M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

Yes, voltage control through CCC. You have to run Afterburner with the -xcl switch beforehand though. Then you can edit the profile.xml file located under C:\Users\{yourusername}\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles

Previously only my primary card was listed there. Now I have both so I can set 3D voltage for each of them. Only hiccup I'm having is I have to open CCC (just open, no other action) after every boot for Overdrive to set the voltage/clock change.

Congrats on the Rift! Don't be too hard on yourself, give yourself time to adjust as sangemaru's advised.

 

Oh, I wanted to make an observation on the 13.8 drivers.
Previously, the number of frames per second we obtained in games was pretty high, but taking account actual frame dropping and stuttering, i'm sure if we'd measured the average frame time, the real fps would have been much lower (20~40-ish instead of 50~80-ish). Now that all those frames actually render, the average fps has dropped a bit (for example Metro bench averages 39fps instead of 45) but the actual frames you see are many more than previously displayed, so the game is much smoother.
I also suspect that the cards are spending much more of an effort (previously 45fps average in Metro:LL would bring my cards to 76C, but now it's 82-83 handily). I suspect our CPU's were much more of a bottleneck before than they will be now, since they went through all that effort to pump frames, only for the cards to discard them and waste them.
Now, each frame sent by the CPU should be used, and it really feels like my CPU is working far less than before due to less GPU-side wasted frames.
All in all, I'm loving the new drivers.

 

i just got my clevo 7970m and it came with an x bracket and screws, but the screw on the heatsink doesnt fit the xbracket on the gpu. do i need a new bracket?

 

Define "doesn't fit". Preferably with pics.

 

You can take the screws and c-clips off the heatsink and use the new screws that were sent with the GPU and x-bracket.

Cheers.

 

its really hard to show with pictures. the screw holes on the xbracket is too small for the screw on the heatsink. otherwise it lines up perfectly.

im thinking maybe i could just take the screws off the heatsink and replace it with the screws that came with the gpu. but im having problems taking off the retention clip.

http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/...30802_120813_434_zps7309b6b5.jpg?t=1375459709

the one on the left is the original screw. the one of the right is the one that came from the 7970m the one that came from the 7970m is smaller than the original one.

 

You can gently and carefully pry the retention clip away with a harp knife, small screwdriver, etc. Something with a sharp tip. Replace the screws with the clevo ones, re-attach. Be careful whe screwing down, in case you need to use extra distance you don't want to crush your gpu die.

 

The c-clips are indeed the biggest pain to remove...hated that when I was installing my 6970's. I found that a pair of small scissors with a curved tip are miracle workers when it comes to these. You can buy them pretty cheaply at any CVS/wal-greens/walmart/tesco (depending on where you are). Definitely saved me hours of frustration.

Just a tip for those who are looking for a good solution to removing those little guys.

 

i ended up breaking the retention clips.

 

that was expected from the new driver, because it uses frame pacing (as you already know) which actualy delays frames from either cards so they pace nicely.
up until now AMD had mentioned that it just pumped frames as fast as possible, thats why we had the max frames, now it filters the frames and dropes some or slows down others, so the fps are slower. Its normal . Nvidia does the same and has lower fps with frame pacing too.



RIFT UPDATE! I am happy!!! i read on the net that ginger helps some people and on the worst case you can try dramamine pills (for sea sickness)
so i bought both and started with the natural solution wich is ginger root tea..
i drank 2 glasses and then with hesitation i launched WAR THUNDER (try this free game if you havent already!! it really rocks!)

up until that time when i tried playing it with rift, i could only fly for 3-4 mins and then sick! if i tried making a roll with the plane or loop then instant sicknes...

so after drinking the ginger i've been playing 40 mins straight , i already played online and downed 6 enemies (real players) ... although the rift resolution makes aiming a , the actual 3d sense and the head movement-looking helps a lot to follow enemies...

SO I CAN USE the rift, and if things get better everyday!! yea!!

 

Aww yea, that's the way I'll try to get some for myself too when I have my own rift
In an unrelated notice, I played so muc Bioshock: Infinite last night I forgot to go to sleep. Crash issues were due to corrupted game files, I verified their integrity in steam and had to re-download 4GB of game
No more issues so far.

Well, f**k. I'm not entirely sure from your pictures, but it looks to me as though the Clevo screws have a wide enough width that you may be able to use them without C-Clips? Or am I wrong?
You can buy extra washers from a hardware store, take some screws with you to make sure to buy things that match up. Sorry to hear. How did you try to remove them?

 

That's great news about Bioshock I also was crashing due to game problems and that resolved itself after patching it to the latest version. Another problem is the one of the patches brings is they fixed the frame drop that happens when you enter new areas but the side effect of that is that the game will crash after a long period of gameplay. Its listed in the change log. Most likely on a loading screen. I'm glad its working well though

Yeah the recommended method with the Clevo screws is no c-clips. You can maybe use them but it would be pointless. The Clevo screw head is wide enough. You can actually screw them quite a bit down (which is unnecessary and might net you worse temps) since the 7970M has the metal border around the GPU die to protect it unlike the 5870M. Recommended is tighten the screw down until the "arm" bows slightly downward.

That card pinoy_92 has in the background though... what is it? The 260M?

edit: svl7 hasn't gotten back to me. Either he's really busy or 7970M's are not interesting to him anymore and he's ignoring me. So that made me look up info on vBIOS editing and I found this directly related to the 7000 series. (Use google translate) I've followed instructions and found the exact same hex string in AlienHacks vBIOS with the voltage of 1.100v. There was only one occurrence of the string and matched the guides template perfectly, obviously with AlienHacks reported 750/1000/1.100v. I then compared it to svl7's modded version of the same vBIOS and he did infact change it to 1.000v.

I also noticed he changed it twice in succession so that made me check out my vBIOS and I found that it showed my default 3D voltage marker followed by 0.975v. The second value could be a fallback value which would explain why so many people experience the "stuck at 0.975v". That would also explain why he changed it twice to "force" the 1.000v

 

Wow, great find. So the file svl7 made for alienhack is properly done. If that doesn't work, nothing will.
@AlienHack: I'm sorry about not remembering this, but have you by any chance done a fresh install of windows since flashing svl's vbios? At least onto a stick / external drive etc.?

 

i dont need the retention clips for the clevo screws. i broke them, because i couldnt get it out of the original screws on the heatsink. i tried using an exacto knife and it broke the tip. i tried using a needle and it bent it. i tried using a kitchen knife and it didnt fit. i tried using an oscilloscope probe and it didnt fit. so i ended up using a small needle nose pliers and bending the clips till it broke. the screws heads are wide enough for the heatsink so i didnt need to use any washers.

yea its my dying 260m on the back. i had 2, but the other died few weeks back.

 

I found out why CCC wasn't loading my Overdrive voltage setting on boot. It actually did but it took around 5 minutes to load (sometimes it felt like it didn't load at all...maybe I was just impatient) and I usually check immediately once I'm in Windows so I thought it wasn't working. It seems AMD set a delay to load ccc.exe of 300 seconds which is a bit wierd.

In order to fix this open Regedit and go to...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SOFTWARE->Wow6432Node->ATI->ACE->Backup->Settings->CLI

There should be a "Delay" Key with a value of 300. Change the value to 0.

So this will fix you needing to open CCC and close it in order for the Overdrive settings to register at every boot... or you can wait about 5 minutes before starting a game

 

btw quick question. i only have 1 7970m. which vbios should i flash?

 

If its a Clevo card the RJTECH vBIOS is highly recommended. If you have a Dell card take your pick from svl7's mod pack.

 

can u give me a link rjtech vbios?

 

rsgeiger was kind enough to upload it here. The file name is "7970M (from TI_RJT).zip"

edit: I think I know enough to edit our vBIOS's now. The only difference I can see in svl7's edit of AlienHack vBIOS is that he edited the 3D voltage indicator and "fallback" voltage instead of changing the voltage in the voltage table. His other edits show him editing the voltage table only. I think he did that because of the way AlienHacks vBIOS voltage table is laid out.

Apart from this link I mentioned earlier there's more useful info here and here. The second and third links also explains how to restore the checksum of the file.

 

So you are going to make an edit in my test bios and change all voltages to 1V and then also fix the ch3cksum? And give it to me to try? :thumbsup:

 

Haha I would have to test edit my vBIOS on my side first to see if it actually works, even then, your vBIOS table is a bit different than the normal Clevo and Dell vBIOS's floating around. Good news is there only seems to be two points in your vBIOS voltage table that needs changing. In the voltage table and your normal core/memory/voltage area.

edit: What are your default 2D clocks and voltages?

 

Nospheratu on the second lunk you gave they have a 7xxx bios editor tool. Do3snt that work with my bios?

Also what you say that my vbios table is different than the usual ones is probably correct and thats why probably the software solutions like trix or gpu tweak either cant read thevddc or cant edit it.

My 2d clocks I mentioned on a previous page. Let me check

EDIT. my 2d speeds are 300gpu 600mem and 0.825vddc

Ps. Has anyone of you tested my bios with the second of his cards? Do they work correct?

 

The tool only works for reference 7970 desktop cards.

Yeah thats possible. But I also think the emulated powerplay tables these exploits use to control voltage are largely driver dependent. It could also be that there's some protection built into your vBIOS to stop software based methods from changing you voltage. This are just theories though.

I haven't tested your vBIOS on my system as the vBIOS I'm running now is the only confirmed safe vBIOS to run on my system. Other vBIOS's give me screen anomalies and could potentially kill my screen so I haven't tried any other vBIOS after svl7's mod pack vBIOS gave me a wierd brightness screen on boot.

edit: Did you get those 2D values from GPU Tweak?

 

Yes and gpu shark I think. Why ? Are they different to yours?

 

Thanks. No they are exactly then same then. GPU Tweak reports memory as base clock x 4. So 600/4=150Mhz which is standard 2D memory clocks.

 

Exactly . Gpushark says memory 150 in 2d mode

Please please... try to edit my bios and also fix the checksum so I can try it

What you said that you found my 1.1 volts only in one place in the.vbios thats interesting..

 

No its twice actually, I edited that post. Its actually listed in your voltage table once. In other vBIOS's where theres normally a 3D voltage indicator your vBIOS is sort of "hardcoded" at 1.1v so thats the second occurance.

I checked your voltage table out now and I see there's values increasing by 0.025v all the way up to 1.100v. So I assume I have to change all values to 1.000v, from 1.025v to 1.100v.

 

Thats a great asumption ;-)
I agree! Do it then! And send me the file to test! :thumbsup:

 

Are you absolutely sure? Chances are it'll work as I know that the offsets I'm looking at are correct from the guides, but there's still a chance that it could brick your card. And that would mean blind flashing. If blind flashing doesn't work then the only other option would be to de-solder the vBIOS chip and order the other vBIOS chip from ebay with your test vBIOS loaded and solder that. That would be the easier method than building a programmer and programming the chip yourself.

 

... do it... I feel lucky...I will first flash my second card so even if it doesnt work I will easily reflash it YOU ARE OFFICIALLY our m17 r2 7970s crossfire team OFFICIAL VBIOS EDITOR!!!YOU DID IT!!!!

 

Lmao! Awesome news man

I don't know about official vBIOS editor though I only helped you out cos that high voltage was reducing the life of your cards... and you had a unique vBIOS with which no software related voltage tweaks worked. Other (non-M17x R2 7970M xfire) users can use svl7's vBIOS editor or TRIXX or ASUS GPU Tweak with the Afterburner -xcl switch

Just to make it clear... I'm not taking requests

If you need any other volts/clocks versions let me know

 

i can now check my cards max stable speed with the 1Vddc and then i will ask from you another bios with these max speeds.

Please do give me your paypal, i really want to buy you a beer or two...

THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!!

 

You're most welcome AlienHack :thumbsup:

Don't worry about buying me a beer, I'm just really glad we finally managed to resolve this. Besides... and don't judge me on this... I don't really like beer I'm more of a cider and whiskey guy.

In other news, these 13.8's are allowing me to view voltage in GPU-Z which I couldn't do before.

edit: I also suspect I didn't have to change the 1.100v value in the voltage table since I didn't change the 1.025v-1.075v values. Your 1.100v was "hardcoded" instead of the normal 3D voltage indicator and I think if the 3D voltage indicator was present then the card would look up the voltage table for the appropriate voltage for the 3D clocks.

 

so you changed the top voltage in the voltage table AND the "hardcoded" voltage?

 

Yeah. The default 3D voltage indicator is 01FF. This is the same in both Clevo and Dell vBIOS's. It's even the same in the desktop cards in one of the guides. In your stock vBIOS its explicitly "hardcoded" to 4C04 which is 1.100v.

Then I changed the 3D voltage in the voltage table as well as that's were svl7 normally mods it. This way even if the driver requests max 3D voltage from the voltage table (just assuming) it will return 1.000v instead of 1.100v.

I'm going to try the same "hardcode" method on my card now so my primary card doesn't get stuck at 0.975v on 3D.

 

interesting find...

 

Well it didn't work for me. I'm not surprised since none of the modded vBIOS's in svl7's mod pack worked. This primary card of mines seems very stubborn. It worked when I edited the 0.975v to 1.000v in the voltage table though.

I think it might be down to poor quality components as my secondary card doesn't do this with the exact same vBIOS. I mean, editing the exact same vBIOS at different offsets to get each card to reflect the same 3D volts in Windows even though they are the same model with the same build revision is just.... wrong.

I think it comes down to the method the card selects the 3D voltage from the voltage table. Is there hardware involvement... and what's different about each of my cards for them to select different voltages even though they are flashed with the exact same vBIOS. Wierd.

 

slv7s bioses dont work for me either.
I am sure that my test bios will work for your card.

 

so more of my random questions. can i just use .5mm thick thermal pads for everything?

 

Yeah I think I'll give it a try this weekend, who knows, my HDMi audio might work

You can. That's the only thickness I have at the moment so I stacked them to get the different thicknesses I needed for the different areas. I have to warn you though, cutting and stacking 0.5mm takes LOOONG

 

Oh wow, Nospheratu, really nice work. I'd add to your rep but I already added to your rep so it won't let me lol.

@Alienhack: Congrats mate, let's see some temps I warn you, if you've moved up to the 13.8 drivers, the cards run hotter (almost 9 degrees upwards in my machine). Instead of stumbling along delivering a frame here and half a frame there they now render many more complete frames, really bringing them up to their real potential. So if you only end up with
~83-84C instead of ~76C, don't be disappointed

@Pinoy_92: 5mm work just fine, but like Nospheratu said, sometimes you may have to stack them in order to get good contact all around. But since we've determined that all our machines are pretty different, you may or may not need stacking. See what works. We're waiting for you to join us in the CrossFire club

 

Tell me about it, I've been trying to add to your rep for your awesome work on the guide for over a week now and it still tells me I need to spread the rep around first

 

@ sangemaru my temps in gaming are 76C , even when bitcoin mining (the max temp you can get with a graphic card!) its just 83-84C , when i had 1.1Vddc i had 90C thermal shutdown in mining and in games too..


@nospheratu how do i give you reputation?

 

Wow, that's some really cool temps Well, I have some crap paste on, maybe will be better when I apply something more decent, then.
You can add to Nospheratu's (or anyone else's) reputation by clicking the little 6-pointed star in the bottom left of a post, right next to the report button (under the avatar).

 

That's great news AlienHack What are your ambient temps like?

Click on the little icon that looks like a star on the left of this post, directly below "Rep Power". Thanks!

edit: Forgot to add I managed to enable OverDrive in my vBIOS after checking out how svl7 enabled it in one of the Dell versions. So now I don't have to use Afterburner with the -xcl switch anymore! AlienHack, I tried looking for the offset in yours but I can't find it sangemaru I can PM you the offset and instructions or I can edit your vBIOS if you like, let me know

 

thats great news!!! you are becoming a vbios magician!!!



PS. nospheratu i have a small issue that i cant understand.
My dell card works like a charm. My engineering sample works great too But after it changes its power state once to 3D (1Vddc 750gpu 1000mem) then the vddc stucjks at 1V, the speeds drop to 300gpu 150mem but the vddc stucks ... i dont know why this hapens. its not a problem right now but i am curious.

 

Lol I don't know about that... if it wasn't for svl7's work I'd be a clueless monkey

Did it do the same thing when you were running at 1.100v? Also did you reinstall drivers recently? If you did reinstall, did you disable ULPS?

 

when stacking the thermal pads, does the thermal pads need to be exactly the same size?

 

@AlienHack: sounds like ULPS issue? Still, nothing to worry about. Is that on the slave card?

@Nospheratu: Well, sure, send me the offsets for posterity, but I'm probably the luckiest man here in term of vBios'es I've used pretty much every single one, and they all worked no problems.

@pinoy_92: not same size necessarily, but at least same interface material. Just make sure you're getting proper contact in all the right places. You don't want to imagine what kind of lazy-stretches i pulled off with my thermal pads It's a disaster down there. Might as well have applied jell-o.

@Off-topic: Am I the only one ticked off by the fact that our thread reached 770+ posts and it's not back in the most active threads list?

 

No it doesn't. It doesn't have to look pretty, as long as its contacting the component on the bottom layer and the heatsink on the top layer.

Layering is mainly for the mosfets (those little chips above the square plastic things (inductors). Look at the thermal pad image I posted earlier). Don't layer on the GPU's memory unless you install the heatsink (without thermal paste on the GPU die) and check if the heatsink is making good contact. If it isn't, then add another layer till the contact is good.