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

The magnesium cover is that large cover you must remove to pull the CPU heatsink off. It is the size of the entire palm rest and keyboard.

I get the same random blue screens. I run a program called 'WhoCrashed', and that always tells me there's a problem with the driver. It doesn't happen often enough for me to care.

I used to have the shaking screen problem too, but it went away when I messed with the CF cable. Bad connection or something. Your problem may be different though. I don't have CF anymore.

You should be able to run that RAM for testing, it won't hurt anything as long as it physically fits.

I run Memtest from a bootable USB stick, so yes, it works.

 

Those bluescreens are cpu and or ram related. Usually happens when either is overvolted too high, or your ram frequency is pushed beyond it's limits by way of the FSB overclock.

And I apply my grease with a credit card. A lot of people say that's not a good way to do it, but I find too often just putting a dot on the die and screwing the heatsink on results in a really uneven coat with lots of 0 contact spots.

 

Is there any way my screen shakiness could be caused by the ram being bad? I haven't gotten one of those blue screens in a while and my gaming performance is fine now. Only thing thats the problem is I feel like my screen shakes a bit. No tearing or any other issues, just that.

Will the ram in my z1 work for testing? Its 1066 instead of 1333

Also, I get it with Crossfire disabled. I can't imagine it has anything to do with the cable if that's the case.

 

Just saying man. I had Fallout New Vegas running with the keyboard peeled back onto the palmrest, and messing with the CF cable ever so slightly stopped the screen shaking for me.

 

So can anyone think of what the shaking of screen objects may be? All the graphics and games are working fine, just screen objects shaking.

 

Screen micro-shaking/anomalies such as you describe are often caused by electrical interference, whether from a component or nearby device (speakers, fan, etc.).

 

I have no clue what it is to be honest.

Just in general will 16 g of ram improve gaming performance over 8 gigs? I have corsair ram. If I got hyper x would my gaming performance increase? I really want to get rid of this micro stuttering. Is there even a chance it's ram? Maybe the screen is bad?

Edit: I put ram from my Z1 in and still have micro stuttering. Can anyone think of anything? It's not the video cards (i switched them back to old ones with old cf cable) and its not the ram. It happens in other rooms too so not sure about that stuff either.

 

Does it happen when you're only using the battery?

The only thing I can suggest is getting something like this:

 

It happens when plugged in. I never use battery. Also, since I put the 5870's in then put back the 6990's, my internet videos (youtube / hulu) go black every few minutes for like a second. I had to disable hardware acceleration and it fixed it, but I don't understand why I should have to do that to begin with when it never did it in the past.

 

Sorry i did explain it wrongly...

i meant that to access the cpu, the magnesium cover has to be removed, when it is removed i reinstall one gpu, connect the keyboard an put it upside down to evoid contact between the bottom of it and the motherboard exposed contact below it.

for the gpu's i just remove the heatsink without removing the whole card from the system.

 

I am with Aarpcard and The Revelator on this one. Most probably is electrical noise.

Especially since the symptoms temporarily stopped when you got rid of your old power board.

I think what Aarpcard meant about the battery, is to try disconnecting the power and running the laptop only off the battery to see if the symptoms persist.

If it stops when using only the battery then it means it probably is noise or even a faulty PSU. Do you have any mates with an alienware that you could borrow their PSU.

EDIT:: I have another possible solution. Reseat the cable that connects your LCD screen to the motherboard. Perhaps a dodgy connection here is causing the shakiness?

 

I'll try using it on battery. Will that noise thing from sears help if that's the issue? I didn't buy anything new. Why do you think noise would be an issue now? Also what about the need to disable hardware acceleration in videos since reseating my old cards back.

Thanks for all your help over this past month guys. I can't express how lost I'd be without you folks.

 

Yes, if noise is an issue the device *should* help....but try the battery first before spending money on it

Not sure about the Youtube issue. Perhaps try reinstalling the driver if your game

I think you should try reseating that monitor cable...you would have had to disconnect it when performing the CPU upgrade.

 

You mean the GPU upgrade? You only have to take the keyboard off to access it. Reseating that cable was the first thing I tried.

 

No, in the beginning you also repasted the CPU. You would have had to remove the magnesium cover which would involve disconnecting the LCD screen from the motherboard.

If this plug is not properly seated then it may be causing the graphical issues that you are experiencing.

I even included a picture in my previous post

EDIT:: Hold up, I am confused now so you have tried reseating those cables in the picture? Because it was not necessary to unplug them when upgrading the GPU's which is why I referred to the CPU upgrade.

 

Though it's not nescessary to unplug the cables to access the GPU, the cables are still accessible without having to remove the entire top exposing the CPU. I removed the keyboard and reseated the LCD. Though it's not required for the GPUs, I still did it in order to make sure it wasn't causing the issue.

Make sense now?

 

Ok cool, I am aware that you dont need to remove the magnesium cover which is why I referenced your CPU mod as a possible point where those cables had been disturbed.

bummer it didnt work then

 

Unplugging the pc and letting it run on battery didn't work either. Again its SO HARD to see but its annoying when it does show up. Could it be that the screen is bad? I'm still under warranty so they should just send me a new screen under the premise that I'll send my old one back, right? Or will they send me some crap refurbished one?

 

To isolate the screen itself as a possible problem (which i doubt it is) plug your computer into an external display and see if you can detect any shaking on that.

 

Only external screen I have is the a dell 20inch monitor and it shakes a tiny bit, but not as badly as the alienware. When I hooked my other computer into the monitor it shaked just as much / little which was almost non existent

Again its almost impossible to detect on that screen, as well as this one - but its really annoying on the alienware.

 

Has anyone seen this?

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VSVb_JlVHC8?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VSVb_JlVHC8?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width='560' height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

 

Have you tried differents power sockets in your house? or even bring it to some friend's house.

I had some shaking once and i have find out that in my house entertainment room i have a single socket that for some reason give me this shaking if i plug the PSU there.

Edit: forgot to mention that the shaking is not constant, it happend from time to time, randomly, even if i plug my 5.1 system on that plug i can clearly hear noise in form of static coming out from the speakers


Guys, a question about temperatures

Can you please report your temperatures at stock gpus clocks?

My temps are ok, i believe, only shaders are the ones that can go 4 to 5 °C above the other sensors and before i repaste once again i would like to have some comparison. Maybe i don't need the repaste at all. From what i've seen R3 handle the 6970's a little better than R2 as far as temperature goes but it may be the 3 heatpipes working better. Ambient temperature where i use the laptop is from 22 to 26 °C

Thank you in advance

 

I haven't seen that video from Eurocom. I will tell you one thing though, they should send Ichime a big fat check. Their profit has probably skyrocketed with AW users buying cards for their machines.

 

I was thinking the same thing. Had it not been for ichime, they definately wouldn't have sold as many of them. It's even made a big enough pugh in sales as to warrant a video guide

@ Intense, have you tried hooking the monitor up with both VGA and HDMI? Maybe that will have differant results. Still won't fix the AW screen though. And it's in all games? What about not in games? I've never noticed any sort of shaking. Have you tried the 5870s again? If the same behavior is caused by the 5870s, maybe it's the drivers? I'm sure you've checked those. If not than maybe Dell can issue a mobo replacement. Like suggested before, could be a electrical leak.

I've seen it in cars, where on an AM station leak out of my spark plug wires caused me to hear the engine revving in the AM radio. Also try another surge protector or outlet. May help.

 

If it's happening on your external screen both with your alienware AND a different computer plugged in, then it's one of two things.

1) Your eye-site (no offense ), but possible

2) Or there's dirty power in your house. This isn't extremely uncommon. The only way to fix that would be with a noise filter - or a call to your power company to have them measure the noise level in your voltage.

But since it's happening on an external monitor both with and without the alienware, then I think it's definitely not something wrong with the alienware.

On a side note, my second PSU for my 480watt combo is much noisier than the primary. It doesn't affect anything other than audio on my laptop and I can only detect the noise when I have my computer plugged into my 2000 watt amplifiers to power my speakers - It's a rather high level of noise too. I would think that if the problem you were experiencing is noise related due to the PSU, I'd be experiencing it as well - which I'm not.

How's your audio?

Ditto. For Eurocom to make a support video for Alienware machines - machines which they don't even sell and are manufactured by a rival company - they must be making bank.

 

Well one nice thing about Eurocom now "officially" supporting Alienware upgrades is it makes warranty repairs/replaces easier. I also like that the parts are now more readily available then they were when some of us started this "little" project.

 

Agreed, that is nice. I don't have the peace of mind of a warranty, but My cards have been going strong since I got them. And they have been folding for several weeks straight . But I did take advantage of the price Phektan offered them at .

 

Yeah nobody beats Phektan's prices...wish he was still able to sell parts

 

I may try buying that noise filter. Also, I can't see it at all in games, I only see it in desktop applications and such.

 

Funny story. Eurocom actually offered me $100 to test their 6990M in my laptop. I told the guy that DR650 and several others already had two of them running in their rigs, and the $100 wasn't necessary. I also linked to this thread. They still wanted more data (as if the abundance of information in this thread wasn't enough), so I took them up on it. I documented every part of the installation, then gave them wattage numbers and everything. I sent them all of the data, pictures, and documentation but never heard from them again.

Hey Intense, if you get the shaking with no PSU installed, buying a noise filter won't do anything for you. You must have a faulty LCD inverter, or some component inside the machine is emitting too much electrical noise. In other words, it is something internal to your laptop. Probably not what you wanted to hear.

 

Turbo! Dang they took your work and ran! Wonder what the deal with that was. Maybe one of them will step up here and defend their actions. Thats pretty low for a business. Offer somone some compensation for thier time and then take their work leave them high and dry. Pretty low.

Don't they know that they can just as easy test the 6990s themselves? They made a video! Just use that M17x and run numbers on there own. Points to laziness in my book. You should email them back and attach all the old emails from them to it. And CC some tech news site, like T|I lol.

At least they offer a warranty with their cards.

 

Ha Ha. Yeah it was pretty funny. They answered their emails almost immediately until they got what they wanted, then I never heard from them again. I'd hit them up, but I just don't care that much. They hooked me up when that 6970 fried, no questions asked, so I just chose to let it go. Maybe one of their employees made the offer prematurely and then a supervisor shot it down. Ichime is the one who deserves all the credit, as well as the early adopters like you, DR. I was just a copy-cat!

 

Yea you do have a point. Although we are all ichime copy cats I doubt without him I would have forked out the cash to test something that may or may not have worked. Though I may do just that with the 7990M GPUs. Especially if they are a lower wattage rating.

 

Funny Turbo...when I first saw the video of the installation, I thought you had done it for them as I recall they had asked you to document the steps for installing the cards in an Alienware.

Agreed, I know I wouldn't have been bold enough to try this without Ichime.

 

Except it's happening on an external monitor as well - even when his Alienware is not plugged into that monitor.

 

Well, then you've ruled out the LCD and inverter. Something in there is making a lot of noise. Maybe a failing component?

 

It's possible, but what are the odds of him experiencing the same problem:

1)On his alienware screen.
2)On an external screen plugged into the alienware.
3)On an external screen plugged into a different laptop.

The would require 2 or 3 identical components failing at the same time and in the same way across three separate pieces of hardware.

 

Only thing I can think of is the power. It sounds like the power needs to be cleaned. One reason I love my Monster 900G surge protector. Got it cheap when I worked at best buy. Like $40. If power is the issue it can be purchased cheaper at Amazon or ebay.

Monster GreenPower™ HDP 900G PowerCenter™

Could be a gimick, but then again, the reason I got it was so when my laptop is off, it shuts down 3 other ports on the strip. My AV Reciever, my printer, and my future external monitor

 

Well a good UPS should provide clean power as well shouldn't it? A UPS might be a bit of overkill for a laptop (but a life saver on my desktops when we'd have lightning storms and lose power)

Just something else to think of I suppose

 

Look at this photo.
Does it fit to R2?



BTW
do you know gpu heatsink part number (for 5870m master card).

 

It will fit in the R2.

Strange though - a black PCB and hynix memory is a telltale sign of a Dell card, but on the side, it says Eurocom. Odd.

 

All Alienware cards (6970m and 6990m) have problems with sleep / hibernate?

 

No only the Dell ones do. The Clevo and the Eurocom cards do not.

 

yes I know but all dell cards have problems with it?

I can buy 6970m or 6990m from Alienware M17xR3 and I'm not sure if it's worth risking

 

with ALL dell cards you will have sleep/hibernate issues but audio over hdmi works.
with eurocom/clevo cards you have the opposite.

I and 90% of users on NBR bought Clevo/eurocom, and we are satisfied.

I would not recomend dell card.

 

Is the picture you posted of the card you are buying? If so, then it's confusing due to the Eurocom label, but Dell appearance.

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure. Honestly the screen shaking is hard to see to begin with and is inconsistent. Let me ask you - would dirty power / noise cause overall performance degradation? My 3dmark 11 scores are fine, but when there's a lot going on in the screen (like a huge battle in LoL / SC2) I get fps slow down where I never did before. I should never lose fps in LoL , even with everything all the way up - its not a very graphically intensive game and for whatever reason I get some slow down (10-20 fps on both LoL and SC2) when there's a lot going on in both. The second the action is over or I move away from it my frame rate returns to normal. I understand this to be "normal" (more going on = more drain on the system) but for these games and my system I should NEVER have slow down. I know this because a week ago I never HAD slowdown. This never happened before I all that stuttering happened. AARP card says that temps don't affect performance as long as they're within a certain limit but I'll say that even though my temps are reasonable with the .5mm pads on, they're not as good as the with the 1mm pads. I just got a sheet of 1mm pads in the mail so I'm going to apply them tomorrow. Again, the temps are still reasonable, but they were maybe 3-5C lower with the 1mm pads but for whatever reason my performance has been impaired. Also, for whatever reason I have to disable hardware acceleration to watch online videos properly. Any clue is going on here?

 

So to clarify:

1) You can infact order the dell 6990m for the m17xr3 and it will work in an m17r2? For some reason I was under the impression that the dell 6990m for the R3 didnt work in the r2...

2) And if audio over hdmi is a must (like it is for me) then you would have to order the dell card anyway?

3) If it is possible to use the dell card, has anyone actually done so and can comment on any other downsides? I have my computer set to never sleep/hibernate anyway so I am thinking this would be a non issue for me.

4) And lastly, would there be any bottleneck with a 6990m paired with my meager i7 720qm? I do have it OC'ed 5% with the A10 BIOS mod...

 

Also, something I'm noticing: in SC2 and Skyrim it seems the highest GPU usage is 75% per card. It seems to stay between 40% and 75%. I'm almost positive I remember, before all this, that the cards were being 100% utilized. Any ideas?

EDIT: 3dmark 11 keeps gpu @ 100% during the graphic tests. Not sure why it won't go to 100% in games, or whether or not its even supposed to but I'm definitely getting decreased performance in SC2. After I hit 3 bases I pulled 40FPS in base. I have to keep vsync on to prevent tearing - so it never goes higher than 60 fps. A week ago, with everything on Ultra, I could have a structure placed all over the entire map and be warping in unit after unit and wouldn't have a hint of slow down. No clue .

 

Not 100% on your first question, but I would say it should work. Perhaps someone else can give a more definitive answer.

You are correct, if you want Audio over HDMI then you have to get a Dell card.

It is very possible to use a Dell card, but you are missing the most important flaw in the Dell cards and that is the fans DO NOT work normally and you need to run a 3rd party application which is certainly not ideal. I am running a ES card so I have this problem, but I do not have shutdown, sleep and Audio over HDMI issues, which I think is only because it is an ES and not a Dell card.

Using HWINFO32 to manage the fans isn't the end of the world but life would be easy to not have to worry about it.

Personally, if I had to choose between the fan issue and audio over HDMI issue, then I would pick the latter. You can easily get around the audio problem by running another cable for sound or even an external USB sound card for fibre if you want surround..

There may be a slight bottleneck with the 720 (depending on games), but regardless you will notice a huge improvement over the 5870's.