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

Yeah that would be awesome as I would be able to ditch the 480 watt setup and go back to something a little more portable

Also, fingers crossed the DisplayPort works. I was pretty pissed that I couldn't get Eyefinity working....

 

I am looking to do the crossfire mod with the 6970's in my R2. I just have a couple of questions before I do and was hoping you all could assist me. First, I will make sure to purchase the clevo cards that support the crossfire and fan setup, but just wanted to make sure that the HDMI output will still work for my external monitor? It just doesn't support the audio output correct? Second, I have only one 5870 card in my system now so I was wondering if anyone knew where to locate the slave heat sink, fan and crossfire cable I need (I have looked on Ebay and cannot locate them maybe dell part numbers?). If anyone here has them and wants to sell please let me know. Third, I have done the BIOS A10 mod which allows you to disable the PSU check feature so I wanted to make sure this would allow me to purchase an M18x PSU and use it for the power consumption issues? Again, thank you for your help and guidance as I try to join all of you "Beasts" out there who've done this mod.

Kind Regards,

Truckin

 

Hey Truckin,

Welcome to the club!!

The Clevo 6970's will definitely output video over HDMI, just not audio.

As for extra heatinks, not sure where to locate this, someone has told me in the past but I can't remember

Hopefully someone else can give you that answer!

As for the additional PSU, disabling the PSU check will only stop the laptop from alerting you during POST.
If you are only using a 330 watt PSU, you need to also ground the ID cable to the negative. Be aware that you will lose your ability to use your brightness controls and also you will not be able to charge/use your battery anymore.

This was recently covered a few pages back where Gloops did the same thing.

Once you have it working, it should alleviate your power consumption issues.

I thought I should also mention that the 7970's are just being released, so make sure you really want to go for the 6970's. Just giving a heads up in case you weren't aware!

 

DOUSE and XEROXIDE!!!
She lives! haha
I'm using throttlestop when gaming with 45/50 and no performance issues or crashes or whatever so far.
Just crysis 2 giving me a lack of vid memory after 10 minutes or so... not to worry since the 3rd is coming out soon
So thanks to you both.

Edit: Had to re-enable paging file to prevent that error in Crysis 2.
Getting 45fps min Crysis 2 Ultra with DX11 textures.
Gotta love it haha

Edit 2: Lol Douse that would be the simplest fix... EVER!

 

Nice mate!

Glad to hear it

I thought you may have been riiiiight on the edge, so a little adjustment is all you needed

EDIT:: Pagefile?!?! GENIUS! That is probably what is giving me the out of memory error in BF3!!! GENIUS! I will re-enable tonight. Thanks

EDIT:: So far so good. Although every time I exit BF3 I get a BF3.exe not responding. May be the 12.4 previews...

TRIPLE EDIT:: Well after this talk of Crysis 2, I decided to give it another shot. I was very disappointed originally when it came out in DX9 and barely played it. But with the Dx11 patch and High Res textures, this game is sweet!!! Runs like a champ too

 

Thank you for the welcome! I don't understand what you mean regarding grounding the wire etc. Does anyone know where to purchase these parts as described above? Would having the 1440X900 LCD screen instead on the 1900x1200 screen LED screen affect anything if I were to complete the 6970 xfire upgrade?

 

No problem!

If you read back a few pages in this thread, the 330 watt PSU mod is explained in quite some detail. As I mentioned before Gloops just completed this for himself.
I dont think you will need to worry about it running 6970's though.

As for your screen, it will not make any difference at all. In fact, you will probably get better performance as you are running games at a lower resolution

 

I'm 95% certain that my second graphic card which I bought from pkhetan has died
In crossfire it made any 3d graphics have strange green dots/glitching and then bsod
When run by itself the card barely loaded windows (while loading the screen would go green for a split second and then black before becoming normal an repeating) before bsod with message something about failing to load and recover from driver blahblahfdk

left with a very bad taste in my mouth and out of pocket 900 hard saved student dollars

 

Damn Kenny, that sucks

Does sound like it has given up the ghost.

Sorry mate I guess check all the basics such as temps and drivers before giving up completely.

If all else fails you could also bake in the oven and try to perform a DIY reflow?

EDIT:: Itching to find out how these 7970's work in an R2!!!!!!! Considering selling both the ES 6990's to fund a single 7970 if performance is indeed equal to or better.

 

I think its a faulty memory module as the card still kinda works, all the bsod messages I get are either atimksd.....something something, or often seem to relate to hardware memory issues (general gist from a google search)
could try a bake even tho it didnt help my last card, might just leave it and get a replacement system (m18x r2) seeing as I'm having other issues as well

 

Kenny, maybe try a reinstall. I'm just throwing darts here though.

But pushing for an M18x doesn't sound like a bad idea, though you will probably get just an R1. Still. Sandy Bridge.

 

If it is the memory, then I don't think baking will help.

Seems to be the main failing culprit in the 6990's...

 

Hey Kenny,

Out of curiosity what driver are you running? Have you upgraded recently? Just trying to think of any other items to consider that might be an issue here (could try re-flashing the bios on the card as well).

Sorry to hear about this.

 

I'm running 12.2 drivers haven't change for a while now. Could someone upload the stock 6990m vbios or point to were i can get it? (I seem to have miss placed my stock vbios)
Ill try once more tonight and see what happens

 

Hey Greywolf22,

Noticed earlier in this thread you had overclocked your setup a little to 715/950.

In RBE which of the clock info's have you changed to the new speeds?

 

Hey Jus71n,

Here are my settings:




I'll admit I'm not an expert at RBE, so if by some chance this is wrong please let me know.

But this is what I've found to be super stable with a .96V underclock. Could most definitely push it further if I up'd the voltage.

 

Hmm, never heard of RBE before. Is it another software OCing tool?

Also, are you undervolting due to power issues?

 

RBE stands for Radion Bios Editor, and you use it to edit your exported vBIOS so you can reflash the cards to run at those clocks. Therefore, this eliminates the need of 3rd party overclocking tools being run everytime at startup to apply the new clocks.

 

Right, OK. So I guess that's more convenient, although I suppose you'd better be sure those clocks are stable?

Thanks Douse!

 

No Problem.

Yeah I would use a 3rd party tool to work out what clocks are stable. Then when you are happy with what you want to use, flash it to the card.

Even if it becomes unstable, you can still always flash back to stock, especially if you do it from a bootable DOS prompt, which is the recommended way. The reason for this is because you are only messing with the 3D clocks, whilst in DOS it will only be using 2D clocks so it should not crash and allow you to reflash.

 

+Rep

Thanks Grey, I'll give it a try later. My 6970's would never run @ 0.96v or 0.98v for that matter. Seeing as I'm going to be messing about I'll give 0.99v a try

 

Let me know how it goes...every little bit of power we can push out of them the better

 

I'm using Sapphire Trixx to adjust my 5970M clocks, but it doesn't allow me to adjust the voltage - is there a utility you recommend for just that? MSI Afterburner seems to freeze my system

 

You'll need to use ATI Flash to pull the vbios from the card. Then you can modifiy the voltage (through RBE) with either 1.05, 1.10 or 1.15v. Then you'll need to reflash the updated vbios to the cards.

I'll copy/paste this here. It's the same for all cards 6900/5800 series.

 

Oh wow - thanks so much DR!

It's in fact your post in a long lost thread about OCing the 5870Ms is what is making me wanna play with the voltage

 

Yea it definately helps. You can probably by stable at 900MHz on the core once the voltage is set to 1.15v assuming heat is good. I benched at 1010MHz core through using dry ice to cool everything.

All you need to change in RBE is Clock Info 00. Those are your 3D clocks. If you look at the RBE screenshots above, you'll change your memory and core clocks if you want to flash the overclock. At the bottom in Voltage (V) just type 1.15 as that will change the voltage and there is no drop down option. Votages other than 1.05, 1.1 and 1.15 will result in BSOD upon boot. 1.15 is the max.

 

Should I whack up the voltage in the VBIOS flash straight to 1.15V and then play with the clocks using software, or try and play with the voltage in software first? (having a hard time finding a utility that will let me do that).

Any ideas on what kinda clocks I could get on the memory?

Wow, hardore

 

Yea, uping the vbios voltage through flashing straight to 1.15 and using software will work. This can help narrow down something stable. Then if you want you can flash the new clocks and won't have to worry about using software after that as the clocks will be permanant until you reflash. Just keep a copy of the stock vbios on a bootable thumbdrive in case you decide to revert back to stock.

On the memory you can probably go up to around 1200MHz I think. Been a long time since I played with 5870s.

 

Right. I think I'll do it this way then.

Sorry for the constant barrage of Qs (I'm nervous since I've never played with voltages before! )... 1.15V is perfectly fine to play at? I need only worry about the temps messing things up?

ALSO - in case I do screw something up, as long as I have ATIFlash installed and a copy of my old VBIOS(s), I can always reflash to stock from DOS?

Thanks again DR! I'd rep more if I could

 

No prob with the questions.

Yea you can always flash back. When testing, just keep an eye on temps. for me and others 1.15v was always good in terms of temps when gaming, but keep an eye on it, if the temps are going over 90°C you may want to repaste the GPUs. Also I wouldn't run Furmark with the voltages at 1.15v. I killed a 5870 once, but that was because I had my system running two screens and was running two instances of Furmark while overclocked and overvolted. That killed my master card But other benching programs should be good.

 

I can second that the 5870's can take a beating. As DR has said, just gotta watch those temps and you should be fine!

 

I agree. Not jumping the gun again.

I ordered 2 6970m's and 2 days later the 6990m was announced. Wasn't very happy lol.

The 7970m looks beastly, but I feel that it's a little underwhelmed - especially with what the reported specs were before it was officially released (1536 shaders vs. the 1280 we see now). I think I'm going to wait for the 7990m's.

I don't have a doubt in the world that they will be compatible though.

I wonder how much longer my cpu will stay relevant though . . . I really need to get my hands on a 920xm . . . Too bad my HP doesn't have dual gpu slots lmao.

 

Well I sold my 6990s. Guess now I just need to cross my fingers that 7970's work in the R2

 

Congrats DR650 on the sell. I know we'll all be waiting to see how the install of the 7970's go. At least at this rate I shouldn't need to buy another computer for awhile.

 

I have a feeling it will be even smoother. I don't think we will run into the same power issues with the 7970/90's.

Lot's of places have the cards listed at 100 watts, but I think their actual draw will be much less.

 

Agreed. This is what I was told as well.

 

successfully installed my new 6990s yesterday and i'd like to thank you guys for all the help! i've installed the latest ccc and other than that have left the cards relatively alone. sadly though i have been experiencing some weird frame rates while playing witcher 2, using fraps i've been ranging as high as 100+ which is beautiful, to as low as 8... with my old cards i was looking at a constant 30+, i think the lowest i ever saw them hit was 20 and never as drastically low as 8 fps. not sure what or where the problem is but if you guys have any suggestions i'm all ears. my r2 is stable, i've had zero issues with games crashing, bsod, or anything like that. i admit i have yet to do a temp test but i'll probably conduct one later today. thanks in advance.

also; am i reading this right? i know the new 7 series cards are compatible with r3's as i already found an installation guide but are they compatible with r2's?

 

That occasionally happens to me with that game. Maybe once every 2 hours of gameplay. I'm not throttling, so I think it might just be the game/drivers.

However, if you're experiencing it all the time, at decently regular intervals, then you're probably experiencing throttling. Have you undervolted the cards?

 

yeah definitely have not, it's been a while since i've touched my r2 haha, am i correct in assuming i can use throttle stop to do this? or would you suggest another program? i also have msi afterburner, installed it a very long time ago lol. thanks for the help!

 

sigh, don't get me thinking guys...didn't we just do this last year

 

Throttlestop is only for adjusting cpu settings.

You're going to have to flash a modded vbios to each card to lower the voltages. Dump your vbios's with atiflash, and then edit them with RBE. Then reflash with ATIflash.

If you don't know how to do that, then don't attempt it without thoroughly reading this thread. You could really mess something up bad. There are a lot of posts in here on exactly how to do it the correct way.

Haha yep. Although I don't think I'm going to be upgrading again. The 7970's don't float my boat. If 7990's come out, then I might, but honestly, I can't see any practical reason why I would. There's nothing I can't max atm and the 7970's are much weaker than I expected them to be. Yeah they're strong, but not what I was expecting.

Last spring, my 4870x2 needed an upgrade badly. That's why I went the whole 69XX route. This time though my cards aren't limping. Maybe Metro 2034 will change my mind haha. But I'm waiting for the 7990 if I do anything at all.

Plus I'll have a hard time funding it. My slave 6970 no longer works as a master card. It has no video output. I think that's the lingering effect of it's touch with death several months ago. As a result, if I were to sell the 6970, it'd have to be sold as a pair with the 6990 for CFX if I wanted to get any kind of money for it. If the 79XX cards work, there won't be much demand for the 69XX series as prices seem to be similar to each other.

 

Not that strong aarpcard? The 7970M seems to be about as powerful as 6970M crossfired and in some ways more efficient.

For someone with crossfire 6990M and 6970 it might be pointless but the single card config laptops this is the first card that can max all games at 1080p!

 

From what I've been looking at, it's about 20% weaker than 6970 CF. From the originally rumored specs, I was expecting something a lot more beastly.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it isn't strong. It isn't what I was expecting though. Kind of like how the 6970m wasn't what I was expecting either. I was expecting the 6970m to be the 6990m.

And from what it looks like, last year may be repeated with the 7970m. . . esp from the leaked/rumored specs. A 7990m must be in the works - and that's what I'm looking forward too.

 

Well I am waiting for a gtx 690M! lol

 

If we are lucky the 7990M will be a cut down 7950!! I am waiting too

 

Ditto, I am waiting for a while...but more because of monetary reasons. Moving back to Aus soon and the missus was not happy when I brought this up lol!

Pretty much said the same as Greywolf! "Didn't we just do this?!?!"

 

If the 7970s drew a little less power like the 65-70 that I originally read, I'd be down to upgrade. But same power draw means little difference for me. I'm going to kill a few AC adapters from my 6990s alone.

Does anyone know of a good way to cool the 240w adapter? Mine gets burning hot to the touch. Occasionally my laptop crashes and have to unplug and power drain to restore. I think that drawing 240w or close to it for too long causes this to happen. Any thoughts?

Also I've begun turning Alien FX off (Going Dark). Not sure how much this helps as I haven't measured the wattage but haven't crashed yet. Anyone know how much power Alien FX uses? It's probably so measily it doesn't make a difference. But it isn't adding to the experience.

 

From what I was told, 7970's consume about 10-15W less per card then the 6990s.

I was just about to pull the trigger on the pair of cards, which would have cost me $1,119 total shipped (2xcards, x-brackets/screws and shipping/insurance) from upgradeyourlaptop. Now I see the AAFES discount where I can get an M17x R4 (i7 3720M, 500GB HDD, 1080P, 7970M) for $1211 shipped. I may have to order that and play with it for a while as I wait for 7990s. Decisions, Decisions

 

Originally I saw 65-70 but in another thread SlickDude posted 100W
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/658084-amd-7970m-available-buy-3.html#post8456665

Either way I can't afford new cards. Probably wait until the next big thing to buy a new rig. Still would be nice to have a 330w AC adapter working without carving one up.

 

There isn't really a good way to cool the AC adapters. Plastic isn't a good conductor of heat.

The only way to reduce the temps I think is to take a knife to the 330 watt adapter or do the whole 480watt adapter conversion. The temps on my PSU's are nice and cool as at any given time, neither has to give more than 170watts due to equal load sharing.

AlienFX draws next to nothing. Maybe a quarter of a watt at the very most. It's probably much much less than that though. Probably ~50mw for a complete guess.

LED's need so little current to run it's practically negligible.