can get the project back on track.

Here is my thoughts on it. The bios, in terms of patching the OCing feature worked like this. When the bios detected a non XM CPU, it was given a set of directions to disable the OCing in the bios. "If this than that" If the bios detected an XM CPU the bios read that, and gave another set of directions to allow bios OCing.

The PSU situation should be the same. "If this then that" So "This" must be dell approved ID code. Now if we can recode "That" to be the same for both dell approved as well as non dell approved, than the bios should be able to by pass a non dell adaptor. Hopefully your still following my logic.

If all that is doable, and it should be a copy and paste of code, the next hurdle will be if there is some other code where the bios detects a higher than desired wattage pull. In that case the bios may be throttling. That will be a more difficult code to find, but if found should be able to disable that feature. Could also lead to fried mobos.

I have no idea when it comes to bios hex editing and my one attempt on a vbios resulted in a bricked GPU

Well those are my thoughts.

 

That would be great! Ideally, it would be cool if rather than disabling the throttling, allowing the limit to be adjusted.

Say changing the throttling value to 280 or 290 instead of 240, as this would 'protect' from potential overdraws.

 

That's a great idea and ill definitely pass it along.

 

@ DR and Douse.....thanks for the info. Really interested to see if this is something that The Wiz can do in a BIOS mod. Might solve all problems.

 

Good stuff guys,

Hope something in the bios can be adjusted to overcome whatever the limiting factor is.

 

Cpu underclocked (to 55w tdp 15x multiplier, turbo limits 2/2/8/9) or external screen no throttleing, max power consumption is 250 and 235w respectively (250-260w normally with throttle) I didnt have time to try an undervolt
Removed the black covering to get contact with the thermal pads but there was no difference
so yeh its either bios periodically checking and then throttling the power or something else is over heating (any ideas)
It does seem strange that power slowly gets scaled up after a few 5-15 seconds, I guess those of you testing with prime and furmark have a more constant power draw so you don't get the fluctuations?

 

Really sorry guys but noobie question.

If i get an r2 with 285m sli I will still be able to upgrade to 6970cfx right? No bios lock or something?

I can follow the same set of instructions given at the start of this thread? Heatsinks and all other stuff will match?

And what all I will be losing when upgrading to 6970cfx from 285m sli? CUDA only or more features?
Whereas the only thing I will gain is more fps in games. And the fun in modding the r2 ofcourse!

 

You'll need to acquire a crossfire cable (since the SLI and Crossfire cables are not the same), but otherwise the heatsinks and all should match up just fine.

 

Just a little update, confirmed that both PSU's are sharing the load. not EXACTLY 50/50 but close enough.

One PSU was pulling ~130 watts and the other was pulling ~120 watts.

 

Thanks Greywolf!

 

ok could you summarize what is needed finally to make this 480 psu? the diagramm and what extra parts are needed (links where to buy online please). I may give it someone who knows such stuff to make it

 

I am sure Aarpcard is putting together a formal write-up, so it may be better to wait for full instructions to be released.

If you cant wait, look at page 95 as that is where he has posted his most current circuit diagram. He has also posted the recommended diodes, however you will need to have a read as I dont know exactly what page that is on

EDIT:: ^^ Page 92 ^^

 

So, just for the records i repasted both gpu's with mx-4 for the cores, and 0.5mm pads on the memory.

First, MX-4 spread so nicely compared to the shinetsu i was using that the application was a breeze. Besides, i followed Katalin advice heating up the siringe and it worked out perfectly! (still unable to rep you...) Second, 0.5mm pads works better than shinetsu on the memory.

here are my temps.

Idle



vantage



furmark



the witcher 2,
2 hours run maxed out (only motion blur, wich i hate, and ubersampling off)



I'm really satisfied by the result. Also considering that all the readings were with fresh application, no time for curing

 

Nice man! Thanks for the update and pictures.

Have you got a link to the AMD temps gadget?

Cheers.

 

Here you got it
Rivatuner GPU Monitor Vista Sidebar Gadget 2.2 download from Guru3D.com

Rivatuner must be running on background with monitoring activated in order for the gadget to work. In order for it to look how mine look, you'll have to personalize it. It has quite a bit of option to do so. and it is easy to use.

 

Thanks man +Rep when I can.
Hows the gaming going? Enjoying super smoothness!!!!?

Cheers.

 

Yes, this is the best part of it actually , I'm really enjoing the gaming experience. I have a lot of them, actually i keep installed The witcher 2, dirt 3, Greed corp, Fear 3, MoH, Limbo (this doesn't count ) all of them run maxed out. Only fear 3 i found out i can max it out with just one card and keep a steady 60 fps (CF off) becouse CF give me some texture glitches that i dislike (blood flickers sometime, ammo count on hud disappear). I have > 70 games on my steam account, i'm trying them from time to time and i can tell that the difference from CF 5870 is huge.

 

This is my take on the dual psu adapter, so far its working and doesn't get hot on idle at least will test tomorrow with games and benchmarks

 

+ rep Kenny!,

looks really well done

 

Are you using a bridge rectifier?

See how you go with a full load in terms of heat.

 

Thanks
Yes I'm using 2x 35amp bridge rectifiers bit of over kill but hopefully heat is ok

 

Two!? didnt see the other one!

Have you measured your voltage output to see what the voltage drop is like? Aarpcard had issued with voltage drop using one rectifier, hopefully you wont run in to the same problem :\

 

Haha yeh I manged to get 2 in there , I don't have anything to measure the voltage drop but I guess we will find out if its a problem soon enough

 

lol, yeah i know how you feel. My multimeter died so I couldnt confirm if the voltage was correct when plugging it in to my laptop....

I was a little tense when plugging it in.....

 

Awesome Kenny!! Looks great, can't wait to see how it goes.

 

Grey, any news from the user that is testing your cards?

 

Hey cpt, yep he agrees that the port on the master card looks as though it is damaged. I'll post some pics of what we think is the problem when I get the cards back (tomorrow). So looks like another RMA for mo

 

Guys, still trying to get hold of a pair of 6970's. I've tried pkhetan & mythlogic with no joy....... where next?

 

Hi Jus71n,

I've seen some selling on e-bay, although they are quite a bit more expensive then what pkhetan was selling them for. Other then that, I'm not sure what else to recommend.

MXM-upgrade I believe sells them as well too, but they seem to be more expensive then e-bay.

Good luck on your search

 

Try to pm Aikimox.

 

So why are the cards so hard to get all of a sudden?
And yeh eurocom sells them on ebay $400 ea + postage :/

 

I am also in the market for a single 6990M, and am having trouble. I can't find even a 6970M for less than $470 on eBay. Since I am going to run a single card due to the hassles that Crossfire has been giving me since day one, I would prefer to have a 6990M.

 

Yup me too.

I'm after a 6990M or a 580M.

I should have got them while they were hot.

Cheers

 

I have a question, does the CF Cable from the 4870 works for the 6970?
And what about the heatsinks and coolers? Do I need everything new and modded to get this working on my R2?

Does anyone sells the whole thing ready to plug and play?

 

Spinal, the crossfire cable and heatsinks/fans ect will work with the 6970 cards. The problem now is the cards are few and far between. Phektan was the man to go to for cards, but he's unable to get them now. The cards pretty much just plug and play. Just get the cards and put them in.

 

So next thing is try to find them to buy, and actually someone who ships to outside U.S.
One more question, how big is the increase of performance going from 4870s to the 6970s in %.