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

I think if I end up ordering another set, that I'll make sure I purchase a set that is tested (both cards) and the cable prior to ordering. Given my experience, I'd rather have a set that says, yup it works with both cards and cables so I can eliminate any external factors.

 

OK boys, here is the lowdown from Eurocom.

" Our No Return policy does not include true warranty issues like it sounds you have. Please give me your name so I can find your order and I will send you an RMA number and shipping info.

Thanks

- upgradeyourlaptop"

They haven't stated how it will go down though. I don't know if money will be returned to my PayPal account, or if they're going to try to send me a new 6970. Obviously, I don't want another 6970, so I'll try for the full refund option.

Sounds like Eurocom does indeed have a warranty, just not for folks who screw the cards up themselves.

And I would also recommend NOT purchasing the 6970M. Seems like a lot of them are duds.

 

Worst case as they probably will not offer you any refund just throw it up for sale when you get the new one after testing it.

It stinks that it could end up to be someone elses headache if they all keep dying but from everything i have heard about Eurocom i think they will push you a replacement.

And you never know the next one might be solid .

Thankfully there was some kind of warranty in place for normal DOA stuff. When i was thinking of getting one for my M15x when i had it i saw the return policy they had and just kept thinking no way.

 

Well, I am relieved to hear that Eurocom at least offers a true warranty replacement vs no return policy. That gives me a level of comfort, and to their credit it sounds like a lot of folks were screwing things up and then asking them to fix their screw-ups. So I can't fault them for trying to protect themselves a little.

Hope it all goes well with the RMA, for the record Clevo RMA is a real pain, so Eurocom being closer will hopefully be better.

 

I ordered mine together and the second card didn't work right out of the box. I think it is a quality issue. Many others have not had any problems with theirs. I got 2 bad ones in a row.

My second card was tested good as well but failed when I put it in. Could it have been my fault? Maybe, but if it was related to ESD it would never have booted to begin with. I think some of these cards just got overcooked at the factory.

 

Agreed, I think there is a serious quality issue going on as well.

 

Don't forget me, I had a set of 6970's that Phektan had to RMA for me. My slave card went all wonky and wouldn't hit 3D clocks. When ever it did, in crossfire config it would cause the system to freeze or lock up. In single card mode, the bad slave (when in the master slot) would cause a BSOD if it hit 3D clocks at all.

I wonder if this issue has plagued Clevo owners, M18x owners ect.

 

Are the Eurocom cards rebranded Clevos? How about the Dells? Or do they have their own manufacturing process? Aside from Turbos card, I haven't heard any problems from Eurocom or Dell, but those of us who ordered direct from Clevo seem to be having problems.

 

I have been gaming for some time now, and I have only had two cards die. A 7950GTX from my old Dell laptop that had the hell beat out of it for years, and now this 6970M that mostly played GTA:SA from 2005 for two weeks. It was clearly a manufacturing defect.

As with any mass manufacturing process, a certain percentage of failure is considered 'acceptable'. The R2 community is probably not a good cross section for comparison. Statistically, you would have to analyze every single 6970M ever put on the market, which is impossible. There really is no solid data against the 6970M, honestly. I would say to buy whatever your budget allows. I am personally going to try to get 6990M CrossFire, because that is the best currently available. Then, when it is confirmed that another newer-gen card works, we'll do this whole rigmarole again.

 

The Dell cards and the Clevo cards are definitely made independently of each other - although following the same reference design provided by AMD. As for the Eurocom cards . . . I'm not completely sure. I do believe they are made by Eurocom themselves.

Having a Dell and a Eurocom card, I can distinguish some differences between them physically. The components on the Eurocom card are placed in a much neater fashion - on the Dell card most of the surface mount resistors and capacitors are skewed while on the Eurocom card the components are perfectly straight.

Aside from that, both cards do seem to have identical parts aside from the Dell card using Hynix memory and the Eurocom card not.

Plus the PCB's of all three variants are different colors. Black for Dell. Cyan for Eurocom and I believe Green for Clevo.

 

Thanks aarpcard

Very helpful indeed.

 

I have a story to share too. I do think there is a quality problem going on. And it does seem to be affecting some Clevo machines here and there too.

I'm still a bit miffed about my slave card (eurocom) hitting 106.5C on the shader when under full load and at stock voltages and clocks. At .96 volts it is fine however. Occasionally I would get random shut downs too.

Through testing each card individually, I determined that it was the Eurocom card which was causing the throttling which would go away after I undervolted the core to reduce the temp on the shader.

I also found that the Dell card was responsible for the shut downs. I can't explain this. In every other way the card is working perfectly fine. Every now or then, the system will just shut down when under heavy load. It's not frequent, but it happens occasionally.

I tested the Dell card alone and I got shut downs but no throttling. I tested the Eurocom card alone and got throttling but no shut downs. Like I said I was able to fix the throttling by undervolting.

However, I screwed up. I accidentally pulled the Eurocom card out of the master slot with the PSU plugged in. I got a nice big spark from the card to the MXM slot. I thought I killed my MB again! (and possibly the card too).

I put the card back in the slot and no post. I was freaking out. I put the dell card in the main slot, and it posted. Thank God! So no dead motherboard, just a dead Eurocom 6970. . . . or so I thought. I put the Eurocom card in the slave slot with the Dell card in the master. No post.

I tried the Eurocom card in the master slot again. No post. I put the Eurocom card back in the slave and this time it posted - however they system didn't detect the card in windows. Atiflash did detect the card, but could't flash the vbios - until I reseated the card again. This time I was able to flash the Eurocom card to a different vbios. I reflashed the original Eurocom bios I received with the card, and then flashed back the Clevo bios in case it had been corrupted. The flash was successful.

Booting into windows I found the card to be detected! However, the card would hard shut down the system whenever 3D performance clocks were applied. Reinstalling the drivers fixed that.

I thought I was screwed. Somehow I managed to bring the card back from the dead. lol idk if this helps anyone, but I thought you all might like to know about it.

And yeah I do think there is a quality issue. On stock voltage, the Eurocom shader goes up to 106.5C under full load and throttles. Same thing happened to Malignant. I think this is more of a AMD problem rather than a Clevo/Dell/Eurocom manufacturing problem.

 

There is a problem with the R2 heatsink sitting on that metal square surrounding the GPU core rather than sitting on the core itself. Next time you pull that card out, take a look from the side view and see if there is any gap at all between the sides of the heatsink and that metal square. Mine was sitting directly on the metal square. The heatsink still had TIM on it in the shape of the GPU die, but it was not making complete contact. It is deceiving. I actually had to file down the sides of my heatsink, around the copper square. No joke.

If your card has a good idle temperature, then when you put a load to it the temperature skyrockets, there is a contact problem.

 

Good to know - will look into that at the next chance I can get. Do you think it would be a safe idea to remove the metal square surrounding the gpu die?

 

I tried to get a fingernail under it, I don't think it is going anywhere. A new heatsink is much cheaper than a new GPU. Just take a small file to it. You can try to remove a bit of metal right where the sink would contact the metal square, but good luck with that. I just filed all four sides around the copper center square. That doesn't need to be filed because it sits well within the square on the GPU.

Can anyone shed any light on exactly what in the hell that metal square around the GPU die is?

 

I know on some older gpus it was made out of porcelain not metal. I'm thinking it's there to provide stability to the heatsink maybe. It isn't there on all gpus. The 9800m GTS didn't have one while the 8800m GTS did and they were nearly identical chips.

 

i found something odd with my bios and maybe this will help you guys also because i noticed the same thing going on with other people here with the clevo 6990m's.
Ok to start off when i first got my clevo 6990m cards from pkhetan fresh out the box and installed to non modded 11.4 driver my GPU Z looks JUST LIKE this screenshot i found on web

Notice the Subvendor ID. This same Id and name were listed in the RBE before i flashed to overclock but now it just only shows "0x1558 - (unkown)"
this is gpuz now

GPU z reads it as dell with different ID RBE shows?

i believe this is why the ati detection cant find cards to install non modded drivers and also why my games been buggy.

ive been trying to get the VBIOS from someone that has a x7200 or p150hm with these same cards because they have the proper vbios i once had. Im just asking for help in search for this vbios. Ill install and see results just incase anyone doesnt want to risk anything. ive been to the clevo sager area and i found nothing.Its not in clevos site either
i was able to install normal drivers without detection problems when i first installed my cards and were read as "Clevo\Kapok (1558)" on gpuz.

 

Hmm, every screenshot I have for both my 6970's and 6990's were Dell (1028).

 

Interesting...both (all 4 I suppose) of my Clevos (6970s) have shown up as Dell subvendor as well.

 

but what ID does your RBE show when you load your VBIOS to it?




This is me

it doesnt make sense


Anyone know someone that has a p150hm or x7200 with clevo 6990m vbios who's gpuz reads like this?

if so may i please get a copy of that bios...

 

WooHoo! Just got back and my 6970Ms are on the table waiting for me.

Time to get them installed.
Then some benching and will try to get back into DR's TOP 5 lol!

Cheers.

 

well i will never do. my power adapter cant hold it. except if i am not doing something right. i am not so keen on benchmarking-oveclocking.i just wish someone could do it for me just to check my system can do it.

 

Truth be told I'm not really much of a bencher myself however I would like to see how the system goes. If I get into the top 5 then that is a bonus.

Okay the 6970Ms are installed now. The Crossfire cable was too long so I had to bend it and use the keyboard to hold it down.
Booted up, funky resolution greeted me. Then the GPUs installed. Restarted and everything is good.
I've tried a couple of benches however they get to the last test or close to the end and then it freezes

Crossfire is enabled.
More testing to come.

Cheers.

 

NIce reborn! Glad to see you updated your system. What bench are you doing and are your cards overclocked? Where did you get your cards at? Any fan issues?

 

Hey DR! Thanks man. I was trying to run 3d mark 11, Vantage and 3d mark 06. All run well until near the end, it just freezes all the time.

I got them off Table21 in the NBR marketplace. Great price, too good to refuse.
They are going to be for my M18x project however that still needs more parts so I decided to chuck them into the M17x R2 for now.

They are dell GPUs so they have the infamous fan issue.

Not sure what is going on though as everything is running fine except when I try to load up games or when I run benches. It just keeps on freezing.
No OC atm. Just stock however it keeps on freezing when I load up games and get near to the end of benches.

I might try and reinstall the GPU drivers.

Cheers.

 

Yea I would install the drivers. At first I was thinking it was a 3D Clock issue, but if the freezing is occuring that late into the bench, it can't be. It would freeze when the game/bench launched if it was a 3D clock issue on one of the cards. Try reinstalling and hopefully that will work. May have gotten wonky when you rebooted and it reinstalled.

 

Same here. Del (1028). Does this value change depending on which vbios you use? I got mine from DR650SE and it fixed my CF disabled problem. My cards have been working great with no problems so far as others have reported. I did say earlier on that I thought my cards were throttling with COD BO, but I'm not so sure anymore based on how well they held 60FPS with MOH and vsync on.

 

Yup I was thinking it was a 3d clock issue as well.
It's weird because some games can load up and I can play for a bit but it will eventually freeze, other games will freeze almost instantly when loading it up. It can't even hit the main menu screen lol.
With the benches it is even stranger because they run pretty much 3/4 and end up freezing on like the last test.
I want to see it post a score lol! ehehehe Must get back on DR's TOP 5 list lol!

Cheers.

 

^^ Buggy drivers are buggy.

 

Hey Reborn, gratz on the purchase

have you tryied the 11.9 WHQL with CAP? I'm using them and i'm quite pleased. Maybe the 11.10 are still bugged and not finished?

For instance since day one my 6970's are working as expected. Just wanted to share my positive experience with those cards, since people are experiencing troubles with them

 

Thanks man!
Yeh good tip. I'm going to try and mess around with the drivers maybe tomorrow if I have more time.

I might even try the 6970s in the R1 on the weekend if I find some time.

I'm just playing nfs hot pursuit the latest last one that was out. Ahh luv that game. Feels like I'm playing on a turbo charged souped up V12 now lol with these new 6970Ms under the hood

Strange enough though I can't even load up FIFA 12 or Crysis 2. Both games can't get pass the opening ads to get into the main menu.

Tried numerous times again with the benches and they all seem to run like half way or 3/4 and then freeze. Playing NFSHP atm and its running great and no freezing yet. So yeh seems odd.

I have wiped the drivers and installed 11.9 modded and then the 11.10.

Just tried RAGE and that works fine too. WEIRD!

Will try 11.9 AMD WHQL when I get more time.

Cheers.

 

NFSHP doesn't used CFX so you're only running on 1 card. Seems like whenever load is put on the second card, it freezes up.

 

Hey man!

Welcome to the craziness that is 6970's 6990's

Hope you can get the freeze sorted out with your cards.

 

You could be on to something there aarpcard.
Very strange. I wonder if its because my crossfire cable is like being squished and bent under the keyboard atm. It did not fit all that well i must say. It had to bend this way and that way and then it was too long from right to left GPU so I had to squish it down.
Hmmmm............

I would actually like to buy a M18x Crossfire cable or maybe a shorter one as well for this M17x R2 testing purpose. Also it will come in handy. Any links or sellers I have funds ready and waiting.

Cheers.

 

I love NFS: HP, but it seems like No one plays that game on line anymore. I can't ever get into a room with more than myself in it. Online was the best part

 

Thanks man! Yeh this freezing is soo and !

I should be sitting pretty in DR's Top 5 already but heck I can't finish any of the benches lol!

Cheers.

 

We should play next time!
I'm getting 60fps and minimal drops to 50 but mainly 60fps constant atm. So it does sound like it is only utilising one GPU.

What FPS are you getting for it DR?
Probs 120 or more ey?

I know, I'll do a quick test and disable crossfire. Lets test some benches and FIFA 12 the chiefs No. 1 game lol!
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2025048?show_ads=true&page=/3dm11/2025048?key=F1U1XVVtzvvCUq6Fm9hg_A

Test completed oles! hmmmmmmmmm
So looks like the crossfire cable is not sitting right or well..doesn't like to be bent or squished too much. Makes sense. Or I hope my one of my GPUs is not faulty. I need another crossfire cable. A shorter more flexible one.

Yup looks like Arrpcard you were right. Right on the money about the crossfire!
FIFA12 boots up all well now after disabling crossfire. WooT.

Cheers.

 

The Mythlogic cables I got fit perfectly. I recommend it. But I'm not sure where you are located and don't know if they ship overseas. The cable was $20USD.

 

Reborn, we should definately play at some point. Now for your cards, you should try the slave card, in the master slot. I wonder how that would work out.

 

i am usng 10.9 and cap as well

 

And I'm so jealous too

 

THanks Ghost,

I will email them and see if they can post a couple to me.
I hope it is just the cable being oldly bent and squished which is causing issues.


Cheers.

 

Good idea man!
I will swap the cards and leave the keyboard section open so that the crossfire cable isn't bent too much and is not being squished like it is now. Hopefully that is the cause of the freezing when I have crossfire enabled.
I'll do more testing after work today. Unfortunately no time atm. Gotta go go go

Cheers.

 

Hi guys,

Just wondering for those of you whom got your Dell 6970m cards to work on your R2, if you could assist me with some issues i've been facing.

After flashing my vbios to the Clevo, i've been able to shutdown but my graphics card keep crashing, highly unstable, won't last 5 seconds before repeatedly crashing. When in the normal vbios (blackcomb) the card does not crash but my windows does not shut down.

May i ask what version Bios are you guys using? What Ati drivers and what Vbios are you guys using?

I've tried A10, A09, A08 and A05 bios from dell and had no luck thus far. Anyone whom had this problem and managed to solve it or anyone who can offer some guidance, i would greatly appreciate it

Also, have anyoned used the Eurocom cards using the Clevo vbios and managed to successfully shutdown their computer? I was wondering if i should throw my card away and order a eurocom, don't want to end up with the same problems Can't for the life of me find a clevo card.

 

anyone has issues with ati driver crashing when using cyberlink youcam especially on resolution higher than 640x480?

 

i modified the clevo 6990m drivers from the website for x7200 downloads with orca so i was able to install them these are my results.


they are finally read correctly on gpuz.
6990M.zip
here yall go i made it for my
hardware ID of PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6720&SUBSYS_043A1028&REV_00
this will work for anyone with same id

 

Awesome Stealth!!

 

How did you mod the drivers? Just so I know so I can mod the newer drivers.

 

i added my gpu ID to the .inf and the installer in the display driver folder, i also changed the intaller settings to same of that as a mobility installer (which i think was only 1 thing that i switch from NO to YES) i did that with Orca

i added all ID's from a mobility driver plus my GPU ID in the .inf as you can see

 

So Stealth, are you still having the crashing\adapter cut out when playing games in crossfire?