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

Do you know a gpu heatsink part number (for 5870m master card)?

And please give me a link to ebay where I could buy the screws for eurocom/clevo card (for M17x heatsink).

Thanks

 

Sorry, I do not know the part number for the heatsink. Perhaps someone else will.

As for the screws, I dont think there is a link but you could contact the eBay seller and I am sure he can sort something out for you.

How did you guys organise it with posts and screws? via eBay or the eurocom site?

 

I'm not going to buy directly from eurocom so need to but srews separately

 

Regardless, I still think that either the eBay seller or Eurocom will be able to help you out even if you have not purchased the card from them.

I think Intense (maybe?) had to order the screws seperately and they did this for him....albiet not cheap..something like 25 USD

 

Any insight? This is really bothering me. When I put my 5870s back in they seemed to suck in games too even though the benchmark scores for those cards were normal. Again, it slows down when more is going on and returns to normal immediatly goes back to normal as I move away from or the action finishes.

Also, when the tech pasted the GPUs with all of that ic 7 diamond too much had spilled under that protective sticker. I removed the sticker to clean off the small metal peices around the chip the best I could but some of those metal peices still have a little dried grey around them. With 70% alcohol and a cuetip I can't remove it - the cuetip cotton gets caught on the sharp metal edges and rips. I don't understand why that would matter now when it was working fine beforehand.

Thoughts? If I could put the old cards back in I would but the performance sucked on them for whatever reason. Now these cards aren't working properly. I can't play sc2 properly when I have slowdown every time I'm in a big fight or when I can't properly manage my based when too many structures are in them.

Thanks

 

1) Yes it will work
2) Yes.
3) Yes.

I was using a dell 6970 as my primary with a Eurocom Slave for the longest time. Fans were stuck on 100% and had to be controlled manually by hwinfo.

HDMI audio is suspected to work. I can personally say that DisplayPort Audio DEFINITELY works - and will still work if a DisplayPort to HDMI converter is used.

You will not experience shutdown/sleep/hibernate problems if you flash the Dell card to the second revision of the X7200 Clevo 6970m vbios.

 

Hi Aldam,

The screws used for Clevo/Eurocom brackets are M1.6 3.5mm

I purchased screws from here on e-bay:

M1.6 x 3mm 4mm 5mm 6mm Cheese Head Metric Machine Screw | eBay

They don't sell 3.5mm, so I purchased 4mm and 3mm just in case. I ended up not needing to use them however, but I did try one and it did fit.)

If you purchase the 4mm ones you may be able to snip off the end a bit to make it fit better.

There are probably other places that you can buy them from, I just know that they sell the proper width (the dell screws I believe are M2 so they will NOT fit

 

HELP! Removing thermal paste from GPU

They say to use a toothpick and purer alcohol to get the paste off the resistors. Is 90% safe? Toothpick? Someone on that thread says I doesn't matter. Is that true? Could it be affecting things?

Somehow it double posted. Delete this one please.

 

This is the link to the right and left heatsink for the M17Xr2 that I bought
m17x 260 heatsink | eBay

It says 280/260 (Nvidia) but the heatsink is the same size. Don't remember if it came with screws or not. I think not, but I kept my originals so I didn't need them. The screws will most likely be card dependent, so best to find the right screws for your card.

 

bought
Thank you.

Which one is for master card?

 

Intense...I've used 90% (minimum) in the past. Now I use ArtiClean...fantastic stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/ArctiClean-60...OR08/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325881824&sr=8-1

 

As long as the cards aren't overheating though, you're problems aren't the result of a bad paste job.

Using a tooth is fine - just don't be forceful.

 

I'm picturing somone trying to remove the paste with thier teeth Bet it tastes funny. I bet IC Diamond is the best tasting paste Give you that Platinum Grill effect. Bling!

IC Diamond 24, number 1 recommended paste, endorsed by Paul Wall



Gotta have a sense of humor

 

What do you think it is? What do you think I should try? Dried paste on resisters don't cause any performance issues? Also, is it normal for games not to utilize the GPU @ 100%?

 

X648M is the left card and I think that is the master. If I'm wrong, someone correct me. Been awhile since I opened my rig up.

 

Sigh I'm so damn frustrated. Does anyone have ANY ideas I can try?

 

Hey Intense, as a last resort the only thing I would consider is a fresh re-install..if you have an extra HDD lying around you could temporarily do that. Can't remember when you did your last re-install, but with all the driver swaps and stuff being loaded it could very well be something with windows itself (the starcraft issue, still not sure what's causing the issue with the screen shaking).

I'd do a fresh install with drivers you know worked previously, and then load Starcraft. It's entirely possible that some other application is consuming resources and causing performance to degrade as well.

Also, I've had issues where Battlenet itself is congested and causes serious performance problems even when not playing against other people.

Just some thoughts...I know a re-install is a huge pain but it would be the cleanest way to eliminate other potential issues and go with a stock windows load, graphics drivers, and the game and see how it runs.

Otherwise, I'm out of ideas as to what might be causing it....I suppose it's possible your cards are throttling due to power issues as well, although I don't know if other folks see this type of behavior or not when the cards are pulling to much power, plus that wouldn't explain why it worked for awhile and now is no longer working.

Good luck man, I know how frustrating this type of thing can be

 

Also, I dont know any game to uses both GPU's at 100%.

Even BF3 at best I get 98% and that always varies. Skyrim is much worse....This comes down to drivers and game design.

I don't know why SC2 was giving you 100% of awesomeness on both, but it does not surprise that it doesn't.

All comes down to the drivers, caps and the game... and a bit of luck....especially when xfire is concerned.

 

Flash your cards back to default vbios.
Flash your M17X A10 Bios.
Uninstall the video drivers using express uninstall all ATI and then driver sweeper in safe mode.
Restart the system and check both your cards are found by typing "atiflash -i"
Let your system install the standard vga adapter.
Restart your laptop and install the beta 12.1 drivers, I have NO performance issues with them whatsoever.
Restart your laptop and disable crossfire.
Run Starcraft 2 and compare your results with Fraps to other benchmarks you can find online. If you are satisfied with the performance with that single GPU, bin the other one.
Just kidding... SC2 doesn't support Xfire as far as I know (afaik abbreviation was so tempting ) so no need to enable crossfire. If you still get that issue of yours, get back to us and we shall look deeper into that issue.
My opinion is it is all a driver optimisation issue for specific video cards, Meaning the driver you were using for the 5870s supported passive crossfire better than the 6990s do. Using the 5870s with an older driver might restore these performances you crave.

Maybe start a new thread for this specific issue with a summary of what you have tried and where your experiments have failed?

Keep us informed.

Cheers,

Mike.

Edit: As Greywolf mentionned a clean install might be a solution and I recommend running CCleaner in the meantime before going through this 2 hour procedure

 

Did a clean install of the drivers earlier. It happens in LoL too. Those are the only two games I've really played lately. It aggrivates me because a week ago everything was fine.

EDIT: Also, both gpu's mirror eachother in usage %. Usually between 40-70. I removed the undervolt from my cards and the performance got better (I think). Again, @ the start of the game everything is fine. I go against AI and I throw in a bunch of cheat codes to build my base and army up really fast just to scroll around with a lot on the screen and test it. Its normal for a cluster of crap to bog down performance. I know that. I also know that a week ago I could be in a 4v4 with everything on ultra and be in the middle of 8 maxxed armies and still able to micro (as well as I can even micro). In a 1v1 against a maxed army fighting in one of our bases my micro goes to hell because everything is lagging. The second the army is dead or I move my camera away from it my fps goes back up to 60. I just don't understand is going on. Last night in LoL everytime we were in a team fight my fps dropped to 35 / 40. That should NEVER happen. Honestly just don't understand it. I'll try LoL with the undervolt removed.

 

Dried paste on the resistors and caps surrounding the die would only result in one type of a problem: Entire gpu failure. And the chances of that happening are ridiculously low - probably 1 in a billion or more.

Have you tried using a noise filter?

You won't find a single application that runs your gpu at 100% besides Furmark. Most games will be in the 60%-80% range - some much lower - Burnout Paradise is in the 30% range for me. There are a few games which will utilize the gpu around 90%-98% like Metro, but those games are few and far inbetween.

What you don't want to see however, is a sawtooth usage trend. Repetitive spikes of low gpu usage during normal gameplay. That would suggest throttling due to lack of power or some other reason. One spike here or there doesn't mean anything. It has to be consistent, and repetitive for as long as you play the game.

I had throttling issues with my Dell 6970m card. Everything would be fine for about 10 minutes in any given game. Then throttling would occur and my gpu usage would drop by about 20% for 3 seconds, then resume back to normal usage and repeat in-definitively. This was accompanied by a measured spike in power consumption from the wall.

The best way I tested for this was to go into the game environment not do anything - let the game idle for about 15 minutes. If the throttling occurred, then I was able to measure it with Frapps, Gpu-z, and my watt meter.

Check to make sure that isn't happening. But the most important thing is you have to let the game idle. You can't be playing it - otherwise the results will be skewed.

In my opinion, the Star Craft problem seems to be related to a cpu bottleneck. You said when there's a lot of things on screen like buildings or troops, etc, it slows down. I think that's cpu related because the cpu is having to process the AI information, tactics, location, and interaction information for ALL of those entities. If the cpu lags behind, then the game will lag behind even if you have the most powerful gpu's in the world. Are all of your power settings in windows set to high performance?

You should monitor your cpu usage and see if it's significantly higher in SC2 when your framerates dip. If it is, check to see if the cpu is throttling with the same methods as I described for the gpu. If it's not throttling, then I'd blame the problem on poor game or driver optimization.

Electrical noise is the only thing I can think of to cause your shakiness. But then again, I'm not so certain. Like I said earlier, when I have both of my PSU's hooked up at the same time I get A LOT of electrical noise due to the second PSU probably not being of superior quality. I don't experience any side affects as a result aside from the audio through my amplifiers. Perhaps yours is a different noise wave form.

Use a limiting resistor in combination with an oscilloscope (if you have access to one) to measure the signal coming from your PSU and the mains.

You say the shaking problem doesn't happen in games. My guess is that the increased current draw from the gpu's is smoothing out the noise interference.

Can you try plugging the laptop into a different socket at a different house maybe? If it still occurs there, then I really have no idea because you said it was happening on your external monitor with a different computer connected. I'd be surprised if your entire location is suffering from dirty power. Be sure you try it someplace decently far away. If it's a faulty pole transformer, it's possible your direct neighbors could be experiencing it too.

Try those things. Revert all the bioses back to stock vbios and bios. Revert any OC or OV settings back to stock. Try a new windows installation if you can.

 

That is most likely the source of the problem if true. If a game doesn't support CFX, the use of CFX while running that game often results in worse performance than compared to even a single card. Sometimes you can force positive Scaling with radeonpro though even if the game doesn't support CrossfireX

 

Sc2 runs smoother with CFX enabled. Leaving the game idle doesn't cause any issues whatsoever. I'm going to test a few things tonight. Thanks.

EDIT: also, AARP card how do I tell what % usage the CPU is? the multipliers seem pretty high when in game.

EDIT 2: Uh, now I'm really confused. Just a week ago I was playing portal 2 just fine with 12.1. Now I'm getting like image overlay like douse was having in that video (I think it was douse). ?

EDIT 3: Rebooted and that problem went away. Odd.

EDIT 4: What exactly does tripple buffering do? Should I enable that?

EDIT 5: Also, you said go back to A10 bios? I have that. I don't have a modded version. Should I reflash my system bios? Not sure how to do that or why it would help.

 

ive gotten a shaky screen before i fixed by taking
1. Vsync+Opengl off
2.Tessellation off
3. surface optimization off

The screen shake was from a old game.

 

Also, I have another question and this one is really interesting. Everyone on these fourms keeps trying to get their temps as low as possible. Aarpcard says that the cards will perform the exact same as long as their under like 100C or whatever it was. If that's the case, then whats the point? Why bother trying to lower temps more if it doesn't affect performance? Just so that you can overclock and remain within a safe zone? It seems even for people not overclocking they try to get their temps down. Keeping my cards @ stock voltages run the exact same (presumably) as they do @ 1.02. The difference is 5 or so degrees C. If thats the case and they're still within that limit, what's the point? I honestly thought that lower temps = better performance. I guess that's wrong?

 

The lifespan of the cards is the reason we bother, same as for the CPU.
Whoever was asking for idle temps for the GPUs, I'm around 42 degrees on my primary and 36 on my secondary while listening to music and navigating around windows.
Voila

 

In your edit you say its normal for performance to degrade when you have a zilion units. Yes, in general you are correct. A week ago, however, this didn't happen. I should be able to go against a maxed army without any slow down. i was able to a week ago and I'm not able to now. That's the issue. My machine should be (and was) more than capable of handling SC2 on Ultra with anything it can throw @ it.

 

To check your cpu usage, open Task Manager and click on the performance tab. The graphs will show you your usage over time. Maximize the window to allow for the largest display area of the graphs. There's probably some 3rd party program that does a better job of measuring it too . . . . maybe cpu-z? idk

The only reason to want cool temps is to lengthen the life span of your cards. Personally, I don't really buy it, but I'm not going to try and force others to agree with me. Most laptop gpu's will have a thermal limit of over 100C. Sometimes as high as 115C. I've run so many gpu's near 100C for years of usage and never had any heat related problems.

8800m GTS - If I remember right, with my everyday OC it was at 96C steady under load.
GTX 260m - Pretty sure with my everyday OC it was 97-99C under load.
CFX 4870m's - Master was 88C on load. Slave was 91-92C on load.
CFX 6990m + 6970m - Master is 88C on load. Slave is 99-101C on load.

All of these cards had thermal limits of 110-115C with software limits of around 105C. Never ran into any heat related damage. I used the 8800m GTS for 2 years, then I fried the mobo. I used the GTX 260m for 1.5 years then sold it to a friend and as far as I know it's still running at the same settings 1.5 year after that. I used the 4870m's for a year then gave them to my cousin who's been using them for the past 9 months at the same settings.

Does it shorten the lifespan? Maybe. But with my experience, I've always felt the need to upgrade far before that lifespan is reached. I think it's possible that people sometimes blame the failure of a hot running card on high temperatures over the course of a long period of time even though they were within the thermal limit - when the actual failure resulted from temperatures that accidentally went OVER the limit for whatever reason. That's why when running cards this hot you must monitor them constantly.

I still want to find a way to drop my slave's temps by ~10 degrees. I was able to drop it ~6C with a heatsink mod from 106.5C. If I can get it down to around the 90C mark, maybe I can overvolt a smidge and boost the clocks even higher.

EDIT:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/StarCraft-2.35167.0.html

According to this you should be getting 82fps with no or low aa on ultra at 1920 by 1080. What are your AA settings?

In the CCC, the filter should be set to standard, with Morphological filtering not checked and Use Application settings checked.

Your anti-aliasing mode should be Multi-sample for best performance.

 

IntenseIGFX I disagree with this last statement.
On Ultra settings, SCII is a highly demanding game and a notebook, no matter how highly specced it is, should not be expected to maintain a stable 60 fps. Seeing the benchmark results on notebookcheck.net with 6990M Xfire at 89fps average, I see what you mean and I haven't been lucky enough to witness such staggering performance in my laptop.
(refer to http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/621134-6990-cf-low-fps-starcraft-ii.html).
Seeing the test system has a 990x processor, I was thinking maybe the processor is the bottleneck/problem.
Have you tried different settings in Throttlestop?

Edit: Read a few threads here and there and the major opinion is bottlenecking by the CPU. I reckon the CPU overclocking you could afford with the 5870s was the source of this stable fps you were mentionning.
Try overclocking your 920xM with Xfire disabled and compare the performance then.

Edit 2: I shall test my system tonight on SCII with and then without Xfire on Ultra. I will tell you what the difference in performance is since we have almost identical configs.

 

Can somebody confirm this please.

 

I second Ghost on that one!

Depends from where you're looking at it lol.
If the system is sitting normally, screen open and keyboard removed, the x648M is for the left end-side card (left side of keyboard - where the E-sata, firewire and HDMI ports are) while the X203R is for the right end side card (right side of keyboard, where the 4xaudio, dvd/blu-ray and SD slots are).
I wouldn't know how to explain it more clearly...

Edit: You still haven't got W7 HP?

 

I still haven't got the whole system. I'm waiting for my M17xR2 Nebula Red.

I've bought the X648M.
Ghost_AWP and thenzfarmer +1 thanks

 

I've never oced my processor. As far as the 100% in sc2 a week ago, I'm not sure if that was the case - I just thought I had seen it. The benchmark scores are fine but I will say that I notice performance loss in all games from a week ago. I know some people said that installing new cards without removing drivers can be a problem. This whole problem started when I noticed screen shaking and installed the 5870s to test then put back my 6990s. I uninstalled drivers last night and put the old cards back in. Today I'm going to uninstall drivers again and put the 6990s back. If that doesn't solve it (again I don't understand why I'm having issues when my benchmark scores are the same as they ever were) ill reformat. Can someone hoestly tell me that reformatting has ever solved an issue like this? Also I don't have a windows disk. How do I format with raid 0? I've never done that before. Thanks for everything guys. I know I've been a huge pain and I appreciate your help.

Edit: maybe something is wrong with the operating system. The 5870s arent performing as well as they used to either. For whatever reason SC2 worsens in performance if I put it on anything less than ultra. With the 5870s I'd put the texture settings on ultra and the other settings on high and that worked fine. Something must be wrong somewhere because LoL should NEVER drop below 60 fps. Especially considering I don't have everything turned all the way up.

Edit: I already have A10. Would re flashing the bios help?

Edit 2: Also, what happened was everything was fine. Then I started getting some screen tearing in sc2 and skyrim. It was subtle in skyrim but everytime I tried to place a structure in sc2 I'd get left side of the screen vertical tearing. Then I switched the cards around and put the .5mm pads on. That's the first time I noticed decreased performance. When the cards were switched around. Then, in order to rule out shakiness being related to GPU I put the 5870s in. The shakiness was still there and I didn't / don't understand why the 5870s were performing worse than they did in the past in spite of their solid benchmark score. When I put the 5870s in I hadnt uninstalled the drivers prior. When I put the 6990s back in after that I started having problems with online videos not working properly without disabling hardware acceleration and 3dmark / sc2 crashing due to some odd program error. Sc2 hasn't done that since but 3dmark 11 occasionally stops the test and gives me some odd error. Last night I put the 5870s back in after clean removing the drivers. Before I upgraded to the 6990s I could run sc2 on high / ultra settings with vsync enabled staying at a solid 60fps. I switched the cards because I bought skyrim and wanted better performance. Anyway that's the timeline. Does that sound like reformatting could help? I've never overclocked (except the FSB OC which I tried for a few days and caused problems) nor used Throttlestop for anything but monitoring. This is getting really painful. I just want to be able to use my machine properly and I can't even do that with my old cards. Any ideas? Will formatting even give me a chance of helping?

Edit 3: I have the Alienware M17x Windows 7 Recovery Disk that came with my machine. Should I just use that to reinstall windows? Or should I download a windows 7 home 64 iso? Also, not sure how to do it with Raid 0 and whatnot.

 

Hey guys,

Intense asked me to make a post on his behalf.

Regarding the power draw of the 6990s'..does anyone have any thoughts on whether the draw of the 6990's could have caused an motherboard issues?

My laptop with the 6970's rarely draw more then the 240W power supplied to the board by the power supply.

I wouldn't think so other then cutting off due to some sort of power overdraw, but he's curious what other folks think as well.

Thanks!!

 

Well, DR was one of the first to run 6990 CrossFire, and he's a known overclocker. Pushes his stuff to the limits. So, unless you've been overclocking harder than DR, I doubt it.

 

I fried a module on mobo it was a express sound card that attaches to mobo from daughter mobo after i did 6990 upgrade. Idk what happend maybe connected it abit off when i unplugd. I think my 240 psu was to blame for tht since i was forcing it for power when i tried a OC bench. Because it botherd me something wasnt ok in laptop I got a new mobo from dell even tho my laptop worked fine w/o that audio express card pieces. The new mobo was missing the Audio express card (Dell said it came with it) which i currently am still missing because i cant find it anywhere. Idk what that card is for..btw i posted a pic of it and burnt out stuff on thread while back.

 

Leaving my system on default vbios with the 6990s and with no CPU overclock, my laptop would crash when the draw neared 260W for more than a few seconds (e.g. Metro 2033). This was caused by the PSU giving up and the laptop being left to handle 240W with a battery only... not possible.
So I don't think excessive powerdraw could cause that kind of impact on the motherboard. The worst it got to in my situation was when I installed 11.11 and I had tearing all over the screen.

Intense, how a clean install will benefit you is that it will enable you to identify which software, if software is to blame, is causing your system to hiccup.
A clean install is a step by step process that will help you identify if a clean drive with few apps installed allow you to run the cards the way they are meant to.
I have never handled Raid 0 drives and someone will have to help you out with that. You'll find plenty of guides online.
As for the OS, do not use the recovery disk. That someone who will help you with the Raid0 will hopefully tell you how to use HDDErase on a Raid setup of HDDs and you will then use a CD or USB with the Full W7 OS.

I recommend you use the 10.10 or 12.1 video drivers when you do your clean install. Please install the video drivers when all other drivers (chipsed, HDD, audio...) have been installed. In my opinion, video drivers should come last, just before installing programs and applications.

I you bought your cards from upgradeyourlaptop on ebay, I can send you my original vbios which are untampered.
That was my issue at first with undervolting. Using DR650s vbios, it never worked.
I then decided to use my backed up original vbios, edited them with RBE and I have now got a stable undervolt which allows me to game happily.
If you did back them up, use them to flash your cards to their default vbios.
If not, I shall provide tonight when I get back to my room at the camp.

I still can't explain this driver issue on two different Xfires (5870 & 6990) if you have used driver sweeper in safe mode... Also make sure you uninstall the Catalyst App Profiles for the sake of it.

 

Why not use the recovery disk? That's the only windows disk I have. Shouldn't I be able to delete the C: partition once I put the disk in? The raid is set up in bios so hopefully it will just install to both HDD's. Also, I'm using the default vbios that came with the cards. I saved them and modified them for the undervolt. I have my 5870's in right now and for whatever reason their performance is garbage even though they get a normal benchmark score. Greywolf said that the recovery CD would be fine. Also, should I make recovery disks of my own via windows recovery in case I need to go back to where I have now?

 

I didn't think the recovery disk included the full OS. If it does, then you should be fine as Greywold indicated.
You can create a new partition and perhaps keep the one you have now.

I am almost certain your issue is driver related.
I can't help you past this point because I have never dwelved any deeper in troubleshooting.
Normal benchmark scores indicate the crossfire bridge is working normally.
Bad gaming performance therefore indicates an issue either in the software/game, a driver incompatibility (but I think that's been extensively covered) and finally a display error (but if your movies play fine and beautifully, I don't see this being valid).

My opinion is you have a corrupt video drive/catalyst that is messing up with your head.
I don't see there being any issue with the GPU setup since the benchmarks are rolling out good scores (please post your results as well).

The second possible problem as highlighted by Grey is an application interfering with intensive 3D apps. It could be a mouse driver, it could be a keyboard driver, an audio driver, a hardware montoring program...

Please reiterate if your 6990M Xfire setup ever worked well and if it ever did, what you did to make it go so wrong.
I'll hang up my hat until further ideas come to mind.

Edit 1: "A recovery disc is a general term for media containing a backup of the original factory condition or a favored condition of a computer as configured by an original equipment manufacturer or an end-user. OEM supplied recovery media is commonly shipped with most computers to allow the user to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system and pre-loaded software as it was when it was shipped." From wikipedia.com.

Verdict = Recovery Disk will do the job!

 

I don't think excessive power draw would be a problem as long as it's under ~300 watts. My system is fine running at 280+ watts for hours.

We do have to keep in mind that the MXM slots are designed for 75 watts max. That was the problem with the first Clevo X7200. Because they were using GTX 480m's which drew over 100 watts, in several cases, the MXM slots melted causing a catastrophic failure. This was fixed on later models with more robust materials making up the MXM slots.

I think that if this would have been a problem with the R2, then we would have seen similar failures by now.

However, Intense is only using 1 PSU. It is possible that the PSU is throttling if power draw has gotten too high. Perhaps he got a lemon of a PSU. A standard 240watt Alienware PSU should be good up to 260-270 watts. Maybe his cuts out closer to 240watts. He should get a watt meter and measure what his readings are from the wall.

 

The Alienware disk is a full windows install (I've re-installed several times off of it), if I recall correctly there is another disk that includes the drivers as well as the other utilities that came with your alienware.

It's not a true recovery disk in the sense of the word, as it is really an OEM version of windows and then you have to install the drivers from the driver disk. So it isn't as easy as throwing the disk in and it does a full restore on it's own...some intervention is required.

So I wouldn't worry about trying to get any other windows disk, the one included is the same thing.

Hope that helps

Also, I'd recommend going out to the Dell website and downloading all the current drivers available for the R2 and using those instead of the drivers disk when applicable. The only exception to this would be the AMD driver, as I'd download that from the website (or use a more recent one that you know worked well with SC2) The one from the dell website is far too old in my opinion and the one on the disk I wouldn't recommend using.

 

Thanks farmer. I've posted all the questions you've asked in former posts. My setup with the 6990's were working perfectly until about a week ago when it just started acting up. My bench scores for 5870's are about 4300 and the 6990's are about 6300 in 3dmark 11.

Should I go ahead and make recovery disks from where my system is now?

EDIT: Besides the graphic drivers, are all the drivers on the disk that came with my machine the ones I should use for everything else? I found a post somewhere that gives me the best order to install them in. http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

Could the PSU theoretically have gone bad a week ago? It was working fine until then. Also, would that explain my specific issues? How does a watt o meter work? What do I look for? Maybe I should go out and buy it before reformatting and make sure. I'm sure they can send me a new PSU if nescessary right?

 

What you're looking for is called a Kill-A-Watt. I got mine at Home Depot for around $30. It has a single plug on the front, and then it plugs into the wall. The digital display will tell you a bunch of different things, but you'll just want to cycle to the wattage draw.

On a side note, the unit that I bought is called a 'Kill-A-Watt', there are probably other versions from other vendors that might be called something else. Just tell the salesperson what you want, and they'll likely know where to point you.

 

I bought the Kill A Watt as well P3 - Kill A Watt

How do I use it exactly? What am I looking for to determine whether or not my PSU is bad?

EDIT: Also, is it okay to plut the kill a watt into a power strip - then the alienware on top of that? That way I can extend it further and watch it while watching the screen?

EDIT 2: Not sure is going on now. I still have my 5870's in and for whatever reason the 3dmark 11 score I just got was like 1700. Plugged into the kill a watt it was pulling about 130 watts. Not sure that means.

 

Yea that will work. Just monitor your wattage pull. At idle it will be around 70-85 watts and if you run 3dmark11 it will go up over 200 watts depending on your settings

 

With the 5870's it will go over 200 wats? Should the battery be in? Having the thing plugged in via power strip just made my computer crash after trying another bench. The first bench with this thing plugged in gave me horrific scores with my 5870's. I'm trying direct into the outlet and if that doesn't work I'll try without the meter and see if that's whats causing problem right now.

Edit: something is very wrong with this computer right now. Even without the kilowatt meter the machine is shutting off every time I try and do a benchmark test. Either something is wrong with the 5870s or something is wrong with the PSU. I plan is to switch out the 5870s with the 6990s and see what happens. With the psu in the kill a watt I was gettif around 140 in the benchmarks and the frame rate was horrendous. I get 40 fps give or take in that first test with my 6990s but the test I just took with the 5870s gave me like 6fps. Assuming everything was working, what am I supposed to see with the kill a watt? I have no clue what I'm supposed to do here. I'm just so devastated about this whole thing. I want to rule out the psu before reformatting. That's a huge ordeal id like to avoid if at all possible. Also no one answered my question about making restore disks from the current state. Thanks.

 

A kill-O-watt is a gadget/accessory that in NO WAY affects the performance of your system unless it is faulty.
It shows you how much power the PSU is pulling from the wall.
It is a guide to show how much power your computer is using at any one time. the 5870s overclocked should hit close to 220W on full load while the 6990s on normal clocks should hit up to 250W in vantage.

Idea: At idle you should observe, as DR650 pointed out, around 75W. Try to run your computer with the battery taken out. At full load there might be power shortages which means the laptop falls back on the battery to provide power for half a second, causing bad FPS.

Use GPU-z to see fluctuations in clock frequencies and take a screeny after 1 min of full load in a game or bench.

Doing a recovery disk is up to you. If you want to save your current OS setup do it. If you can reinstall everything rapidly in a re-install, then don't bother and just save your movies, music files and game backups.

It is a personnal choice.

As for your rig, time to restore is to orgininal settings and contact Alienware in my opinion.
Good luck.

 

Since I plugged my PSU into the Kill A Watt this afternoon I've had more problems. The 5870's couldn't even get through the first benchmark test without shutting the computer down and the 6990's are giving me extreme shaking in games and 3dmark 11. I'm going to order a new PSU tomorrow from alienware before bothering to reformat. That way I can save myself the trouble if the PSU fixes it. I have an old area 51 m15x laptop and psu. That wouldn't work ey?

EDIT: While booting up the meter kept moving rapidly between 70-80-140 ect. Is that normal. Sitting here typing this post its going from 55-60-70 or so. Not sure what this all means.

Even though everything was shaky as hell, starting a game in SC2 my meter read about 170. I assume its supposed to read much higher than that. What does this mean? My gpu is undervolted to 1.02

EDIT 2: 3dmark gives me the 240 wats or so. Right now I'm @ 96 just sitting here. The 3dmark 11 won't give me a score, though. It just keeps saying this:

Posting result to 3DMark.com failed: For security reasons DTD is prohibited in this XML document. To enable DTD processing set the DtdProcessing property on XmlReaderSettings to Parse and pass the settings into XmlReader.Create method.
(connection_to_3dmark_com_failed)

EDIT: In all my games I get extreme shaking. One thing I've noticed is that all the tests in 3dmark 11 are around 230 (physics is @ 170) until the combined test. The combined test hits 250+ and the shaking starts hard there. So does that mean my psu is the problem?

 

Hmm definitely starting to sound like a bad PSU. When your computer shut off before, do you remember if the blue light on the PSU cable stayed lit?

And ditto, there's nothing the watt meter can do to hurt performance. It's completely impossible.

You mentioned you're using a power strip. Is this the same power strip you were using before that was determined to be faulty? If so, that could be part of the problem.

From what you've described, it is most definitely a power problem. And for it to be happening with both the 5870's and 6990's then in my opinion it's most likely the PSU.

And to answer your other question, yes if that's the case, then it is very likely that the PSU could have gone bad in the last few weeks because with the 6990's installed it would have been subjected to far more stress than with only the 5870's.

I don't have SC2, but 170 watts doesn't seem too unreasonable. From what I've read it's a very cpu bound game and doesn't draw much power from the gpu's esp if it's not CFX enabled.

Don't get distracted and hung up by the watt readings - which seems like you might be.

What you're looking for is a relatively high number (above 200) in most games and benchies and low numbers on idle like around 100 give or take maybe 40. Jumping around is normal.

The 140 watts in the benchies is NOT ok. In vantage and 3d Mark 11, with no OC, my laptop will pull 230-240.

There's one of two things going wrong here.

Either the PSU is dead/dying, or the gpu's are throttling like mad for some reason independent of the PSU.

Using the M15x PSU will fix nothing as I believe it is only rated to 150 watts.

 

AARP, read my edit please.

Also, if its a 240 watt psu and gaming with the 6990's will draw more than 240 watt, how is it supposed to work to begin with? Do you think if I buy another PSU it will continue to happen? Dan doesn't have a second psu and his seems to be fine. You mentioned noise added with your second PSU. So there ARE detriments to getting one? Thanks

EDIT: Also, SC2 DOES use Xfire. For whatever reason I'm haivng major video problems in SC2 even though its only hitting 170 watts. 230 watts on the first benchmark tests seem to look and react with the proper frame rates. Not sure what that means.

EDIT 2: Since SC2 is being wayyyyy too choppy with xfire enabled, I disabled xfire and with the watt o meter determined a few things. Game starts (1 video card) @ 150 Watts. W hen I'm looking at my massed army, it goes to 170 and when I move away on the screen it drops back to 150. If my PSU was throttling @ the higher wattage, this would sure explain it. The problem was that when my units were massed I'd get slow down where I didn't get slow down in the past. I may end up reformatting as well just to make sure I get all the driver issues worked out as well, but I'm definitely ordering a new psu. I just hope a new one won't have the same problem.