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

Sorry to hear it worldedit.

Perhaps see if someone has a 6970 ES vBios?

 

@worldedit: try an external monitor, disabling the internal.
The lines could indicate a lack of/or high voltage.

 

It appears that ichime had the same realisation with the memory chips as well.

Oh and does anyone know where the shader is? Is it part of the Die?

 

i really dont understant how you all guyz managed to put 0.5mm thermal pads on your 6970m's ram chips as i just tried to do so and after i installed the heatsink from my 5870m the termal pads felt off as they were not touching the heatsink at all -lol

next step is thicker thermal pads i have (thank god)

and ic diamond 7 on die

Update in 15 min after i finish

 

Cool, keep us posted!!

Mine definitely did not fall off as it does make contact, just only about 40-50%

 

ok, after installing catalyst 11.11 drivers, my res is max 1600x1200 ?
should i use clevo vbios now ?

 

tested with ext monitor and mod clevo under volt mod vbios also same

both card tested good on m15x

btw... i cant search m17x r1 for upgrade card to ati 69xxm series.. will this impossible to upgrade? sorry for out topic.

 

Worldedit, so the Dell 6970 works in the m15x?

Strange...

 

Yes, Douse, it's the exact opposite with the M15x :/

 

Wow, who would have thought!

 

oh yeah, i tried this and i got an error that the device id is d188 and the new one is 7200 and flash didnt go trough

WHAT SHOULD I DO ?

I CANT STAND 1600x1200 resolution cap

 

I found the 1600x1200 issue bogus. Just set the display options in windows to use the screen on the laptop alone. No extending or duplicating. Then the full res becomes available.

Worked for me.

P.

 

Agree with Paul, I had the same results.

Granted I ended up flashing the Clevo bios to my Eurocom cards anyway. But if you do what Paul suggests that should resolve the 1600X1200 issue.

 

IT WORKED
But if i still want to flash the card, using clevo vbios, what should i do ?
i cant sw-off my beast properly at the moment :/
screen goes black but fans and keyboard are still lit :/

what command and vbios you use greywolf ?

atiflash -p 0 biosname.bin ?

 

Link to my Clevo Vbios

Tools needed, and here are some steps. The steps are for OCing a crossfire setup but once your read them and make sense of them, flashing your vbios is pretty easy. Boot of a bootable USB and flash.

 

DR650 beat me to it

 

I had to use the force command to get the vbios to flash correctly. I think it is -f but I would confirm that first in the help section of atiflash. Aside from that, DR's guide is what I followed.

 

yea with the force flash the flash command will be atiflash -f -p 0 6990m.rom

 

Yes, if i use -p it is not working, -f (force to flash) should work, i'll try this in couple of hours though.

WIll clevo vbios fix the shutdown/hibernate bla bla bla issue ?

 

Not sure if it will fix your issues, but you may also need to update your version of Atiflash to recognize the 6900 series cards. The version linked in my post should work.

 

I flashed the clevo bios to the Eurocom cards and have no shutdown issues.

*EDIT* I used the -f to flash them as well.

 

Hey guys... have any of you seen this yet?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...performance-driver-8-911-1-november-18-a.html

 

Been out of the loop for a bit. Is this a Dell 6970 or a Dell 6990?

I've had a Dell 6970 installed in my R2 as the master card for about 4 months now. I had to try several different vbios's before one was stable, but 2nd revision Clevo vbios finally worked. The only problem is that the fans are stuck on 100% and have to be manually controlled. Other than that no issues.

I'm using a Dell 6970 from a M18x as the Master and a Eurocom 6970 as the slave - both are flashed to Clevo vbios's

 

Opps, I linked my 69 90 vbios, I don't have a 6970 anymore sorry about that. Didn't realize you were looking for a 6970 vbios. The flash steps should be the same though.

 

I posted my modded Clevo bios (for a 6970 with the voltage set to .96) a few pages back if you are interested.

 

yes i was looking for it actually, but im blind i think as i didn't find it.
Also, the clocks of my 6970 are stuck on 250\900 most of the time, even when i have everything sw off (mozilla etc) this results in my card idle temps to reach ok 61*C and it stays like this, it freaks me out when card does not downclock itself to 100\150 when i am not running anything. After 3dmark vantage run, card temp maxed out at 76 *C. (SHADER).
Vantage score just over 13k.

 

Boyakasha!!!

Here it is

 

Hi DR650SE,

Sorry for off-topic

I've just seen a poster in Patagonia (in a little town called Tortel) with your nick name "SR650SE" and a bike picture. Was that you?!!

 

Can I use my Clevo 6990M (Clevo vbios for single GPU config) in my m17x R3?

Would I need to flash a Dell 6990M vbios?
I know I would need to for HDMI but I don't use HDMI.

 

Ok so i used your vbios and everything is ok THANKS !!!, apart from one thing,
my card is always on 250/900 clock speed, it just dont want to use 100/150 mode. WHY ?

What drivers do you all use ???

 

Nope, but I'd love to travel out that way sometime. I actually have a pic in my profile. It's a year or so old.

 

Glad the bios worked for you

Odd about the clock speed, not sure why that would occur. I just double checked mine and they are running happy at 100/150 until needed.

I have been one of the fortunate ones to actually get 11.11 drivers to install without BSODing. Although I am still uncertain how stable they are. Hopefully they will release 12.11 a bit more robust then 11.11 is/was.

Good luck with your clocks...very odd.

 

yes that's odd, without any drivers clocks are 100/150, but when i will install 11.11 then it starts LOL.

 

Well I jut installed 11.11a and it BSOD'd immediately. So currently doing a full system restore back to 11.10 (probably could have resolved without a restore but didn't want to muck with it to much).

So maybe 11.11 is just problematic all around. Weird that it would show up when you installed the drivers. Sigh, who knows.

 

ok so 250/900 was a result of eyefinity sw-on. back to norm ...finallyy ehhh

 

Awesome! Glad you got it sorted out

 

Congrats flingin! Always good to hear another success story!

Keep a eye on those shader temps tho. Mine didn't climb barely at all in 3dmark11 but was a different story after a hour or so of Skyrim\BF3.

Also, my clocks stay up cause I have an external monitor plugged in. These suckers do idle quite high though. Mine sit around 60 degrees @ 250/900

Worldedit, dont know if you read that aarpcard seems to have fixed his shutdown issues with a Dell 6970.

Have you tried the version of vBios that he is using?

Sucks that 11.11a didn't work Greywolf Lucky you have a restore point eh!!! Has anyone else tried it yet? I will give it a shot on the weekend, at the moment want to focus on getting my temps a little more stable.

 

A BSOD problem during installation is what is holding up distribution of an updated Dell driver release for AMD cards. See this post by Dell-Bill_B.

 

...……

Looking for an answer

 

If it is anything like the R2, it should work and you would not need to flash it.

Sorry I cant be more helpful, a lot of the knowledge here is related to R2's.

 

Thanks, good to know Alienware is comfortable with Clevo cards.

Heh, what's the chance of being the last post of a page two times in a row..

 

Yea, no one really knows about the R3 until you try it. It may default the the GPU fan to 100% speed, 100% of the time if the bios has an issue with the GPU.

 

lol I wish my fans default to 100% when HWINFO isnt running....they sit really low.

Fine for idle but bad if a game were to be played....so basically if a n00b hops on my machine and doesn't make sure the fans are being controlled...well...lets just say thank god for thermal shutdowns

 

Ouch, that could be dangerous in the wrong hands

 

Yes i know something about it, yesterday i got a call from my GF, she called me to say that my laptop don't want to sw-on anymore, i came in pissed off to find ''NTLDR.dll is missing'' message (boot mgr fail).
I had to reinstall OS
SOUR !!!

i may want to tell her ''this is over''

BTW
i had to use 1mm thermal pads on my 6970 as 0.5mm were to thin and were felling out lol

42-45 idle
74-75 max in furmark, after 0.96v vbios mod
LOVING IT

 

hahaha yeah, waddya gonna do

Congrats on those temps. I am eager to double up the pads on my cards.

Did you use 1mm on all the memory chips of just the ones towards the back?

 

Douse, if doubling up the pads helps, I may give it a shot, but gotta order more pads. Right now I'm at 1.0v and my shader maxes at around 80*C. I also used cheap paste, and not the ICD that I had. But I will use ICD when I repaste/pad, as I don't worry about the "polishing effect" ICD has.

 

This really makes me feel really comfortable so I think I will stick with my Clevo vbios (I'm glad I don't use HDMI). Clevo OEM cards seem to be the best for everything tbh. Will catalyst/driver installation be any easier with my Clevo card? I've heard people having problems updating their graphics drivers on the R3.

I'll report back in a few days.

 

No way to know for sure. That qoute is specific to the M17x R2 which has a much differant motherboard. While the Clevo cards are best for the M17x R2, it' is the exact opposite for the M15x. Those with Clevo cards in the M15x have max fans 100% of the time. The M17x R2 with Dell 6900 series cards will have fan issues as well.

Clevo cards are great for M17x R2, Dell cards, not so great with the R2

Dell cards for the 15x are great, Clevo/reseller cards, no so good

 

Sure thing, I will let you know how I go.

My current set up is a little hotter...Shader temps can reach 87-90 degrees after a long gaming session.

My second card maybe only a few degrees less. At least I know it is being used

I am using TX-3 on the die. I have heaps of X23 but it is such a pain to spread I just can't be bothered using it.

I wont get around to doing it till the weekend, but when I do I will post some results.