M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

yes. it doesnt work

 

That's interesting, I'll have to see about that.
I'd tried installing 13.4 catalyst + driver straight and upgrading just the driver to 13.6 beta 2 but i still had crashes, and lower performance than on 13.1, but it's an easy enough experiment to do so I'll try it. Meanwhile I'll hold out on that OpenGL driver at the moment.

@Alienhack: The vbios doesn't boot or doesn't change voltages? If it doesn't change voltages, I suggest using the AMD cleanup utility and reinstalling your drivers. If it doesn't boot...
The last suggestion I can make is to look in RadeonPro under the Overdrive Header and see if you can use the Power Tune feature there to lower consumption somehow.

 

Guys I've just come across a utility that I've seen around but passed over as I thought it was another generic GPU OC utility.... its NOT!!!! It's abso-freakin-lutely BAWS!!!! It makes Overdrive/Afterburner/TRIXX look like buggy alpha releases when used with our cards

AlienHack this is your answer to your high-voltage issue. It can adjust clocks AND voltage for each card separately and simultaneously for 3D mode AND 2D mode Although I prefer a vBIOS mod with this much power in a utility we can get by.

What utility is this you may ask??? ASUS GPU Tweak ... you're welcome

Please test and provide feedback. I still have to do more testing cos frankly this seems too good to be true right now but GPUshark is reflecting every change I make even decreasing voltage. I just hope I'm not the only one this works for. I downloaded v2.4.3.1

edit: Just tested with TR and its actually holding my custom settings! Amazing piece of software... Check the attachment. Is that custom settings or what

 

Woah woah woah. That for serious man? That would be abso-f'in-lutely-awesome. I'm actually not in a posture where I'd need that app right now, but for Alienhack that's pure gold.

 

Yeah its absolutely crazy... I still cant believe it cos I've been trying to find a way to make Overdrive, Afterburner and TRIXX adjust the second cards voltage for the past two days and had no luck. And then I came across this and thought why not...

I wonder why this utility isn't more recognised though... I'm still in shock

 

For all we know it only works on 7970m cards
Btw, I'm experimenting with the OpenGL 4.3 beta driver. I'll be back with stories once I have some.

 

Lol, you're probably right

I've checked the releases for this utility though and it was first released in 2011... and one of its features is saving your settings... wait for it... to your vBIOS While installing I noticed nvflash was one of the files being installed, now I know why. Seems to be a very powerful application.

Awesome man, hope it goes well :thumbsup:

 

Well, the openGL driver is an unfortunate no-go. Installing just the driver an nothing else on top of 13.1 would not let me load catalyst after (thus no access to enabling crossfire).
Installing the full catalyst suite results in the same-old bsods on alt-tab. I guess 13.1 + 13.6 beta2 it is

Saving settings to vBios? :| That sounds like a brick waiting to happen. Weird.

 

Thanks for the feedback man. Hopefully the prototype drive is around the corner.

So I did more research into this app and I think the reason nvflash and ATIwinflash is there is cos the utility checks for newer vBIOS version and probably uses the flash utilities to flash the updated version. You're right though, that's a brick waiting to happen. I cant seem to find any info on "saving your optimized settings to your vBIOS". I was hoping it would create the modded ROM similar to RBE ... but I guess that's a bit far fetched.

 

I have this utility. I think I tried it and constantly it crashed.

I will give it a try again

 

aww no man

Try disabling ULPS before using it.

Uninstall Afterburner, TRIXX and any other GPU OC utility you have.
Uninstall the catalysts as well.
Run AMD Cleanup Utility.
Install drivers again.
Disable ULPS.
Install ASUS GPU Tweak.

 

If you really want to try that utility, in addition to ULPS, disable powerplay as well. It seems like a great util, just never try to save any settings to vbios
Well, I don't think you'll get the option anyway I'm pretty sure that's only a feature for select ASUS cards.

 

Hey guys. I have been thinking about joining the 7970m crossfire crew. I have a quick question regarding the different types of 7970m version. There are a variety of version on ebay. It looks like Upgradeyourlaptop is not offering the m17x r2 version. More recently it appears that versions are from the m17x r4 or 18 r2, compatible with pm 77 chipset. From my understanding, these 7970m version have the 015.022 vBios, correct? Is it possible to perform a vbios flash to the 015.21 version? Or, will it not even POST with 015.022 vbios? Thanks.

 

Hello baftuse The only cards that can be down-flashed are the ones up to 015.021 vbios. Trying to flash a 022 vbios card will brick it. I am unsure if all cards up to 021 vbios are compatible with the R2, but at least that leaves the option of experimenting with different vbioses to try, by most cards are compatible. If you plan to join the Crossfire crew, absolutely make sure that the cards you purchase are pre-022 vbios. (I personally use two 017 vbios cards).
These cards can be flashed to 022 vbios safely and back, and the other ones can't, so there are clearly hardware differences between the two types.
It doesn't really matter if the card is "m17x r2 version" or not so far as you make sure you pick a card with the correct vbios.

 

Thanks sangemaru. I have a 7970m from upgradeyourlaptop already installed; had it for some time now. I'm just trying to figure out the other options for the second card. I will definitely inquire about the vbios version. Thanks for the info. Congrats on the crossfire success.

 

Thank you I am a very lucky nerd. I seem to have managed to solve all problems. HwInfo64 can now remember fan speed profiles without me having to even focus on it so long as I put the computer to sleep or hibernate, and both sleep and hibernate seem to work properly once you disable ULPS in the registry (search EnableULPS in regedit and change all values found - including EnableULPS_NA - to 0 ... just cycle F3 until you've covered them all).
Yep, this machine is pretty much awesome Friends of mine that are buying high-end desktops and spending 1500$-2000$ for them remain flummoxed when I share my 3dmark and other bench scores with them. I honestly consider this machine the best desktop replacement ever made, when considering its size, style, build quality, screen options and sheer power.
I wouldn't trade it for a m18x if only to keep the screen (not to mention that I consider that machine too big).
@Alienhack: I tried benching with and without using HwInfo64. Pretty much no difference on my machine. I have the respin period set to 1000ms (so once per second). HDMI works, cross works, no crashes, no bsods, no power shutdowns.
I have only had thermal shutdowns, and only during the 3dmark 2013 early tests (the ones that hit 1500+ fps and manage to make my cards boil I swear that stress is heavier than furmark). Otherwise the cards benching Metro: LL maxed out don't surpass 76C and don't seem to care how high you push the settings. Any slowdowns only appear so long as your CPU can't handle the AI-heavy scenes (which only happens to me so far because I have to replace the CPU heatsink ).

 

I just figured out that ASUS GPU Tweak needs the -xcl parameter run with Afterburner before it unlocks voltage control. I also have ULPS disabled if anyone runs into problems.

Another thing is if Afterburner locks up your system (I have no idea why it started this nonsense all of a sudden) run any game and alt-tab out of it and then run the shortcut with the -xcl parameter.

 

First post edited

 

Dude, I had no idea you were updating the first post with all that info! Absolutely brilliant!!! Well done man, now we don't have to trawl through this massive thread searching for what we did to make what work after a Windows re-install

 

Brother sangemaru, nice job starting this wildly popular thread.

This guide makes me want to mod my M17x R2 really bad, LOL. My 19 year old has pretty much confiscated it and claimed it as his own. I don't have the heart to pull rank on him. I agree, after all these years, it is still a phenomenal beast.

 

When you say Disable ULPS you mean through Asus Gpu tweak? it has only disable 2d option

you are my man!!!
i just spent 1 hour trying to solve these 2 issues. first i didnt see any voltage control on asus tweak so i suposed i had to run afterburner with -xcl but it started crashing... so i visited the thread here to whine but alas! you had the 2 answers already ready for me!!

UPDATE: i run afterburnewr with -xcl, it enabled vddc in trixx but not in Asus tweak.... :-( is there anything i have to do in asus tweak to enable volts ?

also asus tweak wrongly reads my mem clock as 4000

 

Just saw and read the first post. Amazing job Sangemaru!

 

Yeah I also experienced the same thing... are you running 13.6 Cats?. I've been trying to get it working on 13.6 and I think its something to with that driver version. Try the below I've just completed it and I'm back to full control in GPU Tweak.

Uninstall Afterburner, TRIXX and GPU Tweak.
Reboot.
Run CCleaner for files and the registry.
Reboot.
Uninstall CAPS.
Reboot.
Uninstall Catalyst Suite.
Reboot.
Run AMD Cleanup Utility.
Reboot.

You should have a clean slate to work on now. Run CCleaner maybe one more time to clean any leftovers from the uninstalls.

Install 13.4 Catalysts. (I installed 13.1 first and then the driver only from 13.4 but you may not need to do this as you don't get BSODs on Alt-Tab)
Reboot.
Install 13.4 CAP1. (You can install the 13.5 CAPS if you like, I doubt it will make a difference)
Reboot.
Disable ULPS (Use Regedit and search for all "EnableULPS" keys and set them to 0)
Reboot.
Install Afterburner (I installed v2.3.1) and do not tick the box to open Afterburner at the end of the install.
Reboot.

Now run Regedit again to make sure all "EnableULPS" keys are set to 0. You can tick the box for exact match which makes it quicker. Now add the -xcl parameter to the Afterburner shortcut on the desktop but do not run it yet. The game method didn't work for me this time around so I used the method below which is easier.

Open CCC and disable Crossfire. Wait till its complete and CCC is responsive again.
Enable crossfire again. Wait till its complete and CCC is responsive again.
Close CCC.
Run your Afterburner shortcut with the -xcl parameter. It will prompt you to reboot.
Reboot.

At this point you can make sure that the Afterburner -xcl worked by checking that Overdrive is available in CCC (Dont enable it though) or installing TRIXX and verifying that voltage is unlocked. Now for the moment of truth...

Install ASUS GPU Tweak... and cross your fingers the entire time
Reboot when prompted (Don't stop crossing your fingers, this is very important!!)

When you enter Windows again GPU Tweak should open up automatically together with the sensor window. You will be able to tell immediately if this worked if you see the voltage sensor is reporting the correct voltage (0.825v). If it is, you can stop crossing your fingers

I've set up GPU Tweak with the settings below.

Enabled Advanced mode to display voltage.
"Sync all cards" toggled on
Disabled the sensor window from booting with windows.
Enabled GPU Tweak to boot with Windows minimized.
Under Settings->Tune tab->TuneSetting->Keep setting on for next start on close application: Ticked

Since its GDDR5 memory they are reporting the effective memory speed = 4x base clock. So your actual vRAM clock should be 1000mhz

 

how would i figure out if the card is made by dell or clevo?

 

Well, brother Fox, point the young man in this direction Maybe he'll be happy to tweak and upgrade.

 

I'm sure he would, but Daddy ain't buying his GPUs, LOL.

Maybe once he gets a job and has some money of his own he will do it.

 

Have a look at Page 2 of this thread, its been covered there.

In addition, I've noticed that the Dell 7970M's have the AMD logo whereas the Clevo's do not. Also Dells PCB is blue and the Clevo's are more of a greenish blue.

 

And the engineering samples might be black

Nospheratu, did you have issues with the voltage tab in asus tweak not showing up when using 13.6 beta2? And then by changing to 13.1 you solved it?

 

Yes, voltage display/edit didn't show in GPU Tweak at all even though TRIXX showed the voltage control and Overdrive was unlocked in CCC.

Try those steps above, I typed it especially for you man! I know it works with 13.4 as well as I was running the complete 13.4 Catalyst Suite the first time I tried ASUS GPU Tweak. I'm actually running the 13.4 driver with 13.1 CCC now.

edit: It may work with 13.6, its possible there was still some left over files that I did not clean out properly from the previous GPU Tweak install or some step that I missed out. I was getting pretty frustrated especially after all those reboots since I knew I had it working perfectly. I stopped testing after I completed the steps above.

 

I did exactly as you wrote. Everything worked as you said, Overdrive is present in ccc BUT GPU tweak doesnt show volts, even in the settings it doesnt have the option to click and enable volts ... :-(

 

Maybe the vbios of your slave card just... won't allow voltage change of any kind?

 

i dont know and cant understand... both cards use the same test bios (the one the engineering sample had in it) . thats the only bios that works in mylaptop.

by the way i made a post last week in bios mods but no answer...
Ati 7970m bios wants edit

 

The sensor monitor window is reporting 0.00v under the voltage sensor as well? I'll do some more testing when I get home, hopefully we fix this.

Its possible but I think its a bug in GPU Tweak not acknowledging the -xcl changes. It should at least show the voltage even if he cant adjust it.

I was wondering what sort of "magic" the -xcl switch was doing and I found out it actually emulates a powerplay table for the GPU in the registry where these apps are able to edit the values from clocks to fan speed and voltage.

 

@Alienhack: Can you somehow push the 2D voltage upwards? (Say using TriXX) and change 2D clock speeds to stock or near-stock levels?

 

That's what makes this GPU tweak utility so awesome. Afterburner and TRIXX only offer 3D mode adjustments. At least that's what I've found. I'm not sure if there's additional functionality hidden away.

 

@AlienHack: You are definitely going to hate me for this either way.

I've modified your vbios through some really sketchy reverse-engineering (a.k.a. pattern recognition). Now the problem is, I have no idea if this will brick your card or not...
If you try to flash it, it will report as corrupted for sure, because I edited it manually and didn't rebuild the checksum (since I honestly have no idea how to).

What I basically did, was I took the Dell Stock vbios in svl7's archive, patched it to your test vbios voltages and speeds, and tried to pattern match your vbios with the patched one to look for similar values. There's a pretty big hex string which I'm sure is properly patched, but one offset which just looked sort-of probable.

This has an exceedingly high chance of bricking your card if I touched the wrong offset... and the checksum is mismatched... and is a bad idea all-around

I do not recommend you try to flash it. If the final checksum is the correct one, it WILL have the voltages and clocks you need... but if not, I have no idea what may happen. Ideally, if the vbios failed to work with the card, you could hope to reflash or blind-flash, but there's also a chance that it wouldn't work and it would require changing the bios chip on the card.

This is the kind of flash that is only relatively safe for users with their own JTAG... Well, I've ranted enough.. If you know anyone with a JTAG, now would be a good time to contact them

 

Its monitoring the volts just fine. There is just no volts bar to change the volts

Damn. What are you doing to me now? What if I flash just one of the cards? So I can reflash the second one if the buos doesnt work.

also did you edit my bios or slv7s one? Because slv7 bioses dont work for me. Only my test bios works fine. If someone could get into it and find the vddc sections and edit these.. did you do that?

 

Its working then! Did you click on the icon on the bottom to switch between advanced mode and standard mode? Advanced mode only displays voltage. See the below pic for the button.

sangemaru!!! edit that post and remove that file asap!. All the noobs are gonna download that frankenstein vBIOS and brick their cards! lol Your theory seems really sound though its playing with fire if your're unfamiliar with hex and just pattern matching.

 

if i buy a dell card, would the guide not work?

 

@AlienHack: Ok, let's do some reverse-engineering In svl7's Dell vbios, the 3D VDDC offset setting is located at 0x0BA56 - 0x0BA57 (two offsets). The values for these two offsets for 1.1V are 4C 04.For 0.975V the value is CF 03. For 1.05V it should be 1A 04.Now the PROBLEM is that I can't read hex. I can only pattern match. So in order to edit your test vBIOS I would go about searching for the occurence of the 4C 04 value in two offsets, and change it to whatever value I desire (you can use the values i mentioned above for 0.975 or 1.05 - if you want some other value I'll have to tinker some more to find it out). The other problem is that there are a hell of a lot of 4C 04 occurences in your vbios Now out of all those values, the offsets that appears most likely to me to containt the actual VDDC are:0x0 B2DB - B2DC0x0 BCCC - BCCDIf you asked me which offset I'd put my money on, i'd pick the BCCC - BCCD block.If you flash one of the cards... it's complicated. Should your machine still boot (even if it did not display anything on screen), you should theoretically be able to blind-flash the card you'd be experimenting with in order to at least regain use of the card. If the machine fails to boot, you'd be stuck having to locate a JTAG and reprogram the vBios (if the card didn't spontaneously blow up ).Either way, you would retain use of one card. If you could get svl7 to take a look at those offsets and give us his opinion, that would go a long way.Forget about the bios I linked back there - I was using flawed methodology, it's probably pretty much useless. I'll remove that link. I'm pretty sure I can make the vbios you need easily It will just be one of 3-4 variants, and god only knows which one would actually work

I have two dell cards. Works just fine for me

 

as you can see... no vddc option for me..

well if i program the second one then even if it doesnt work i can reflash it to the standar vbios... is that right?

 

That's just it. If it's the wrong offset block, I have no idea what will happen if you flash a bios with it modified. If it's the correct offset block it will definitely work (though you'd have to force through the checksum verification since I can't generate the checksum myself).
Even with the wrong offset, the vbios could flash and the card could boot and nothing would happen immediately, only maybe triggering bsods/problems/corruptions etc. Either way, it would not reflect the voltage change and we'd know immediately that we'd have to use another option.
But what happens if the card refuses to boot afterwards? You'd have to reprogram the chip using a JTAG, which would get a whole lot more complicated.

 

well thats not the card that boots. its the second one. even with a bios that didnt boot when the card was first one (slv7s bioses) if it was placed as second one it worked.

damn./.. what should i do? try and flash it? i mean you just changed one hex code... what could that do? if its not the one we want...

 

Like I said... it could render your card unbootable (which would then require JTAG reprogramming or replacing the vbios chip), or it could allow the card to boot but it would be a faulty vbios (but that would be no trouble since we'd be able to detect the issue immediately and just reflash back and cross that offset off the list), or it could be the offset we need in one shot, in which case you'd be golden.

It doesn't help that behavior between cards varies so much... one card refused to work in my machine but it would still boot, whereas the 022 vbios card refused to boot my machine, even as slave.
We need someone with actual experience even if only to take a look and give us his opinion. I'd say that considering the worst-case scenario, there's a 33% chance of success.

I suggest you wait a bit and we try to get in contact with svl7 again.

 

AlienHack What is that 2 with the line striked through it on the left of "3D"?

sangemaru you should mail the vBIOS to AlienHack if he wants to try it... still I think its too risky. Even if he orders a vBIOS chip with his current vBIOS already programmed (theres someone on ebay selling them, might be svl7, who knows) he still has to de-solder the old one and solder the new one on.

 

ok send me the file link. i feel lucky.

just to ask, how many times is the 1.1 v offset (4C 04) in my bios? i mean are we picking one out of 3-4 or 1 out of 20 chances??

thats the button that lets you choose modes, 3d-2d -disable 2d etc. dont you have that? i thought we use the same gpu tweak version 2.3.0.2

 

No... I'm using v2.4.3.1

Lol! Dude don't do it... I have the highest respect for sangemaru and I can appreciate the fact he's going out of his way to help you but this is just a bad idea

I know you're desperate but you mentioned previously that svl7 edited a vBIOS for you (I'm not sure if it was your test vBIOS) and you were stuck on 2D clocks.... and he's a pro at vBIOS editing. I can't watch this .... It's really funny though

 

even with the new version it doesnt work.

Also slv7 said that edited my vbios but i tried the one he gave me and the card wasnt working ok. i think he used his vbios as a base though.
after that he didnt answer my messages. its crazy because i am really willing to pay 40-50 euros whoever manages to do that... (sagermaru does it for free... )

 

I'll do some more attempts to see if I can narrow down the probabilities. Did svl7 edit your test vbios or a different one?
If svl7 already tried to edit your test bios, I'd really appreciate you sharing the file with me so I can take a look, only to check a master at work and see if I can learn something, myself.

At the moment, there are about 8 offsets that use that specific value string, out of which I'd only consider those two (and maybe a distant third) offsets as actual possibilities. So worst case scenario we're talking about a chance in 8 with a less pessimistic 33% chance.

 

"Quote Originally Posted by Slv7
Oh, I guess I missed all of that, lol. You wanted 1v? And 1GHz mem? Let me revise that, hahahahaha
here is the link:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0By-T_a8nGsPrQXZsZzRFNWxrNWM/edit?pli=1

Quote Originally Posted by AlienHack
so you did it!!!

before i flash the cards please inform me what speeds you have in? 850 core 1200 mem? cause as i told you my mem isnt so goo in the ES card so i would prefer 850 core 1000 mem otherwise above 1100 it crashes

Also did you manage to lower the Vddc to 1???



SO i gues that bios there is mine edited (or maybe his edited) with 1V vddc and 850 core 1000 mem.

So sagermaru if it is actually mine edited then if you search for 1V hex offset in it and compare it with my curent original vbios which has 1.1V then you can possibly find the place where VDDC is in hex