M17x R2 7970m CrossfireX Ultimate Installation and Tweaking Guide

I would also do as sangemaru suggested as drop voltage to sane levels. I don't know if the VRM on that card can sustain that level of voltage.

Awesome that you have it up and running so quick though

 

ok tried 850 core 1000 mem and came up stble at 3dmark with 6133 score
going for 1200 mem

 

6133 is pretty decent. Expect to get ~6400 with 850/1200 clocks.

I would like to ask you to make a dump of the vbios before you flash anything else on it. It would be great to figure out if we can all use hdmi and auto fan control.

 

i thought about it already and did a backup first thing
i am thinking of you guys!!

stable with 850 1200 but mem did little to the score, i went to 6190 only
max gpu temp 87
oh wait i had some thermal throttling on the cpu... i will fix that and try again...

 

You charmer you

 

so... with bad quality of thermal paste the card oces to 940 and 1150 stebly for 3d mark 11 with a score of 6400 and max temp 79

anything above that is not fully stable....
so what should i do? keep it?

 

How much did you pay for it .
Also, have you tried undervolting the card? Are you running single-card or crossfire right now?
The score is not bad, even the 6200 one. You literally would not be able to feel the difference between the two My engineering sample card used to score 6200 points at 850/1200.

Also, we made the Most Active Threads list

 

we are on fire!!! :thumbsup:

240 pounds i think

i am running single and i dont know if i will go crossfire...

what would the score be with a normal 7970 at 850 1200??

 

While I personally believe 240 pounds is a mite expensive for a somewhat crippled card, I would test the card in games with lower voltage (1V) and if it appears stable, providing the seller offers at least 3-6 months warranty, I would keep it. My engineering sample card never had any problems, but there have been users of the early card releases who had cards randomly die on them, so I would not keep that card without a bit of warranty.

I suggest communicating with the seller and asking for a retail card, unless he explicitly stated that the card is an engineering sample card and what clocks/voltages it runs at.

And especially if you plan to also do Crossfire, replace the card unless it's stable at 1V or less. At 1.1V your PSU would have to be of extreme quality to be able to sustain the power draw of two cards, even if only one ran such high voltage.

 

you are right. i tested at 900 1200 , super stable with 6300 score and max temp of 79

By the way if it gives max temp 79 at 1.1volt i wonder what it would give at 1

ALSO i have a problem changing volts... trixx doesnt have the option . how can i change volts??

 

Have you tried scrolling down in TriXX?
I expect at 1V the card would max out around 72C.

It's great that it's stable

 

Yes I did scroll. There is no volts option. Maybe I should unlock ccc overdrive first.

Also concerning the hdmi. Its working as I said but when I plug in the tv it says that an hdmi to dvi connector has been pluged in and that sound wont be transfered through it. I need to connect it external ly. I think another user in these forums had the same issue but fixed it

 

Hmm, so it's a bit of hit-and-miss. Well, if Trixx has no voltage control, you're going to have to flash a lower voltage vBios, since software control only allows you to go up, not down.

 

any other way to play with voltages? trixx as i said doesnt show the volts
also gpuz doesnt read anything fro the card like temp, fan volts etc...''

UPDATE (weird one)
run afterburner with the -xl command tha unlocks the overdrive. Well... it run alright, i had the message that clocks were reset and i needed to restart. I did and there is still no overdrive BUT in trixx the volts are unlocked.

so now i can play with varius subvolts (i can undervolt too) to see whats going on

I would like to try other bioses but i am afraid that if they dont work and the card doesnt boot i will have no way to restore the current one that at least works'

 

Nop, that's pretty much it
I don't know if a different vbios will show you temps, voltage and fan speed, since the card may be so experimental to lack some features. You're a pioneer of electronic history mate.

 

well history shows us that pioneers have 2 possible outcomes.... either they crash and burn in wich case noone remembers them... OR they hit the jackpot and they take their place in history...

hdmi and fans working both is something to remember but the oc capabilities of this card are not so great...

Also... anyone remember the issue someone in this forum had with hdmi working but without sound?

by the way hwinfo shows everything about the card. only gpuz doesnt
and trixx (no temp reading)

 

Yea, my engineering sample was crap for OC as well, but it undervolted pretty nicely. I never ran it below 1V though, because at 1V I could still OC it a little.

 

what did you do with it? sell it?

by the way, i started trying undervolting results. Look like its stable at 850 with 1.025V , i will try more

whats the standar volts of 7970m?


PS. if i can get sound to play through hdmi ( and the card has stable speeds of at least 900 1100 ) then the card will stay. i like everything working as they should

looks like this puppy needed undervolt to shine....

latest tests show , at 0.990 V max stable at 960 core 1150 mem

it doesnt want to play at 1000Mhz whatever i do though...

 

Awesome work AlienHack!

That's a wicked oc on the chip for such low voltage. Whether to keep it or not is the real dilemma. sangemaru's advice is really solid.

I pulled and installed my cards three times yesterday... not fun. I tried undervolting through vBIOS flash and nothings reflecting... not even clock changes yet the flash is successful. Then my second card started idling at 0.900v... So I pulled both cards and put the second card into the primary slot... and its still idling at 0.900v and the 3D voltage is still at 1.000v. Checked on GPUshark and it also reports the card is idling at 0.900v yet the idle performance state is 0.825v. I'm think poor quality VRM. I saw you guys were chatting about 3Dmark11 score through the thread email updates and since I had one card in I ran it and got a score of 6103.

I'm thinking this bad VRM needs some help so I decided to place some pads on the mosfets and inductors like in the 7970M thermal pad diagram thats floating around and return the card to the secondary slot since the second card usually runs cooler. I only have 0.5mm pad atm so it took forever to stack enough to reach the correct height... exhausting. Then I see the 0.5mm pad on the inductor is causing the heatsink not to make proper contact with the vRAM... disassemble again and take a layer off the mosfets and pull the pads off the inductors.

Finally I managed to install everything back and boot into Windows. Open GPUshark and see that the first card is normal 0.825v on 2D and 0.975v on 3D. Second card still 0.900v on 2D and 1.000v on 3D. Then I run TR to quickly load up the cards to see if it reaches 3D clocks/voltage... it does, but now the second card has dropped back to 0.825v 2D voltage...

Flashing the cards with the Dell vBIOS kills all sensors for me in GPUshark and GPU-Z. HWinfo works but doesn't reflect the clock changes I made on the vBIOS and no vddc sensor. Strange thing is the vBIOS I received with my cards and the RJTECH vBIOS are different even though they are both for the P270WM. RJECH vBIOS I loose sensors as well.

I'm not sure where to go from here. I prefer vBIOS mods to software personally so this is a real disappointment.

 

I gave it away along with my old Medion machine. I hope the buyer is happy with it It was a wonderful machine.

Holy wow. That's beyond impressive, especially for such an old series card. Pity you can't raise the memclocks, but it's not that crippling in the long-run.

I don't think you have much to worry about From what you've told us so far, even if you can't stick the voltage lower, your cards perform awesomely. Or did the second card drop to 2D voltage while playing TR? That would be bad.

I'm inclined to say that your voltage/clock issues deal with the software side, but I'm shooting in the dark here.

 

Yeah I guess you're right. No, the voltage was stable in 3D it went back to the correct 2D voltage when I exited TR which is a good thing I'll ask SVL7 to try and mod the vBIOS but I should be happy as these two cards are working without any major problems on this amazing 4 year old machine .. and with the 240W of all things!

I've fixed the Bioshock crashes btw and in the process stopped the BSOD's with the 13.6 beta2's. Hopefully everything runs smoothly from here on out. I still have to play for an extended 3-4 hour session with an intense game like Crysis 3 to make sure everything's stable though.

I hope the new driver that addresses micro stutter doesn't cause any problems for this setup as I'm really looking forward to that. Release date is scheduled for 31/07/2013.

 

Even if the driver does cause issues, you can just revert to 13.6 beta2 and use radeonpro profiles with dynamic vsync to eliminate microstuttering.
And yea I can't wait to finally have my crossfire ready as well. I'm playing with fire though, since I'm basically deficit spending... will have a loan to repay after.

 

whoa... strange things nospheratou....

By the way. I will go crossfire after all , not because i wanted.. but because as far as i know a second card is on the way.... :thumbsup:

What i want to mention is that after playing months with my R2 and the crossfire 5870 cards in it and geting a taste of microshuttering in every single game, , gaming now with just one 7970m is another experience. i mean its not the frames tha went up, even in demanding games that the fps drop sub 30 the game is fully playable, it feels so fluid.
With the crossfire it was a mess with shuttering all the time, moments that the games went like slideshows with framerates of 30-40

 

Uuuu, so there's going to (hopefully) be 3 of us with crossfires, hehe
Yea, the 7970m is in a whole other league compared with a 5870m crossfire, although as far as i can tell on the net, users of RadeonPro with dynamic vsync profiles created don't even know what microstuttering means anymore .
I used to have horrible stuttering with the 285M sli, even though I was getting 40+fps. Pity RadeonPro doesn't work on nVidia (wait, that's a good thing for us amd users ).

 

For shutter free crossfire must I install radeon pro or just the cap file?

 

You must install RadeonPro, and set up an individual profile for each game with Dynamic vSync activated and set up around the average framerates that the card can render in that game (or just use 30fps )

 

Did i missed something ? Can we I have 790m crossfire in my M17 r2 now?
Can someone please explain how to let 2 7970m´s work in a m17 r2?
As far as i understand you need a vbios with lower voltage settings and this radeonpro driver?

 

you just need 2 7970m and concerning their bios there are 2-3 that you can use in them.

About the 240W psu that has issues in some users, well in nospheratu he has no issue. the cards and the whole r2 is stable as rock . So wait 1 week for me to try my second card and i will inform you if the 240W psu can handle 2 cards

 

Pretty much what AlienHack said, with the following clarifications:

Using a decent-quality stock 240W PSU, the system is at the limit of being able to use the XM CPU's with those GPU's.
However, so long as your cards can be undervolted, even if you have to sacrifice the clocks a bit (but it appears there's no need to do that), once you go below 1V on each card there seems to be enough power overhead to be able to even overclock the CPU a little (actually, the clocks Nospheratu is running seem quite big to me - consider that he's running them at 3.33GHz across all cores, while the stock cpu is sold running only 2GHz across all cores and 3.33GHz single-core).

You only need the two cards, flashed with lower-voltage vbios (1V is a safe bet to start, and you can experiment going lower from there) and using a decent-length crossfire cable (costs around 30-40$ for the cable - you can reuse the 4870m/5870m cable).

The two cards need to come equipped with a compatible X-bracket, otherwise you won't be able to tighten the heatsink on them. If you're coming from a nvidia-equipped configuration, you will most likely need to do the washer mod on the screws, by detaching the c-clips, removing the screws from the GPU heatsinks, and re-attaching the c-clips directly on the screws.

Once all this is done and the computer detects the card and can start them in crossfire, install the 13.6beta2 drivers (which appear to be the most stable), install the Catalyst Application Profiles (if I remember correctly CAP2 appears to be the latest) and install the RadeonPro application (this is not a driver).

Set RadeonPro to start automatically with windows and create custom profiles for each game you use crossfire in, enabling Dynamic vSync and setting it at a framerate limit just slightly lower than your average framerate in that game. If your average is 42fps, set the Dynamic vSync for that game at 40fps for example).

If your cards are good undervolters (let's say 0.975 or below), you can see how far you can overclock the CPU without pushing the PSU too much. If you're lucky, you'll start exceeding optimum temperatures long before you actually trigger a shutdown due to insufficient power .

You can also attempt to slightly OC the GPU's, but keep in mind that at those voltage levels (and it's advised to keep the voltage as low as possible while still stable), any clock increases may not be stable and the benefits would be quite low. Increasing clocks will also increase power consumption, which is not worth it in my opinion, since a 7970m crossfire is already so powerful that I doubt there is any game we can't max out at native resolution. Aim to keep power consumption low by disabling AlienFX while playing and keeping the CPU clocked high enough to not bottleneck the cards but not too high as to consume too much.

You can also use ThrottleStop's TDC limits to modify how much power the CPU can draw. You should aim to keep the PSU under the least possible stress, since you'll be relying on it to power your machine for many years to come Although, if it begins to degrade in time (and it most probably will after a while) you can just sell it and buy a new PSU

A more detailed tutorial regarding configuring RadeonPro can be found here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18499549

 

Excellent post sangemaru

Although I haven't tried dynamic vsync with 7970M's yet I did use it with my 5870M's and it didn't resolve micro stutter. It does help with keeping your performance level constant for a smoother experience but the micro stutter is still there.

 

Have you tried all the instructions detailed in the post I edited above? It's not quite as simple as just enabling dvSync

Triple buffering disable, disabling the rendering of frames in advance, all that yadda yadda. Also making sure that you can maintain a certain minimum framerate (ideally above 40-45fps).

 

exactly all the above. BUT i have a small doubt, maybe nospheratu is the exception , and his r2 with the 2 7970m and the 240w works fine while all other r2s cant run 2 7970m with a single 240w psu...

so, as i told you wait some days until i get my second card and we will see if nospheratus status can be replicated.

my first 7970m is an enginnering sample and it is a small diamond as it overclocks to 940 only with 0.990V

its weak point seems to be the mem as it doesnt play well over 1100-1150

 

Just checked it out, I haven't done any of that and by his images it looks very promising!

I'll give a it a shot with FC3 this weekend. Thanks for the link :thumbsup:

edit: Nice score AlienHack!

 

Holy wow alienhack. That score is HUGE. My card only scored ~6970 graphics score with 950/1400 OC Yea, you'll have a bit lower mem bandwidth than most 7970m users, but I'm not sure there's many 7970m users that reach the 7700 range of GPU score, and you're doing that with undervolt and an underclocked ram.

 

i just noticed something...

The fans DO work on auto BUT looks like they are controlled by the CPU temp.

What i mean is, when the fans are let at auto and i run 3dmark 11, the first 4 GRAPHIC tests run , they use ONLY gpu and minimun CPU. All this time the 7970's fan is stable at 2500 , and thus the card raises temp to 80 , on the next tests that the cpu is used and its fan raises to 3000-3800rpm ONLY then does the 7970 fan raise and follows the cpus fan .

That is no issue in everyday use , because whatever game we play the cpu is used so all the fans go up..

BUT in special occations like in 3d mark where ONLY the GPU is used the temp rises, ofcourse it settles at 80-82C which is still fine so there is actually no issue. I just mention that for people to know.

and tesselation OFF in CCC :thumbsup:

its not what you would mention as a fully legal result.
BUT alot of people use this way when benhing in 3dmark.

I'll try now to see what will hapen with tesselation normal

 

Ah, I didn't notice that Yea, do it with normal so we can at least compare properly
Yea, I had the same fan behavior with some vbios (don't remember which one). I prefer to use HWinfo for that extra little bit of precision, and because otherwise the fans sometimes remained stuck at max speed.

 

for you sangermaru that you prefer you hwinfo running .... i have bad news....

my latest tests show that whenever i am running hwinfo my physics score in 3d mark drops dramatically... i mean physics score drops from 6900 to 6300, i tried it several times and its the same. So i supose the requests that hwinfo does to the system every milisecond for all these sensor data is probably taking its toll on speed...

 

Hmm, I never thought of that. I'll do some experiments with that Thanks for pointing it out.

 

my fully stable score...



UPDATE: also stable at 940 1140 with 3dmark score 6666 (too demonic IMO)

 

Haha, that demonic score is awesome )
Yes, 6666 sounds right for that core clock and those ram speeds It's pretty good.
Also pretty decent for that voltage.

 

You guys are "SIMPLY THE BEST":thumbsup:

I will jump on that train too if i see some rockstable working 7970m cross Benchmarks with proper score´s.
I have a 920xm 4* 3.2Ghz, Turbo up to 3,3Ghz @stock voltage. Must i undervolt my cpu too maybe?
I dont think the 920xm will be a bottleneck at our 1920*1200 resolution anytime soon

that radeonpro app. will solve the problem with microstuttering?

 

I don't think you can undervolt the CPU, although you should be able to limit the power it uses. But I don't think that CPU will be a bottleneck either. Regarding microstuttering with RadeonPro, there are many people on the internet who claim using it has eliminated all microstuttering for them Let's wait for nospheratu to do some testing if he feels like it

 

what i cant understand is at that time people tried the 330watt psu mod- did no one tried the stuff with undervolted vbios?
anyway im ULTRA EXCITED cant wait for results hahahah must control myself..

 

How can I deny you fine fellows some gaming results

The results aren't good though I tried it with FC3 since I know there's definite micro stutter and there's no improvement. I did his default method first with vsync enabled and dynamic frame rate set to 50fps. FPS in game was around an average of 45 on ultra settings at native res throughout the intro from the time I'm in the cage till I fall in the river. When I wake up in the room its a constant 50fps (DFC). When I step outside fps drops down to around 35 on average in the village and then back up to around 45 completing the signal tower mission.

Micro stutter is especially bad on top of the signal tower even when I'm looking at the floor of the tower and walking forward. But its everywhere really. Second I tried the dynamic vsync method and capped the fps to 58. Results are the same. PSU got quite warm, not as hot as with Crysis 2 though.

That said what might not work for me might work for you, and even if it doesn't AMD is bringing salvation at the end of next month

@lastshady They did try undervolting but they experienced throttling and most went straight to the dual 240W mod. Those who did the 330W and undervolted experienced shutdown's which they thought the R2 was initiating when in actual fact that 330W PSU works differently in the way it delivers power. A user with a Clevo P170EM experienced the same shutdowns with no ID chip mod (Their systems dont use ID chips so they can use any PSU). Also I think my PSU is special... cos its buzzing and still giving me UNLIMITED POWAH!!! (btw it was buzzing when I had my 5870M's too so it wasn't these cards that caused it)

 

Buzzing means happy magnets! Your transformer is working very well..... Probably

 

Buzz just helped me get this... GPU core oc helped too

 

you should do more game test.
that 3dmark score is unbelievable

 

That.is.beyond.awesome.
I guess the people who got the crossfire working didn't say much and the ones that did the psu mods wanted overclocks. It also means that for some reason the 330W psu is crap on non-AW m18x computers.
My god, withing 10% score of a gtx titan with i7-4770k.
@Nospheratu: For dynamic vsync to be effective, your computer must be capable to render frames at a speed above the setting you set the vsync at. So for example if your average is 45 fps, set the vsync to 30. But if even with these cards you can't sustain 60fps, you're better of lowering some details. Framerates below 40fps will exhibit stuttering no matter what you try to improve, even in single-card, even on nvidia.
Lower some details to achieve 60fps average and set dynamic vsync to 58fps, then try to play.

 

It looks like your GPUs are throttling big time in the combined test. Try a slightly lower CPU OC and see if it pumps up combined score.

 

ciare to elaborate? will ati release new drivers? lets hope they will help


For me microshuttering with the dual 5870ms was tragic... i was playing hawken with 50-70 fps and at points i was looking at the fraps counter because the game was so choppy that i thought i was sub 20fps... but i was still at 40!!

in generall crossfire (and sli too) is not a perfect thing for me.
When i am going to put that second 7970 m inside my R2 i will have crossfire off. Generally i will use only the first in gaming (even with my current one i play all the games i was playing this period with great fps so no need for crossfire)
And i will only use the crossfire option when newer games come out with more graphic demans (star citizen?) OR when finally Ati manages to fix shutering with drivers.

Otherwise the effect was so bad with my 5870s (i dont know if its the same with 7970s, they are suposed to be better in cf) that i dont want to feel this way while playing again. It was super choppy while running 40-50 fps...

i7 950??? socket 1366??