And another.. 7970m in M17x R2..Installation with photos

Check your socket on mainboard. You have to unscrew quite a bit, but it could be worth it, try first fidling on the power plug turning twisting and slightly bending. See if your charging alienhead shows up. Before doing this do the power drain just to be sure it will start charging. You might even try to fiddle the plug after power drain before powering up. If i remember correcly it should also charge then if it recognize the PSU. This should not be affected by GPU.

Perhaps crossfire is a problem for the battery, giving you way less power shutting the system down.
As mentioned i have had startup problems with crossfire at times living on the limit of what my old psu gives. There is no reason to belive that battery gives more power then a 240W.
Removed all OC and now also reduced voltage on cards. Your 8970's might be even slightly higher on power.

Try fixing your battery/charging problem before moving further on your GPU's. Dont play with BIOS (either V or normal) while having this issue. That could be the last time it worked.

 

I tried this already. Removed the motherboard and re-glued the power jack. I have another question. Is there a power supply on the motherboard itself? If it works ok with battery but not with ac adapter then machine may get power but its not transmitted to the motherboard from this power supply? If there is can this be fixed replaced without changing the motherboard?

 

Glued it?
If the soldered sockets are loose, gluing will not help cause it will keep pins away from contact.

You might have to give it a onceover with a soldering iron.
Sadly i dont know where i found a guide confirming this was an alienware problem.

 

Ok i meant electronically glued with silver iron as you said

 

Yes i saw this is an issue with many alienwares (not only R2) but the only solution was to chnage motherboard or make the power draw. The second didnt help..

 

there was a video of a guy re-soldering the female socket pins back on the mainboard.

If its warranty, dell will swap mobo.
It its on your cost I would have another look at the socket.
Silver solder is normally VERY hot, hopefully you didnt do that, but just a normal solder
Another thing, like i did, try to solder some wires between the pins on the socket and another area where the power is supposed to go into the computer.
You can see it or you can measure it.

Try measuring between the pins and ground for instance and then try to find where power and then the ID chip goes and measure them to from the socket on the mobo.

 

ok guys i got the -new- motherboard and guess what. machine still doesnt boot. On ac adapter or battery only. Battery has only one light left. What can it be that changing the whole motherboard still doesnt boot? I tried to see the alienhead to open for 1 sec when connect the ac adapter. I tried to see if its any of the components trying without gpu on it etc. No sign of life! Please help or im out this thread now on...

 

I'm really sorry to hear this man.

Try to boot with the least amount of components connected ie. 1 stick of ram, no hdd's and one gpu. Disconnect everything besides the lcd, keyboard and powerstrip.

There could be a short somewhere... or one faulty component. Do you still have your original CPU to try?

 

thats the first i thought of too. a faulty component. tried without hdds, without gpus, without ram memories, blue ray, express card, network card, bluetooth but also without the keyboard. does it matter?

does a new motherboard need to charge for a while or it doesnt matter?

 

No, no charge necessary.

That's pretty good troubleshooting there. What you can try just to rule out a short is running the motherboard out of the chassis on a non-conductive surface. It might be a bit difficult though considering how tightly integrated the chassis is to the components and fans.

 

ok hold on. i manged to make it boot but still have some issues.


this is how.

1) I replaced the keyboard with new one, lucky i got a totally new one (i saw somewhere someone had same issues and only the keyboard replacement fixed it!)

2) i pressed a secret boot button on the motherboard and it started but only black screen.
3) turned off and removed secondary gpu
4) Now i can see theres a problem with lights on the control panel (where the power button is as well). My guess is that the cable or the control panel has issues too. i have one spare. pc can turn on with one of them (but still no lights) and the control panel doesnt work with the other one at all (not even boot) Faulty cables?

 

Dayeam... awesome work and information :thumbsup:

So that could mean your original motherboard is still working? Can you take a pic of the boot button on the motherboard and post it up for future reference?

With this determination it looks like you're gonna get to the bottom of this

 

yes the first motherboard may still work but i am not sure. here is the place of secret button

got it from here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ont-start-boot-even-stir-possible-causes.html post #4
a million thanks to him!

and here is the guy said only keyboard replacement worked.
Advice on m17x R2 motherboard replacement - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

i was one step before throwing it away before i tried both solution at the same time and worked.

However it seems that secondary gpu doesnt want to work. However i am still trying. Sometimes machine boots with both of them on. Even booted once with crossfire cable connected but stucked a while after windows logon. i managed to see them both on device manager before it stucks. catalyst crashed before it stucks too.
Mostly it doesnt boot with both of them on and need to remove ac+battery and press power button for 30 secs). I will reinstall catalyst now that its open with both gpus on (no catalyst installed and both gpus detected as microsoft adapter). It may stuck during installation. Lets try anyway. I have not many more things left to try. And i have flashed modded vbios on both of them with reduced maximum voltages.

 

ok i got a blue screen during installation: clock watchdog time out. I searched this could be done even by hardware or driver. Anyway is anyone using windows 8.1 and crossfire? what ati drivers do you use? I believe that latest bios of R2 and windows 8.1 dont cooperate?

can anyone read my minidump and let me know what he can get?

http://www47.zippyshare.com/v/45491914/file.html

 

Really happy that you're getting somewhere

Is it working with the AC adapter now? What motherboard BIOS are you running?

This is just a thumb suck but try disabling the audio device in the BIOS before booting into Windows to see if you gain any stability.

 

AC Adapter works now yes. new motherboard has A08 bios on it. I saw it now. But even A10 is not made for windows 8 and over right? Previous motherboard had A10 on it. What bios version you suggest?
Also how to disable audio device in bios? Whats the meaning if i dont get any sound?
I know many got newer machines and may not bother windows 8 and over.
What os do you use? Anyone uses crossfire with windows 8 and 8.1 without issues? i guess many drivers are not made for windows 8 and 8.1 too right?

Last but not least i dont see any thread for R2 and windows 8-8.1 drivers.

 

I know StamatisX over at T|I is running Windows 8 with 7970M's without major issue and he's on A10. He did say he used to get occasional BSOD's when browsing but he mentioned he had no stability issues on Windows 7.

The audio option is under the advanced tab and is called "High Definition Audio". Here's an image to help. Its not permanent. Disable it, and hopefully you gain stability then install the catalysts. Reboot. Then enable the audio, hopefully it works. Users had to do this with newer cards in their R3's/R4's.

I'm using Windows 7 at the moment.

 

i wonder where did he find drivers for windows 8 and 8.1 used older windows 7 ones?

So disable high definition audio in bios and install A10 bios. playing with some Dell windows 8 drivers now but not specifically for M17X R2

 

installed A10 bios. now on no chance to boot with secondary 8970. Always getting flashing caps+ scroll buttons. I ll stay with single gpu finally. Well i almost feel lucky instead of having a dead laptop.

 

Try contacting your seller or Eurocom/CLEVO for the latest vBIOS for the 8970M for a non enduro machine. I'm glad you're up and running again though. Excellent work man

 

Dont we need the unlocked bios?

Have you modded your PSU now Aristotelhs?
I had sort of same problem when trying to start with dual GPU on the 240, at times it just stopped.

 

not excellent because i spent so much extra for motherboard and new keyboard and finally my second gpu doesnt work.

I guess you mean A10 unlocked? This was made to have overclock option for no extreme cpus. Why should we need unlocked bios for gpus?
No its the original 240 adapter. I thought that this whole story maybe due to not enough power but i dont know-cant do the mod for 330 one. I am not an electrician. So you couldnt run crossfire 7970 and this changed with psu mod? You also got the caps+scroll buttons flashing with secondary gpu? What issues did you have? Which psu mod have you done?

I have 2 240w adapters but cant do the mod!!! Damn

 

Anyway is imsolidstate in this forum? I may buy a modded 330w adapter for the M17X r2 from him?

 

I understand but it was working when you first got it so there must be something we're overlooking here. It's still excellent work if you take into consideration all the research you did to bring your machine back from the dead :thumbsup:

If your cards are undervolted and your CPU and cards are running stock clocks the 240W should be fine, if its a good one. It might get quite hot when gaming although it wouldn't cause the second 8970M to stop your machine from booting.

 

I see. what if i downclock the cpu from bios? just to try? Gpus have stock clocks with lower maximum voltage. By the way you have a pm.

 

At this point you can rule your PSU out... its highly unlikely that your machine with two 8970M's are requesting more than 240W on boot. So concentrate on another area if you're troubleshooting to get both cards working on boot. They should be able to boot without the AC connected and just running on battery. There's something else that's causing it, not the PSU.

Try the unlocked A10. There's much more features unlocked than just the ability to overclock your CPU. Not all of them work but at least you have a few more options to troubleshoot with.

Also try to get a few different versions of the CLEVO 8970M Non Enduro vBIOS's to test with from CLEVO/Eurocom.

 

I doubt they are going to send me any other vbios. thus if i cant get into bios with both gpus on how can i flash a new vbios? I could do that before (rare but i could sometimes) but it was just luck? Anyway i managed to flash primary vbios to secondary (also stock clocks with lower maximum voltage) But if 240W is enough for dual 8970s with 4GB memory and i7 920xm then i wonder why people with 330watt mod 920xm and crossfire or lower gpus had power issues. this was only under overclock?

What options to change in unlocked vbios? Even with disabled high definition i couldnt boot with both gpus on. Even original A10 bios has overclock options for i920xm as its extreme.

It just sounds so strange than secondary gpu died the same way the first secondary did. If it really died actually. And initially it worked for 10 minutes till machine froze during gaming. I was playing cod mw2. its old and i guess it wouldnt even stretch 8970s. I installed primary the same way as the two secondaries!

Power issue was my main consideration but if you say that 240w is enough then i just wonder... Just to make a summary:

1)240Watt adapter
2) second secondary gpu worked for 10 minutes under crossfire as the first secondary. Machine froze on both occasions during gaming. No cpu-gpus overclock in any case. But graphics were actually moving slowly for every 1 sec or so. This was with default maximum voltages and stock vbios for both primary and secondary.
3) Eurocom support said that the first secondary gpu die died (Maybe its because of its name? lool) because of no proper heatsink installation and overheat because of it? Well i installed primary the same way. This cant have happened twice with secondary
3)changed motherboard and still cant enter bios with secondary gpu on (caps+scroll flashing)
4) with older A08 bios (bios that new motherboard came with) i could boot even windows but then machine froze after a while. I could boot once. then i couldnt. After complete power off (remove battery+ AC adapter+ press power button for 30 secs) i could boot again. Then same story
5) One of those times that i managed to boot into bios with both gpus on i managed to flash underclocked vbios of primary on secondary. Also could store secondary default vbios. Atiflash said test ok for BOTH.
Thats my sad story.. Now i have a new expensive secondary 8970 in the box and doesnt want to work.

 

Hey Aristotelhs,

What AMD driver did you use to get the brightness control working on Windows 8? I just upgrade from Win7 (AMD 13.11 Beta) and now i cant control my screen brightness. Btw my gpu card is same as yours.

 

What do you think about mantle?below is the report.:hi2:

 

Sad that is. For sure.

Firstly, on your place i would go back to 7970m cards if i could, but it seems more than late for this, only re-selling 8970m's is what left.

Secondly, i offered to do the PSU mods for Trusted NBR users for free as long as they would provide me the parts, nobody wanted that, it was a pure LOL on my face, even offering a service for free - just LOL. And you have to understand - If it would be worth for somebody to do those mods and sell the PSU at a elevated price, there would be a ton available on ebay already. The truth is, the price for 330W PSU, parts, hassle, + A LOT of time spent on soldering and assembling/reassembling makes it very expensive MOD, and you know, they aren't many R2 users who would like to upgrade their R2s to 7970m, let alone do some soldering, and some R2 users do not know they can even change their GPU. I estimate the time spent + parts and pain in my @$$ = $150 minimum, would you pay $150 for a modded 330W PSU ? Well i guess not, because we are here, on NBR to accually save some money if we can, bro for a bro, not like these scams here and there who just want to squeeze out every penny from you

Thirdly, When you install the card, you have to be 560% sure you know what you are doing, you have to prepare yourself before, no rush, and for god sakes have ESD strap on, or at least ground your self prior to installation. Make sure when you are attaching the heatsinks, when you screw the screws, that it is not causing the PCB of the card to flex anyway. It is a good idea to place the pads and paste, attach the heatsink properly, then remove the heatsink to see if the paste spread is OK and take a close look on the thermal pads from the OTHER side if you can see them being a bit pushed in because of memory modules are standing up approx 1mm off pcb. Then you can say contact is OK.

After installation and booting up, first thing you should do is to take a look at the temps, they should be in the regions of 30-45'C IDLE, climbing very slowly. Then run a game for 1 minute and see if temps are within 60-75'C, if yes, then you can say to Eurocom, that you have done those steps, and they will not try to avoid replacing it for you, knowing that they have somebody that knows what is doing. If they assume you are not, then they gonna blame you.

If the Laptop is not POSTing, with caps/num flashing, this means the card is inserted in the wrong way ( possible PCB flex caused all pins not to touch them selves properly ) or the card is bad. Long story short.

I feel really bad, knowing you have spent so much money on R2 CF and being unable to get it working, you probably could easily get base AW18 for that money

Also another point worth mentioning,

Users who convinced you 240W is enough for CF 7970m

Some of them are lucky to have a 240W PSU that is able to sustain this config, but it has been proved that even if they are, the PSU can quickly ware off, esspecially capacitors, which can pop up or blow up, because of to much power is being pulled.

So like Nospheratu said - if it is a good new 240W PSU, you should be fine- But For A Short While

So get your self a proper PSU MOD, or stay with one card, without CF and cut your losses bro

 

First of all thank you very much for your reply after so long. And thanks for the time spent as this is a big post.

All i know is that i have installed many crossfire configuration without issues. 8970s just didnt want to work for any reason. And spent a small fortune dealing with a company that was not telling the truth from the beginning. I would select you for the psu mod but i wont plan to spend any more for the M17X R2 even for the components needed. Right now i live with single 8970 (with slight downclocked vbios) and have no issues and no installations any more. I open machine just to clear the dust. would really like to see if anyone would ever try them in crossfire though. with 240w adapter or with modded one. Just to be out of curiosity

 

Got a question that is slightly connected to the 7970 cards.
Using the crossfire i had to go Clevo. This of course means picture but no sound.

Who has got good ideas about a very good USB sound-card?
I see that you Aristotelhs use a X-fi system. Anyone else got ideas?
BTW for my desktop i once had a video-card with HDMI plug giving sound. It was just putting the sound onto the video via a digital input in the card from the sound-card i used.
Is there an adapter like that too for USB. In reality joining DVI and Digital Sound. Does anyone know?

 

I feel your pain bro. A sad day it is.

Try to sell the other 8970M card, is is probably fine, just does not play with R2.

And start saving money for AW 18

Sending PM regarding SC

 

i am pretty sure its faulty as it doesnt work as primary too. But its faulty because of the R2, wrong vbios, fake info from company etc. I cant sell something that may not work. this means more money to spend..

maybe AW18 when the time comes. 8GB cards are on the way too. For the time being long lasting R2! and its gaming really good even with single 8970 and demanding games.

 

I have installed a 8970M from a Clevo barebone P170SM (VBIOS BR44465.003).

Computer booted unfortunately without an LCD issue.
I flashed the VBIOS blind, with the version BR44618.001 (Non-Enduro VBIOS).
After a reboot, I have finally an output on the LCD screen.
I am on A10 Unlocked bios and fans are working auto.

I've done Prolimatech PK-3 Nano Aluminium thermal paste on the GPU cores, GPU memory chips and the inductors, Phobya Thermal pad Ultra 5W/mk on the MOSFETs.

Idle temperatures are 34° (GPU sensor), 32° (Dell sensor) at 1400 RPM (HWInfo64). Without HWInfo64 the fans go out at these temperatures and start at 55° again.
Alienware stands on a notebook cooler without a fan.

 

I have tested the AMD HD8970m 4GB (Clevo) and found out that the:
Display Port - not working
VGA Port - working
HDMI - working but without sounds.

 

what about crossfire? does it work or havent tried?

 

naaah i havent try it yet. maybe if I got enough $, I would try it

 

Has anyone changed the VBIOS of a 8970M with VBE7? :hi2:

 

I don't recall anybody from this thread mentioning this...

 

So does the 8970m work with the r2? when blind flashed with enduro off vbios?

Plz confirm.

 

Yes this works, see # 535

 

Hey everyone. I just noticed that after I've updated to 14.1 \ 14.2 Catalyst, My FurMark Benchmark score is down where before I manage to get 37fps max and now I got only 25fps max.

Anyone use overdrive for the graphic on max setting?
I've run furmark with 1000MHz GPU Clock and 1375MHz Memory clock. Temperature: 91c++ (98c++ during gameplay)

Normal Stock Setting Temperature: 81c >

 

I have my 8970M VBIOS changed with VBE7.


Undervoltage - works
Core and Memory Clock - works
PowerTune TDP Limit - works
Change of TDP - works
OCCT - no throttling


My changes:
Memory Clock: from 1250 MHz to 1350 MHz
TDP (W): from 81W to 94W
TDP limit: from 0% to 15%
Undervolt 850 MHz: from 1.025V to 1.000V
Undervolt 900 MHz: from 1.050V to 1.025V

Edit 1: OCCT - no throttling: only by increasing TDP (W) = 94W

 

does hdmi audio and video work?

 

HDMI only stream video only no audio.

 

Where does one find the BR44168.001 vbios for 8970M? I'm in the same boat as Athlonia was- no LCD with the BR44465.003 vbios. I've scoured the nets trying to find where to dl the file but can't seem to find it anywhere.

 

Hi guys.

I recently switched from a HD5870m to a HD8970m (Dell | BIOS-Version | 015.036.000.005 | BR44618.001 | non-Enduro), was Plug'n'Play, no issues at all.

After several weeks I encountered lag spikes in games/3D apps and AMD POWERPLAY would not jump to high performance states anymore, the graphics card would reset constantly to 0% load, while the CPU load would jump towards 100% on all cores.The card would stay @ 300Mhz GPU | 150MHz Ram in games or jump to that idle setting after a few secs running a higher AMD POWERPLAY performance state.

Long story short, after several tests, I "kinda" tracked down the problem: Under medium-heavy load, the GPU & CPU would compete for limited power. Although the GPU&CPU combo worked flawless without a single problem (temps below 72C) for several weeks, it suddenly does not work anymore. Work-around-solution so far: I disabled the Turbo mode/OC in the bios! That way, ATI Powerplay automatically works again and the GPU runs in full performance mode (900MHz GPU/1250MHz Ram) as long as the CPU is not running full load (e.g. benchmarks or Star Citizen).

QUESTIONS: Is my AC power adapter (240Watts) failing to supply its full potential due to summer heat and age (4-years old)? I use HWiNFO64 for the GPU fans, MSI-afterburner lets me adjust only MHz settings, but not voltage. Atm using mobility cat 14.4.
Any ideas what could cause those wonkie problems?


ALIENWARE M17x-R2 | i7-920xm | 16GB DDR3 1333 | AMD Radeon HD 8970m 4GB Ram | Intel SSDs | MS-Windows 8.1

 

Interesting observations.

Given you are running 920XM processor the cpu can expect to draw a fair amount of power especially if o/c.
I'd say you PSU is fine and you should have no worries with that combination (only issues are with crossfire).

Being a dell 8970m card there is a chance the E/C of your motherboard bios is having issues reading the thermal temps of the GPU(hence your use of hwinfo64) and is probably causing asymptomatic issues like those you described.
Nevertheless, your finding to turn turbo mode off my help others who maybe having same issues.

 

At first I am going to try a brand new PSU and then an i7 720 to exclude power issues.
Update: If I run the i7 920xm in Turbo mode + 5% overclocked (possible in the PM55 bios) --> I see powerdrain Peaks monitored with Finalwire of 75Watts and it is not even running full load. Is that normal? I can only imagine powerdrain peaks of up to 100Watts solely by the CPU + 100Watts by the GPU = No wonder my GPU is throttling!

The temps are absolutely fine, Finalwire (and any other Monitoring Software) read the temps of the card just fine. It worked for a month without any problems, that is what stumps me atm.

I don't want to exclude temps completely, but the reaction time is too short (5-10 sec) to rise up to critical states for POWERPLAY to throttle back to idle settings.

Voltage problems, faulty card or maybe even a windows update causing trouble? We will soon find out, ...or not