M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

just as an update:
i replaced the secondary fan and it started working immediately.
so i still have the not charging issue.
when thats fixed i will be able to unleash the full crossfire power.

 

Oh, you must have the wrong id chip in if it won't charge for you. You'd previously modded your PSU if i remeber correctly? You should get the 330W psu properly modded with the 240W id chip if you don't have it ordered already.

 

Hey guys

I'm running in to problems with my m17x r2 and the original video cards i have in it. I remember seeing a thread like this where everything was 100% working (HDMI + Sound, Display port, auto fan controls) but using only a single 7970m card. I'm thinking about doing that to my system, but i can't seem to find the thread. Can i get a pointer?

Thanks all!

 

Sure. Flash a Dell vBios and use hwinfo for fan control. The card has fan control anyway, but it depends on the CPU fan spinning up if left to default, and may overheat in gpu-intensive but cpu-non-intensive applications.

 

That simple, eh? Well heck, now i just need to find a card at a reasonable price! Dell has held my system for 2 months because they can't replace the 5870m cards anymore, and one of mine died.

 

Hi sangemaru,

I have modded my old m15x PSU.
But I did not mod my current PSU.
I just stop charging about 1.5 months ago.
I sent it to a repair shop, they resoldered the dc jack on the motherboard.
And it started charging again.
But 2 days later it stopped charging again.
So I think the motherboard is broken.(time for the third motherboard)
This Monday I will receive a new motherboard(if the Dutch customs will be nice)
I'll update again if I got news.

 

That means they have to replace your system entirely if it's still under warranty. That means m18x r2 or alienware 18 with either 680gtx sli, 7970m crossfire or 780m sli (flagship cards). If it's still under warranty, nag their tech support until someone agrees. If they won't, ask to speak to the manager.

 

They keep trying to push an m17x R4 or something on me. I told them the only solution is to replace the video card in my machine because i do not want to lose 16x10 aspect ratio and my beautiful RGB-LED screen.

 

Also you do not want to loose the option of crossfire.

 

OK back to CF issues.

Anybody knows why my system shut downs with everything undervolted/downlocked ?

(both 7970m cards 0.975v 800/1100 and CPU 15@all cores 50/50 TDP/TDC - Still shut downs )

People here are running CF with OC on a standard 240W Psu, and i can't even get it running for 1 minute because system powers off.

Is my PSU so bad ?

Or is it something with my Mobo ?

 

Any idea where your GPU temps go?
Is it running "forever" if you pull secondary GPU of setup?
OR try to disable crossfire for a while first?

 

You have to understand, there is a WORLD of difference between the 240W PSU's. My 240W PSU can barely handle one undervolted gpu and the overclocked CPU (in comparison to an old Targus 150W of mine that could push a hyperclocked 920XM with a heavily overclocked and overvolted 7970m without blinking. I'd modded a 240W to use with it and it shutdown when the 150W didn't), and I still get shutdowns on occasion using it. It takes a while for it to get hot and overstressed, but it happens. This is compared to Nospheratu's and Alienhack's PSU's, which could run the machine fully overclocked. And even their PSU's degraded over time and could not sustain the power drain properly if i remembr correctly.

This machine with these gpu's absolutely NEEDS the 330W if used over a long period of time. Even so, if you overclok CPU/GPU's, it will degrade eventually and in 2-3 years you'd have to get a replacement (and migrate the ID chip).

Think of it this way: The PSU you're using is probably the one that originally came with your machine. That's what... 3-4 years old? They do degrade in time. What you need is the 330W PSU mod.

(I'm assuming you've yet to mod your PSU, or if you had, you didn't mod it properly).
What PSU are you using? If it's the 330W one, how did you do the mod (EXACTLY how? Where did the chip go, what pins did you solder, did you cut the trace and link the two grounds etc.).

With the 330W properly modded PSU, I have not a care in the world.

 

Thanks for info sangemaru

I was almost sure this is my PSU who should i blame, but now i am 110% sure, for this - thanks.

I am waiting for my 330W PSU to arrive next week, and i will go ahead and do the mod.

My PSU is probably .....4 Years old, but i did not expect for those PSUs to degrade so quickly and so bad.

I am assuming my 240W PSU can't even provide 200W of power now.....

 

remember that you might get 50W out of your downclocked CPU. (your TDP)
and even though you have reduced voltage by a few % on the GPU, and downclocked it they are quite sure 150W when operating and even more.
There is your 200W alone.
Add your screen, discs, cooler, fans, memory, etc you are not far from 240, most likely still above.

Normal clock and voltage 2*GPU pluss above 50W on your CPU makes every 240 PSU go above.
Some give more than 240, some probably about 240.

 

330W adapter mod successfully completed! Well... not exactly completed, I still have to close and clean up the adapter I made, you can still see the wires, but it works just fine.

No performance improvement though, this is the 330W score, compared to my best 240W score. Its even drawing the same amount of power according to my Kill-a-watt meter (max of 285W in 3Dmark11 with both cards @ 1.0v and 950/1400 and XM @ 25x with 90TDP). The only benefit is that I can play games now with my XM at high TDP levels with total stability.

I'll put up a step by step guide when I have time, it's more work than just swapping chips but it leaves both PSU's intact with no modification on the 330W at all.

Here's the adapter in its current state...


edit: You can see how tiny the ID chip is (connected to the blue wires) compared to the PSU adapter socket. That's an original R2 socket so its the same one found in all our machines. That tiny chip was a pain in the @$$ to work with

 

where did you find that angled connector?

 

It was a full right angled PSU cable which I modded. I bought it from ebay, the seller has relisted it here.

 

Idle 30-35'C both adapters, 1 Primary adapter on full load 65-70, highest temps while in CF just before shut down ~60'C both...

Sniped one for myself !

so let me get it right, i can solder IN the ID chip without opening the AC adapter YOLO ?
Put it in, in that place just before the jack ends and an good ?

GUIDE please

YOLO CF R2 !

Thanks !

Love You !

 

Yep, pretty much I just like my PSU modded without the headache, which is why I fully modded mine, but that should work providing the connector is of good enough quality to not melt.

 

@flingin Check out my post here. That basically tells you what you need to do.

With regards to modding the right angle cable, the rubber around the ferrite choke and the connector is soft and very flexible which makes it easy to work with. I used a serrated knife and pressed against the rubber of the ferrite choke housing for a clean cut. I cut off one end and then length ways along either side of the housing making sure to leave a bit of extra cable.

You will then see the ferrite choke which you can crack with a hammer. Remove the pieces and then the cut off the plastic that's covering the cable with small wire snips. You will then see the cable which you can strip to positive, negative and the ID line. The cable has the ID line at the center, surrounded by strands of the positive wire, white insulation and then strands of the negative wire and then black insulation.

You will then need to connect those wires to a power jack. I purchased this one as its the original R2 jack. The two pins at the top are negative. The two pins at the back forming the shape of a U are positive and the pin at the back in the centre is the ID line. Solder the ID line pin to the negative pins. Then positive wire to positive pin and negative wire to negative pins.

The blue ID wire coming from the right angle connector needs to be soldered to the ID leg of the ID chip (check imsolidstates photo to be sure) and then connect the other two legs of the chip to the negative pins on the jack. Close it all up and you're done!

I also had to trim a bit of rubber at the right angle connector as its a bit of a tight fit if you don't. The rubber around the connector did get a warm at the right angle after testing but it's being blasted by the heat of the CPU fan continuously so I don't think its the connector itself that's causing it. It's still early days so I will test it thoroughly to make sure everythings working as it should.

 

can we just make a simple guide step by step please, for future generations noobs.

i feel like i do not remember my own name when i am working 15hrs / day

i would be keen to make YouTube vid, but next week i do not have a day off, which suck.

 

Yeah I will do a proper write up when I have some time and add pictures as well. There were some bits of info I couldn't find online so a guide would be useful.

edit: okay I bollocksed it all up I think I was moving the wires connected to ID chip too much when trying to find the best spot to put the chip and one of the legs broke off.... tried to fix it and in the process broke the other two off.... .

 

Just did an investment that could go boooom.
So happy to see all the guys doing the builds for the 7970M, that i bought another card again.
Got to keep up with flingin buying all those cards.
This time it will be quite a chance going for a 022 card.

Worst case scenario, i will frikking move parts from the broken card if thats what it takes to make it run.
Im not giving up on X-fire, even though i cant get the 021 cards. Gotta try.

 

Omega-ouch. That's kind of why I avoided trying to make an adapter. I have no confidence in getting the build quality right. I hope you fix it (and then build a better enclosure for it or something )

I hope you get lucky bro. I don't know what would happen if you switched the vbios chip around from the older card to the newer one. Keep in mind you could attempt to make a trade with somebody using one of the older cards in UEFI machines, such as people with M6600, m17x-r4 etc.

 

Yeah its friggin irritating me now... I was so close to start playing with the 330W power and now I dont even have anything to fall back to

I hope I can salvage the chip if not I have to waste money on a 240W PSU just for that tiny chip...

I see the error of my ways now though. I should have made a tiny pcb just for the chip so theres no stress on the legs everytime I move the wire.

 

Ouch. Yea, in retrospect that would have been a good idea.
You can get replacement chips like that easily, it's writing the PSU information to it that's the problem: MAXIM INTEGRATED PRODUCTS - DS2502+ - ADD ONLY MEMORY 1KB, 2502, TO-92-3 | eBay

 

There should be another guide on imsolidstates page i think i remember for programming the DS2502.
Then again, one probably should be a tech to do this since it involves other circuits.

I hope i get lucky about the card too.
I really really want Xfire

 

I just hope you don't have too much trouble getting a second card.
Yea, imsolidstate has a program written for writing data onto those chips It can be used to read the info from one of the PSU chips, and then write it to the other. The problem lies in the hardware for me. I assume some kind of serial connection is needed.

 

Yeah I did see the 1-wire programmer schematics but I honestly dont have the know how or time to learn how to build it at the moment.

I'm just hoping I can salvage the chip but scraping off some of the plastic to expose more of the legs and solder it to a small pcb that already had a SOT23 package on it so the connections line up.

 

Yea Nospheratu, why not.

The alternative is that its dead anyways

 

i am so sad to hear the bad news bro, i found this thing on ebay, i get a pack of 5 and i can send 1 or 2 to you if you want
5 Pcs SOT-23 6 PIN to DIP 6 PIN Adapter PCB SMD Convert SOT23 6PIN to DIP 6PIN | eBay

 

Yippee ki-yay mother$@*($#!!! Seems this chip seems doesn't know what the meaning of dead is!

Its back in action, I just need to be careful with it now so I don't go and really screw myself over. I managed to hijack a bit of PCB that had a SOT23 package chip from a spare mouse and soldered the chip to it. With the amount of heat I've applied, barely any legs and my terrible soldering skills its amazing that its still working!

Thanks for the offer flingin, its really appreciated but I'll manage with the current PCB, its not pretty but it gets the job done You have the right idea there though :thumbsup:

 

Thats great news!! these small moher#@@#ers can withstand punishment!! So after you finish up we will need a step by step pictured guide.


Concerning the 7070m's on the ned with the new bioses... thats a very sad new to hear. that we cant find replacements for our cards if we hapen to brick one. I asked in the past but i cant remember the answer. What hapens if you flash on these uefi cards an old non uefi bios from our cards?? dont they work/?

 

I'll try my best to provide a easy to follow step by step guide

sangemaru knows more about this but from what I understand if you flash one of the UEFI cards with an older non UEFI vBIOS the card is bricked. It seems they changed something in the hardware that doesn't play nice with older vBIOS's. Check the first post, I remember reading sangemaru discussing it there as well.

 

i replaced the motherboard (on motherboard number 3 now)
everything was working, ran a quick test with 3dmark kombuster etc.
then i decided to play some bo2.
then i had 2 seconds of gameplay and then my screen went completely black and the fan started blow max.
tried alt+tab, cntrl+alt+del but it wont work.
i powered the machine down using the power button.
it took a while for me to allow it to let it be turned on again.
now i get flashing scroll and caps leds.
which turns out is an gpu related issue.
anyone got a clue what to do?
after all the work (let alone money) im ready to toss this thing out the window.

update:
i let the machine cool down for a good 15 minutes and it boots up normal again.
i think i just pushed it too far.
gonna try enabling some v-sync settings just to compromise

 

Don't you even dare BrO !

 

there is no such thing like i pushed it too far in electronics. if it works it works, and if chip temps are normal then it should work.

Monitor the gpu temps closely. maybe while installing it and the new mobo something went wrong.

 

Glad you got it working again NiveQ!

Say whaaaaaaaat?!?!?!?

 

holy batman !

challange accepted %$#

 

I think the better score is mostly due to the new 13.11 beta's, they provide a nice boost in performance.The 330W is definitely playing a role though as I saw power consumption go up to 295W. I think a 5% OC in BIOS will net better physics scores as well but my crappy RAM cant handle it.

@NiveQ AlienHack provided some solid advice there. Use HWinfo to check temps across all sensors. 15 minutes cool down time could mean some component is not getting proper cooling it needs.

Don't give up, a new mobo install is a major undertaking and leaves a lot of possibilities for overlooking certain things. Especially since you've done motherboard replacements 3 times now and might be be taking the simplest things for granted.

 

First of all, if the card comes with the uncompatible vbios, you wouldn't be able to flash it in the R2, because you wouldn't be able to boot it up at all. The system will refuse to post with a UEFI card, either master or slave, so that's not an issue. It's downflashing the card in a UEFI-compatible machine that will brick it.
If the card refuses to post, send it back, there's nothing that can be done for it.

Not all new cards are like this. There's some that play nice and 8970m's are compatible for example, like Aristothle proved.

Are you sure you're cooling the cards properly? For example, take my vRAM chips. It took me months to figure out that they weren't getting cooled because I had to look between heatsink fins to see the spaces. I'd say make sure you're getting proper cooling on ALL the important card parts. It sounds to me like it's getting pushed too much (not core temps necessarily).

HOLY SITHSPIT.

There was a new beta driver out? I had no idea. I'm still on 13.10 beta1.

Oh, and brother Trome:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...-used-amd-7970m-gpus-x2-clevo-dell-vbios.html Might be compatible card. Have to ask brother reborn.

 

Here's a direct link to the driver, AMD Catalyst 13.11 Mobility Beta v1

 

with what multies is your cpu running?
and what score did you have with the same oces and the 13.8 beta 2?

mean i got max 10.074 with gpu 945 mem 1150 and 26x multies (and one psu) , how much would i gain in score?

 

Last driver I was running was the 13.10 beta1 and I posted my score on this post. It was 10393P.

I honestly didn't expect such a massive jump but from what I've read the new driver seems to give users anywhere from 2-7% performance increase in 3Dmark11. I haven't tested any games yet as that's where it really matters but I've also read there's improvements in Crysis 3 as well.

I was running the same config as previously 25x on the XM, 950/1400 on the GPU's with 1.0v. I also updated FutureMarks Sysinfo utility as it was nagging me all the time, I'm not sure if that affected the score although its highly unlikely that it did. I think AMD sprinkled a little magic on this driver release

EDIT: Finally got the PSU to draw over 300W, max power draw was 325W on the first test. M17x R2 7970M GHZ Edition Crossfire

 

thanks for anyone who replied to my past posts,

I spent this day trying to identify and solve the issue my beloved machine is having.
i repasted and rechecked every step of my motherboard swap.
this solved the flashing leds error ...which occured a lot yesterday.

now the system will just hang on the windows logo during boot.
and this probably has something to do with the Ethernet controller.
because sometimes it boots up fine with wireless etc.
and the other time the hardware has an issue and barely boots up.
tried installing various m17x drivers and no dice.

whilst im typing this im reinstalling the amd drivers. (13.11b)
and it just bluescreened after the installation was finished.

now im installing 13.8b2

the person who might have a clue as what is going on ill buy a pack of beer.

 

Have you tried testing each card solo in the main slot to see if it boots alright? I used to get similar behavior when I used an incompatible card from Riri-Fifi. I personally think the card was shot, but Riri-Fifi claimed it worked for him after. Replaced it with a compatible card and fixed my issues.

 

thank you,

that will be my next step.
purchased the secondary card of ebay from upgrademonkey.
ive never had issues with anything from them yet.

 

Still worth trying. Even if the card is dead, upgrademonkey are reliable for replacements.

 

i had an issue once when a card worked fine as main card but returned errors when on second slot...
so check them seperately or swap them


Also, sfter upgrading today to the new drivers the ULPS was reenabled (i didnt know) and i started having BSOD when alttabing or changing res in games.

I am lucky cause i realised it, disabled it and nw again i am rock stable. So i concure that ULPS desabling is a must fr crossfire...

PS. Nospheratu these GHZ edition 7970m's rock!!! :thumbsup:

 

New drivers give me 13089 GPU score at stock undervolted settings compared to 11500 At one point I'll start overclocking too and see what happens, heh. Too sick to care right now, though.