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

So my 6970's are on their way, they should arrive anytime at the beginning of next week. Meanwhile i have a question... well... wich are the stock multiplier for the 920xm?

Since i've installed it, it has never run on stock, when i did install throttlestop the multi were already set @x24.

 

Thanks Kenny,
Maybe I will just upgrade to the 920mx and do the cooling mods and see how it goes.
What all can be done to make it run a little cooler so it does not always sound like a jet engine running. I have a studio 17 with i5 and Ati 5650 and it runs very quiet. I know my r2 wil never be that quiet but a little less would be nice.

 

Hi. I think you should make repaste, retention clip mod and maybe set your BIOS on defaults or change it. And one more did you clean your fans and heatsinks, cause if they have a lot of dust in them,your lappy will be not quite. When I have done those things my lappy became cooler, quitter even at high loads. Good luck with your new 6970m and making cooler your beast.

 

And guys. Does my i7-620m bottlenecks 2x5870m?What if I will have 920xm,like how much in % it will give me more fps?And about overclocking 920xm, what advantages it will give me if I will have 3.2 Ghz on all 4 cores?Thanks guys for your answers.

 

Hi there, sorry took so long to reply been pretty busy this last week and not at home for most of it. How can I send you my email address? I have clicked on your name but cannot find a pm link?

Thanks,
Warren

 

Post one more time and then your PM feature will unlock.

 

Ok, thanks

 

@pkhetan, still dont see any pm feature probably doing something stupid... How would I go about sending u one? Lol.... needing help with the most basic things on this website.... pretty embarrassing.

EDIT: Its working now

 

Mine too

 

Edit............

 

6970s are out for delivery....super excited!

*delivered*

 

Great news

Mine are already in mexico they should be here tomorrow morning! Let us know when you receive them and your impressions, (i'm sure you will do it without me asking for it, anyway )

 

I sure will

 

Hey guys, quick question. So I got the 6970's installed, everything booted up properly, but now windows reports the cards as standard vga? I've tried installing the catalyst driver but it just reports that I don't have a compatible graphics card..any thoughts on how to clean it up?

Thanks!

 

Try installing through the Device manager point it to the C:\ATI\SUpport\11.6 drivers folder and it should install. If not try uninstalling the standard drivers and try again. Or try using the M18x Drivers.

 

Thanks Mkelliny,

So tried the above, but still no luck...I'm gonna throw a fresh windows load on it and see how that goes.

Wish me luck

 

have you tryied 11.7?

Also, did you took any picture during the install? how did you manage the CF cable mod?

 

hmmm, so windows still detects them as standard VGA adapter. Have attempted the dell 6970M driver (which unzips but doesn't actually look to install the driver), and 11.6 from the ATI website doesn't detect the driver. Any thoughts??

 

Can you take a picture of the cards from the two sides? I have may be a thought...

 

Hey guys, ok...sorry to panic everyone. Stupid ATI drivers were not completely installing, so finally got it to recognize the cards. Now to check out crossfire . Thanks everyone.

 

And I thought that maybe they just sent you a 6990M

 

Awesome man! Can't wait to see you try out some benches!

Enjoy!

Cheers.

 

Well, snag number 2...both cards are detected now, they seem happy, but its telling me my crossfire cable isn't connected . So I've pulled the cards, reseated them and reseated the cable and will give it another go. As an aside, just in case, is anyone aware of anybody who's got an extra crossfire cable they might be willing to part with? Hopefully I won't need it (and I'll post in the WTB section if I do), just curious.

Wish me luck

 

Did you do the cable modif described by the ichime in the first post?

 

Hi pkhetan,

Yep almost step by step, and I don't see anything that would indicate a problem with the cable (nothing pulled out, no unusual bends), might still be driver related...will play around a bit more and see if I can't sort it out.

Will keep you all posted

 

Hi Cptxabaras,

Yeah followed the steps posted to modify the cable (didn't require much modification, really just peeled the tape away). I'm hoping that I didn't somehow mangle the cable in the process (I don't think so...but with my luck who knows). I'll try to snap some pictures once I get it working. Thanks for all the support guys...don't let this scare you, it's just my typical luck

 

Good luck mate, following this thread closely, you will eventually get it sorted out.

 

Thanks my friend, can't wait to hear about your results

 

Hey all, sorry for the massive posts tonight. Just an update, and a question. So I've got both cards enabled and are seen in device manager. Looking at GPU-Z, they both seem to be operating correctly (temps seem fine, all the information looks to be presented correctly). The only problem is, I'm unable to configure crossfire. Looking at the AMD crossfire diagnostics it mentions that the cable is not connected correctly. GPU-Z also shows that Crossfire is disabled. What I'm trying to sort out is if there is any possibility that this is still a driver issue (currently using the latest moded 11.7b drivers just to try to eliminate some AMD driver issue), or whether this is truly a problem with the cable.

I've reseated both cards, reseated the cable, physically looked at it. All seems to be in order. So that leave me with the following question, which seems rather obvious but I'll admit I'm getting pretty tired at this point.

Is the only way to verify that it's a cable problem is to either, purchase another crossfire cable and attempt it again, or put my 4870's back in and see if it's one of the cards or the connectors?

Or is there something else anyone can think to try? I'm hesitant to put my 4870's back in, only because that involved re-heat syncing them and risking other potential issues.

Any thoughts, idea, suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Hey man,

Are you able to load up CCC and go to the Crossfire option setting. Can you enable it or disable it in there? I know sometimes depending on the driver I have issues even getting to that screen.

If you can't get there to enable it then I would suggest trying to install an older driver version like 11.5 or 11.6 or even Dells drivers just to get you rolling again before you go hunting for another Crossfire cable.
Give the notebook a few restarts too after each driver installation. Sometimes I have to install drivers a couple of times too. Then see if crossfire can be re-enabled.

Good Luck!

Cheers.

 

Thanks Reborn, I'll try your suggestions and see how it goes

I know sometimes the drivers get confused, so I was hoping a clean install of windows would help, but just can't seem to get it enabled. When I go to the crossfire screen it's greyed out, and when I click on Crossfire diagnostics it says that my cable doesn't appear to be connected properly...I'll try some older levels and see if it's not something odd with 11.6 and 11.7 that's giving me so much grief.

Thanks again!

 

Greywolf - sorry to see you're having some difficulties. I'm sure it will be sorted out. Those cables are very fragile and may not show damage.

I did not notice if you had posted this already, so I apologized if I missed it... Do both of the GPUs show up in Device Manager without any issues or error codes?

 

Hi Mr. Fox, good to see you.

So looking in device manager I see both cards, no issues at all. They are being detected as 6900M (I'm assuming that's correct). Using GPU-Z I can select both cards, and verify things like temp, stats, etc.

If I go into CCC the crossfire option is greyed out, and if I look at the status it reports a cable issue.

I've tried various drivers, all seem to install ok...but all lead to the same crossfire problem

 

Well, it certainly does sound like a CFX cable issue. Did you find one for sale yet?

 

Are these x7200 cards or two p150hm cards? You may probably have to do a reflash.

 

Normally they are X7200 cards, also be sure that you put the slave card on the slave slot and the master on master. you can check also th vBIOS of each to verify if Clevo didn't mix the cards.

 

My cards are out for delivery

EDIT:

Cards just arrived, going to install them and report back

 

Thanks guys I'll check the vbios and see what I can see.

EDIT *Flashed the vbios and now doing a reinstall of windows to clean it up...will report back*

 

Awesome!! Let us know how it goes

 

Does this mean that Clevo had mixed the vBIOS?
Did you make a backup before reflashing?

 

Yep, I made a backup, and I think I mixed up the cards when I installed them (not Clevo). Question, can I simply flash the bios to the appropriate cards? or do I have to swap them as well? Will do either if I have to, just thought I'd ask

 

Well you already reflashed them, didn't you? I think they are exactly the same only vBIOS is different. It's just because if there is any other problem with the card and we need to send them back for RMA, we have to ship them exactly as they were delivered. That's all.

 

Thanks Pkhetan for all the help (and everyone else as well). So I did flash the cards with the vbios from the first page, and got lots of screen corruption when it booted. I then reflashed the cards back to their original bios and the screen corruption is gone...I then flashed the cards with the other card's bios (effectively to mimic swapping out the cards) and same results...crossfire cable is saying disabled, and it detects both cards. So I'm pretty puzzled, I'd physically swap the cards if you guys can think of any reason to try that, but I'd imagine that the vbios flash would effectively do the same thing. So I guess that leaves me with the question as to whether it's a card or a cable issue.

 

Ok, just lets check something : what is the vBIOS number for the card that you put in the Master slot and that of the card you put in the Slave slot?

 

Interesting you ask..the vbios is the same for both cards (even listed on the cards themselves)...I pulled them out and looked at them. They both show vbios BR39257.009..Is there any way to physically tell which card is which? and should the vbios be different?

*EDIT* Sorry to completely hijack this thread all...

 

Ok both cards installed, everything working as intended. CF works, both cards are properly installed with 11.7 and caps.

I'm not happy about temperatures, max out 85 one card 79 the other. I will repaste. I did use AS5, grain of rice drop on the middle of the gpu die. How much i'm supposed to tight the heatsink? the screw that comes with the cards allow to tightening all the way down if needed.

I have Shin-etsu MicroSi also

 

Ok...so I reinstalled my 4870's and it detects them both just fine, crossfire is enabled and working. So it's definitely not the cable at this point. Now I'm confused

*EDIT one odd thing about the 6970s..when I installed them I couldn't get any driver loaded except the desktop reference drivers (mobility modded ones), which may be why crossfire isn't working. I clean installed windows several times last night with different driver attempts and only that one ever worked....any ideas why that might be?

 

Awesome!! Congrats!! I wish I could figure out what I did. Hey Cpt...is there a way to tell which card is the primary and which is the secondary? Also on your boxes what vbios is listed?

 

Thanks XD

On both boxes (master/slave) i have BR39257.008

Bios version from GPU-z is 013.010.000.011.039257 for both cards.

How did you screw down your heatsink? i'm not sure how much is good

 

Just a comment on the crossfire cable. With my second 6970m, I was sent a M18x crossfire cable as well. It's shorter than the M17x crossfire cable, but is a much better fit for the 6970m's in the R2 than the R2's crossfire cable is. If I ever get my computer working again, I'm probably going to use the M18x's CF cable instead.

New mobo should be here on Thursday