M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

With the clevo cards I and others could not get the v1.1 to work on our system. Only the v1.2. Which is extremely hard to find now. Kind of wish I went dell but I wanted fan control

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I have v1.1 working fine here.
Want to match it up with v1.2 in xfire.

 

Hmmm. My first card was a v1.2 I got a second that was v1.1 and I couldn't get them to boot together so eurocom exchanged it for a v1.2 and it booted right up so I didn't have luck with running the two.

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I bought mine here: FOR Dell Alienware M17X M18X AMD HD 7970M HD7970M 2GB GDDR5 Video Card 09XVK3 | eBay

1 left, but the seller may have more. The two that I got worked fine in my R2. YMMV.

Well, turns out it was not the cable, but perhaps one of the CFX slots themselves on one or both cards, because I cannot get it to work with the new cable either. =( I've tried 5 or 6 times now and it just won't show the cards as properly linked. I'm about to give up and keep the second card as an eventual replacement for the first one. Sucks, but either way, 1 7970M is still an upgrade to 2 5870Ms!

 

your able to load into windows with both cards in?

 

Yeah, everything runs fine, I see both cards in HWinfo / GPU-Z, but the cable either isn't seated properly or one/both of the cards are damaged in such a way that CFX just won't work.

I'm gonna try a fresh install of the drivers and see if that changes anything, although I doubt it.

Edit: Of course, that didn't do anything. Figured it wouldn't but had to try anyway.

 

Just to be sure nothing is messing with you.
Have you read out the two different VBIOS versions?
Have you tried flashing them with another VBIOS?

 

I think Trome71's advice might be just what needs to happen. If I remember correctly the 022 vBIOS's that do work on our R2's are the hybrid versions which could be causing the CrossFire issues (as they're built to work as a standalone card as well as with an iGPU). So downflashing to a non hybrid vBIOS could resolve the CrossFire communication issue (someone correct me if I'm wrong, afaik if 022 boots on our machines it can be downflashed safely).

@meisenst, Just to be sure, are you installing the cable after you put the heatsink on? It would be very difficult or almost impossible to do that so I just thought I'd check. The cable needs to be connected before installing the heatsink on the second card. The cable will bend slightly when you're installing the heatsink but you can adjust the heatsink slightly whilst installing it so that theres a larger space between the heatsink fins and the GPU's PCB. It will proabably be 2mm or less to play with but that's what I did to reduce stress on the cable.

On another note, I've been thinking about the BSOD's I've been receiving on 3Dmark and it made me investigate a bit more into the default voltage our cards use and how it is determined according to the ASIC of the card. The ASIC value is basically a measurement of the quality of the GPU's silicon and the amount of voltage leakage there is. The default 3D voltage of the card is selected depending on the quality of the ASIC. That's why we have so many voltages listed in our voltage table. The default voltage is variable.

That's the reason one of my card's worked at 0.975V and the other at 1.000v even though they both used the exact same default vBIOS version. Currently I'm running both card's at 0.975V to reduce heat and draw less power at stock clocks. If I'm understanding this whole voltage selection according to ASIC properly it means one of my cards that defaulted to 1.000V is only able to run stock clocks at that voltage stably. So when I am undervolting it to 0.975V, it may be game stable but 3Dmark's intense Firestrike and Sky Diver benches might be highlighting its inability to perform at that reduced voltage.

I've subsequently flashed both card's to 1.000V and the BSOD's have stopped in 3Dmark for now. I'm still a bit skeptical but from my personal experiences the BSOD's appear random and could be unrelated to the voltage. I just thought I'd share my recent "eureka" moment with the ASIC and voltage selection info so you guys can think about it when troubleshooting

edit: I'm still getting BSOD's on 3Dmark. so the thery above is nonsense. It might be helping a very small fraction but I think it comes down to a driver issue with 3Dmark from my testing.

 

Let's hope new AMD card lineup, first, not gonna be a re brand, second, we will not have any issues with 1.1/1.2 versions as well as with the bloody vbios.

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I hear you flingin.
Hope the AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4GB is what its said to be and still operate in the R2 (and can run Xfire)

 

And will use my modded 3 - heat pipe GPU heatsink

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I see that i get more and more advantage on the heatspring cooling for GPU
if more powerful GPU's arrive i will add cooling, and power
But it was said to be more powerfull at same power, AND be able to go higher power. (where we might get power issues)

 

I removed the heatsink to install the cable, yep. I was very careful to mind the cable when I replaced the heatsink and it appears to be all good.

I was under the impression from sangemaru's original post that we shouldn't be trying to downflash 022 cards, but I might have misread. Was that only for blind flashing?

 

Just checked to be absolutely sure and they are both the same: 015.022.000.001.000000 (113-C42904A1-119). I flashed both of these cards with svl7's undervolted (0.975V) vbios at the beginning of this process (once I was sure that they were working in the system). I can try another vbios, but I want to make sure that I'm not doing something that will brick these cards first. What else would I want to use other than svl7's vbios for these?

 

Hey, that's an interesting piece of info to check into when overvolting.

In all honesty, if you already have the cards flashed to svl7's vbios and they still don't work, the only thing I might advise you to try from here is experiement with some of the early prototype vbioses, see if any of them can wake up the non-functioning card.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/private.php?do=newpm&u=459009

Now, the problem is that this may brick your card. And if it does, even if you order a replacement vbios chip to fix it, you'd still need another maching to confirm, in case it's simply an incompatible card, and not a bricked one.

 

I think we've reached the performance limit with the 7970M CrossFire and 920XM combo on our machines. I dont think we will see much improvement using current API technology and newer more powerful GPU's. Possibly when DirectX 12 releases it might help us gain more fps as its a low level API and will reduce the demand from our XM's.

Mantle is AMD exclusive atm and if DirectX12 is bringing low level to both GPU camps it will die a quick death. The 920XM is still competitive atm but with newer CPU's being more efficient per clock cycle and devs taking advantage of that we might be left in the cold with regards to running high/ultra game settings even with a low level API and our XM's clocked to >= 3.5ghz on all cores.

 

The second card is "working" in that it is properly detected, everything looks fine under HWiNFO / GPU-Z, drivers initialize properly, etc. The only issue is the CFX. Obviously I don't have many ways of testing the second card without CFX on, so I don't know what it's going to do if I stress it, but I suppose I could throw an artificial workload at it (i.e. BOINC) and see if it behaves.

I could remove both heatsinks and swap the cards, but I'm thinking that won't do anything of value anyway.

The other problem here is that I don't know which of the cards is non-functioning in terms of CFX. It could be either, or it could be both. The amount of reflashing I might have to do to test this bothers me somewhat in that I don't really have a way out if I brick them both.

 

Dude, swap the cards. You need to know if the secondary card is capable of being loaded on its own. If it does, you may be looking at a need for yet another crossfire cable. I can't stress how immensely fragile they are, even though you may not think you damaged them in any way. If the card doesn't load, it might be defective.

Be advised that heatsink seating and cooling, on the memory, inductors and vrm's as well as the core, is very important on these cards. I don't know about others in particular, but my 7970m cards have always been sensitive to having every little chip properly cooled, with not too much force applied, etc.

I am honestly talking an average of about 10 seatings on my cards (there were a few that worked outright, but those are canceled out by those cards that took 3 days of work to start working themselves).

 

Think i remember someone in here needing a specific card as primary.

 

I think thats Alienhack, his ES card has to be primary.

 

Well, heck. I owe each of you guys a beer. Switched the cards and CFX is working. I don't know if it was the card switch or I just got lucky with the cable this time, but either way... cheers! =D

 

Think you should not.
Im from Bergen Norway.

 

The Internet is a vast place. And beer is available everywhere! ;-)

 

Did you see the link?
Worlds second most expensive place after Tripoli Libya.

Then again, it is ALWAYS nice going on holiday abroad.
Everything is an improvement.

Fantastic that your cards work now btw.

Good luck with them.

 

Can I ask how many times you have tried 3dmark since changing voltages? The reason I ask is I get BSOD about 60% of the time I run it the other 40% I get through it. I ran stock volts at first then lowered them for temp reasons and would get BSOD for both. Should make a diffrence but you have Clevo cards like me right?

 

I am not Noshperatu, but i run the 975 24/7 atm.
Can run any benchmark all the way with that.

Seems like the problem i had with not enough power with the 240W.

What VBIOS u run btw? Clevo or dell?

 

Im running the modded clevo VBOIS.

Im always wondering about my power out of my PSU. I am running a modded 330w but Ive never been able to test what its actually pulling . If it was power wouldnt it BSOD on every run of 3dmark?

 

It's not the PSU, it's the voltages. Keep some slightly higher volts, myself I also had a card that didn't like being under 1V, no matter the clocks. It would work, but it would bsod sometimes, so I just kept them at 1V.
Rather have them stable than not.

 

I had the same luck at stock voltage too. Would not get through 3dmark at least half the time. No problem in games and 3dmark11

 

well i gave up. i bought the right card wrong vbios on it, it just seems like such a hassle to have 2 7970s. when theres nothing wrong with the fps in the games i play already. so if anyone is interested its for sale
http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...-2gb-gddr5-m15x-m17x-m18x-dell-p-n-9xvk3.html

 

Sorry about your troubles bclarkie. But yea, single 7970m is still plenty fast.w

 

Well, it is a shame that this did not worked for you bro. CF 7970m in R2 was always something that would require a lot of dedication from the user, not to mention a "Thick Like a Brick" wallet.

 

Apparently not enough times... I'm still getting BSOD's on 3Dmark. It seems less than before but I've experienced it again so that whole ASIC voltage theory goes out the window. I'm going to leave the card's at 1.000V though. Yeah, I have CLEVO cards as well. It's only on 3Dmark Firestrike/Skydiver so it most likely is a driver issue as from my previous troubleshooting I remember I stopped getting the BSOD's with an older Catalyst. Luckily none of my games are exhibiting the problem.

Edit: @Trome71, your question on Windows 8 got me tinkering again and I realised I forgot to mention that the brightness controls dont work with the current Catalysts. The workaround is fairly simple though. You just have to add another entry to your post Catalyst registry edit list The key to search for is called "KMD_EnableBrightnessInterface2" and you need to change the value to 0. It may appear multiple times depending on the number of driver installs, same like the "enableULPS" key.

 

Makes me feel better knowing it's not just my cards.

 

Yeah we're in the same boat Sorry for misleading you for a bit there

 

No worries!

 

Hi guys, didn't seem long ago!:hi2:
I have a question. Dell 7970m the card will work in Clevo P170HM with clevo vbios. Somebody knows about it.
I asked a thread on clevo and to me answered something type - "You never get the correct job of Dell 7970m in clevo machine", more shortly bla bla bla.
In Alienware machine we also not pluchay the correct work of some Dell 7970M functions, but cards work! ! !

 

I don't think its likely that it will work, even with a CLEVO vBIOS. Prema who is a well renowned BIOS modder on T|I said the below...

" Unlike NVIDIA, Dell AMD cards generally don't work on Clevos. The reason being the thermal sensor values given to the EC are misinterpreted and causing the system to do a thermal emergency shutdown. "

 

Thank you, Nospheratu

 

@nitsun69 Have you tried playing Watchdogs with CrossFire? I have a BSOD on startup. Disable CrossFire and no BSOD. Where it gets interesting is If I delete the gamerprofile.xml file which contains the games settings including graphics the game boots fine and I can set the graphics to my liking and play. As soon as I exit the game and try opening it up again the BSOD occurs. Basically if the gamerprofile.xml file is there on startup I get a BSOD.

This is using the 14.7 beta Cats. If I drop back to 13.1 theres no BSOD at all. The game runs horribly but thats to be expected with such an old driver. With 13.1 theres no BSOD in 3Dmark either.

 

No I haven't tried watchdogs yet. Been spending all my time playing skyrim and. Last time was on ps3 so I've been enjoying max pc settings. Do you know where I can find the 13.1 drivers I'm curious if I'll get through 3dmark with them.

 

i can check it out for you as i have the game downloaded in my hdd

EDIT

so I have tested it. Ran fine for the first time in full screen until i changed resolution. BSOD. Now i can't set it to full screen even after deleting XML file, neither manual mod of XML file helps. ?

Another EDIT

Found solution here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWIzQ7UMc_Y

And another EDIT

I am total idiot, i am running on 13.11 ( terrible FPS in CF~ 20 on Ultra and CF off ~35FPS )

EDIT

Also getting BSOD after installing 14.6 beta, not playing another game because AMD fails to deliver !

 

You can find it here. It's a bit pointless really since its not optimised for games but it should get you through 3Dmark fine

Thanks @flingin Exact same symptoms, BSOD on change res as well. I did a helluva amount of different driver installs yesterday and found that 13.12 is the last driver that allows me to go into the game but even then I cant change res without getting a BSOD. From 14.1 to 14.7 it BSOD's on launch just before the Ubisoft intro video plays. If I turn CrossFire off my performance in Watchdogs is the same as yours.

I dont think the Dell user's are experiencing this though.

 

One thing worries me all the time. We have sent humans onto the moon, built a nuclear reactor, aeroplanes, radars, good know what else we did but we can't do a proper £! (%! driver

 

Lol The only driver I've tried that works withour BSODs is 13.1 .... so thats a LOT of driver releases between then and now. I dont think they even realise this problem exists. Its not as widespread and our configs arent exactly supported/documented.

I think this whole thing boils down to the same problem I experienced when I first installed the cards. The alt-tab BSOD. The problem seems to occur when the cards are changing modes/resolutions, 2D-3D and between different resolutions.

 

You guys running on win8?

Are you overclocked while this BSOD?

Still 330W?

 

I'm officially on Windows 8.1 now. Got tired of uninstalling games for space when I was dual booting win7 / Win8. There's a few workarounds that need to be done on our machines such as editing a registry value for brightness controls to work with the new Catalysts. Funny enough 13.1 doesnt need this reg edit.

Also we need to install the driver for the Dell 380 Bluetooth adapter, even though we have the 370. We also need Windows 8 drivers for the infrared remote device, you know the one that says "Smart your NB" on install

Cards are running stock apart from a 0.05V undervolt. The undervolt isnt the cause of the BSOD's. I've done numerous tests and its definitely a change in the drivers that caused this. All drivers after 13.1 have this issue.... every single one.

Yeah, 330W is still going strong. Cards are performing well. The one thing thats really got me irritated is the amount of bugs in these newer games. Theres so many of these optimization threads all over the net to get over these bug ridden games. Who ever heard of patches back in the day. Now its like every game has 3 patches some even released on launch day So I have to waste time trying to find workarounds and optimizations for the terrible performance instead of playing the game. Wondering whether my config is causing it or the actual game is another headache.

I can play games with 14.7 RC3, which I'm using now. I just cant change resolution in game with CrossFire enabled. At the moment I'm playing Thief.

Anyhoo, I've reported the bugs to AMD, whether anything will be done about it considering we're running an unsupported configuration is anybody's guess. Maybe we'll get lucky...

 

Thx for info. Going 8.1 as we speak, currently installing 14.7 rc3, and most other is installed.
No dual boot option.

Ill read more of what you write here to be sure i get everything working.

 

Anything fancy for making the 14.7 to detect the graphics cards?
For me, progress stops while searching for hardware early in the install.

 

Nope nothing that I can recall. Afaik theres no separate mobile version of the drivers either so its supposed pick up the cards. What are the cards detected as under device manager?

Here's some of the drivers I've used. Cant find the infrared device driver atm.

WiFi card (Intel 6300)

Dell 370 Bluetooth