M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

Hey nospheratu
I totally forgot the hdmi yesterday, I got home quite late and had to do some annoying business. I did get to check if Fan speed and noise when using HwInfo64 fan control differs from auto fan control, which is NO
So fan control works, and I'm using a Dell vBios with it. I may also have another 7970m to get the crossfire working by the end of the week. We'll see. I'm really strapped for cash, though, and I'm playing with fire because the country is almost in pre-yugoslavian levels of economic health (which is to say, almost ready to implode). Ironically, there are next to no riots or protests even though the rest of the world is full of them for much less important reasons.

Anyway, cutting off with the off-topic, when did you say you'll get your own cards?

 

No worries man You gotta do what you gotta do to put 7970M's in your pocket

That's great news about the fan That sounds really hectic about your country ... but look on the bright side, you're buying the second 7970M locally so you're effectively helping the economy!

Seriously though, hang in there, once the refund comes through from Riri-Fifi everything should balance out but if you're cutting it a bit tight you rather wait it out. There's always cards for sale. I'm in one of those countries that protest for any reason so I know first hand of what you're talking about.

It left the US on Monday so it should be here any day now. It most likely is here already but the tracking updates are notoriously delayed here. Once it reflects on our local Post Office tracking system I'll have to wait +- a week for it to go through all the red tape so I should have it by next week, hopefully.

 

I suggest contacting your post office support line directly and giving them the tracking number. You'd be surprised how many days you can cut if you contact them directly.
I've had this happen to me for a lot of times now. Usually workers tasked at the customs / tracking / imports side are much more competent than the paper-pushers in the offices themselves, not to mention the people doing deliveries, so you can set things up for yourself to minimize wasted time if the support line is willing Even if it doesn't show in the tracking software itself

Yea, I keep wondering how South Africa is You from Johannesburg?

 

Yeah I know what you mean as a lot of people wait patiently for international mail. I have a method setup from all my previous international buying and I cant optimise it it any more unfortunately. I do call them if I find the package not reflecting on the tracking system according to my projected date but all they do is provide info, they cant speed up the process.

I'm obviously generalising but the workers at customs/tracking/imports and the offices here are equally incompetent

Its an awesome country even with all its problems, but every country has its own I suppose. I'm about 30 minutes away from Johannesburg, in our capital, Pretoria.

 

How's the jobs market and immigration policy there?
Would an english-speaking european be out of place?

 

The job market is good if you have the relevant qualifications and experience. I'm not too familiar with the immigration policies but I doubt there's anything strict about them as there hasn't been anything in the news that would indicate there's something bad about them.

Not at all. In the company I work for there's consultants from all over the world and I've yet to find one that wasn't loving this place If there's one thing about South Africans that you should know is they're generally a very friendly bunch.

I speak English only, I understand Afrikaans but I cant speak it. So there's no language barrier to break through.

 

because of the bad economic state of greece i had a lot of friends who searched for foreign work and finally left
in south africa as far as i know they are in need of educated personel. if you have degree then you can easily find work there. although the salaries are not great if you compare to usa or most of europe, but because things are cheap there the salary is very good for south africa..

Nospheratu is that info correct?

 

If you keep in contact with your greek friends that moved, it'd be great if you could ask them what they needed to do to be able to work. Googling doesn't quite offer the same breadth of information that experience does

@Nospheratu: I did some actual real testing and I figured out that the automatic fan control does in fact, NOT work. It's jut that my GPU was running so cold I never noticed...
You have to use Hwinfo to set up fan profiles, but they appear to work well independently for the CPU and GPU so it's no problem. I'd rather have HDMI and use an extra program.

 

Yes quite accurate AlienHack. Although renting/buying property and cost of living is low vehicle prices are high compared to the rest of the world. Salaries are competitive though depending on the field you're in. Its hard to generalise though as it all depends on the company you work for.

Yeah I went over flingins' thread about his 7970M install today and he mentioned on Dell cards the fan operates at max speed only. So I don't know where I picked up on fans stuck on low rpm, that's was incorrect. It makes sense that your temps are good then What are your ambient temps?

 

Around 28C if the AC is off, 20C with AC on. Idle the card stays between 27 and 34
It's cool as a cucumber. God, I want a second card...

 

My bad bro, the fans seem to stuck at 2500ish RPM, witch is actually low, not high as i said in my guide, my bad

 

Did you ever try to run a crossfire, flingin? I'm really curious about others who've tried before.

 

No i did not, the only reason is that i red so many posts about issues with XF that i decided not to go for it....never, especially when there are other obstacles, like this bloody ''only'' 240W power adapter

i rather have system stable at 30fps than to have 50 fps with lockups every 5 minutes.

For me XF is only for braking 3dmark records now

 

Well, I still plan to go for it After my metro:last light bench I'm pretty confident that a crossfire would be a great asset in games on this machine, even with the cpu stock (but if we can get it to OC, that would be even better).
If i get the Crossfire, and money allows, I'll also see about fixing the issues with 330W PSU tripping over 220W load.

 

Add me to the going for it list too

Cards are in the country!

 

Nice nice I'd have been testing the crossfire today if the buyer for my pair of GTX-285M's would have kept his word
But... maybe soon
When you install them, try to run the CPU stock while lowering the TDC limit on it to something like 45-50 Amps. I'm curious if it'll still be able to turbo and if it'll provide enough juice for the undervolted cards that way. Well, really, it depends (A LOT) on your PSU. If it's of good quality it'll be able to supply more than 240W... and if it manages to go to 260-270 and you keep the GPU's undervolted at the same time, you should be absolutely golden.

 

Yeah I plan to start at rock bottom with maybe a 0.9v undervolt with 700/1000 clocks and stock CPU settings. Stock TDP/TDC for the 920XM is 55w/47A.

If it works... and I'm hoping it will, I'll start raising the performance. I just hope my 240w can make it. I think I may have to get another though, this one is starting to make a buzzing sound recently. The 7970M's might just push it over the edge.

I read your post on T|I about the power supplies and was thinking of maybe getting an older version of Dell's 180w or 210w but then I realised the ID chip would have to be changed and it would possibly lead to the same problems that the 330W mod has.

 

Yep. Honestly, I was thinking of doing 3 things (when I have the cash to experiment):

The first is to locate a very high-quality 240W PSU Some will be better, some will be worse, but every once in a while you run into an extremely AWESOME one. If my old 150W Delta could supply over 200W, there's bound to be a 240W one that can do similar stuff.
The second is to do the 330W mod and check over the supply with my electonically-savvy friend and try to determine WHY the modded 330W PSU is unable to deliver more than 227W, even though the 240W can do more.
Lastly is to do the 2x240W mod since I have two of them just wasting space in my apartment, and use them when I'm at home and at my desk, to do OC's, push the limits etc. (fun stuff).

Regarding the rock bottom, if the RAM really can't be underclocked except through altering 2D profiles, you'll have a bit of work ahead of you, but if it were me I'd see into downvolting and downlocking the cards using the CCC Presets.

Specifically, the way you can use these to OC/OV and UC/UV is to: Enable -xcl flag once in Afterburner to obtain Overdrive in CCC.
Make a minor overclock in overdrive and save it as a preset.

Edit the preset and locate the entries for CoreVoltage, Core Clocks, Memory Clocks, for Idle / 2D as well as 3D clocks

What this will do is give you TOTAL CONTROL over anything clock and voltage-related on the card. Even if altering the 3d memclocks lower won't enable, you'll just have to edit the 2D profile with a 0.9V profile, 700/1000 clocks and do the same for the 3D one, and Voila. All you have to do is apply the preset from CCC and you have the new specs.

You can keep multiple profiles this way with very little hassle.

 

Come to think of it, we could dodge the problem of restricted 3D clocks entirely by running stealth mode with altered 2D clocks
If you feel like giving that a try make sure to use this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/463382-stealth-mode-indicator-9.html#post6589020 to figure out when you're actually running stealth and when not.

 

Yeah I was planning on doing that since I have the Clevo cards and the HDMi only works with the Clevo P270WM vBIOS afaik. Other Clevo vBIOS's may work but I don't trust them as two people have burnt their screen with those vBIOS's that were shipped with their cards.

And since the only vBIOS editor we have is for the Dell vBIOS from svl7 that isn't going to help me. So software oc is the way forward. I'll try to find the most stable frequencies and then request svl7 to help mod the vBIOS for those frequencies. Hopefully he releases the new vBIOS editor that caters for all cards soon though.

 

I'm guessing your post got sent for moderation?

I like the way you think man! I also was thinking of stealth mode but I think it lowers our CPU clocks far too much for gaming. Still, have to try it to know for sure.

 

Haha.. I just quoted your last post mentioning your post got sent for moderation... and my post got sent for moderation

I should have removed the link...

 

i cant beleive that i cant actualy find a card to buy. i have the money and i cant seem to fuind a seller whos is fast and keeps his word.

firstly the seller i had found in here is disapeared. I am talking to an ebay seller, we have talked about the order details but i am waiting 2 days now for him to tell me what vbios version the dell card he sells has. :-(

and worstly my m17 cant boot cause it has no graphic cards inside as i sold them...

hey guys, either of you, if you hapen to find a seller in your countries or online that you know that has a card that works in our m17x r2 then tell me so i can order immediately.
thanks...

 

@Alienhack: Mate, it doesn't really matter what vbios the card has You just have to do a blindflash if it blackscreens, but on a dell card the chances are low that you'd have any problems. The only vBios I know of that burns our LCD's is the Clevo HM series vBios.

I have a pair of 285M's that I was planning to sell to a countryman and he seems to have vanished... but if I were you I'd just wait for a 7970m to show up. It'd be faster than anything from Romaniastan anyway, and wasting money on such slow cards seems like a waste.

 

I tested it Throttlestop doesn't care about Stealth Mode. And the GPU was nicely using the clocks I set it to

EDIT: Check this out. 3D Clocks. No need for stealth mode.



Now the only issue i'm having is the fact that the voltage seems stubborn and refuses to change down. The voltage can be set upwards in software, but not downwards, and the 2D Clocks can't seem to be available for us to set. Hmmmm... may have to get creative.

 

sangemaru's right. Even if you find a card with enduro enabled you can use the automated blind flash I linked to previously. It's painless and even if you are having problems we're here to help.

Brilliant work! Memory is underclocked!!!

I'm assuming you got those volts through modded vBIOS? So looks like I have to use the Dell vBIOS to adjust voltage for now then, I don't really use HDMi currently so it'll be fine for now.

We don't need the 2D clock mods now that we know memory can be underclocked! Looks like the 7950M is going to be "released" after all

 

Yep. We can just use svl7's 0.95V vbios and lower the clocks till we find a sweet spot of power draw and performance.

 

Well that only has meaning on 2 7970 crossfire . If you only have one why bother lowering the core volts

 

To keep it cool and healthy if you don't feel like running OC marathons, i suppose.
But since me and Nospheratu plan to do crossfires...

 

You naughty boys....

 

Lol

You shouldn't lower your voltage though since you're running one card. You have the benefit of running that card at maximum potential. I would try to find the highest oc you can achieve on the gpu/vram and then drop that value by 50mhz each to be safe. Don't increase the voltage though if you want your cards to live a long and happy life

edit: check this thread out... seems the 330w PSU mod is shutting down at around 220W draw for a Clevo P150EM owner too! So its not just the R2 thats causing it....

 

Huehuehue. Well that's convenient
If it's like that we'll have to check out and hack the PSU's somehow. At least it's not motherboard side.

However, there's a conundrum here. The 240W PSU (with the 240W PSU ID Chip) can supply more than 240W depending on quality. The 330W PSU with the 240W PSU id chip can't supply more than 227W.

There's something going on with either the ID chip or the 330W PSU. I tend to think the blame lies with the PSU, and it most likely having protection circuitry designed around not jumping the power rating defined by the ID chip... When the 330W ID Chip is used, that's no problem at all, but with the 240W ID chip, we have to remove that protection somehow.

 

Guys I found a card and the seller is willing to flash me whatever vbios I want. So can you tell me the exact vbios number to ask?

 

Any of the one's in this pack should work. You can choose your flavour of CPU/vRAM/Volts. But I think the default vBIOS which you should use is in that pack too. sangemaru is using of those atm.

Regarding the PSU...

I agree, theres something up with that PSU... but it cant be the ID chip that's causing it since that dudes PSU hasn't been modded by the looks of it.

He wants to open it to check if its been modded but they way these PSU housings are built he would know immediately if its been opened up by just looking at the housing.

The ID chip circuit is "closed" and doesn't interact with the PSU circuitry afaik. So that leaves me with one theory which is the 330W works with the M18x cos of the method the M18x draws the power... but that theory is a bit weak since the Alienwares' Desktop PC the X51 uses the same PSU Unless there's a small circuit board that regulates the power within the M18x's and X51's chassis that allows the 330W to work.

I think our best bet is the Clevo 300W made by Delta for the Clevo X7200 since another user confirmed that its working on his P150EM without any issues that the user with the same machine and the 330W experiences. Another thing is those machines don't have this rediculous ID chip restriction to be worried about so they can effectively use any PSU.

 

Sagermaru can you tell me exactly which one you use? Is it a dell official?

 

That would work in theory, but if our machines don't detect the 240W ID chip, they'll stay locked at stealth clocks Which isn't a huge issue, as discussed before, by the way. More importantly, we have to find out whether a non-modded 330W PSU can provide more than 227W of power.

I currently use the 0.975 undervolted bios in the pack attached by Nospheratu above, but you can use any one of those vBioses. I recommend a 1.05V vbios for a single card, and overclock to your heart's content.

 

guys, i just want the specific vbios number of the normal (not undervolted ) vbios.
I cant tell the guy to click the link and choose. i have to tell him a valid dell vbios number. sagermaru what was the number you told me that finished in .17? and that worked from the begining?

 

I just had a look at the download and the default settings vBIOS is in the root of the zip. Its called "Dell7970m.ROM"

Here's the BIOS version number. Ignore the clocks, just pay attention to the BIOS Version field.

That guy is using a non modded 330W and his cuts of at around 220W so its not looking good

edit: We can also mod the ID chip into our chassis as its a closed circuit so we could use any PSU also.

 

@Alienhack: Check Nospheratu's post That's the vBios number right there.

@Nospheratu: If we could mod the ID Chip into our chassis and use the Clevo 300W PSU from x7200, that would be golden, since it doesn't seem to suffer from any of the dell 330W issues. We'd still need to undervolt the cards anyway since peak consumption for a 7970m crossfire stock exceeds 250W.
Can you elaborate on the closed circuit thing? I was under the impression that there were other circuits in the way as well. If there really aren't any, then we can just do some soldering on the mobo to link the id chip (and whatever small board and resistors it requires and use any supplies with the correct tip. Hmmmmmm. Sounds too easy

 

Yeah 300W isn't enough but maybe it can give us about 350W if its a good PSU That PSu was designed for a laptop running a desktop CPU with two MXM3.0b cards in SLi so I'm hoping its a good quality one.

Check my post here on T|I, I asked iamsolidstate about this possibility and he replied with a simple how to.

 

I just checked up on RJTECH for the price of the Clevo 300W and its a bit rediculous... its $165 + $99 shipping (express mail international to S.A. which is their cheapest option). Spending a total of $265 on a power supply is just crazy man and that's excluding the 14% tax I have to pay once it lands here

And we'd still have to mod the connection tip... so even if its faulty/DOA we wont know until we've modded the tip to test it and in the process voided the warranty.

Hope the 240W works

 

Wow, that is ridiculous.

 

Hopefully we can pick it up on ebay or the NBR marketplace for a reasonable price.

Check this review out though. They measured power draw from the wall at 410W before the PSU tripped... with 80% efficiency that would equate to +- 328W that the laptop requested before the PSU tripped.

 

Just a fairly reasonable question. How much more powerful are you expecting 2 heavily underclocked and undervolted cards to perform compared to 1 heavily overclocked and possibly overvolted card?
I think I'd stick with the latter option but thats just me. If you guys learn anything valuable about overcoming BIOS power limits etc please share with your M15x brothers

 

Very fair question and I've thought about that as well. I was actually waiting for the 7950M's to be released which had a supposedly lower TDP than the 7970M. Unfortunately they never saw the light of day. So by basically turning the 7970M into a 7950M I'm hoping not to have any problems.

Also this is the first aftermarket GPU upgrade I'm doing and I don't intend to do another for another 3 years at least. This for me means not running the cards over their designed specs. Especially when it comes to voltage. I don't think MXM cards power circuitry is designed to sustain increased voltage levels. My 5870M's ran fine for over a year with a overvolt of +0.10v before giving me black screens. The cards are stable now at stock but in my opinion this is a clear example of degradation over time. So yes a single 7970M + XM heavily overclocked might in fact give you good numbers creeping up to the underclocked 7970M xfire... but for how long?

We're lucky that the M17x R2 isn't bound by a hard limit like the M15x is. If I remember correctly the M15x is hard limited to 180W. Our machines have been proven to draw up to +- 365W with the dual PSU mod so the right single PSU out there could resolve our problems.

 

I actually pretty much expect the heavily undervolted and only slightly underclocked cards to be around 50-60% faster than a single OC'd card Even if these cards were awesome 680m's that could pull off a 33% overclock, running them in SLI even at 10% penalty each would still be faster than a single card. Same applies to the 7970m, which is very hard to take over a 25% OC. And for example, my 7970m right now with a 11% CPU core OC and a 20% memory OC only gains 8% extra 3dmark score I'll have to test it with 3dmark Firestrike Extreme though.

Still, I expect crossfire to be MUCH faster than a single card.

 

I wish you guys solve the mystery of crossfire and a single psu on the m17 r2 . Now that I bought my card I see how easy it is to just find another one when they will become cheaper and just double my performance.

The only 2 things that hold me back are:
1. the psu thing and that if I use the 2x240w mod it will be hard to transport.
2. The fact that crossfire doesnt work that good. On my 5870 cf 1/3of games didnt use the second card and the ones that used it suffered from micro shutter.

So for me the best option is to use the single 7970m right now and wait for something stronger insingle gpu to come out. (9970m anyone)

 

Congrats on your card! Glad you found one so quickly

I hope we do too So far no one has been able to run xfire with the 7970M's on the M17x R2 wihtout the dual PSU mod so it doesn't look very promising

I think crossfire working well depends on the games you play. The only game that gave me trouble with micro stutter was Farcry 3 although from what I've read it does seem to be a poorly optimised game. Usually the Catalyst Application Profiles help with optimising the use of crossfire with games and they've worked well for me so far. If not, RadeonPro came to the rescue The games I play that usually disable crossfire run at 60fps with one GPU so I dont really realise its disabled. Maybe I've been lucky but I've never experienced any problems with the crossfire setup that wasn't easily fixed.

The good news about micro stutter is that AMD has acknowledged the problem and are working on a new driver that virtually elimates it. Have a look here at a demo of it in action.

 

You know for all the talk about microstutter I've never had a problem...maybe some folks are more sensative to it then others or I've just been lucky with the games that I play...glad to hear that they are going to address it however.

 

damn... something hapened and now i found a second cars... its like god is senting me e msg to go crossfire or smthing