Calling all R3 owners with a 6970 mobility.

If any of you are daring enough, could one of you remove your card from the laptop and check the back of the card's PCB specifically to see if there are any VRAM chips are located on the reverse of the card?

It'd help me out a lot as I can't find a picture of the reverse of the 6970 mobility anywhere. You can either just tell me, or upload a pic. Either way rep will be given. Thanks!

 

If I have time tonight I will post a pic otherwise it will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

Yes definitely! If the 6970 doesn't have Vram on the backside of the board it should do better on cooling and overclockability when compared to the 460m.

 

If you are going to repaste, could you record before and after idle and heavy usage temps?

 

i should be getting mine tomorrow, thinking of repasting right away, but not sure yet.

 

inap let's be realistic here, with what you're eventually gonna do to that gpu you'll NEED to repaste it lol!

 

If there's enough request for it I could do a repasting guide with pics and instructions, already have the pics just haven't put them up. PM me or post something if you'd like a guide

 

i would love a guide, pretty please and by tomorrow morning, hehehe

yeah, i kinda went over board and got 2 sheets of thermal pad and 2 tubes of mx-4. oh well its always good to have back up.

 

I am doing a stock run at 3D Mark Vantage with my PC in 5 minutes. Then I will post the results and then I will change hard drive and RAM and I will look at the VRAM for you. You should have your answer within and hour.

 

This is interesting, Dane could you post the guide or send it as a PM to me? Thanks!

 

Why does a gpu not have vram on it? Are the new gpu's just that dang futuristic that they don't need it? Please 'splain!

Also, please post a guide on how to repaste for the R3. I can try to follow (mandrake's) old video of removing the gpu, but would quickly get lost, so pix and instructions would be nice

Thx!

 

The GTX-460-470 and 485m have Vram under the board too because was not enough space to place all 1.5gb or 2gb on top of it

 

The 6970s should not have vram on both sides, the guys at mxm have confirmed this here.

If your thinking of putting a pair of 6970s in your m17x r2 you are going to have other problems, possible heatsink modding and the 6970s are longer then the standard mxm card, so while this shouldn't be a problem for the right hand side the left hand side has a plug (for the fan i think) which seems to be in the way of were the longer card would sit.

 

Thanks for the info everybody. I am planning on putting Dual 6970's in my R2. And yes, I know of the eminent complications and am more than capable/willing to deal with them. As it turns out, the heatsinks on the 4870's should fit the 6970 mobility. I've already got that nearly confirmed. The only modding that might be needed in that department is to put heat spreaders on the voltage regulators on the back of the card.

Why I wanted to know about the vram chips on the back was because if there were, then the heatsink mod would have been FAR more difficult and probably not worth it.

The more pressing issues, will be with vbios/bios recognition.

The 6970 in a M17X R2 with a A10 bios revision WILL BOOT into windows, but the card will be buggy. I'm counting on this custom bios people are working on to get full support for the 6970. - Heck, I might even start working on a Custom Bios too - I have some experience, but it'd be a lot of work.

. . . . either way, I won't be attempting this upgrade for at least 3 months. . . . so I'm just trying to work out as much as I can now until then.

Thanks for the help! Rep will be added.

 

Can anyone comfirm the viewing angles on the 60Hz version screen with 6970M are just as good as the 120Hz panel?

This link has the 120Hz version to compare with:
Alienware M17x R3 - 3D Vision Gaming Laptop Review - Boot Time, Screen / Sound Quality Videos

Thanks.

 

That's the best pic I can take this late and on such short notice. Hope it helps you:

FRONT:


BACK:

 

Nice so AMD used higher density chips than the Nvidia card has. That ought to give the AMD guys a big benefit on cooling as the Nvidia cards have ram chips on both sides with a heatsink on the top and nothing but thermal pads on the bottom +1 Joebarchuck, thanks for the confirmation.

 

Thanks man! That was exactly what I was looking for! +1'd

 

Ok forget what I said about the 6970 being a bit to long,its at most 2mm longer then the 5870 so it'll just fit in nicely

When I get the money I also plan to put 6970s in my r2 as well, I have spend the last few days thinking/dreaming about it
Fingers crossed for full bios support