HD 6970 Crossfire-X in M17x R2

Hi,

I have been ordering bits and bobs to perform the HD 6970 Crossfire-X upgrade, however since my laptop only came with one GPU i have had to source the cooling pieces by myself. Dell/Alienware say they dont sell heatsinks individually.... .

So i ordered a heatsink from the USA last week and it turned up today, however there was no retention clip with the heatsink. Ive looked on the net and some people are saying the HD 6970 comes with bolts attached to the underside of the card????? So no clip is required.

However if thats not the case then i was wondering if anyone knows how i can get a hold of a retention clip to fit the second HD 6970. i can use my clip from my HD 5870 for one, its the second im going to struggle with.

Any idea's would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks again.

 

you mean the bracket that goes behind the gpu board? Clevo 6970's have it already installed

 

Yeah the bracket fitted to the underside of the GPU, I'm getting my GPU's from mxm-upgrade.com???

 

i don't know about mxm-upgrade cards, i may sugest you to contact NBR member pkhetan. I got mine with him, excelent seller with great prices.

 

Agreed with CPT, though I would venture to guess that the card would come with it. I would hope anyhow. BUt Pkhetan is great to deal with if you havn't ordered your second card yet.

 

At the moment I haven't purchased any HD 6970's yet so I'm open to pkhetan has to offer. I'm just hoping I dont have to buy an ati GPU just to take the retention bracket off it. Too much un-necessary expense if I can avoid it!

 

I bought a card from Eurocom, and one from DELL and neither had the retention bracket.

 

I can confirm that the two I bought from Pkhetan come with the retention brackets, and all you need to do is use the screws that come with the Clevo cards. I would definitely order through him, I haven't ordered from the other companies, but given the support/assistance that Pkhetan offers I wouldn't see any reason to go anywhere else. He's awesome and the cards include everything you need (except the fan at heat sinks obviously)

 

Ive been in touch with PKHETAN and i believe he does the ship the cards with the X-Shape bracket, so like many of you have pointed out, he seems to be the man in the know so ill be going through him to buy my crossfire-X setup. Thanks all who pointed me in his direction.

I', tempted to go for the HD 6990M but does anybody know if this works properley in the R2?? And if so is the 240W power supply still adequate enough?? And would it still be Ok as i was looking to upgrade the CPU to an I7 940XM (anybody know where to get these from???).

Thanks again.

 

A few folks have the 6990's on order to try them out in the R2. So unfortunately we don't know yet...but should know in a couple of weeks.

 

A single 6990m should work completely fine. Ichime tested an ES 6990m many months ago. There might be a problem with CFX 6990's though. Most likely not enough power - which I'm currently trying to work on with a dual PSU solution. Hopefully later this evening I'll be able to post some more results of my trials.

 

Did you get the cards yet and how much did you get them for? I'd like to keep my R2 for a while longer especially with BF3 coming out in two months

 

Looks like pkhetan sells them for $640 as a pair. Check out his thread here.

 

Just sent him a message, thank you Malignant

 

Your welcome and to let you know he is also selling 6990's. No one has tried them in a dual configuration in the R2's yet but since the 6970's work, the 6990's will most likely work. I'm waiting on the guinea pigs first though.

 

Yeah I'm the same way, let someone else that's more brave and capable of testing them out. It will be awesome though if the 6990's did work. Get my machine for another year or two

 

I'm still hoping that they'll send me a pair of 6990's for my RMA...then I'll be a guinea pig

 

Unfortunately my first pair had a bad crossfire connector on one of the cards, so had to ship them back and am awaiting my new cards to be shipped out.

 

FYI, since your system came with one GPU, you'll probably need a Crossfire cable. The one from Clevo is too short for the M17x-R2 and you'll need to get one pulled from a M17x system with dual 4870s or dual 5870s. The SLi cable from the M17x won't work and these Crossfire cables by themselves are really hard to find on ebay.

 

Greywolf bought the crossfire cables from here I believe.

 

Thanks Malignant for reposting the link

Yeah that was the best (and only) place I could find online that sold them. They are a bit pricey and the cables are used, but they ship pretty quickly (even standard shipping) and the cable works flawlessly (I'm using that one currently in my system as I wanted to test it). They also include a one month warranty and claim to test before shipping. So I had really good luck with them. They also sell heatsinks/fans etc so if you need those although they don't always have stuff in stock (from what I've seen), but the cables are currently in stock.

Otherwise ebay (when you can find a cable which is rare) or on the board (which is also rare).

*Edit* Just saw that the crossfire cables are now out of stock. Hope everyone was able to get one while they were available.
Not certain how quickly they restock, so I'd keep checking back.

 

I bought my Crossfire-X cable from the PC hub store yesterday night (the same link that has been posted on these threads), really lucky i think as they have no remaining stock left, i just checked. Phweee.

Im awaiting confirmation of stock availabillity of 6970's and 6990's from PHKETAN later today, hopefully ill be ordering soon. Do you know if PHKETAN, when he sells you the card, does he supply the most important clevo heatsink screws with the board does anyone know???

If not ill ask him later.

 

Yes, the Clevo cards that you buy from Phketan will include everything (the screws for the heatsink) as well as the brackets on the cards themselves (the X bracket that you attach your Alienware heatsink too). So you should have everything you need to attach your alienware heatsinks to the Clevo cards.

 

I've ordered my cards now, well ive started the bank transfer so hopefully in a few weeks I'll have the 2 6970's from Phketan. Should be an enormous gain from a single 5870. I'll report on my performances both before and after the upgrade soon.

 

Congrats, can't wait to hear how it went installing them.

 

Would be nice to see how much a performance gain there is over a single a 5870M

 

I've seen a huge bump in performance coming from x-fire 5870's. I guess that coming from a single card the difference will be night and day

 

I'm hoping that my performance will be significant as I'm coming from two 4870's

 

It will be. Most games fps were increased by over 100% coming from my 4870's.

 

Fantastic to hear!! Thanks!

 

Unfortunately Pkhetan is unable to get hold of the HD6970M's so, really sad that i'll now no longer be able to feel the power from the two cards in CFX. Awaiting a money re-imbursement.

Sorry guys.

 

go for the 6990M CFX then...

 

I only really wanted to go for the 6970M, i was inbetween them both but in the end only wanted the HD6970M's.

 

You can still get a 2nd... have you seen the ones for sale in FS/FT?

 

UPDATE!

Pkhetan has managed to get me the pair of HD 6970M's. The guy is a legend! Hopefully next week I'll have them installed.

 

Hopefully you will Your cards are quite the pair of globe trotters

 

lol...hmm I wonder who has jonny's cards

 

Lol. Just wish I knew who had my cards. And why do i not have the quick reply box on my NBR? Hope its just my phone

 

I'm so close to selling a kidney to get the 6970's especially with BF3 around the corner.

Congrats on the new cards, can't wait to see how they run

 

i want to do same thing for my m17x：update 6970m cfx from single 5870m
I already bought cfx cable and heatsink from pchub.com like you.
I already give the order to "Pkhetan" .And he said to me the cards was not in stock will reimburse to me too.
Now you will get the cards,i have no update news for the cards from "pkhetan",
I will update my m17x too.

 

Haha, yeah you guessed it, was a bit long winded how it all happened but im so pleased that DR650SE was happy to help me out.

I owe him really, i'll +1 him, thats the least he deserves. I dont think you can imagine how excited ill be when they arrive. Lol.

 

Pkhetan is an ace guy, no doubt, i think that after i placed the order, (sounds like you where in the same situation) Clevo stopped shipping the 6970's to favour the newer 6990's. This wasn't his fault though he was only going on what was happening at that current time.

If you bare with him he will reply, he was great with me, never normally had to wait long for a response and im in a +5hour time zone on pkhetan.

I hope he sorts out your order issues, you'll have to keep us posted on your plans.

 

Yeah sounds like a lot of people are playing musical cards (versus musical chairs). At least they all seemed to get shipped out, now it's just a matter of getting them all to the right folks.

 

I agree with you ,Phketan is a very great guy,i never doubt,but It is some trouble with Clevo，Clevo stopped shipping the 6970's like you said.I wanted a couple of 6970m's once，Now，i maybe will get 6990m's in the future。。。。

 

I would like to upgrade to 6990 as well but... if i buy the card and change it..should i keep the old one in case of faulty ? I assume if something goes wrong on the mobo or anything else we have to put back the ''old parts'' back for dell not to void our warranty yes ?
Same thing goes for CPU does it ? I have to keep the old parts even if i upgrade ?

 

That's correct.

 

i kept my original 840qm and 5870's in case of need, for warranty purpose.

 

I'm also interested in a pair of these, messaged pkhetan but the reply said "sorry, no longer in business"

Is there anywere else to get these at reasonable money, as MXM seem expensive

Thanks

 

Hey Jus71n,

Malignant ordered them from the following :

"Mythlogic said they sell clevo 6990's in pairs for $920 plus shipping"

Might try them.

Good luck!

 

I have found some here,

ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 6970m GPU MXM 3.0 Type B | eBay

But the question is will they go straight in? with the heatsinks and screws off my current 5870's

also I would need a cable to connect them. were would i get one of those?