M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

the current "experimental" bios i have is working like a charm. i tried istalling the 7970m bios from the pack to my "second" (latest arrival blue pcb) card but it wont show video to the screen. ..

so i am stick with the experimental. Which is great BUT is at 1.1V , something that although it doesnt hinders my CPU oc (24 multi) , i would like to lower it as i am sure i dont need so high gpu volts...

trixx says its changing the VDDC BUT HWinfo shows its still at 1.1 VDDC...

really slv7 would help us a lot now...

 

Yea, 1.1V is gigantic.

If I were you I'd try to drop him a question on TechInferno, to see if he's still interested in the subject after so many months

 

I am talking with him already

 

Great news Please do ask if he could do a 750/1100 0.9V vbios. That would be really great to software scale up from for the ultimate sweet spot.

 

OK GREAT NEWS AGAIN FOR ALIENHACK AND THE WHOLE TEAM HERE!!!

i found an old displayport to hdmi connector and i sais what the hell, lets try it out.

SO I HAVE A WORKING DISPLAYPORT WITH SOUND AND ALL and ofcourse the auto fans...

I think this is a first!! someone with 7970 in crossfire in an R2 with autofans and displayport-hdmi audio and video working???

 

That's pretty cool.

 

Hahaha! Who says we R2 users can't have our cake and eat it

I'm loving this machine even more. I'm playing Crysis 3 now with no shutdowns at 24/24/24/24 with a TDP of 75. All cores aren't hitting the 24x multi but the cores are averaging around +-3ghz and the game is running >50fps with EVERYTHING on high settings at native res and very high textures. Absolutely awesome upgrade.

There's still some stutter but FPS doesn't drop below 50. It may also be since I'm further into the game and the maps aren't as intense. Also no BSOD for about 4 days now and I'm on 13.6 beta2's. I installed 13.1 then only the 13.4 driver and then only the 13.6 beta2 driver. I installed them over the others so I'm actually running the CCC from 13.1

 

so you did what i told you?? updated only the driver? :thumbsup: glad it helped.
I installed the 13.4 in the begining and later moved to 13.6 beta , i never had ony probs.

by the way, lets hope ati releases the magic antistutter driver soon...

Also if slv7 finds a way to edit my experimental driver tehn maybe we will all be able to have auto fans and displayport audio & video!!

UPDATE: While slv7 is trying to modify my test vbios i went on adn did some tests to see whats going one with my gpu volts and how to modify them

well something interesting i noticed is that when i change the vddc in trixx , as i told you before hwinfo shows that its doesnt change BUT gpushark says it has changed BUT only for the 1st card.

so should i beleive gpushark or hwinfo? and also any idea why trixx doesnt enable me to change the second cards vddc?

also when in crossfire gpushark only shows 1 card...

UPDATE GPU z says the VDDC is still 1.1V so trixx doesnt actually change it... so gpuz is not showing right, only hwinfo and gpuz

 

Hopefully SVL7 comes through. As far as I know GPU-Z and HWinfo read the same location in the GPU's registers for info. I'm not sure how GPUshark reads it. I noticed in TRIXX if you select the second card it doesn't give you the VDDC control. I assumed that if you have the "sync settings across all cards" setting ticked under settings it would use the same VDDC value.

Use version 0.6.6 of GPUshark. The latest version doesn't show both cards for me as well. If I disable crossfire in CCC then both cards reflect in the latest version.

I jumped the gun yesterday. I'm still getting some throttling at the setting mentioned above. I think my PSU is degrading slowly... initially I was able to run 90 TDP and now 75 TDP and it looks like I have to drop that further now

I'm only using Crysis 3 for testing btw as its the most graphically intense game I have at the moment.

 

Yea, it's highly probable for your PSU to be degrading, because at that power draw you'll be able to feel every Watt of downsize in PSU performance.
My personal opinion is that with the 240W PSU, we'll either use underclocked profiles on the cards and not push the CPU so much, or we'll either do the 480W mod or try to mod a higher-rated PSU, and use the stock PSU just for traveling.

I do believe that you guys are just destroying the poor gals All those overclocks, you greedy fellas.

 

Yeah its difficult to control yourself when you know there's so much of untapped potential lying there... waiting

I'll try to drop clocks to the 7950M and see how much performance drops today. With the PSU degradation its difficult to gauge though as what I thought was stable goes out the window after a while.

I've checked prices for the Clevo 300W and its expensive everywhere.

 

What I keep wondering about is whether or not the users who tried to use the dell 330W PSU simply had defective/low quality PSU's or there's something deeper at work preventing higher power draw.

 

I suspect a lot of these users purchased the cheap PSU's from ebay where they are sold at 1/4 of the price Dell sells them for. They may be legitimate but then again they may be cheaply made counterfeits...

 

What you say about gpushark is corewct. It only displays both cards when crossfire off. Otherwise it only shows 1

Also I am almost sure that trixx doesnt change the vddc. I tried lowering the vddc to 0.6 and my card was stable which cant be true so I have to find another way to lower my gpu volts
Damn I dont like them running at 1.1... after intense gaming their temps raise to 80-85 area. I think if I drooed the voltage to 1 the temps would surely go at 73-77 which will be great

By the way my psu limit is 23-24 multi (2.9-3.1ghz) at 22 multi its rock stable at all the games and benches. At 23-24.i had 2 psu shutdowns (power brick led off)
So I am hoping that with gpu volts lowered to 1V I will be able.to raise cpu to 25 which is its maximum oc for 4 cores anyways. That would be perfect

Only if I could find a way to lower volts. I cant beleive that there is no program that does that successfully.
I mean trixx shows that does it but it actually doesnt, msi afterburner crashes ...

 

@AlienHack: I suspect yours is a driver issue (@Nospheratu: Didn't you also have trouble with voltages not sticking?).

The PSU's (if they're not knockoffs) should have no trouble working the cards at 1V/0.975V, especially if running slightly underclocked, with the CPU not being pushed overmuch around TDP 70-80 and TDA around 55.

 

Yeah but that was through vBIOS flash. On my last attempt using the 0.975v from the mod pack it worked and both cards were running at 0.975v sucessfully. One of my cards still operates at 0.975v even though I flash it with different values, so that's strange.

I stopped using that vBIOS though as I have Clevo cards and it gave me issues with my screen.

 

I see. I hope AlienHack can get some support from SVL with heavily undervolted modified Clevo vBios'es for you Clevo guys, since there is no other way to undervolt the cards from software.

 

Just ordered one of these. Its the only Kill-a-watt clone I could find locally.

Hopefully it does the job and I'll be able to see what Buzz is getting up to

Look here

HP 350W external PSU ..... Only thing that doesn't line up is the 20v, 17.5A spec. I'm not sure if its usable. It was built for the HP Firebird PC that also used an MXM card.

 

the extra V wont matter BUT the Amperes will fry our aliens...

PS. i have thermal issues in very demanding games... with 1.1V VDDC and the cpu at 3Ghz the gpu temps go 85+ ..... i dont like it at all... Damn icant beleive i cant find a way to change my card volts...

 

But wouldn't the R2 only draw what it needs? I'm clueless when it comes to electricity so correct me if I'm wrong. The dual 240W mod has two PSU's so it could request more current than a standard single 240W?

Yeah that is quite high temps, especially if you running stock clocks. I'm not sure what else you can try apart from trying to make the 017 Dell vBIOS work for you.

 

Oh, now THAT's what we were looking for. The 20V spec should be within acceptable limits, a .5V difference should be ok. We want that
You shouldn't worry about the amperage. The CPU and cards draw as much as they need, it's not the PSU that forcefully pumps power into them.

@AlienHack: If it's too warm, use thinner thermal pads (especially on memory - 0.5mm on memory and 1mm pads on VRM should be ok), repaste with as little paste as possible while still having decent contact. Still, they're so warm because HOLYCHRIST1.1V.

If you manage to solve with svl7 for a low-voltage vbios, you should be golden

 

I am trying different drivers for the moment

Has anyone been able torun msi afterburner? For me it stucks on startup

 

I have only been able to run Afterburner 2.2.4 ONCE (after deleting any other installed versions). I managed to enable XCL in it, but when I was trying to experiment with creating 2D clock profiles it got stuck and froze the system, and would freeze afterwards every time it started.

This used to happen before I installed the 7970m too, so it's a m17x-R2 related issue.

 

Afterburner runs fine on my machine, It used to give me issues with my 5870M's though. Even TRIXX is running without flickering which it used to do.

sangemaru we cant use 1mm on the VRM's inductors, the gap between the heatsink and vRAM would be too big. I think you meant the other way around, 0.5mm on VRM and 1mm on memory.

 

Trust me, I'm using those just fine. 1mm pads on the vRAM didn't get me any core contact, and 0.5mm pads on VRM's had gaps with the heatsink, so 0.5mm vram with 1mm vrm's it is.

I have my suspicion on the fact that I have old GTX-285M heatsinks, which may not be identical to yours. I had to do full washer mod just to try and get some core contact, and even like this I have plenty of more pressure room, since I have to use more paste than I usually do in order to get contact. I have no idea what I'd have to do to actually try and increase pressure, but I'm pretty happy with how the card runs so far.

 

I have the 5870M heatsinks so there must be a difference since I'm using 0.5mm on the vRAM and I had to flatten the 0.5mm pad even thinner with a rolling pin to get it to fit between the VRM inductors and the heatsink.

 

welll... iam kind of shy to admit that i used no pads on VRM... only on the rams..

UPDATE HELP!!! ok i need help!!! at 1.1 volts the cards go near 90C and shut down!! i have to find a way to change their current

So software change is out of the question because nothing helps.

So BIOS flashing.
Up to now i have tried flashing in the cards either the .17 dell bios , one undervolted slv7 bios , an edited slv7 bios custom made for me BUT THE SAME RESULTS (windows - trixx- gpuz- dont read their core/mem speeds right, they dont change power mode , they only work at their 300 gpu power saving mode. )


THE ONLY BIOS THAT works is the experimental bios my enginnering sample card had in .


so anyone can give me a link to other bioses i could try? clevo?

So i managed to destroy everything....

i started experimenting with 7970m bioses i could find. i found one that worked on the engineering sample card.

in thios thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-7970m-modded-vbios-clevo-p1xxhm-laptops.html

they have a link to a 7970m bios:

https://www.box.com/s/e55d985fc4c7e23f403f

i flashed my second card with it (the engineering sample) and it was recognised normaly in windows with everything working fine, temp monitoring , vddc 1.05 , gpu clocks and mem clocks normal

so i though, , if that bios works with the engineering sample then it must work with my dell card wich works only with the test bios that the ES card works

so i flashed my main card with that bios too.

so now no boot, scroll lock and caps lock blink and num stays on...

i changed cards and brought my second first the same thing
....
so i have to find someone with a double mxm laptop to help me flash the only known for my laptop working bios....

and i know noone in Greece

VIDEO CARD ERROR not recognised by the R2
http://forum.techinferno.com/attachments/alienware/2762d1321457905-m15x_m17x_posterrorcodes.jpg

i am so sad .. i am thinking of selling them, forgeting the crossfire and going single 780gtx ....

 

AlienHack!!! Why AlienHack Why?!?!?!?!

Does the machine boot up with only the ES card?

Try a power drain. Pull AC, Battery, coin cell battery and hold power button down for about 20 secs and then connect it up all again and try booting with the good card in the primary slot and the bad flashed card in secondary. Its worth a try but I think its a bad flash. And if you're not even getting through POST you cant even blind flash...

Hows your soldering skills? You may have to replace the vBIOS chip with one with the correct vBIOS. Also anyone with a single MXM slot can help you out, it doesn't have to be a dual card laptop.

edit: that vBIOS modded to work with HM laptops is the P270WM vBIOS which came stock with my cards so its a Clevo version.

What motherboard BIOS version are you on?

 

... god loves me!!!!!

i dont know why how or what , but whuile changing cards back and forth the Dell Card booted with The Test bios in it!! ???

Anyways, i managed to recover both cards to test Bios and working fine.

So i continued my testing, i flashed the DELL card with the 17 Dell Bios !! I MEAN IT SHOULD WORK ITS A DELL CARD RIGHt??

well, it works! BUT the laptop screen wont show anything! only the vga port shows.
So i am wondering, maybe because i reseted the bios before installing the cards (2 weeks ago) , could someone of you 2 guys that have a dell card in their r2 working fine tell me in the bios in the IGD-LCD control sub menu what are the correct choises?? i mean maybe something in there is not right! and thus the dell card with teh dell bios shows only in the VGA port.

I have r2 A10 moded Bios

The setings for the panel are
Imageshack - igdlcd2.jpg

 

Lmao!!! Great stuff!

I don't recall having that menu, I think that may be one of the additions of the modded A10. I say flash back to the official A10 so you can eliminate any potential unknowns the modded BIOS could bring to the table. I've never used the modded A10 as there were some stability issues that were never resolved.

 

hmmmm.... instead of solving issues we are opening biger ones, if i must start flashing the laptop bios...


anyways.

i really dont know what to do...the test bios with 1.1 V is not an option!! its frying my whole laptop!!

OK so lets try and troubleshoot.
NOSPHERATU you have a dell card right? with silver screw holes on it? and you flashed it with slv7 's bioses? and your laptop lcd works fine from the start? your second card is? a dell again? flashed with teh same bios? and what laptop bios do you have?

 

I have Clevo cards, both of them. I've flashed them with svl7's modded Dell vBIOS and it works but after a few boots a received a black screen with extreme brightness so I went back to my stock Clevo vBIOS for both cards.

I'm running the official A10 motherboard BIOS.

 

so... if i flash the clevo bios in the dell card? will that work??

what card does sangemaru have? clevo too? anyone with a dell??

 

Thats the vBIOS you just flashed, so no. I would start with the stock A10 BIOS so we have the same base.

Im gonna get some sleep now, dont go bricking the cards!

 

LOL

when you wake up either i will have a cool laptop with 1V gpus or 2 baked cards... :thumbsup:

sleep well and lightly...

bios original A10 did nothing...

 

I don't understand how it is that the Dell vBIOS isn't working... this is only on a pure hardware and low level software point. The motherboard and card revisions even if different shouldn't be so different to the point were a different vBIOS is required.

You're lucky you received the ES card... if you didn't that would mean you wouldn't have the vBIOS from it and no 7970M would work on your machine, which doesn't make any sense really.

edit: Just to confirm you are flashing in DOS with the latest version of atiflash?

 

The cards are very picky Remember that I absolutely could not start a dell card in my machine, had to send it back to riri-fifi and it worked for him.
On the card I have currently, I can flash pretty much any vBios I want, it won't have trouble.

@Alienhack: Until we can find a way to edit your test vBios, I think you should stay on lower clocks. Outside of the test vBios, is there no other vBios that works with your cards?
It doesn't have to be the same one for each card... so long as one of your cards works with undervolted dell vBios and one of your cards can work with clevo vBios, that can be edited and you can get undervolting. The question is with the second card, if it works with any vBios other than the test one.

Also: I recommend using thermal pads (stretched 0.5mm if you have to) on VRM's and MOSFETS. How good is your core to heatsink contact? How much TIM are you using? Your cards shouldn't get so hot at that vBios (I ran 1.1V 1100 core / 1500 mem and it didn't get so hot).

If you manage to start the cards with some undervolted vBios, but it doesn't register in Windows, than that will have been a software problem and would require driver or windows reinstall.

If you want to go 780m, that's your choice and I can't fault you for it mate My pocket does not allow, however And I want the cross.

 

exactly what i was thinking. at least i am lucky i rceived that strange card and bios by luck and i am able to use the laptop now

either ati flash from dos with boot usb or usually i flash in windows with atiwinflash . it doesnt matter, the vbios is installed correctly. even with dos atiflash that i tried

ABout temperatures, i tried the dell card with the dell bios and as i said it works BUT only through VGA port.
so i used an external monitor and went in windows gaming etc.
With 1V the max temp went from 87C to 77C... the pasting is not the best right now because i exchanged first -second card all the time but the difference in heat was obvious

Now that i returned to my starting possition with 2 test bioses in the cards, even if i only use the first one for extensive gaming , the temps rise to 85-87C, IF i use my laptop base with twin fans the temp stays at 81C BUT that is only with one card and the cpu at 20 multi (67-70C) , if i fire up crossfire then the whole system boils, both cards get raised to 85 , and then it depends in the cpu if the system is stable. If i leave it at 15-20 multi it doesnt add much heat so ok,.. i can play but if i raise the CPU to 23-24 multies then the cpu goes to 90C and the cards hit 90C too and the system shuts down (not psu related, gpu thermal shutdown)


is there a moded clevo bios to try? is there a chance to brick my dell card if i flash it with a clevo bios?

 

+1 I've tested lower clocks as well yesterday 700/1100 and the performance is still good with no throttling. I'm testing it on Crysis 3 on the Red Star Rising mission and the framerate doesn't drop below 40fps with everything on high settings at native res.

Don't ever flash in Windows. It may have worked for you in the past without incident but its just asking for trouble. There's too many processes going on in the background that could interrupt the flash and leave you with a brick.

I know its more of an effort to flash through DOS but it means more peace of mind. Also use the latest version of atiflash as I tried an older version I used with my 5870M's and it didn't recognise the cards.

 

Yea, absolutely never ever ever flash in Windows.
For all you know flashing in Windows may have generated some of the issues you were having with the card not recognized.

 

No modded ones at the moment. But the vBIOS you downloaded from the Blind Flash thread is the Clevo P270M 7970M vBIOS which is set to 1.00v by default on my cards.

Well judging from your card being so picky with its vBIOS it could brick it. That said, svl7 confirmed it would work as he mentioned that to a user who wanted to flash the Clevo vBIOS to gain auto fans on a Dell card. And apparently it does work since you flashed my Clevo vBIOS when you got the no POST errors but still managed to recover from it as it booted. Problem is if it works intermittantly you might not get the chance to flash back to the test vBIOS.

 

well the good news is that after my yesterdays adventure, both my cards survived so i can test varius bioses in the dell one while keeping the engineering sample as a backup to boot if something goes wrong.


after some calculations the way i can play crossfire intensive games with 1.1 V is if i leave the core at 750 and the mem at 1000 , the cpu multi 21-22 and do a full repaste at the cards adding new thermal pads on mems AND VRMs

and ofcourse using the laptop fan base. All this in the summer that my ambient temp is 30-35C

in the winter with 15-22 C in the room i will hopefully be ok.

Its just that i feel sad for the cards that have to work at 1.1 without any real reason... yesterday that i flashed a 1V bios in the dell card and used it a bit with vga output it was so cool and nice... 73C with intense gaming AND without a laptop fan base...

Even if i manage to fix ONLY the dell card it will be ok for me cause i will use it either as a single and sell the ES card for a low price (~200E) and stay single carded or sell the ES card and buy a clevo one to again go crossfire...



SMALL weird thing by swaping cards around i found out that when the engineering sample is installed as main card , then crossfire cant work. in the ccc it says the cabe is not connected properly, and its not the cable problem i tried and resited it dozen of times. But when i put the dell as main card and the ES as second then crossfire works liek a charm...
weird stuff. Probably they didnt emplement CF fully in the Eng.Sample card.

 

That is strange. Maybe the vBIOS is configured as a slave card? But that's wierd as the Dell card probably wouldn't have worked in the primary slot then since you're running the same vBIOS.

Some good news though iamsolidstate fixed the 330W issue!

 

they have the same bios...

anyways. as i told you i dont have psu issues , only once on 24-25cpu multi and oced gpus. Thank god my psu looks super productive.

Also the thermal problems dont look that bad now that i came to my bech house for 2 days. the ambient temperature is 20C (not 30C that is in my city house) , so the cards run 70-75C max. Much better and way more stable , so i can pump my cpu at 22-23 multi without prob.

SO after playing games yesterday all day without a single overheat shutdown , i have to say that is an incredible machine. i cant beleive i am on vacations drinking mohitos and running hawken on ultra with 70FPS . And hopefully on winter time when the temps drop i will enjoy the machine with gpus and cpu more oced.

PS. i really dont feel well that i feed these cards 1.1 without any reason though.

 

HELL YEA!. So it was a PSU-bound limit after all. That's it, it's time to go full retard and get the 330W PSU And this way we don't have to do the mobo ID chip trick as we would have had to using the HP 350W PSU, nor do we have to ruin the connector.

And he managed to pull over 400W before shutdown. That's GLORIOUS.

Someone's living the good life You're using the Oculus Rift devkit in Hawken I assume?

I personally need that mod, since my 240W PSU is struggling as it is (very warm, although no buzzing). And I do wanna OC some m0ar

 

Haha yeah great news... and he said the 330W delivered up to 440W of power

I need the mod too as mines gets pretty warm with extended gaming sessions with the CryEngine games. It'll be nice to run the XM and the cards with the power that they deserve and for that I need moar powah cap'n!!!

 

I just wanna devastate Destop users Imagine a pair of 7970m's overclocked to 1000/1400 each crossfired.

Yea, your PSU is the bomb Running such overclocks with the cards so heavily overvolted is insane.
Not sure what to suggest to lower voltage, tbh

Set me straight, I still don't follow your card layout:

You MUST use the ES card SLAVE to use crossfire.
Your ES card CAN run lower voltages (I believe you said 0.975 was stable?).
Your OEM card will only work with the ES and Clevo vBios'es, but no others?

Why not flash one of the undervolted dell vBios'es to the ES card, and a Clevo vBios to the OEM card (since it would run at 1.025 or 1.05V)?

P.S.: I'm so wondering if Riri-Fifi's 7970m would have worked with your ES vBios... it showed as "unable to start device" though... hmmm.

 

Now my one card stuck at 0.975v doesn't look like the better card of the two

I still want to mod the chip into the chassis though. Cracking that brick open seems like much more effort and not as clean as the internal chassis mod. Hopefully it can be done as effectively the only alteration iamsolidstate did to his mod was ground the ID line after the point where he cut the trace in order to unlock the full power.

AlienHacks ES card can run the modded 017 Dell vBIOS but has no LCD display. He can only use VGA output. It can also run the Clevo W270WM vBIOS but he had some problems booting up.
His OEM card can only use his ES vBIOS.

I also get the unable to start device error on my machine for the first card if I uninstall all AMD drivers. Once I install the driver though everything seems fine.

 

Yea, once I installed the drivers on that card my computer would ALWAYS freeze on windows load. Even after reinstall. The one thing I didn't think to try was to use more driver versions Sigh...

 

Glad the 330wpsu mod worked! This way after I solve (if I ever solve) the overvolt-overheat problem sky will be thw limit!

Well guys sorry I have complicated you ...

To put things straight , I have one engineering sample card with black pcbus and one 'DELL' loiking one with blue pcbus

They both work perfectly with the test bios thats why I am hoping slv7 will manage to edit it right and just lower the vddc in that bios and all will be great!

About other solutions with other bioses, well things get complicated...
The eng sample one works with the test vbios and as a slave only with a clevo bios BUT only as a slave...
The dell one works with the dell bioses (and all the vbioses of slv pack) but shows no laptop screen only vga port external screen.

So the simplest solution is to edit the test bios but that isnt as easy as it sounds , slv7 tried but didnt manage yet. I hope he succeeds.

If only I knew who made that black pcb card... I could ask them to edit that bios for me..