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

Yeah my understanding is 11.12 will BSOD similiar to 11.11 (which I personally experienced).

I uploaded the official preview driver from AMD 12.1 and it works fantastic. Even saw a very good improvement on my vantage score, and haven't had a single BSOD with them

Interestingly even on the AMD website it states that gamers should use the 12.1 preview drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/Catalyst121Previewdriver.aspx

"The AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 Preview includes all of the features found in AMD Catalyst™ 11.12 and also includes all of the latest optimizations found in the AMD Catalyst 11.11c performance drivers (AMD Catalyst 11.12 does not include the latest 11.11c optimizations). It is highly recommended that all gamers use the AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver."

 

Currently I'm running the AMD FirePro M8900 vbios, with 11.10 drivers. CCC sees it as Firepro and gives me firepro options, but I need to add the device ID to get the firepro drivers to install. Havn't had time yet. Doing it for folding. Had to OC the Firepro vbios from 680/900 to 715/900.

But even the 11.10 drivers are doing fine. Though I havn't tried gaming. I may try the 12.1 drivers, but I want to get the firepro drivers working so I can have the benefits in folding.

The only problem is there is no option for Crossfire in the Firepro CCC. CCC came from the 11.10 driver package but just give firepro options if you have the vbios installed.

Even without crossfire enabled through CCC, F@h still finds and runs both cards for folding .

Hopefully firepro drivers will make folding more efficient.

 

Nice b marks. And good luck, hopefully my cards come in today to do my 6990 swap.

 

Awesome, thanks, going to flash just for the sake of it, will get back to you guys when she's running like a beauty

 

Damn -_- Might need some more work, damn xfire cable!

EDIT!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY
Guess what xD

Edit 2: Definitely need to undervolt the cards. I have throttlestop disabled and I hit 240W twice during the 3D Mark vantage benchmark (23948 on GPU )
I feel reborn!

Final Edit: Big Thanks to Ichime, DR650SE and Greywolf22!

 

I put my heatsinks on while the GPU is in the pc. I do everything almost exactly the same as that video except I spread my paste with a card as opposed to the dot method (I do the dot method on the CPU). All of this was as per Greywolf's advice and minus a faulty slave card when I first got them, I haven't had any issues. Since I've installed the new slave I haven't had any problems whatsoever with the cards, just the drivers and skyrim. Now I have a skyrim profile made to not utilize xfire for that TESV.exe (through the CCC) and I get really good performance on Ultra with everything all the way up. I don't think I've once seen it drop below 60 FPS. I'd like xfire to work, of course, so that the slave can share the load and keep temps down further. My temps for skyrim get higher than any other game, but still fine (75-76C is the max the shader gets but for other games that use both GPU's the temps seldom get higher than 72-73 on the master and 70C on the slave).

I would advice putting the heatsink on while the video card is in the machine. Its way easier than fiddling with it on the edge of a table to avoid the heatsink that sticks out and doesn't allow perfectly flat contact.

Hopefully the 12.1 WHQL will have working xfire for skyrim.

 

Ok then, here is my comparison of the performance between the 6990M Xfire and the 5870M Xfire.

Max Power consumption off the wall:
5870 no-OC (700-1000)= 199W
5870 OC (800-1200)= 212W
6990 (715-900) = 256W

3D Mark Vantage:
5870 no-OC (700-1000)= 15997
5870 OC (800-1200)= 18160
6990 (715-900) = 23948

3D Mark 11:
5870 no-OC (700-1000)= 4244
5870 OC (800-1200)= 4840
6990 (715-900) = 6509

As for BF3, max framerate I think is capped at 62 due to Vsync. Cheerio

 

Awesome thenzfarmer!! Welcome to the club

 

Thanks Such an awesome upgrade! I'm wowing so much I can't leave my laptop alone haha. See you soon.

 

Congrats!

Nice 3dmark11 score!

 

Glad its working man! Enjoy it!

 

maybe somoene can help.. been posting a diff thread about a problem i am having with my card install. I am running 2 6990's. Seems the moment I reboot with 2 cards, the boot uip process hangs at teh windows logo (bloom) screen. Yet, seems to work fine with one card.

I jsut got m y cards from eurocom. They said that they are already pre flashd teh same way the usually do upgrades for m17xr2 clients. any ideas?

 

Are you able to boot into safe mode? and do both cards show up in device manager correctly in safe mode?

Also have you tried booting up, uninstalling the drivers and then reinstalling the drivers?

Just a few thoughts of things to try

Good luck!

 

OK. I beleive I jsut figured out whast going on... and i might be screwed. I decided to switch the cards. Take the seconday one, and switch it to teh other slot.... And I got the dreaded flashing caps and flashing scroll... with no post. Maybe the second card was jsut broken from teh get go. I wonder how Eurocom is about returns.

I didnt flash or do anything to teh card. I hope I jsut dodnt loose 400 bucks

 

Sounds like a 6970 I had. I had to RMA it.

 

Hey guys if I wanted to upgrade the Ram on my laptop, what would you recommend? That's the last step to laptop heaven for me (and a 330Watt PSU).
The power draw is too great.
I recorded 260Watts earlier on Metro 2033 despite undervolting my cards to1V.
Arkham City is usually running at 216-220Watts at Ultra settings - DX11 enabled.
I haven't had any signs of throttling yet, quite unlike the M15X I previously owned which would throttle like
crazy when hitting the 150Watt threshold.
Seems like it depends of the game but I don't feel safe having a 240Watt rated PSU running at 260W

What's your take on that guys? Is 20 over a big issue?

 

Definitely call them. I know Turbo had to do an rma and had pretty good results. Good luck

 

Another quick question, my laptop is using 118-135Watts while idling which has caused my computer to crash once or twice when I've unplugged it from the wall socket.
Have you guys got this issue as well?

 

Hi thenzfarmer,

Related to the 260W draw. Are you doing any overclocking at all (CPU specifically or in the bios)...if so I'd definitely drop that and see how you do. You might also consider under-volting to .96v and see if that gives you much improvement (I don't know that it will, just something else to consider).

My 6970's don't draw as much power as the 6990's, so the highest I've seen is around 245W for a short time. So I don't know what the implications of 20W over would be.

Maybe aarpcard has some thoughts?

 

Thenzfarmer, I wouldn't worry too much about the power draw.

If it is too high the laptop will start throttling and if it really does start pulling more then the PSU can handle, it will just trip. So if you are not getting any throttling and your PSU is not tripping then you are all good

The adapters are designed to cut out before any real damage is done.

 

Thanks for the info man. Ill do the same as u then bro

Yeah farmer. It will just cut out for saftey if it feels it can't pull any more electricity. Once building custom gaming pc with 3 gtx480's slied. The psu was to weak just turned on. Post screen than off. Pretty sure same with laptops.

 

Cheers guys, I'll let her run then
I don't do any overclocking and I don't toy around with Throttlestop either.
Just the raw powerdraw of the cards I guess.
Thanks for your input!
I'll undervolt to 0.96 now.

Edit: I tried both 1V and 0.96V and the system is very unstable and unable to play games.
As soon as I flashed the vbios to the default settings it all ran fine.
Don't know how other 6990M owners manage to flash to 0.96V and maintain performance.

 

Hmmm interesting. Hopefully I don't run into problems like this on Monday. :/

 

Also keep in mind that no two GPUs are exactly the same. In the same way that some overclock better/further than others, some might not want to run at stock clocks on a lower voltage. Just find the lowest voltage that your card will run stable at, and then remember how lucky we all are that our older laptops are able to run 6xxx series cards.

 

Yes indeed, I will go for a trial and error process to find how low I can make the voltage and maintain performance.
Battery lasts approximately 45 minutes and the system works well on battery as long as it isn't started unplugged. If I try that, it crashes as it uses up to 140Watts to boot.
Temperatures are great, maximum temp reached so far is 82 degrees.
This is just FYI of my system, not a definitive fact

 

Yep, my 6970 runs on 0.96v with OC 740/900 rock stable.
The only reason your 6990 is unstable is that 6990 has 1120 shaders vs our 960, and core at 715MHz vs 680 - and this requires slightly more power.
So 6990 undervolting to 0.96 will not work for everybody :/

 

Yea both my 6990s are at .96v and stable.

 

Ditto. I have very solid performance with my .96v vbios. I know there's a few people on these forums that have a .96v successful undervolts. I ran benchmarks with the stock voltage and with the undervolt and my benchmarks were always a tad higher with the undervolt than they were with the stock. Maybe its just coincidence, since scores fluxuate within about a hundred or so points. My hypothesis is that, because the .96v undervolt draws less power and produces less heat, the cooler cards perform better on the benchmarking tests. Not sure how much weight that holds, but at least in my experience they perform better (at stock clocks of course) with the undervolt.

 

I am having trouble with my 6990s and undervolting as well. As soon as I put it to anything lower then 1.1v it is unstable.

Initially it appeared to be working but I found that unless I activated overdrive and then deactivated it my firmware changes were not applying. So this would have been giving me the false impression that they were running at 0.96 when they were in fact running at 1.1v as shown in Furmark (this which would also explain my higher temps as I thought they were undervolted when in fact they were not).

Problem is, when I do activate and deactive overdrive and the lower voltages are applied my display driver starts crashing and I get occasional BSODs.

It doesnt really bother me, as I would like to focus on getting the temps lower at stock voltage as this will then give me room for overclocking.

I have found that I do not get throttling unless I overclock my CPU to much.

 

Douse, are you undervolting by editing and reflashing the vbios? Thats what I have done to undervolt.

 

Yeah, as far as I am concerned that is the only way

But for some reason overdrive is having an effect on the bios settings....

Although I am not surprised that I am having different issues, as they are ES..

Honestly, its all good as I will just keep them running at 1.1v

Perhaps it has nothing to do with overdrive causing the instability and the ES's just cant run at a lower voltage?

 

Out of curiosity Douse, which kind of effect OD is having on bios settings?

 

Ok, so here is what happens.

Say I do a fresh format and a clean install of drivers.

Everything appears to be working fine. I then take a copy of the vBIOS and then use RBE and drop the voltage for the 3D clocks.

I then apply the firmware changes to the cards using atiflash etc etc.

There are no errors and everything has gone through successfully.

Now, if I run Furmark it shows my voltages at still at 1.1, not what was specified in the vBIOS.

I then go in to CCC, activate OverDrive by accepting the T&C's and then disable OverDrive.

If I then run Furmark, it shows that the cards are running at the correct voltages as specified in the vBIOS.

Buuuut alas, it is very unstable. I then flash it to stock voltages and it runs stable again.

So I don't know if OverDrive is somehow interfering, or if the cards just dont like anything below stock.

Like I said, it is not the end of the world as I would rather the cards ran nice and cool at stock voltage as I want to overclock in the future... and that cant be done really with an undervolt.

 

Darn if it wasn't unstable it would be almost a feature....

i have my cards downvolted @0.96V if i want to OC i use Trixx to rise the voltage. It would be nice if Overdrive would rise the voltage once the OC is applied for stability sake

 

Hmm, is the instability only in Furmark? I think when I run furmark it may crash, or just go to a blank black screen I can't wake from. Only ran Furmark once or twice. I havn't throughly tested it, but in games it's stable as a rock. I figure in the future if I need to OC, I can raise the voltage at that time.

 

Yeah pretty much the same issue here with flashing.
My Adapter momentarily gave up on me last night as I was playing BF3, the system crashed.
What I've done so far is:

1. save a copy of both my vbios with GPUz
2. open these .bin files with RBE
3. edit the clocks as per the attached screenshot for both files
4. replace the original .bin files with the undervolted one
5. rename them to vbios.ROM instead of vbios.bin
6. place these two files on my usb
7. restart & boot on usb
8. run atiflash -i to se both cards are there (0 & 1)
9. run atiflash -p 0 vbios0.ROM; if flashes the vbios and asks me to restart to save the new settings which I don't
10. run atiflash -p 1 vbios1.ROM; if flashes the vbios and asks me to restart to save the new settings which I do
11. Log back into windows and get overwhelmed with the beauty of video card crashes and true system meltdowns

Unlike Douse I'm limited by the 240W PSU so I need to get this undervolt to run and I will!

Edit: forgot the picture sorry

Edit 2: Also, I just noticed that my card #1 is currently being used at 99.99% which I doubt seeing that the temp is so low and its max utilization is 25% above that of card #0. Does that mean the driver is not optimizing crossfire and also why is my card #1 the main card instead of #0
So many questions :/

 

Nah, although it happens less in games, it still happens.

Furmark seems to run fine for a bit and then BAM, crash etc.

Thenzfarmer, whilst I may have 480 watts at my disposal I am still susceptible to the same throttling as everyone else I am afraid

Yeah, it would be ok if it worked Seriously though, I am only making the assumption that OD is causing the instability. Perhaps my cards are just not stable at lower then stock voltages.

I really should put the voltage to 1.09 and see how it goes...

buuut way too busy right up to the new year

 

I'm confused. How can you tell if your undervolt isn't working? I've been having this issue where I'll be playing a game, the screen will freeze, my music will stop in the background and screen goes black. Only way out is via a hard reboot.

Any ideas?

EDIT: This has mainly been happening with SC2. It doesn't happen every match but if the computer has been on for a while it seems to happen. If I reboot and play it seems okay, but I'm not sure why its happening. Also, sometimes my bottom bar will change color from that normal themed windows bar to the old default one and it won't let me change it back in the personalize menu. If I close out a window or something it just automatically changes back. Its odd. Maybe these are driver issues with 12.1?

 

The windows classic theme is probably the operating system switching to basic mode when launching a game. It is normal and sometimes annoying as a little window will pop up telling you so and it alt tabs you out of the game.

I can tell the undervolt is not working by running Furmark. At the top right you can see some stats and one of them is the voltage of the cards.

As for your issue, sounds like a pretty solid crash to me. Could be anything Does it happen with other games?

 

May have happened once with skyrim. Can't remember. Only seems to happen with SC2. I'm going to install furmark in a bit after I reinstall 11.10. Which Furmark do I install? Never used it before. I just want to verify my voltage.

 

The latest is fine. Just watch those temps as it is designed to pwn your GPU's....also watch the power consumption as it can trip adapters if you are not careful.

I think it also has a GPU monitoring program built in to it as well, which is handy....or though I may be getting confused with something else..

 

I don't want to run it for a full cycle. I just want to turn it on and see the voltage of my GPU's to make sure they're @ .96v. Is that possible? Just start running it and see that, turn it off?



The top right within the benchmark didn't show the voltages, but gpu shark did. According to this, my GPU voltages are exactly what I set them to, .96v. The furmark ran my cards to 100% and I didn't have any sort of crash. I highlighted it in red. Douse, even though you set your vbios to .96v, gpu shark doesn't read it?

DR56SE told me only to change the voltage to .96 on the first core. Should I have done that for any of the other ones that had anything higher than .96v? All my other games seem to work great. I've just been having crashes with SC2 and maybe its driver related.

EDIT: Just watched the GPU shark while I ran a benchmark and the Current Performance State for each card kept a solid .96V VDDC while running all of the graphical tests. Oddly enough, twice in between the tests while the next was loading up and GPU usage was low, the VDDC flashed to 1V for about half a second on both cards. I'm assuming it does that since the other core allows it, maybe? Either way, I assume all of this means that my cards are flashed properly and chances are my crash was a driver issue. I just installed 11.10 so hopefully it won't come back.

What does a shut off from the computer drawing too much power look like? What happens exactly? BSOD? Straight shut down no warning? What are the symptoms that make you realize "Oh, this is a breaker issue because my pc wants too much power"?


EDIT: Seems like 11.10 fixed my issue with SC2. Oddly enough, when I was loading the map and my GPU was @ 0% usage, the VDDC on my master went to 1.0V. Is that okay? I assume its fine for just a split second here and there. Not once, while the GPU is actually being used has it gone up past .96, but it seems it goes to 1.0V sometimes while the GPU is ABOUT to load maybe? No clue but everything seems to be working great again.

EDIT 2: After several hours of playing SC2, Skyrim, and some Deus EX, my issue hasn't repeated itself. Haven't had any crashes whatsoever. 11.10 works great for SC2 and skyrim, but not so great for Deus Ex (compared to 12.1). I may just wait for 12.1 to be officially released and all the bugs to be worked out to upgrade again. 11.10 works great for skyrim xfire, except I get that yellow screen when I go into the menu. Small price to pay for working xfire, though. I'm just glad my SC2 crashes were driver related and not an issue with my video cards crashing. Since I got that new slave card put in last week or two, no hardware problems!

Also, can someone explain what the difference between mobility drivers and the standard ones are? Should we be getting mobility drivers?

Also, Douse, I really have no clue why Overdrive keeps installing for you. I've installed so many versions of drivers / CCC in the past few weeks and not one of them installed overdrive. I've never seen that option in CCC, not once. Maybe there's some underlying cause that's causing you to download it that can be amended? Not sure. Are you using the Eurocom cards from "Upgradeyourlaptop"?

 

Just got my 6970m from a fellow forum member and slipped it in. Easy install with this great guide. Already seen a major increase in performance from 4870's x 2 to 6970m. THANK YOU!

 

Congrats

@IntenseIGFX, if your adapter trips it will cut off all power and your laptop will literally turn off without warning. The blue light at the end of your PSU will also be off.
If this happens you need to remove the IEC power cable from the PSU for a few minutes until the light turns on when you plug back in the IEC power cable.

The reason that it is jumping to 1 is that the 3D clock profile actual consists of 3 steps. Kinda like a low, medium and high. You can see by clicking on the high clocks in RBE and it will highlight some other clocks as well. You will currently have your medium clocks sitting at 1 volt, so when it jumps from medium to high it will show 1 volt. Personally I would change this to 0.96 as well, but that's just me.

It should not be switching between medium and high clocks whilst you are running Furmark. In 3D applications it should be sitting solidly at 3D clocks\voltages. Of course during loading screens etc these will bounce around the low,medium and high clocks.

Yeah GPU Shark also reads the voltages and it reads them correctly (1.1 without overdrive enabled etc)

Overdrive is installed\activated if CCC thinks your card supports it. Obviously the Eurocom cards do not seem to support Overdrive. My card is a Dell Engineering Sample, so it is different to yours. This would be why overdrive is installing. Technically it is not a bad thing, even a feature, as Overdrive is kinda cool too have on hand...

Mobility drivers are for the graphics chip sets that have an 'm' on the end of them. Eg 5870m, 6970m, and 6990m etc. Basically for laptops.
Without modification, normal desktop drivers should not work with mobility chips. So yes, you should only be using mobility drivers.

I have looked in to disabling OD, or maybe not installing it but so far it is not possible as it is part of the CCC package.

 

Never once has it changed from .96V while running 3d applications. Only in a loading screen or between tests when there's a static image on the screen have I seen the 1V.

Thanks for the response! I'm pretty sure that I'm using the desktop drivers, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of people on the forum are using desktop drivers as well. None of my driver files (.exes) say mobility in the name except for my 11.10 driver.

Thanks.

 

You do have a good point, they dont seem to mention mobility anymore.

Perhaps they have moved away from separating Desktop and Mobility drivers....I remember with the 5870's you had to download specific mobility ones...

Anyone want to clarify?

EDIT:: I just went through the process on AMD's site and the drivers are still separated as notebook and desktop.

 

Hey! I managed to undervolt to 1.05 and it seems to run steady-ish.
I wanted to try the 11.10 drivers but all the downloads I have tried don't seem to include the video driver which defeats the point of me installing it.
Could anyone please let me know where that driver can be found?
Thanks

 

Strange, normally this is the case if the package doesn't detect a compatible video card.

It then wont give the option to install the drivers

Try the 12.1 previews. They worked for me.

 

Hey guys,

Anyone running Metro 2033 and the 12.1 drivers? Every time I exit the game, it blue screens my computer stating that the video driver has quit working. It only seems to happen on Metro 2033 (regardless of what settings I'm using) and I think it ran fine on 11.10.

Not really a huge concern, but was just curious if anyone else with their 6970/6990's were seeing the same thing.

 

Are you using dell cards too? It seems like anyone who has the Eurocom cards aren't having problems with them.

Does metro 2033 perform better with the newer drivers, Mike? Is that why you upgraded from 11.10?