M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

Hmmm after searching and rebooting a couple of times, all of a sudden it started taking the drivers, so no worries.

Gots to figure out my other missing drivers.

 

Awesome Normally the cards should say "Microsoft basic display adapter" or something along those lines when the AMD drivers are not installed.

Remember to change all occurances of the "KMD_EnableBrightnessInterface2" key in the registry to 0 if you have a problem with the brightness controls. I'll try to get a link to the CIR infrared driver when I get home.

 

thx a lot.

What drivers u use on the wired internet (broadcom)

It finds the card and tells everything ok in controlpanel, but cant get wired connection on the net.

 

I left the default windows driver for it. Same with the chipset drivers as I noticed the default versions were newer than Dells.

 

Sorry I overlooked the part where you said it LAN driver installation looks normal but doesnt work. I'm on WiFi so I didnt really test the LAN connection yet. Here's the ITE Tech Consumer Infrared (CIR) for Windows 8.1

Hows the Windows 8 experience? I'm starting to get used to it but I miss the proper start menu. I heard classic shell is a nice free alternative although I'm managing with ObjectDock.

edit: My LAN connection is detected as "Intel 82577LC Gigabit Network Connection", does yours say Broadcom? It should be the same as its part of the mobo I think. If it is try this.

 

I found the wired network error about 1 hour ago.
The port in my router that was available for my computer was actually bad.

Had to get another router and now the wired network is ok.

Ill install the IR driver and see how many other errors i have.

Thx a lot so far.
Win8, not sure what i feel yet.

 

I wanted to get AW18 some time ago. And sell my R2. My girl friend, and she is a typical woman not knowing and talking about pc's a lot.....In fact not talking about it at all, told me that day, out of nowhere, " do not sell this laptop, it has such a beautiful screen and colors "..... I was like What the £@÷# ?!

I think i have to find my self a bigger coffin cuz I will be probably burried with it ( the laptop )

Adding to the discussion now,

So far I've been hating Windows 8 Series

 

Meh... windows 8.1 is ok-ish for me if i ignore the whole windows store section of it.
How y'all doing?

 

Hey guys

The thought did cross my mind about changing to a later revision model and the only reason would be for the CPU... then I started thinking how in the world can I get a newer CPU in this machine I've spent too much time and money on this machine to give it up now. And if I did change the laptop I would go for something lighter and smaller so the M18 is totally out of the picture. That said... my main crutch is design and personally I feel this laptop is still one of the best designs Dell has made so far. If theres another design that catches my eye, I'll make it work

Windows 9 is around the corner and I hope we can make the transition without too much drama, compatibility wise. I have a feeling that its going to be the next good OS as per Microsofts good/bad/good/bad OS cycle.

Also AMD needs a proper kick up the backside for shoddy driver work. Even if we take out this custom R2 config out of the equation theres far too many people complaining about problems thats persistant through multiple revisions of the drivers

 

Now after doing WIN8 for a day or so, im still not sure what to think.
All of a sudden I experience shutdown. Not even BSOD.

Going to blow some dust of older drivers to see if it helps.

Btw when reading about drivers, seems as if NVIDIA has a lot of issues too on the driverside and also on the stock VBIOS.
Might be a bit hitting limits on the newer GPU's making it harder and harder to make proper drivers and taking advantage of all the speed?


EDIT:
Seems the reason is higher temperatures or load with win8.1.
Donno why.
Slowed my GPU's down to 825/1175 and slowed my CPU down to 25 from 26.
Still my primary GPU is at 79 deg after playing a bit.
(9deg more than the heatspring one btw) Perhaps a repaste soon.

 

Try an older version of cats, I read the 14.7's cause gpu's to run warmer.

My temps are around 75c on load so it doesn't seem to affect my cards.

 

Ill just leave it with slightly underclocked GPU's for now.

I know I need to eventually do the "enter HeatSpring" act on my GPU1.

It has been pasted with same paste for nearly a year now and temps start drifting from the GPU2 already changed in january.

 

The only weird thing for me with the heatspring is when I hold my laptop vertical, temps deteriorate heavily, but if I angle it back straight, temps are their normal cool self.
Weird, but not relevant enough to want to ever switch from heatspring )

 

As we discovered earlier, even 0.1mm difference can cause your temps to worsen, in this case, flipping a laptop do flex the chassis and your cpu heatsink

Normal

 

Guys. how are you? i am back after several months of absence
what did i lose??

also , any news on the new r9 m290x cards from ati? is this card a rebranded 8970m which is in turn a rebranded 7970m?
ati has new technology in desktop gpus for 1 year now, why arent they making new mobile cards??

 

Yo Alien, you did not lost much, if anything.

After 7970m cards AMD started to do re brands for a whole year.

Only nvidia done some real upgrades like 880m but R2 users can not use it because...... SLI does not work so we are stuck with AMD.

Also our Xm CPUs start to show their age....slowly

To be honest the thread is pretty much dead

I bought a bike, yamaha yzf r125, CBT tomorrow and I will put some money into this hobby now

 

thats whats i've been doing. i bought the mercedes slk if you remember and started throwing some money towards it.



bought bodykits etc...

BUT
in the same time i received my oculus rift DK2 wich is great with Elite Dangerous... and also Star citizen Arena commander 0.9 was released wich has great eye candy!!

so i wanted to know if my alienware could keep up with these...

 

Congrats on the vehicles guys

This is a coincedence as I also took delivery of a new vehicle last month, a Scirocco R. I'm not putting much money into it though, the performance is sufficient for now. Here she is, her name is Aoewyn



Our XM's are showing their age slowly but its hard to tell with the buggy drivers AMD is putting out. Most of the issues I'm experiencing could be sorted out with a good CrossFire driver... i think.

There was the 14.8 "WHQL" that was meant for their APU's and more recently the leaked 14.X meant for the new Radeon R9 285. Both haven't resolved my BSOD's or the fact that I have to edit the registry to get brightness working on Windows 8.1. I realise these drivers arent really meant to be used for configs other than those products its associated with but I keep hoping at least one of the bugs is resolved with a newer driver version.

 

Oh, nice rides fellas I bet I get first prize though.
Everything is just falling apart on mine, speedometer died, transmission lost a step, gas evacuation is cranky, radiator leaks, alarm malfunctioned, front window got cracked, side wing was rusty and now has a hole in it, can't be locked anymore, losing oil, A/C died... and about 20 other issues.
gimped instead of pimped.

 

Hey there everyone, I know this thread is kind of dead, but my little card that could (a single HD4870m that handled a lot of games surprisingly well) finally gave up the ghost in my M17xR2 a couple of weeks ago after 4 years of loyal service, and I decided this was a good time to upgrade. Unfortunately getting hold of brand new 7970ms in England is a bit difficult, and the only ones I seem able to find are at 015.022, if I flash these with the modified 015.022 vbios by svl7 will these work? If not how about using the 8970ms (as brand new versions of these are roughly the same cost as refurbed 7970s).

 

I have bought an dell .022 one and it work like a charm, flashed the slv7 0.975 volt without any problem ... It's pretty much lottery i think.

 

Yea, it's a complete lottery.
The good news is that in the last few months, a great deal of the 022 vbios cards I got didn't have any problems with flashing to svl bios or working in non-UEFI machines.
Still, if you don't plan to use 2 cards i'd just advise using a single 680m.

 

Yesterday i saw A18 on outlet almost Maxed out, 4940mx, 16gb ram, 880m sli, 2tb hdd, blue ray etc, 1 600 GBP Total, almost started to think i could snipe it and then I realized.....I have not played a game for longer than 15 minutes for like ....5 months now....

I will be selling my dual 7970m's in about 6 months, and the current problems with obtaining nicely paired cards like this for R2 will hike the price a bit

Need funds for next year bike....Yamaha R1 or Kawasaki z1000

 

That low amount of gaming is part of the reason why i switched to an ultraportable. I actually do move around a lot, and i gotta say, i'm packing heat even with this little one.
Still tempted in a GS60 with 970m when it comes out, but we'll see.

 

Thanks for the replies! Would it be worth going any higher, say up to an 880m?

 

Not just now I would say

 

and would it be worth (assuming I can source a heatsink) doubling up on 680s?

 

Not in an m17x-R2. Last SLI setup that works is 580M's.
If you want to use an nvidia card, so far it's only 680m, and only single-card.

 

ok, thanks for the advice!

 

well although i use my alienare m17x R2 only for watching movies on TV , I DO lately try Star Citizen to see how it runs, and elite dangerous.
the good news is that Elite flies by with 120+ fps and Star Citizen Arena Commander is 50-70fps with high graphics, even in Very high the fps are at 55-60 BUT i get slowdowns when i move (fps drops -dives from 60 to 5 and then 60 again) every few seconds, its probably the huge textures in very high details, maybe our 7970s gpu mem isnt enought. i have an ssd so its probably no hdd issue.
When i lower to high detail everything is butter smooth at 60fps

So i can play my second SC account on the alien just great!! :thumbsup: i dont see may laptops in RSI forums , even new ones , managing to do this

 

Star citizen is not yet optimized, the slowdowns during navigation are something i've read about for a long time now.

 

Hi Guys

i want to ask, whats the record for 7970m cross in m17 r2 in Fire Strike ?

Because from what i saw till now 7970m cross gets only about 8k in m17 r2, while 7970m cross in m18 gets about 11k

is that right? If its then its because of throttling? There`s no m17 r2 with 7970m cross to get 11k in fire strike too?

Thx

 

I have scores posted in the OP.
The graphics scores on the GPU in Firestrike range from around 9500 to 11k+.
I have a feeling you're asking why the overall scores are different and that's easy -> you can't compare any amount of overclocked 920xm/940xm with the improvements of sandy/ivy bridge and their impact on the score.

 

Ok thx, that means the overall-score on m17 r2 will be about 8k while the graphics score depends on throttling/Overclocking and range about 9.5k to 11k?

ok i thought what would be the best option for me. I thought maybe a 970m would be nice but now i see that 7970m crossfire is even stronger than a 980m.
970m gets 7600, 980m gets 9700 in Firestrike, 7970m cross about 11k.

7970m cross costs about 600-700 Euro its the price range from 1 970m.

So from what i see 7970m crossfire -best bang pro buck^^

 

It's not that simple.
For one the maxwell cards will be single-GPU, in slimmer, more convenient machines, running at massively lowered levels of power consumption and backed up by modern CPU's.
The m17x R2 is many many generations behind now, and only semi-viable due to mods like our Xfire mod, which doesn't come without complications and drawbacks, and I heavily advise you read the entire first post just to get an idea of what kind of challenge awaits.
That being said, if you own the machine and don't exactly feel like selling it and hoping to get the cash to buy the new stuff, but still want to make it shine (especially if you have the version with a good screen, have a strong CPU, use a SSD already, etc.) then yes, you could say that the 7970m's may still be the best bang for the buck.
There was a lot of sweat, time and stress involved for those of us who got the full working mod, and i'm sure there were plenty who would have liked to make it happen but ended up giving up because of the huge number of issues that had to be overcome.
And who knows, 980m may work in the R2

Oh, btw, the 7970m's would cost you a lot cheaper than 600-700 eur for a a pair shipped

 

wow you have a 7970m crossfire to sell?
Im very interested in this. How much would i pay for 7970m cross* x-bracket+shippment to Germany?

Are these already flashed cards, so that i can just plug and play in my m17 r2?

 

So, here is the whole problem.

At the time when 7970m CF was still a fresh setup and cards were available almost everywhere in many versions (1.1 1.2 etc ) you could get the right version/brand/vbios combination easy. Now, you have to search, and if you do not, you will end up or may end up with two cards that will be a pain in the @$$ to get to work, or not at all forcing returns on your cost etc.

Now, another thing is extra fan, radiator CF cable, psu mod , bla bla bla .......

If i would be you, I would get 980m

I would get one from eurocom and test it in R2 but there is no need for me as i already own 7970m CF.

Anyways, single 980m should work so I would give it a go and if any problems arise you can always scream for help here

And if I am not mistaken, i still hold a R2 record in Firestrike ......or somebody correct me ?

 

Best machine ever made... AW should get their s*** together and instead of a desktop 980 + ULV processor, they should reincarnate this machine, I want 17" SLI laptop that is AW, not Aorus!

 

Here I give you the new M17xr2 v2:thumbsup:

:hi2:

 

Hey flingin did you see this?
From recollection did you not have issues with this card being incompatible with our r2?

 

from what I've read so far, 13.11 is still the most used driver for the 7970m? this is for being able to play games like bioshock infinite with acceptable fps right?
I am currently using Catalyst 14.2 but i'm only getting 15-30 fps on my r2. temps are only around 65C-75C so I don't think the gpu's are the problem here.
although I only have an 820qm processor, I don't think this would cause a drop of fps on games like this one.

appreciate if you could help me out guys. thanks in advance.

 

840QM is a pretty heavy bottleneck even for one 7970m.
There's a reason all of us went for overclocked extremes.
Also, what PSU are you using and what detail settings in game?

 

I do not know if you missed it or not but there were threads/quotes about 8970m in R2 already and is does work ok .....

 

With a single 8970m working I assume crossfire would work just fine as well? Seems I can get a clevo 8970m off eBay right now...

 

Yes you can get is single 8970 and CF'd in R2 but remember to do some research to be sure you are getting a card that will play with R2 ( brand+vbios wise) as some models might not or give you a pain in the @$$

GTX 980M does not seem to be any cheaper soon, what we see is nVidia top of the line cards are holding their price always at a very high level, even if they would offer lower performance to a similar based AMD card, and AMD cards are getting cheap quick....

So do not rush with a card from ebay from a private seller, especially if no details are given, it might be a guy like you who bought it for R2 and it did not play with it, and he will sell it but not necessary will put this detail on ebay, which is not that much possible but still......know what you buy bro and save yourself pain which other users did not....sadly

 

Just not finding near the guide for the 8979m as I can on the 7970m. Would go that route except its getting g too hard to find one with the right bios. Hoping clevo is the way to go because there are several clevo cards up on eBay.

 

Clevos should be OK with the vbios that has enduro disabled i think, as to the guide, is is the same as for 7970m, you just have to disregard the vbios/versions numbers and so on as for 7970m cards they will be totally different, the rest is totally the same as the 8970m is a 7970m rebrand with more ram and turbo clocked Core by a 50MHz more

 

May buy one soon then. Gonna wait and see because if payment doesn't go through for the 1st person in line for the r2 on the market place its as good as mine lol. Not really seeing that happening but it could and $450 for 2 7970m's plus other components is a good deal.

 

R2 and 2x 7970m's for $450 ? is it all sold as "sold as seen, parts/spares/repair" ?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...n-booting-alienware-m17x-r2-custom-built.html. look for yourself. Looks legit to me.