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

the 6990s would sure pull way more power than the 5870s because we are looking at 200W for the two cards under max load, compared to 150W.

But why didn't I experience lowering of power to around 130W, when exceeding 250W like many were experiencing?

 

The more I read about peoples trouble with getting the 6900 series card, the more thankful I am for getting the cards in the small window of opportunity I had. When my family sits down at thanksgiving AMD goes around saying what were thankful for, Im saying Im thankful for getting 6990s from Pkhetan. Hahaha, well that and getting married.

 

LOL...I agree Pkhetan is awesome

 

A single card gets a good bit hotter than it would in CrossFire. I am running the retention mod with a lapped heatsink. Run a single card at 800/1000 and you'll be boiling water.

 

what do u mean "lapped"?

 

Ahmadmud, You should be getting a higher FPS in Furmark with everything maxed out and in full screen at 1920x1200.

Like I said, I was getting 34 fps and I have pretty much the same set up as you.

I would imagine because something is bottle necking your system, you are not noticing the FPS dip.

Also, my power fluctuations are almost identical to yours. I don't get dips to 130 watts, it drops more around 30-40 watts, with bigger fluctuations the higher you go.

 

you are absolutely right, I just noticed that when furmark is not in fullscreen mode, it only uses one gpu, so when I changed it fullscreen, the avg fps jumped up to 39 fps, just like you said.
I guess I am gonna have to redo the test in order to see how the two cards do the max load on cpu as well...
regarding the power drops around 30-40Watts, i am glad to hear that i am not the only one experiencing this, but does this mean we are not have power throttle?

 

Nah, sorry

Means you are getting the throttling.

Experiment with it. Adjust it so power draw is around 240 watts, and it will not bounce around.

EDIT: See page 62 for my results if you are interested.

 

just tried furmark (fullscreen and both gpus working)without any other load on cpu, and you are right power consumption is almost constant 227W. now I see what you mean.
so i guess back to hoping for the new bios fix

 

There more forum users we have trying out what the best settings are, the better this tutorial and thread will be!

Can't wait for Christmas where both of my 6970s are sitting tight, waiting to be played with!

Good luck for everyone trying this!

 

Switch em out with 5870's, nobody will ever know!

Then you can have the 6970's NOW

 

Overclockers Club - How to lap a heatsink

I use the retention mod, which means no thermal pads. AS5 goes on the memory chips as well as the core. Lapping the heatsink ensures that it has a mirror finish for maximum heat transfer. Every degree Celsius counts.

 

Hrrrm interesting Turbod. Looks like a lot of effort

It would be harder with laptop heatsinks....

 

The hardest part would be making sure in the process you didn't sand too much in a certain area. With a desktop CPU it would be much easier as you could rest the paper on a flat surface, but with our heatsinks, it could be tough.

 

thanks turbo, might need to do this the new cards to reduce temps

 

Yeah I might do this to my CPU heatsink as my temps should be lower.

The only issue is, there appears to be a section where the copper looks like it has worn through. Don't ask me how, as I have only repasted it a few times.

I wouldn't want that to get worse....

 

Turbod, in your experience, how much of a difference did lapping make?

I know they say around 5 degrees in the article, but that seems to be quite a large decrease imo.

 

Well if you think about it, lapping essentially adds more heatsink surface area to the CPU so in theory it's a good idea, especially for desktop chips, where you can lap the chips themselves as well. If I was ever really bored I might give it a shot. Depending on Turbos results, Thought my heatsinks seem to work as is.

 

I have done this before back in the day of my Celeron 566 and DIY water\peltier cooling...

Seemed to be effective, but not sure if I would be as adventurous now! Seem to be getting more cautious as I get older

 

You and me both, just hit the big 3-0 today

 

Happy Birthday DR650!! Oh to be young at 3-0 again

I just hit the big 3 - 9...too close to the big 4 - 0 for me

 

Birthdays all round!! I think birthday wishes are in order!

HAP HAP HAPPPPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

As for me, turning 27 in about 2 weeks

 

Happy Birthday to everyone. Today just happens to be my un-birthday.

As far as lapping, I did it because I was bored. It reduced temps by a couple of degrees. It is nothing you should do unless you are also very bored.

 

Looks like everyone had the same idea for their birthday presents....new video cards

 

Haha, thanks guys. Yea the cards were my treat for myself

 

I bought a Dell 6990M ES from the NBR member Table21 for $375. It was packaged inside of an anti-static bag, several layers of bubble wrap, foam, and finally the box. Installation took 15 minutes. I used the retention mod, with AS5 instead of thermal pads. My laptop booted up with no issues. Since the 6970 and 6990 use the same driver, I didn't really have to do anything. I did reset the CMOS. HWInfo does show the card as a 6970. This is due to the fact that its an ES GPU. GPU-z shows 1120 shaders and 715/900 stock clocks.

The fans do NOT run at 100%. However, they do run at a couple of speeds higher than idle. Mildly annoying, but I was already expecting them to run at full blast, so this was no big deal. Upon further investigation, the fans stay at this speed, no matter how hot the card gets. This means that you have to use some form of fan control, or you'll overheat them. I am using the fan control portion of HWInfo. Completely silent at idle temp of 49°C, and temps haven't exceeded 80°C in any of my runs.

Some of these symptoms were mentioned on the first page. I can verify some of them:

The system will not shut down properly.

The system does not sleep properly, and will not resume from sleep.

If the screen dims, it is fine. However, if the screen shuts off completely, I have to do a hard shut down.

HDMI-out works fine. The audio over HDMI works fine as well. OSD sees it as display port though.

A Vantage run at stock clocks yielded 13,544 GPU. A run at 800/1000 scored 14,851 GPU. A third run at 815/1000 got me the 15K I was looking for.

Thanks again to Table21 for the stellar price.

 

Turbo, upgraded your 6970 to a 6990?

 

how can you control the fan speed from hwinfo?

 

Yes. However, it is not without its problems. Just to clarify, non-Dell 6990s have fan control, but still suffer from the shutdown, sleep, and hibernate issues? Or are they 100% functional? My single Eurocom 6970 had none of these issues. It worked as if it was Dell OE. I find it odd that the 6990 would have so many issues. I hope a fix for this comes along at some point.

It is the small icon next to the 'Logging Start' button.

 

oh thanks

will installing the clevo/Eurocom bios fix the fan problem?

also i just installed the cards, ,but i can't install the drivers from amd website. it says no proper graphic adapter found???

 

According to Ichime's original post, nothing fixes it. A system BIOS update will hopefully fix it.

You're going to have to install the 11.10 preview drivers. They force themselves to install. After that, you should be good. I had the same problem with my 6970M.

 

thanks, download now

so did you use driver sweaper following this guide here:
ATi Mobility Catalyst 11.9 Display Drivers For Notebooks (28/09/2011)

or just normal installation?

 

Others may disagree with me, but I really only use DriverSweeper for worst-case scenarios. Install the driver. In my case it had to be the preview driver that force installed.

 

if you don't mind, can you please tell me what are the defult settings for gpu fan speed with respect to temp?

also what did you set yours to ?

 

I'm only really concerned with keeping the idle temperature and full load temperature under control. Here's what I've got though. These settings do an OK job of keeping the fan speed from constantly modulating.

 

why are you controlling the MemIO rather than the Displ0, shader or thermal diode?

 

Turbo, try wiping your drivers then install the Dell drivers, than install the AMD drivers on top of the Dell drivers. That May solve the shutdown issues. Worked for another member in another thread i think. Don't remember the specifics of the issue.

But make sure the Dell drivers are actually getting installed. That May require you installing the 5870 to get the Dell drivers to install with the .exe

 

I don't have a 5870 GPU anymore. Sold them both. With no driver installed whatsoever, the system will shut down on its own without hanging. I would also have to assume that would fix the sleep as well. No driver will install properly accept for the preview drivers. They force themselves to install. I'll keep messing with it though.

 

Because that is what gets the hottest on my laptop.

 

MemIO is also the warmest of the above on mine as well (assume it's the same for everyone)

 

finally the first run with the new cards @ stock clocks and voltage:



Edit: note that second card is a little hotter the the primary one, must have done a poor job at pasting, although i used OCZ freeze and .5 thermal pads on all memories front and back:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/818/37845926.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/64/19003967.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/13/81641999.jpg/

 

Looking good Ahmad .

Yeah that second GPU looks abit toasty but can be easily fixed.

Looks like you made a good choice grabbing those cards .

 

Nice work Ahmadmud!

Where did you get the cards from?

 

Awesome Ahmadmud!

Looking great!!

 

thanks guys, it is actually two of many of the ES dell cards table21 was selling last week...

the cards are great, except for two main problems:
1. Power throttling as expected
2. No bios fan control, use of Hwinfo64 will be required

 

Bugger, wasn't aware table21 was selling cards.

 

Hey Guys. Been away for awhile in 6970 limbo waiting on a replacement 2nd card. Got it on Tuesday and it came without retention posts. So I had nothing to screw the heatsink too. Since then I returned it and upgraded to 6990s. Have them in my bag and can't wait to install them. Maybe can do at lunch. I'll let you guys know how they work. I'm really hoping both cards will work out of the box. Then I'll read back to figure out how to undervolt.

 

Mod the vbios to be undervolted at .96v. Seems to work well. Specifically for the 3D clocks. If you undervolt to .96v across the board it will reduce your temps at idle as well, but thats your call. I may undervolt the rest of my clocks, but havn't had the time yet.

 

Thanks DR650SE. I assume you use RBE for undervolting? Never used it before. Have to read up on it. Is it all GUI based or is there vbios flashing that needs to be done via USB bootable?

 

Here ya go. You can name the cards how ever you want. For me, when I copied the vbios, after editing I named them 6990M and 6990S for slave and master so I knew which vbios to flash to which card. Naming the edited vbios is your call, and you can go back and rename the original how ever you want.

When you open the vbios in RBE you'll see the clocks and the voltage beneath it. You can just type .96 in the box/boxes and save.