M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

Umm, just follow the page 1 guide step for step and you'll be good )
Do you have the modded PSU prepared?

For the life of me i can't think of anything else right now.

 

Nope , i will do the 330 W mod when i buy the 920xm , for now the 720 qm use 40 W , less than 100 W par gpu ( 0.975 V vbios ) , that should work in game, maybe not in bench.

 

If it DOES work in games (might not) you'll kill the PSU in short order (a couple months at best).
The GPU's even undervolted to 0.975v, when fully loaded will pull about 105 - 120w each.

 

Yo. I don't want to ruin your day but whenever you buy untested item it means it does not work...... seller wants to give hope to the people that they can get a working card cheap....Never happens. . (Maybe 1% luck )

 

Yep i know, it's not a long range solution for me, as i don't know if the gpu work or not i don't want to throw to much money on it. If it work that will be 920 xm + 330 w psuu.

Yea i know, curently asking myself why i have done that The guy is selling a LOT of alienware parts and some other mxm card sold as untested, something like 13500 good feedback. If it don't work i will give a try with heat gun / hoven.

 

Hello

I've just received the two 7970M's and am planning to get started with the installation soon.

I see there is no mention of using a master and slave vbios, as with the 5870 and 6970m cards.

Does that mean it's the same vbios on both cards?

Thanks

 

Aye, same vbios on both if they're identical cards.

 

Great.

And the drivers, where do I get them from?

I have gone to the AMD web site, and selected mobile drivers but the package that downloads is identical to the desktop version of the drivers.

I know in the past I needed drivers that were linked from this site and had mobility written somewhere in the file name. Or have AMD fixed this issue and they are now all included in one package.

Sorry its actually been a while since I've upgraded the drivers in my M17x R2, Kinda found one that worked well and stopped there..

Thanks

 

Download Drivers
put in the details and download either version. current beta version is working well on my machine

 

Hi the file that downloads has the following filename "amd-catalyst-14-9-win7-win8.1-64bit-dd-ccc-whql.exe", is that correct.

I have had problems with the AMD drivers in the past..

Edit: Never Mind.. That driver worked.. At least AMD improved on the drivers side.

 

I'm at work so cant check. It should be correct if you put the correct details in. Should install fine restart windows and see what happens.

 

It worked..
Was actually Easy, just download and install... Nice.

Thanks

 

Glad to hear it. You disabled ulps in your register? You may want to flash your vbois with a undervolted one. Monitor your temps. They dell or clevo cards?

 

No not yet, I currently only have one card installed. Hopefully installing the second card will be tonight's project.

Was considering flashing to the undervolted vbios (one given in the beginning of this thread), just glad the one card if working well as is.

Card went to about 83oC during a 5 minute FurMark run (1024x768 Burn in). I'm using hwinfo to control the fan speeds as described, but I am using the default speeds and temperature values in hwinfo, are these OK?

The cards I got are Dell from Upgrademonkey, what worried me is that the cards say vbios 015.022 on the back sticker and they "downgraded" the cards to 015.021, so I was worried in the beginning regarding their compatibility, but so far one card is running, managed to run some bench marks and play saints row 3 for about 30min (Max temps 74oC during benchmarking and game)..

Also..
Do I need to install the A10 Unlocked Bios, as I am currently using the standard A10 Bios from Dell?

Thanks

 

Furmark is useless , you will never get that hot in game, in Valley benchamrk ( uningine ) i never get above 69 °C fan @ 4000 Rpm for exemple, 67 ° in BF4 after hours.

 

Dont stress your cards unnecessarily with Furmark, it's too harsh on your hardware and is pointless as toto29620 has mentioned. When I was testing temps Crysis 3 got my cards hotter than any other bench/game and its a real world test.

 

Yeah, I know it does not give real world temperatures, but a worst case scenario.

At least I know that my card isn't hitting 90oC + , so that's good..

 

In fact there is an automatic shutdown at 85 °C so your card will never reach 90 °C

 

Oh wow.

The 5870m's did not do that. My one card hit 120oC before I took my machine apart and re-pasted it for the first time ... many years ago...

I guess that's a good safety feature...

 

Hi

I've Just finished installing my second 7970M and am now running Crossfire..

Below is a screen shot showing my second 3D Mark vantage run.



The Primary Card Maxes out at 72oC and the Secondary Card at 77oC..

All in all I'm calling it a success.

Thanks to every one who helped me on this thread..

 

Congrats, may it serve you well
So 022 cards can work these days. Good to know.

 

So guys you were right, the "untested" ebay 7970m is dead or near. I have tested it in slave mxm port with my 7970m in master port, boot but not reconized in windows. In master slot, most of the time the light go on but no screen and no boot, some time i have the bip and scroll/lock signal, bad VGA error coe.

Actually it's in with crossfire ribon between the good and the dead, nothing change. I think someone is going to be warm this week end if you know what i mean ...

 

Hi toto

Sorry to hear that... you still going to try and get one else where?

 

Thank

yes I was worried that they would not work, but it was pretty much a plug and play for me.. used the vbios they put on the cards (015.021), was and am still nervous about flashing a different vbios..

Unfortunately (but expected), my power supply went and turned it self off after about 4 hours of game play, running Crossfire, and the game was a bit jittery..

So I will have to do a power supply mod..

I am going to follow " Nospheratu's" guide as I like how neat it looks and the fact that you can easily swap power supply's later..

I've already orders the cable/plug here and the power jacks here

Still looking for a 330w power supply from Dell...

 

I will try to bake it in the oven first, will see after that. For this month it's a no , i have to wait for an other pay.

It has POST once so it's not a defective Vbios or anything for me, most of the time there is no heat from gpu so the power don't go throw it, for me that's the problem, some power input signal is not receive by the power regulator on the 7970m, or the gpu doesn't speak to the vbios so no power. I think it's a bad solder, let's hope 10/12 min in the oven will do the job.

 

I hope that works.. Good luck.

 

Yep. Told you so. Take a lesson and do not go for any other bite like that, you may end up spending way more that you planned

 

Hey Blueneon - sorry if this is an old question, where did you find the 7970Ms if you don't mind my asking?

 

Yep, i was seeing this as a lost from the start so it's not a big deal for me, i tried, and failed ... It was something like 50 € with shipping fee, not a big deal. I will keep you in touch after the baking process.

 

Hey Doc steel

No problem..

I got the cards from UpgradeMonkey , but its best if you contact them through email, and tell them exactly what your looking for, Cards.. vbios and xbracket..

I Emailed them on "[email protected]" and chatted with a lady named Sally.. And she put every thing together.. Delevery time was great I made payment on the Friday and received the cards on Tuesday the following week..

Just make sure you insist on the 015.021 vbios.. I was a bit worried because my cards had the 015.022 vbios sticker on the back, but they flashed them to vbios 015.021 before shipping, and for me they both worked..

Also I can confirm what the other guys on this thread are saying, that you will need a power supply mod to get them both running in crossfire..

Or if you just want one card it runs great with the standard power supply (240W), and I found it to be about 30% or more quicker than a 5870 Crossfire setup..

The crossfire cable from my 5870 worked, only the positioning of the connectors on the cards are further forward than on the 5870's (Sorry don't know about the 4870's..) so it was a bit awkward to install as it does not fit nicely in the track where it normal lies.

Any way....

 

Thanks for the info - I have been letting my M17x-R2 sit idle awhile but for the cost even a single 7970m would kick the pants off the pair of 4870m's in there now. Again, thanks for the detail, it will really help out!

 

So i have baked my 7970m twice, now it's reconized at each boot and the code bad vga blink but that's all ... That is going back on ebay, don't buy it ... or buy it but the baking things will not be the solution.

 

just to update...

i have yet to make the modded 330w psu until now as i have discovered my spare 330w psu here had temp problems. whenever i plug it, the psu starts to heat up and i smell smoke and so i decided not to use it for the psu mod.

also i have decided to buy me a new 240w psu so it would not give me the unrecognized psu error during boot up. i tried using this hoping that my temps would be stable even when i remove the 2nd gpu.
this time to check what's causing the problem, i was left with only one 7970m plugged on my R2 while using the new 240w psu. hoping that temps would normalize when i play games, it still started to heat up slowly up until 85C.
this time i also made sure that the heatsinks had full contact with the gpu. i am currently using 015.017.000.001.042717 bios version as posted on the 1st page of this tutorial.
idel temps is 37C-40C using HWinfo.

i am left with no clue whats causing the sudden increase of temps. is the 240w psu not enough to support a basic 820qm cpu and a single 7970m gpu?
do you think the problem is with the cards that i have? as i have told on my previous posts, these gpus were originally from an m18x r2 which were also overclocked.
but thats the use of the flashing of cards right? setting the known stable voltages and everything else?

monitoring both the gpu and cpu are showed on the images below...


would you recommend me using a different bios version?
i hope someone can help me with this.

 

Hi guys,

So i have just installed a working 7970m this time, crossfire running, ulps things done BUT now my cards are both stuck at 450 Mhz ... They work together but at 450 , when i desactivate the crossfire the primary card is still stuck at 450 .

Has someone been throw this ?

Edit : found out the problem, windows performence mode has changed the ati powerplay setting from power to mobility ... just go back on power and TADA the beast woke up.

Now i have to find a good psu, instant shut down with 920xm at 3.6 Ghz and crossfire 7970m on stock 240 w psu

 

if you disable unnecessary things in the bios and undervolt your cards you could likely be able to run your cards temporarily. I managed to run for a few months before getting a modded 330w psu. Might not be able to run the 920xm too high even with the 330.

 

I have a wattmeter so i will try different cpu setting, i have already flashed the 0.975V on both card, i will try to keep the load under 250/260 W. The 330W can provide 400 and more if i am right so no problem with the 920xm ?

For info, i have the flextronic one and it shut down at 270w , it stay on at 260 w. I had tested it on crysis 3 , i have to set 60A/60W max on throttlestop and *24, i thnk i am gonna use *23 but fps fall A LOT . At 3 Ghz i have around 55 to 60 fps ( vsync on ) on crysis 3 all max max and no fxaa , psu shutdown, at 2.4 Ghz i hae 20 to 25 fps ... But it stay on.

 

I currently have both cards undervolted as you my 920xm is running through throttlestop at 25X with 85a/85w and my 330w runs with no problem I know some others have run into power issues benchmarking but have managed to run 26 multiplies which my cpu does not like. you will be fine. I dont hae a wattmeter so I dont know what I pull from the wall.

 

The 330W will draw 380-400W from the wall at max load (temperature and unit dependant).

 

@nitsun69 and meaker

Thanks for the feedback I have found on techinferno a tuto to make an adaptator, i think i am gonna follow that road, i can use the 330W at home and the 240W on trip like that.

 

It's sure great to see the M17x R2 still alive, kicking and running great for peeps!

 

Yea, it's getting old but i love this laptop, still running great on a lot of game after all this time ! Let's hope it will support the new gen amd card or maxwell maybe.

 

There's a member on on T|I selling a CLEVO 7970M for $400 if anybody's looking for one...

http://forum.techinferno.com/computer-components/9108-7970m-2gb.html

 

Ok, so i'm in the M17x R2 7970M club now too ...

I've got a 015.022 vbios version, and apart the Fan, everything works natively, max temps under load 79°C with fan at 3600RPM...

I do have a question though, does anyone else suffer a BSOD when launching HWiNFO?

i though it was because the 5870M was getting old for Win 8.1, but it's still happening on 7970M, it doesn't happen everytime i start HWinfo, but it does happen often enough to bother me.

I'm using Win 8.1, i had no such problems on Win 7.

 

I don't use w8.1 so i can't tell about hwinfos but it can tell you that 79 ° is a bit high, try the 0.975v Vbios.

 

Oh ok ... Well Hwinfo reads 0.975v already, could be a bug that i've read about... I'll dump my vbios and check

EDIT: Just checked and it's a bug with HWinfo, the actuall voltage in vBios is 1.075v wich explains the high quality temps... will flash the slv7's 0.975v vBIOS...

Another thing, GPU-Z reports ASIC quality a bit over 80%, is that good or bad?

 

I don't know, never thought of that.

 

Nope, no change in temperature, do you mind sharing your fan speed table?...

mine looks like this:
0 - 1300
40 - 1600
50 - 2000
60 - 2400
68 - 3200
75 - 3600

Also figured out the problem with HWinfo... in settings (before you start hwinfo) i disabled "GPU I2C Support" in the "SMBus / I2C section"

EDIT: Could be that my temps are due to the laptop sitting flat on the table, it's not elevated and i don't use any cooling pad...

 

I am at job so i don't remember exactly the fan table. It's something like this :

0 - 2000
40 - 2000
50 - 2500
60 - 4000
65 - 4500
70 - 4500

Quiet a bit noisy but when you see the price of one card, i don't want to wear them .... The fan can't go highter than 4000 rpm but i have found that i will get some 200 more rpm when you enter 4500.

I often use my laptop on a table too, the temps are something like 68/70 ° max for gpu 1 and 72/74 ° for gpu 2. It gain 5 to 10 degree on the cooling pad.

 

Haha ok 67°C max temp in load, but damn the lappy gets loud xD

Well i got mine dirty cheap, but you are right, better not put her to excess heat, i'll try to keep it under 75° , just have to find appropriate noise/temperature ratio

I guess it's time to get a pad, a book, or something to lift the back up a bit

One more thing, what does GPU-Z read your card running at?
Mine says PCIE @ x4 1.1, and i feel this may be crippling the performance.

 

That's normal, put a little load on it and the pcie should go @8x 2.0, click on the "?" and start render test. It's a power saving system.