M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

ITS THE WRONG ONE!!!

... just joking, its the exact same thing

 

lol!!! my heart skiped a beat!!!

thats what he flashed in!!! the standar dell bios that is in the zip file , its called Dell7970m.ROM

 

Lol Yeah thats perfect

 

Hmm, Alienhack's right... it is the same pack. This is pretty weird.
I wonder which of the vbioses he used and why it blackscreens for him on it. If I were you I'd ask him to try and connect an external display to VGA and see if he gets output...
And we should know what machine he uses.

 

GUYS!!! i am in shock!!! the bell just rang 10 mins ago and a guy from postal office was holding a box!!! i thought IT WAS MY OCULUS!!!
but then i realised the box was too small! so i opened it!! AND THERE IS A 7970m inside!!!! ???

i spoke 20 mins ago with the seller who suposedly is trying to fix my card by flashing the vbios. SO WHAT DID I RECEIVE????

how can i check what card i have?? its a black-brownb pcbus it uses and says ati 109-c42957-00A

 

Lol!

I'll tell you what you received, you received a chance to do everything properly by yourself!

Take a pic and attach it here so we can figure out what brand of card you received

edit: Also get familiar with this thread in case it has the incorrect vBIOS loaded. You should also point the seller to this thread to flash the one he has back to the previous vBIOS.

 

Hahahaha, that's hilarious. Did you even pay for the card yet? If you were communicating with eurocom (upgradelaptop) or some other "company" seller, there's a chance that while you were communicating with the seller, someone else sent the card out lol.

Sounds like a Clevo card. You should probably flash it with the RJTech vBios. Now stick it in already

 

can you see that link?
https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd....20x720/7959_10151560046779755_847729803_n.jpg

 

look like something lika that hapened!!!
and it has the backplate on too!

 

That doesnt look like a 7970M.... more like a 6990M

 

No, it's definitely a 7970m. I can tell the layout by touch by now

The caps look clean and well-soldered. Either Clevo got their act together or that's either a MSI or Dell card. Can't think of any other manufacturer.

My bet is it's a dell... but I've never heard of a black dell card. I wonder what vbios it uses...
Since it's not the card with the part number you referenced above, you should check for all serial numbers, codes, dates and anything you can find.

What's that oval sticker?

 

isnt there a marking i can check??

the gpu core on it says
AMD
1142 ENG
MADE IN CHINA
N8B612.08
215-0828000

 

i am styarting re asembly of my laptop (i had it fully dissasembled)
the oval sticker is gold and says L@C and has months around it

 

Yeah but the 8970M has the exact same layout as well...

I think it may be a 6970M engineering sample. I remember reading those had to have ENG on the die for it to unlock extra shaders.

 

The 215-0828000 number is a chinese indicator referencing IC's - anything from GPU's, CPU's to microcontrollers and electronic trash.

Weren't Eurocom themselves manufacturers of GPU's for the 6970m and 6990m series of cards? They used to use black PCB's.
Maybe this is a Eurocom card, lol

I can't recognize the 1142 eng and the other number.

 

It may be some kind of engineering sample, but it's definitely either a 7970m or a 8970m, and I really doubt anyone just felt like sending a 8970m out.

 

Cool, let's see how lucky you are

 

I'm stumped.. I hope its a 8970M ... and that the vBIOS work with your machine!

 

Well, if it's a 8970m he can't CrossfireX (i think). Actually, I'm really curious what happens when you flash a 8970m with 7970m vBios, since the only difference is that extra 50MHz boost clock (probably done through vBios).

 

i feel the weight of chance leaning on my shoulders...

 

Lol, I did read somewhere recently they did try flashing a 7970M with the 8970M vBIOS and the card wouldn't work even though they were physically the same.

 

Actually, they're not physically the same. 8970m has 4GB GDDR5 vRam That's a pretty significant difference actually. The reverse may work, depending on how the card is laid out, but flashing a 2GB card with the vBios of a 4GB card... bad idea.

 

That is definitely a dell oem 7970m card pcb board wise.
The code at bottom matches next to AMD logo.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/computer-components/694450-sold-dell-oem-amd-7970m-2gb.html

 

Great news mate, good to know

 

?
Since when did AMD make chips in china?
Looks fake..
AMD has two factories Dresden and Taiwan --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices#Production_and_fabrication
Proceed with caution Alienhack..

 

Pretty much every electronic component is assembled in china mate The 7970m cards are fabbed at TSMC, Taiwan (aka Republic of China).

 

Yes but I have never seen this on the AMD chip itself. All of the 7970m GPU's genuine have Made in Taiwan. Not sure why they put this logo on it???
Confused.

 

Well, TSMC also has an 8-inch fab in China, it may have been manufactured there. You know, labor costs and all that.

 

Possibly... it is possible but the pcb board color is even more weirder. I checked out a msi and it's pure green pc board. The clevo comes in some aqua blue color and some newer dells are like this and the holes are brown/copper around gpu on clevo and white on the dell versions.
This board alienhack received is a dark color one I cannot recognize with other 7970m manufactured cards.

Either he has an engineering sample or this is china hoax.

 

Well, Eurocom don't do hoaxes, and for a hoax, those components look surprisingly well soldered
I've had 2 dell cards so far, both blue, never seen a green dell card.
Clevo i've heard is in blue and green, msi only green.

I guess we have to wait for Alienhack to post

 

If anything it's possibly a dell 7970m engineering sample.

Yup we will wait and see what he can extract from it and more.

 

good news for starters... the card booted up normally.
i am installing drivers now but gpuz without the drivers shows this:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd....720/995814_10151560138614755_1220786284_n.jpg

 

Is that... a 7950m engineering sample? Also that bios revision is HELLA-OLD. Common versions now are .017, .018 and .021.

 

Well spotted tron2^ :thumbsup:

If it was a 4gb card there should be vRAM chips on the reverse of the card too.

AlienHack is it too late to check the back? Usually theres a few stickers on there too with the cards code name... or have you already installed it?

 

there was a small white sticker with a barcode on it

SO WHAT CARD IS THAT??


is it engineering sample?

 

Absolutely no chance of it being a 8970m with those clocks and that vbios. It's either a 7970m ES or a 7950m ES. If it's the 7950m I'm not sure how it will react with vbios flash. In theory it's the same card, but you'd probably need to upgrade the vbios to use Crossfire if it's detected as 7950m.

 

Dayeam... I think it is! Clocks and shaders match up. What in the world is that...

 

What on earth is this?
I am still baffled by this. Which vbios did he flash with?

 

Ah, i didn't see the GPU-z before.
It's a 7970m ES card. Really EARLY ES, judging by the vBios. He should really flash de stock vBios from the techinferno archive if he doesn't want to manually overclock it. I'm not even sure that card could handle 850/1200 clocks. Try overclocking the card manually and playing a few games with crossfire active on it, and see if it can take stock clocks and a 0.975V voltage (really doubting it).

 

Its a 7970M ... with 7950M clocks!

Run GPUshark in detailed mode and take a screenprint please!

 

i am bafled!@@@ what is that thing in my alienware!!! i didnt flash any bios, it came with the curent one and booted up nicely with that. GPUz cant see its temp only hwinfo, it stays 38C at idle with room temp of 31!!!!

so what should i do with this? why does it have so low core speeds?

 

Looks like an engineering sample 7950m overclocked to 750/1000
Check here
AMD Radeon HD 7950M - NotebookCheck.net Tech

Further
http://www.game-debate.com/hardware/?gid=861&graphics=Radeon HD 7950M

 

Well its an engineering sample so who knows what they were testing it for. Educated guess would be for the 7950M which never was released since its running the same clocks as the 7950M was supposed to.

Please download GPUshark from here and post the detailed view!

 

I suggest checking with GPU Shark detailed mode. I would personally use Trixx to overclock it to 850/1200 at 1V (i have a feeling any lower than that won't hold water for you). If it works stably I would flash the 0.975V or 1V vbios from the archive.

The 7970m and 7950m cards were identical, which is pretty much the reason why the 7950m never got released. This is a very early engineering sample card, and providing it can handle 1V or 0.975V he should definitely flash the old bios as soon as possible.

 

heheheh you like to push the boundaries
Alienhack plz do as above and run gpu-shark in detailed mode & post picture.

 

ok... some more weird news... fans work at auto and hdmi works too (although no audio but that i may fix)

also with the clocks i showed you the 3dmark 2011 results were 5726... isnt that the usual number for 7970m?

 

gpu shark results

GPU Shark v0.7.2
(C)2013 Geeks3D - 3D Tech News and Pixel Hacking - Geeks3D.com
----------------------------------------
Elapsed time: 00:00:46
GPU 1 - AMD Radeon HD 7970M
- GPU: unknown
- Bus ID: 2
- Device ID: 1002-6800
- Subvendor: Unknown (1028- 43A)
- Driver version: 12.104.0.0
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit
-- Catalyst ver: 13.4
-- Catalyst rel. ver.: 12.104-130328a-155818C-ATI
-- Catalyst rel date: 3-28-2013
- Bios version: TEST0003.T02
- GPU memory size: 2048MB
- GPU memory type: GDDR5
- Performance states: 2
- Performance state
- GPU: 300.0MHz
- Mem: 150.0MHz
- VDDC: 0.825V
- Performance state
- GPU: 750.0MHz
- Mem: 1000.0MHz
- VDDC: 1.100V
- Current performance state:
- GPU: 300.0MHz
- Mem: 150.0MHz
- VDDC: 0.825V
- GPU usage:
- GPU: 0.0%, max: 76.0%

 

Dayeam... you got something special there AlienHack And to top it off it looks awesome too with that black pcb

edit: damn, just saw your voltage for 3D clocks is "overvolted". Normal volts is 1.025v, yours is 1.1v!

 

Actually, normal volts varies between 1V and 1.05V depending on revision and manufacturer. I had one 1.05V card and one 1.025V card. In his case, his card is running a crazy high voltage. I really wonder how high-quality the core is, and if it can take a lower voltage... for his sake I hope it does, because the power consumption at 1.1V is bound to be huge.

The card looks pretty awesome, and the score is totally normal for those clocks (and quite a bit higher than the 850/1200 card used to get at launch with the crappy drivers )
But I'm not sure how usable it is for crossfire... unless you undervolt/undervolt/undervolt.

 

well i uped to 850 and its stable in BF3 with max temp 80 (but i used a noname paste so i will repaste tomorrow with arctic silver )

as i told you the fans work on auto , i just reverified and hdmi works great BUT i have to see whats going on with the audio