M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

I did, it went to x4 2.0...
After some research i guess it doesn't make much of a difference, Luckly it's at x4 and not x1
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html

 

Temp wise I dont think 79C is bad if your ambient temp is high. Its summer where I am ( 30C - 35C ambient) and I'm hitting 79C regularly when gaming. I'm also on Windows 8.1 and the 0.975V vBIOS. I suppose I could get the temps down but I'm not too concerned at the moment.

I dont experience the BSOD but I dont generally use HWinfo on my laptop. ThrottleStop is constantly running in my system Tray for CPU temps and I use GPUShark 0.6.6 to monitor both cards when I need to. I suppose you have to use HWinfo to control the fans on the Dell cards though, so maybe check if theres no other monitoring software running at the same time thats also accessing the sensor information that HWinfo is reading. They could be fighting for priority and causing the BSOD, I'm just guessing here.

I would also suggest disabling all sensors apart from those you need to use the fan control. That should be the GPU sensors only I think. Then add them back according to your needs to see which could be causing the BSOD.

 

Ok, but I'd rather be safe than sorry ... I'll also check if everything makes good contact, don't wanna burn the card lol...

I've already solved that ... and i always disable the sensors i don't need

Thanks though

 

That's strange for the pcie speed, i don' remember when i was in single gpu but i am pretty sure it was 8x 2.0, maybe a bad contact, i had the same issue with an hd4870 who wasn't really plug on a pcie extander.

 

So people i have made my 330w modded psu this afternoon, a bit different like other. In most case you swap the id chip in the 330 psu and ground the id line before the comparator. I have just cut of the m18x id chip, ground the all id line and cut the id wire from the power plug. I have solder the 240 id chip on a tiny pcb and solder it directly inside the m17x. Like this i can use my 240 w and 330w , they will be both reconize as a 240w psu. The only thing is you have to use a psu that have the id wire cuted, if not the id chip in the psu and the id chip i have soldered will be in conflict.

Some picture :

 

Hi,
I'm new here.
Just bought an old M17x r2 with a single 4870M ,my dream finally come true (wanted it since it was out) (ordered an new Alien 15 with 980M though, shipped yesterday).

I'm trying to upgrade it to 2 7970M.
Here are the steps i did.
- bought 2 Dell branded 7970M, same Vbios (15.022) same exact model.
- bought a second 4870m from ebay with right heatsink and crossfire cable
- bought a brand new right fan.
Buying was the easy part.

- Installed 1 7970M and tested. Working perfectly with HwInfo64 and last catalyst CCC.
- Installed the second one : - Drivers ok
- Fan ok

I can see both the cards in windows/device manager but ccc says : Disabled Adapter and Crossfire option is grayed out.
Message is stating that my crossfire internal bridge interconnects is not set properly.
I modded the cable and reconnected it 2-3 times, no change.

So is the xfire cable from 4870M compatible with 7970M ? IMHO not and that's the problem.

thanks

 

They are the same so there should be no problem, maybe yours is a bit unplugged under the heatsink, you have seen that it's a very tight place. You have to remove the black tape, you must only have the blue wire and the plastic plug, then bend the wire. I have had some trouble to get the heatsink in place with the crossfire cable but it work.

 

I did it, blue wires are 'naked' on about 2cm.
I triple checked connections, it must be ok. Maybe a dead cable ?
Second 4870M doesn't work so no way to test the cable with it. (buying this card with cable and heatsink didn't seems to be a good deal)
I have no options...I have to find another cable.
Did the second 7970m automatic activate if the cable is good ?

 

You can activate it in catalyst but yeah it should activate crossfire automatically. If you can see both gpu in gpu z with both temp and stuff, the two card work fine. Maxslo is selling some crossfire cable in marketplace if i am right.

 

Tested many catalyst versions and tried to reconect it but it's still disabled.
Aida64 and GPUZ can see the 2 gpu's and reading temps+clocks.
(First card jumps to 850Mhz the second stays at 300) .
Thanks for your answers, im going to contact Maxslo.

 

Before anything else do you have unable all power saving feature ? ( disable ulps things in first page ) , the ulps things and in the power setting in windows. Right clic on battery, power setting , parameters , advanced ( i have a french windows so i try to translate ... ) , ati power setting at the end of the list, ati power play setting , battery and power supply set to optimal power.

 

I did it with regedit (see page 1)
Me too, French Windows

 

Hi All. my current 7970m is running 017 BIOS. It's over 2 years old and I'm wanting to get another 7970m for crossfire. Thing is that the newer 7970m cards are on 021/022 BIOS and are not compatible with my current 017.

Will it be OK if I updated my BIOS to 021 so that I can purchase a second card, or is it going to brick my current 017 one?

 

One of my 7970m came with a 0.17 vbios, flashed both on 0.22 0.975v no problem. Wait for other answer maybe.

 

Damn I bought a 7970m to put into my R2 and it has Vbios version 15.022... Should I just try installing it and seeing if I'm one of the lucky people that got it working? Or should I sell it and try to find one with a lower vbios version? Any help would be appreciated.

 

Cool so your dell branded 7970m 15.022 card worked. Guess I'll open my R2 up and try mine out.

 

Yes, both are working, with hdmi and audio.
Fan must be controlled with HWiNFO.

Crossfire not but cable must be damaged, bought another one from maxslo.
Mines come from a well know re-seller on ebay

Don't forget the retention mod otherwise ->shutdown ,overheating

 

@RianChio23

Try it, mine work without any problem and it came with 0.022

 

l

Cool thank you for the response. I feel better about this card now. I will install it after work and let you know how it turns out. I was lucky and got this card for $150 and bought my m17x r2 for $60. This is the 4th Alienware I've found at work (I do electronic recycling) The other ones were m18x r2's, my m17x r2 worked fine, it just needed a new battery and a new ram stick to boot up and has been working like a champ. I'll be upgrading from 2 4870ms. One more question, my understanding from the guide is that the card I have cannot be downflashed, but can it be flashed with a modified vbios of the same version? Or are you running it on the stock vbios it came with?

 

You should consider a 920/940xm too, it help a lot in modern game.

 

That was next on the list =) It currently has the 820 cpu in it. Did you leave the vbios stock on the .022 card you had toto? I know it cant be downflashed but can it be flashed with a modified version of the same version vbios? Should I try installing the card first with the stock vbios and see if it boots up? Thanks for the help @toto29620

 

Yep , stay with the stock vbios first and then start looking for the vbios you want, my cards are running on the undevolted 0.975 0.022 one, you can find a package with undervolted and overvolted vbios on techinferno with a very good step by step tutorial.

I can send it to you if you want, not sure if the autor is ok with that ...

I use the undervolted one to keep my cards as cold as possible and not too power ungry, now i have the 330w psu so i could try overclocking but the 920xm is so slow ... I don't now how people keep it at 3.0 Ghz and more in game, on the cooling pad it can stay under 95 ° in most game at 3.0 Ghz but after that it produce so much heat ... I have already mod the cpu fan to help a bit, already thinking of an uge mod for the heatsink.

Overcloking on the 7970m deserve to nothing until the 920xm isn't really oc, in single gpu it can help those card can reach 950 Mhz without too much volts, above 1 ghz it's getting tricky.

 

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. Yeah a link to that would be helpful. This will be my first vbios flash. Never done one before but understand it.

 

Here for the vbios pack : http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/1736-amd-7970m-modified-vbios.html

And here for the tutorial : http://forum.techinferno.com/amd-video-cards/1738-[guide]-amd-vbios-flashing.html#post21467

I always write all the cmd command on a paper, if your keryboard is an azerty one it will work as a qwerty one be carefull. Do never shutdow or unplug or whatever during the flash, you press enter and wait. I you fail you have to buy a new card / swap the vbios chip, unofficially there is a technic to bypass the vbios check and boot the card in slave slot and flash it in windows ... You have to connect to pins of the chip with a tiny wire to do that, i will try to find a step by step if you are in this case. For infos a new vbios chip cost around 15$ on ebay, good soldering skill required.

I don't want to scare you or anything, i have been there and i have dig a lot on internet when i was waiting for my card to see what were my possibility.

 

Very helpful thank you. I have great soldering skills. I worked at a company soldering and building machines that build pcb boards =) I hope I don't run into any problems

 

Finally home. About to start prepping for install

 

And black screen but I can hear it boot to windows...guess I'll try hooking it up to a monitor using a vga cable as soon as I find it. I have the last modded bios made on my machine. Was there a bios option I needed to change to get it to display or is this card just not compatible?

 

couldnt find my vga so decided to plug into tv using hdmi and I got video out. So now I just need to flash a vbios @toto29620 ?

 

If anyone can give me some insight it would be appreciated. Here is the current progress... I was able to get output thru hdmi and vga so I flashed the undervolted dell modified vbios. I then installed the catalyst drivers and can launch and play 3d games perfectly but I can only achieve this on vga and hdmi. I get no video output thru my lcd and it has always worked before. I've reseated the plugs for the lcd but still only get output thru external. Other than that the 15.022 7970m card is up and running

 

You should'nt be able to boot if the card isn't compatible, can sound stupid but try to open and close the screan, it help sometimes ... The screan is detected or only the vga one ? Do you have an rgb led or the 1440*900 ccfl one ? Try reseating one mre time the screan cable, it's very easy to have some miscontact on it.

 

I have the rgb led. I tried reseating and still no luck. I read a fix for clevo cards being flashed with rjtech bios and them working on the lcd but I have a dell version 7970m. I'm guessing I'll need to try another vbios flash. I also have an extra dell 7970m 15.022 card with bracket and heatsink still installed if anyone needs another card

 

Opening and closing didn't work for me only the tv its hooked up to are being recognized by windows under display settings. I'm glad the card works though in my m17x r2

 

Make sure the LCD connector clicks into the slot before locking the bar into place.

Its very deceptive as it may seem like the connection is fine but the connector needs to be fully inserted to work.

If that doesn't seem to work you could always revert to your original card to rule out the cable connection for certain.

I don't have Dell cards so I have no experience regarding vBIOS versions and our RGB LCD's.

 

Good idea, I'll check the connection again then I'll pop my old card in to rule the cable. Brb

 

Ok so I reseated the cable and still no display, so then I popped in my old card and I got the rgb screen to display. So Its something with my 7970m card. Weird that it would work fine thru external only. Any insight on what to try or a vbios to flash @Nospheratu ? I read in a forum somebody having the same problem but with a eurocom card and they flashed a rjtech vbios to fix the issue. I couldn't find that vbios but maybe that's something I should try?

 

So close yet so far lol I hope somebody can point me in the right direction to a fix =) Maybe a setting to change under the unlocked bios?

 

From my limited experience, I only started fiddling with mobile GPU's in this laptop, I would say its the vBIOS.

The mobo BIOS, even the unlocked version and its settings is most likely not going to help resolve this.

I would try asking here or PMing members who recently installed 7970M's what hardware revision their card is and what combo of vBIOS and BIOS they're running.

The GPU's hardware revision is commonly found on a sticker on the back of the card.

I know a few members are using the CLEVO vBIOS in my signature on their Dell cards but I'm hesitant to suggest it as they were the ones with early revisions of the card and I'm afraid it might brick your card.

@toto29620 is very knowledgeable and much more current in terms of this mod so hopefully he a few ideas to try.

 

Are you sure it's an Dell one ? Look at this :



I think the same as @Nospheratu, you can try but there are some risk to brick the card.

http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/4428-modified-clevo-7970m-vbios-pack-non-enduro.html

 

Yeah it's a dell for sure. I'm about to pull the card out and look at what hardware version it is

 

Here are the only stickers on the bottom of my card. Hopefully this helps.

 

I have 2 more 7970m's so I wouldn't be against trying to flash something =)
The thread with the guy having the same issues had a eurocom card and flashed the rjtech vbios. I cant find a working link to download those but that fixed the same issue that user had. Whoever can help me solve my issue will receive a 6pack on me =)

 

There is a link in this thread, you had to be logged in to download it : http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/4428-modified-clevo-7970m-vbios-pack-non-enduro.html

 

I need 4 more Posts to download lol anything I need to know to flash a clevo vbios to a dell card? Do I need to force vbios install?

 

You can ask to a moderator they will will unlock the download option on your account. For the flash, i don't know, i have never done this so ... In my mind there should be no problem to do the flash, it's just an hexa file named 7970m.rom. I hope you sucess and not end with a nice paper weight.

 

Me too lol. I have 2 more 7970ms just in case. This one has to be compatible considering it works out hdmi and runs games, seems to just need a vbios to sort the last problem. @toto29620 so some dell 7970m users used the clevo vbios? Can you point me to that thread? I apologize for needing so much help, I never really used forums before so my forum etiquette and searching is noob status

 

I have found this :

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x-aw-17/2163-flashing-dell-7970m-clevo-7970m-bios.html

http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/2593-does-dell-vbios-mode-7970m-compatible-clevo-cards.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/sold-used-amd-7970m-gpus-x2-clevo-with-dell-vbios.734436/

So it seem to be ok to flash an clevo vbios on a dell card, might need to use -f fonction in atiflash to force the flash as a guys said in one of those tread. Slv7 can be trusted, he has a very large knowledge on vbios and cards.

In this forum i haven't seen anyone using clevo vbios on dell card, some guys with clevo card had a white screen problem, solved with rjtech vbios ( non-enduro one ), i haven't read the all damn thing so i might have miss a thread

 

So now flashing what vbios would cause my card to brick? Are those modified clevo vbios also based off the 15.022 version stock bios? I'm worried if they aren't then that would cause a brick?

 

I don't know, it's just a possibility to keep in mind, make a dump of the stock bios first if you have to swap the bios chip you can send your vbios to the seller on ebay, the will write it on the new chip.

All dell vbios seems to be safe, clevo stock one too as slv7 said here ( http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x-aw-17/2163-flashing-dell-7970m-clevo-7970m-bios.html ) , the modified clevo one should too.

The guy with the eurocom card have sucess with the rjtech ( http://forum.techinferno.com/alienw...reen-after-installing-eurocom-7970m-help.html) but eurocome are selling dell or clevo card ? If someone know ?

 

Interesting posts.

I have a clevo 7970m v1.1G in my Alienware m17xr2.
It will only work with eurocom vbios in it. With rjtech it will not allow me to play 3d games but it still gets in to windows. When I play 3d I get BSOD.

The vbios files I have are the eurocomm and rjtech. The rjtech was a risk to see if it would remove the white bleach screen on boot-up but alas this is caused by hardware v1.1G and as jaybee says in his thread the v1.2G is the one to go for if buying a clevo.

As RianChio23 is using a Dell 7970m card I am not sure it is a good idea to flash these clevo vbios's into it. the fact you are getting a dark screen on boot-up but still can hear windows sounds on log is reminiscent of the jaybee thread of a clevo card going into the Hm series clevo laptops and flash it in bios the vbios with enduro off(rjtech vbios)

Given that you are using a Dell 7970m it should have worked in the alienware m17xr2 and the RGB led screen should boot-up. I can only think trying some dell vbios's but if you want the clevo rjtech and eurcomm vbios for 7970m (clevo) let me know and I will post them up with link.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Rian can you post more detailed photos of the front and back please? I have a feeling it could be a clevo 7970m.

 

Yeah that last one was the one I read about the eurocom card with same issues on my dell 7970m