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

ROFL, nah I had attempted to purchase a pair of 6990m's from Pkhetan a while ago, but the money has gone AWOL...so my bank is trying to figure out what has happened...

So when that gets sorted I will be trying again!

 

RJTech has been around for a bit. I remember browsing their site for high-end laptops quite a few years ago, before I decided on an Alienware. I would really like to see what else is in store for the R2 before I commit to nearly a thousand dollars worth of video cards. At one point people were saying there was absolutely no chance in hell that the R2 would ever see anything beyond the 5870Ms. However, a single overclocked 6990M seems to be scoring in the same range as 5870CF at stock clocks. At least in the synthetic benchmarks.

 

I think there was the same saying for R1 too. In any case , you think RJtech is worth giving a try ?

 

Struggling to find some 6970's.... so with my setup could i install a pair of 6990's (stock speeds) and still run my CPU (940xm es) overclocked @ 25x and the system be stable?

 

Thanks for the infor TurbodTalon, time to sell a kidney.....

 

I think your psu will struggle with that....

You can put together two 240watt PSU's which will stop your PSU from tripping, but you will most probably have the fps stuttering that people are experiencing.

We are hoping for a BIOS update to fix the throttling...

 

Mythlogic can get 6970s. But you'll pay almost a grand for them.

 

$? plus shipping to the UK..... is the improvment going to be massive over some overclocked 5870's? enough to justify £640gbp, I know I'll get some money back for the 5870's but maybe only half the outlay

 

Yes, the improvement will be quite noticeable. Consider that 1 6970's almost match dual 5870's (at stock speed). It should be weaker about a 15% or so if i'm not mistaken.

As somebody stated somewhere here on the forum (i believe it was Scook), 5870's are great cards but they are bandwidth starved. The 2Gb of Gddr5 with a 256bit bus and the 160 Shader more of the 6970's were quite a lot of an improvement vs 5870's

 

Agreed. If you look at the gaming benchmarks on notebookcheck there is a substantial difference in performance from CF5870s to CF6970s. I would say at least 20% improvement on most games. Once I get mine, I'll test them and give some hard numbers.

 

Rjtech is a very famous seller in the Clevo world. Ask him before if the 6990M card he is selling is manufactured by Clevo/Kapok. I'm telling that because he said that these cards are compatible only with X7001 motherboard but not the X7000, and this seems strange to me as the Clevo/Kapok 6990M card is compatible with all X7000s motherboard. If the card he is selling is not a Clevo/Kapok card, then someone has to try it in a M17x-R2 before being sure about the compatibility.

 

As soon as someone sends him en email, we will all know.

CF5870s to CF6970s is only +20% ?

 

I would say closer to 50% depending on the application

edit:

I would say no, the only way I can get crysis stable on my system is to leave the cpu stock

 

I gave it a very conservative estimate based on what I read. The notebook review numbers in games I was interested in (BFBC2, COD BO) closer to 50% performance increase.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire - Notebookcheck.net Tech

AMD Radeon HD 6970M Crossfire - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Haven't seen a lot of personal in game benchmarks so these are the numbers I relied on. Some people don't consider these to be accurate benches.

The difference between 6970s and 6990s is not as large.

 

The only real differance between 6970 and 6990 is the clock speed and 6990 has a few extra shaders. Stock Vantage GPU puts the numbers at 22.5K for 6970 at a stock core speed of 680MHz, and 24.5K for 6990 at stock core speed of 715MHz. Thats based on my stock tests if I recall correctly.

 

Man I don't care as long as either one can handle a stock psu ok and run BF3 awesome!

 

They should have identical power requirements

 

In most games, 6970m's in CFX with a moderate to high OC, will be far more than 50% ahead of 5870m's. CFX 6970m's are easily 90%+ more powerful than my 630mhz 4870m's in most games for example. 5870m's @ stock are barely 10-15% quicker than my old 4870m's.

 

I missed out on getting some 6970's from Pkhetan
What options do we R2 owners have now? Are there any 6970 or 6990 sources/dealers out there?? I saw mention of RJ Tech as one possible source.

I've been playing along with my 4870 crossfire setup for over a year now and it's time for some moar power

 

Well I emailed Rjtech asking if their 6970's and 6990's are compatible with the RX2 laptops. Hopefully they email back

 

Here are the increases I have seen in benchmarks going from 5870 to 6990
vantage 30%
vantage gpu 46%
3dmark11 41%
3dmark11 gpu 55%
crysis 58%
crysis 2 46%
Hawkx 2 26%
Lost Planet 2 56%
Stalker COP 31%
Alien vs Preditor 47%

(I think hawkx and stalker are possibly cpu bound)

Overall 44% improvement (its far from comprehesive but gives an idea anyway)

 

GAWD! Me want now. It will be interesting how the 6990's run BF3

 

I'm going to sell my 5870Ms in an attempt to get just one 6990M. I am really tired of the bull associated with CrossFire. Plus my wife has an insane collection of Dooney & Bourke as well as Coach purses that she's trying to get rid of. If any of you need to smooth your spouses over due to excessive purchases of GPUs, give me a jingle.

 

How much do you plan on selling yours for and where do you plan on getting your 6990 from? Thats a good idea and later the price for a second 6990 should go down

 

I know eurocom have 6990s in stock but a limited number, with or without the mounting posts ( I assume you guys will want them without). Here is the message they sent me (through their ebay store):

Dear meaker10,

We have them (asked about the HD6970s) with and without the posts. 6990's are here but we are low in stock so they are not posted on ebay yet.

Thanks

- upgradeyourlaptop

 

Looks like my 6970 just arrived in Germany for my RMA. So hope to hear something by the end of this week regarding my repair/replace.

 

So are these compatible?

ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 6970m GPU MXM 3.0 Type B | eBay

if so I may be pushing the buy button, emailed them if I buy 2 free xfire cable and $69 shipping to the uk.

Are these straight in, or do they need bios flshing? do fans work ok? and full 1920x1200 res?

thanks

 

Has anyone who went from 6970Ms to 6990Ms gotten any actual gaming benchmarks for the two? There are 6970Ms on eBay every time I check, but I don't want to be kicking butt my own later if the 6990M is considerably more powerful than the 6970M. DR650 said something earlier about there being roughly a 2K difference in Vantage between the two, but that was CrossFire.

@Frozenarcticguy: RJTech has the 6990M, but we don't know if it will work in the R2. You would assume it would work with the correct VBIOS flashed to it. Ebay has 6970Ms for sale all of the time. As far as my 5870Ms go, I really don't want to go any lower than $200 each, and that's without heatsinks or the X bracket. We can always work something out though. PM me if you're interested.

 

Good luck man, third time is a charm. I'm enjoying the 6990's. This things are beasts! Though I havn't done any gaming at all with them Haven't removed my benching drive since I put them in.

 

Turbo, It all depends, I think if I were going crossfire, and using a 920XM, I would be inclined to go for the 6970s, only because with less shaders and less clock speed, you have a little more headroom. But since your going with a single 6970/6990, Let me know what you want for a baseline. Although I don't really have any games installed. I could provide benchmarks at required settings. I'll just drop my cpu multi to match yours. But we could get identical benches from somone with a 6970.

The good things about going with a single card, is if you want, you can always upgrade later, but you can also overclock a single card, and your only limiting factor will be voltage, not power draw as is the case with dual 6970s, and 6990s.

 

Sick of this

"Unfortunately, access to this particular item has been blocked due to legal restrictions in some countries. We are blocking your viewing in an effort to prevent restricted items from being displayed. Regrettably, in some cases, we may prevent users from accessing items that are not within the scope of said restrictions because of limitations of existing technology. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, and we hope you may find other items of interest on eBay."

Do you all get this on the ebay page?

 

Just change your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS) should bypass any country-based blocks imposed on ISPs

 

Ok so I'm sure its a eurocom card, can anybody confirm the flashing with another vbios enables the 1920x1200 res?

 

Ichime would be the best person to answer the question, I know he's done some installs with the Eurocom cards and will know.

 

Thanks man! It's been a long road so hoping this will be a happy ending.

 

Yes they are compatible. I am using 1 of those and 1 Dell card.

I used the Eurocom card listed there as the primary card for about a month when I waited for the Dell card to be shipped. It was simply plug and play and acted identically to the Clevo cards. Fans worked fine. Now I am using it as the slave with my Dell card. I'd be confident that crossfire with them would be simply plug and play as well. I am having small problems (fans on 100% all of the time, but that is due to the Dell card and not the Eurocom card.) And yes 1920 by 1200 works on the vbios they are shipped with - they ask you to specify which version of the card you want. I told them I wanted the Eurocom Panther 2.0 version (Clevo X7200) version if that matters.

It's using Dell cards and mxmupgrade cards or mixtures of different brands that start posing problems.

 

The 6990M on RJTech says that it won't work in the X7200 in big red letters. In addition to that, the 6990M on there is $490 and the 6970M is $550 for some reason. The 6970M on Ebay is ~$450. I could get that and run a full-time overclock on it. I don't know what to do, honestly. I need to get some real-world numbers on the 6970M vs 6990M before I pull out my wallet.

 

Hi Turbo,

Not sure if this will help, but I did run 3dmark11 and vantage on a single 6970m (since I haven't been able to get crossfire enabled), with a mild overclock.

I scored a 3132 in 3dmark11

and

Vantage Score 14317 3DMarks

Graphics Score 13749

CPU Score 16342

I don't have any gaming benchmarks yet, since I've been mainly focused on crossfire. If for whatever reason I can't get crossfire to work after I get my card back I may be looking to sell off one (or both), but trying not to think that far in advance just yet.

 

Hi greywolf,

Could i ask you where you bought youre cards from ?

thanks

 

Hi Trulyfatal,

I bought mine from phketan on the board, but he's no longer selling them. I know e-bay has some, and a few other places as well. A real pity though because phketan is great to work with.

 

I got 6970s from Pkhetan as well as 6990s. RMAed them 6970s and switched to 6990s. He was great and its too bad others can't benefit from his services. Hope people can find another alternative.

 

Thanks Greywolf. That actually helps a lot. I'm running a single 5870M, and it scores 9,325 in Vantage with a 100Mhz overclock on both core and memory. How 'mild' is your overclock? Also, if someone has a Vantage run with a single 6990M, post it if you don't mind. Do you have one, or can you produce one DR650?

 

I can, just give me what parameters you want for the bench.

 

Hi Turbo, I'm only overclocking my CPU using the 5% bios. Regarding the card, I don't have it in currently, but I believe I had it set to 820/1050. Temps were great, no crashing or artifacting. I didn't try to push the CPU or GPU's above that though because I wasn't trying to get the highest score, but rather get an average on what I'd plan to run a single card on full time.

 

Laptop Video Cards :: ATI HD 6970M 2GB Video Card for X7200 - R&J Technology, Clevo Barebone Notebook kits, Laptop and desktop system builder

 

Trulyfatal, good job bro, let us know how they work. I'm soooo fricken ready to pull the trigger and buy a couple

 

Here is an overclock matching Greywolfs settings. The CPU might be the only different factor. I forgot to drop it one multiplier.

 

Awesome DR650!

Gives a great comparison!

 

Damn. So the 6990M beats even the 6970M by 2K points. Have we ruled out the 6990Ms off of RJTech? I really want to pull the dang trigger!

Thank you Greywolf and DR650.

 

I haven't gotten an email back from RJTech so I don't know yet