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

Are you attached to an external monitor? I believe the second GPU will clock higher on idle if attached to an external monitor.

Can someone confirm?

 

no i'm not using an external monitor. any ideas how i can monitor the clocks and temps please? i had a gadget and rivatuner for that but now it's not working so i removed it.

can someone explain why isn't the second car temps showing in HWinfo64 or in afterburner?



i can only see the temps on the CGU-Z, however i dont know if they are correct.
can someone please help me?
i read the guide and did everything i was supposed to.
what program shall i use to monitor my temps please?

 

While having HWinfo open start up GPUz your second card should pop up on HWinfo list. This is because i believe GpUz pick up a sensor that HWinfo doesnt for card2.

 

Thanks!!!

so why is the second card clocked like that?
is something wrong?

 

I'm assuming you didn't install something correctly?

Attached image is what my 6970Ms look like...

 

Secondary card doesn't show up becouse you have Ultra Low Power State enabled..
To get readings from secondary card open a browser Window and the card will activate. Best things to do is to disable ULPS through regedit. I (Google for "EnableUlps" )

 

@anyone, I was just running my 6990 @ .9volts for over an hour in diablo 3 -- i used RBE and changed the voltage in all the blanks to .9, flashed, and rebooted. When i should've hit the desktop the next time the desktop checkered. - Does that mean i pushed the voltage too low or did i change the wrong blank(s). I looked for a tutorial, but i only found one that seemed decent.

Edit: I booted to DOS and reflashed the stock bios and am posting, so i didn't brick

As a side note, I heard back from Eurocom support. They want me to ship my laptop to them so they can try to figure out why the second card doesn't work. I've asked for another solution if possible. Thoughts anyone?

 

gee thanks!
that fixed it!
i downloaded a ULPS configuration utility and did it.
However now, my card shows as if it is clocked higher than the master when idle, which makes it get hot. Any ideas if that is wrong? According to imglidinhere's screenshot, his card works exactly as the master.

 

For the poster that is asking if what's a good choice for a thermal compound: Artic Cooling MX-4 or IC Diamond. Both are non-conductive and MX-4 doesnt require any curing time, not sure if IC doesnt have curing time though. Also, Phobya thermal pads are a little bit pricey but they compress better and gave me lower temps (1-2*C) than Fujipoly on my machine.

 

i run furmark to see if there was going to be a change in clock speeds and this is what i get. crossfire is enable in catalyst control panel as well as in gpu-z. i used furmark (multi-gpu). i think that the second card is not working? check the utilisation on the second card.



this is just after furmark multi gpu fullscreen as i remembered someone pointing out that the second card will not work in windowed mode or something.



i remember having a similar issue with the 4870s and from the very little i can remember there was some fix or something through rivatuner back then. The problem is that rivatuner doesn't work with this setup right? so how can i fix this now?

if i could only find this Common issues & resolution - Alienware M17x Wiki

i started to remember a little but cant access that page

 

Alright

Alienware M17x (R4)
3rd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3720QM Processor (2.6GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.6GHz, 6MB Cache)
17.3" (43.94 cm) 120Hz WideFHD (1920 x 1080) WLED LCD w/3D Bundle
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2 x 4GB)
1TB 5400RPM Hard Drive
Slot Load Fixed Blu-ray BD-ROM / DVD + /-RW Combo Drive
2GB DDR5 NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 680M
Killer(TM) Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video

On order
(Selling my R2, based in Australia, message me if interested)

 

I just re-pasted my single primary card yesterday morning because it had been running a bit hot since I did the testing last week (and I didn't put fresh paste on when I put it back together last week). However, my card is still running hot, peaking around 85ish under load for a couple hours. Is it possible that I am not getting a good compress from the thermal pad and that is driving up temps? I didn't re-do the thermal pad, and it definitely has imprints.

Also, does anyone have a write-up on which places to change the voltage in RBE on the 6990.

 

are you sure 85 celsius is too hot mate?
i think it's normal?

 

I had lower temps before by about 10 degrees C after the same span of time. I have the fans ducted with tape and did the mod where you attach the fans to the card and put the whole thing in together.

 

i didn't do any cooling mod, however i remember there was a thread called the ultimate cooling mod or something..........

did you check my temps in furmark? that is only for a few seconds and 640x480 fullscreen.
it's 40 degrees Celsius over here and i wont fire it up unless in air conditioned room, and on the nzxt cooling pad. room temps according to the aircon around 27 Celsius.

 

That'd be the one I did. I didn't touch my CPU - but the GPU one showed pretty good results. I think I will try using different paste and fresh pads when I get home from work.

Its about 35C at home in the evenings when I am gaming typically. I don't have AC or anything else to cool it anymore, and I play with my laptop just sitting flat on a piece of formica laminated wood that I put on my lap. (Yes it's kinda ghetto, but it gives me room for my mouse and stuff). In FURMARK last night my temp got all the way to 88C before i turned it off about 5 minutes into testing.

I am also trying to figure out which of the voltages to mess with in RBE - I want to set mine to .95 with stock clocks as that is stable after changing with Trixx.

Does anyone think it would be a good idea to reflash the bios on the card that isn't working right? The guys from the ebay store for Eurocom want me to send my whole laptop back which i'd rather not do as it is my only PC and I'm on call 24/7/365 for work.

 

The M17x R2 is only designed to cool a GPU rated with a 75w TDP. The 6990M has a 100w TDP. The fact that the R2 can handle a 6990M at all is astounding. My 6970Ms draw too much power before they overheat...but alone the one 6970M was hitting around the same region for max temperatures.

85*C sounds about right. That's fairly cool if that's both GPUs at 100% load in game.

 

I was getting temps of about 75C before I messed with things to test for the failed cards. imglidinhere, which blanks do i change in RBE to set my voltage down to .95 on my bios? This was probably stupid, but I set all of them to .90 (which was stable with trixx under load) last time through, but got checkered desktop on next boot, so I rebooted and flashed back to stock.

 

when i play, which i do pretty rarely, i use my NZXT cooling pad, and i set the gpu fans to 100% to cool down the cards as much as possible.

 

I agree that 85 degrees isn't bad, however I'm certain it can be better

One thing that might help would be to prop the back of the laptop up...I use an NZXT cooling pad as well, but I've heard simply propping the back up can lower it a few degrees.

That being said, re-pasting sounds like the way to go, I know that some folks had to file down some of the heat sink to make better contact between the heat sink and the 6990 GPU...I believe Turbo Talon was one of the first to do this, which significantly lowered his temps.

That being said, if you were around 75 previously and now are 85, I'd redo the paste...remember that it's always a good idea to spread the paste on a bit thicker on the GPU then you would on the CPU...also make sure that you have the heat sink tightened down enough that it's making good contact.

I max out about 68 degrees, but then again I'm only running a pair of 6970's, keep it on the cooling pad at all times and the ambient temp is around 80F.

 

Wait...

If both GPUs are being used at 100%, will they overheat for you Greywolf like they do for me? Or is that due to something going wrong on my end?

Should I do the tape thing to duct the airflow more through the heatsink?

Also, the second GPU is idling at it's 2D clocks and jacking up the temperatures. The fan profile sitting at 4500 RPM is rather noising and fairly annoying even after only 5 minutes. Any reason why this is?

 

Yes, filing down the heatsink will massively improve cooling. I noticed my 6970s needed this as there were evident cut grooves which I needed to eliminate with very fine sandpaper (500 grade if I remember right), and some of THIS. I will redo the cooling as soon as the thermal compounds and pads I've ordered arrive.

 

regarding the temps dont forget that room or air temperature also plays an important role. My 6970s max out at around 75 Celcius most of the item but weather is hot here.

 

Does anyone have a good write-up for where to change the voltage in RBE? Want to make sure I get it right.

 

@imglidinhere : Nope never overheat..in fact mine rarely go above 68C and I have a slight overclock on my cards (715 X 950). I also have mine undervolted to .96. runs like a charm and rarely pulls over 240W.

What driver are you using, I recall 12.3 or 12.4?? had an issue with the clocks on the secondary GPU not working properly (also had an issue with fan control). I'd recommend 12.6 or 12.7 beta if you have tried that already.

Also make sure you check when nothing else is running, and you aren't attached to an external monitor...it should idle at the lowest speed (100X150 if I recall).

@PWn3R : as far as RBE goes, I manually set all the clocks that were ABOVE my undervolt to my undervolt setting (for example, if Clock 1 was 1.05, I changed it to .96). If it was already under the undervolt speed I left it alone.

I've heard you dont' have to change them all, I did, and I've been running this way for about 9 months or so.

If you need anything more specific let me know.

Good luck!

 

can you tell me how to undervolt my 6970 crossfire setup please?
i am going to repaste as soon as the stuff arrives from UK however it's HOT here and i'd like to undervolt as i'm not actually planning to overclock. i will just keep my cards at stock speed. so how do i do it? do i have to flash from dos or something. i remember flashing the 4870s to increase voltage. hopefully there's some other way around this?

 

Hi all,

Well I'll give you my tutorial on how to use RBE...if anyone else wants to chime in on this that would be appreciated as I'm relatively new to this as well (although have done it quite a lot over the past number of months).

So using RBE is a pretty straight forward process, although I highly recommend you are careful when you do this as it can cause harm if not done correctly...

all the general warning apply, I can't be held responsible for bricked cards, or unbootable systems, etc. Note that this shouldn't cause any problems, but the standard disclaimer applies.

Also I'm certain there are a number of great tutorials on this subject, but I'll just show you what I did, specific to my 6970's and my alienware system in general.

So first step, download RBE if you haven't already:

RBE - Radeon BIOS editor

And run it

Should see a screen such as this:



You'll want to make sure you have a copy of your card bios (which can be saved using GPU-z), and make sure you keep it.

You'll click on load, select the bios file from the card and click on clocks...

The screen will look like this:



Here I simply changed any clock voltage that were OVER my underclock voltage (in this case .96) to .96. Anything that was under that I left alone.

Here you can also over clock your card if you like changing the value of the settings in the Clock 00 boxes (as you can see mine have been changed to 715/950)

I left the rest of the settings alone and then I saved the bios using a DIFFERENT name then the one I uploaded (or make sure you have a copy, you can name it anything you wish).

Once you have it saved, you can then flash the bios back to your card and verify the settings using GPU-z or HWinfo.

Note that just like overclocking, undervolting varies per card. Some folks such as myself can run perfectly fine at .96, others can only undervolt to 1.0. If you start seeing random reboots or shutdowns, it's possible that you have undervolted too far.

Also undervolting will impact how high you can overclock your card...so if you are looking to extreme overclock you cards undervolting will have an impact on this.

Hope it helps, if anyone has anything to add, change, modify please feel free and let me know.

Any other questions just let me know.

Thanks!!!

 

@ Greywolf22 Thanks a lot man! I will try this in the morning at work. so after i modify the bios with RBE i flash the cards with atiflash?

 

Correct, just flash your modified BIOS back to the cards and you should be good to go. As long as no one makes any major changes it's a good way to get a lower voltage (hence lower heat/power draw) solution. With the cards pulling as much as they do, and producing as much heat, anything we can do to lower the power draw and the heat tends to make things work better in the long rung.

Hope it goes well, keep us posted.

*EDIT* Just to make it clear to everyone, make sure you keep a copy of your original bios somewhere safe, just in case you
need to reflash it back. Most everyone here probably has a backup to share if you've accidently not done this...but best to keep it just in case.

 

Yeah, use Zfactor's Guide to making a bootable usb drive and use the win98boot option instead.

It's crazy simple.

 

I think a title change might be in order



Still working out some kinks

 

Ichime

NICE!!! Can't wait for you to get all the "kinks" worked out, but awesome to see that you have it working.

Fantastic!

Keep us posted!

 

Yep, seems most of the kinks so far were fixed by installing 12.7 Beta. Vantage GPU is up, but that's not reflective of the real stock GPU score because I turned off turbo boost.

Power consumption is higher than my 6970M CFX setup and even with turbo boost off, it's hitting that 270w ceiling so we'll definitely need to get that 330w PSU working in a more permanent manner. However, when I tried my single GPU tests with turbo boost on, it was more in line with what a single 6990M gets (around 200w max). Also, it hits 950/1400 pretty easily but I haven't tested higher than that.

So everything works and FAN CONTROL IS NATIVE so there is no need for HWinfo, although I like using it because I can individually control each fan so that the CPU fan doesn't max out when the GPU temps are high and vice versa.

Going to enjoy some games (and I can finally finish Crysis 2 without crashing I think) and update tomorrow.

EDIT: Going to test audio-over-HDMI tomorrow.

 

Clevo 7970m's?

 

How far can you under volt?

 

Question for you pro's out there. I undervolted my 6990M (the one working one) to 1v. However in a few games it was lagging - not sure if it was underclocking itself but i suspect that *might* be the case -- should i take the undervolt off and see if it helps?

 

Wow, this machine is awesome even though it's 2 generations old. The screen alone is already the best when it comes to a 17' laptop.

 

Wow, great news ichime!

As Stealth asked before, which cards are these?

 

Eurocom cards. I think the difference between Eurocom and Clevo is that the Eurocom cards have a custom vbios so that it works with the R2s, at least that is what I have heard.

Haven't tried that yet, but I dont believe in undervolting

Are these at stock clocks? You should be fine at normal volts since you are paired with a 620m


Also, further testing is postponed for now because I killed my power adapter while playing Crysis 2 (it was falling apart anyways). However, these cards handled Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 with ease. I played both games pretty much maxed out and gameplay was pretty smooth.

But now I have to buy a new adapter so I can use this opportunity to help get that 330w one to work in a more permanent manner...

 

@PWn3R the undervolting "should not" impact your performance, however it's worth taking it off to see if performance returns back to normal. Also you can run a vantage or 3dmark 11 benchmark and compare the difference, but there "shouldn't" be any.

@Ichime looking forward to more tests, pretty exciting. Especially if we can get a workable solution on the 330w PSU

 

ichime sorry if been said already. you tried on crossfire?

 

Update: HDMI audio or video doesn't seem to be working at all. Could be a vBIOS issue but I don't know if it is safe to flash to the Dell VBIOS at this point.

I have/had Crossfire on.

 

@Ichime: Nice work, second R2 with 7970m Cf Can you do me a favor and dump the vbios and upload it?

 

@Greywolf22 I still have yet to get any help from the support team at Eurocom, I've called 3 times in the last 3 days and not gotten a response (i've left messages as well). Do you think it is worth taking a shot at flashing the vBios from the primary card (working) onto the secondary card to see what happens? I'm out of ideas and when this card is in the primary slot it just goes black soon after windows logon (when it even boots).

 

Hi PWn3R,

Definitely won't hurt at this point. Not sure what's going on with Eurocom, I know they have a member on this forum so might be worth sending them a message as well...

I've been looking for the member id, but not having much luck finding it...maybe someone knows?

If I come across it I'll update my post.

 

+1 Thanks.

One question I have single 5870m.
900/1200 is max what I can reach with standard votage @1.05

I just want to have @1.1v during games. Which table (clock info) should I change ?

 

Definitely over volt the 5870m, they love it Although, those clocks are pretty good already!

You should only need to increase the voltage in the table which has the 3D clocks in it (700/1000 I think)

 

Hey guys, does anyone have an old crossfire cable from their old 5870's that they would like to sell me? Mine got pinched and isn't working

 

lol the first time I read your post, I thought that someone stole it! I was like 'WHAT?!'

Sorry, you wont want mine. I has been hacked and modified and now does not work properly I ordered mine through Mythlogic. They did make lots mistakes and caused a lot of head aches, but in the end they did take responsibility and sorted things out. So I would still recommend them.

 

Wonder if M17x-R1 is upgradable to those cards...