M15x & 6970M / 6990M - What you need to know - upgrading, problems, solutions

No problem getting a 240W PSU. Just got one. $119.99.

DELL 240-Watt 3-Prong Additional AC Adapter with 6 ft Power Cord for Dell Precision M6500 Moblie Workstation / Alienware M17x / Alienware M17xR3 Laptops : Laptop Accessories | Dell

 

That's a lot of money! Did you buy from Dell or go the eBay route? I find the 150W version gets really, really hot when you run it for a lengthy amount of time. Nice in the UK during winter, keeps those inactive toes nice and warm during long spells of gaming. I'm hoping the 240W doesn't heat up quite so much when you power an M15x with it?

 

yup that was one of the reasons i got the 240 watt psu for my M15x, the stock psu get way too hot when doing anything intensive.

 

Cool, I'll be sure to try and pick one up when I get home.

Exactly 2 weeks to go. Yeeeeah!

 

how are the temps in the m15x compared to the m17x r3 with the 6970?

 

Except for the memory I stay below 80°C while gaming. Max is always about 75-78°C, the mem goes up to about 88°C... I need to order fresh pads I guess.

 

The MEMIO temp is the memory controller, not the memory chips. It's part of the GPU, changing pads won't help. The MEMIO is always the hottest of the three with AMD cards.

 

Wow, ok, didn't know this... makes actually more sense since there are a lot of memory modules, lol. Thanks!!

 

Hey guys,

I rung dell the other day from New Zealand, I think the support/sales must be based in Asia or something, because I found it really hard to understand the rep. Anyway, I gave the rep the part number for the 6970 and she quoted me $830 NZD shipped, but she said she wouldn't ship it unless I gave her the technician number..
I see there's a 6970 mobility for $800USD on ebay.. that seems like drug money, or is that just what I should expect to pay?

Regards,


Mike

 

No, you should be able to get it for about $600-650 USD... $830 NZD shipped would be ok I guess...
The one on ebay is overpriced imo.

Why exactly didn't she sell the card?

 

Thats way too much I was quoted just a hair under 500 before tax and shipping. $800 Hell NO!

 

Wow thats crazy i would never spend that much XD

 

Yeah here in sweden they sell the 6970m for about $800 too. Guess i have to forget the upgrade

 

There is a long wait right now for the M17x R3, I don't think they will ship the 6970m out any time soon. I just call Dell again and they said the card is not in stock and there is no exact date when it will be available to order. If the rep told you that it in stock and ready to ship. They straight up lie to you.

 

This will depend on the location...

 

Well, I didn't push the point as much as I possibly could have, but I got the impression they weren't going to sell me the card unless a technician was present/working on my laptop.

I remember pricing up a 5850 when I was living in London and the rep wouldn't sell the card to me seperately, he only gave me a price for the card fitted. Seems the reps I have dealing with aren't as nice as the ones you guys deal with in the states.. maybe it's time for a trip to the USA..

 

Yes, same here... they won't sell you the card unless you pay the technician as well. Hate this.

Edit: Aaand... they won't even sell anything that's not supposed to be in your system.

 

Updated the first post, you can now officially order the card from MXM-upgrade.

Btw, I'm working on a little hardware mod for the fan control, testing some things atm, though I don't have a lot time so this may take a while until I have a final result. If anyone has a spare fan to sell let me know, otherwise I just get one from ebay. This will make the testing a bit easier.

 

A m15x will be tested with our card and Dell bios soon. If it works, we can deliver them with the Dell bios preloaded.

Just noted the Paypal code doesn't play nice with IE. If you experience issues

a) I'd like to know
b) Use FF

Ice-Tea

 

or

c) Chrome

 

MXM is showing that the 6970m can now be delivered with a Dell vbios.

"Note: we can deliver these cards with the original or Dell vbios, whatever carries your fancy. Just add a note on Paypal to deliver the Dell vBios on the card and we'll take care of it!"

Had any further conversation about their experience with the Dell vbios, fan control, etc.?

 

Great news!!

Audio through DisplayPort/HDMI works now with my card as well!!

I needed to flash the Dell 6970m vbios to the card, which allowed me to install the M17x R3 driver. This made it working for me.
I guess you can simply upgrade the video driver and keep the Dell audio driver when you need to update.

Thanks goes to the Master of MXM-upgrade, Ice-Tea, who agreed to test whether the card even works with this vbios (I didn't want to kill my card ) After I got his "ok" I flashed my card as well and did some testing... success!


And a big thanks to Inap for providing the vbios!!!


As Ice-Tea mentioned before, they will send you the card with this vbios already installed when you order it from them (add a note when ordering), so you don't have any trouble flashing it.


NOTE: This only applies to the card from MXM-upgrade so far, I can't say for sure whether it will work with the card from Aikimox, though it probably will.


First post updated!


Edit: @The Rev: No, unfortunately still no native fan control... but at least some progress

 

hmm, the fan speed may be something we cannot do anything about?

 

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I'm working on a hardware mod. Software wise I can't do anything about it. You would need some crazy disassembling skills to make it work I guess.

 

Dang still no automatic fan . I would take the fan over the audio.

 

Awsome progress!

 

@svl7 ~right now I am using custom fan control using sapphire trixx OCing program. I don't understand exactly what you mean by native fan control, but perhaps you should take a look incase you haven't. you get to set 3 points on a line graph, x being fan % and y being temperature. for example I think I have (0%,0) , (50%,40) , (100%,80) and so it automatically changes your fan. You might even know everything I just said, perhaps somebody else will read this and benefit even.

 

I'll check in the vBios if I can work something out for the fan control, but don't keep your hopes up.

We recently tuned a "2 speed thermocouple" method. This is something we can also ship at no extra charge.

 

What do you mean by "2 speed thermocouple method"?

 

the paypal button on mxm-upgrade doesnt work. I just get to a paypal page that tells me to retry again later.

 

A thermocouple switches the fan fully on when a certain temp is reached.

However, if you connect a resistor between the two terminals it will run at low speed untill the set temp is reached. Enough to keep it cool for surfing etc

Mr.Valle: there's indeed an issue, don't know what yet. Are you using IE? If so, any chance you could give FF or Chrome a spin?

 

Hey guys, this is the shop where I got my 6770M, he is a nice guy and is by the book. Anyway his cards are dell ones and should work normally. You will pay a premium over the MXM-upgrade ones however.

Buy HD6970m, del M15x HD6970M 2G DDR5 MXM3 VGA card, CARD, del M15x HD6970M 2G DDR5 MXM3 VGA card at Aliexpress.com

EDIT: Ice-Tea, have you seen my 6770 benchmarks?

 

These guys are claiming that the card was designed for the M15x...

 

They are claiming it is a Dell card - but then they say it may need a bios update to work in a Dell. I'm just a little bit suspicious about the "designed for Dell" bit.

Joe

 

No I think what they mean is that the card is from Dell but the laptop you use may need the newest bios for it to work.

 

insane price though...

 

Well this is what he said. He was under the impression I had an M15X (because he targeted the 6770M at dell users):

 

Haven't seen the benches yet. Became proud dady last week, kinda slurps up my time

"The Dell factory" That's funny, as they have no factory. Only ODMs working for them.

 

Congratulations man!

English is not the guys first language but he delivered a working card to me, so I believe him when he says they are dell cards.

Like I say though, they are quite a bit more expensive than yours.

 

He's also offering HD6770M's said to be "MXM3 designed for the M14x." "Plug and play."Odd when you consider that the only card available for the M14x is the GT555M, which is soldered in to the motherboard. Also like "Near new (not refurbished)." WTH is that supposed to mean, particularly with a brand new laptop that has barely begun deliveries. I would stay very far away from this good fellow.

 

it is possible its a typo or they dont know(and truly believe it is for M14x).
maybe its an entirely different card even!

most of these seller are just trying to sell the problem is they pay no attention to details what so ever, he could easily know of the mistake and still not fix it. they sell at a distribution level and dont really care about the individual person.

since they did deliver some thing to somebody, i will say they are not scammers, but its a mistake.

ps.the price is suspiciously high, may be the point of that is to haggle, otherwise they are just scarring off potential buyers!

 

Yeah, I'm working on something similar, I did some testing recently with some NTC thermistors... I think couple with a thermostat it could work fine. Though it may take some time before I can really finish it, need some other parts and also more free time.

Crazy prices...

 

Not on the 6770M, and when it produced scores like this:

Result

I cant complain too much

 

A little update... the latest beta of HWinfo32 now supports automatic fan control, you can set four different fan speed/temperatures per fan and it will automatically adjust the speed when the temp changes.

I haven't tested it a lot yet, but it works great so far. Big thanks to Mumak for all his work!!!

Of course you can also use this with every other GPU in case you don't like the standard fan trigger points.

 

great new svl.. I hope you can get that beast working flawlessly

with a 6970M and a 920XM stuffed in there, I believe you can give any computer running a single GPU solution a run for it's money eh ?!?! Great news for any M15x user...I thought of buying the card myself but it's too damn expensive right now.. hopefully sometime in the future...

On a side note, have you tried OC'ing that 6970 yet...? I think it can run at core frequency of 900Mhz pretty smoothly considering a 5850 used to run at this speed at reasonable temps.....see if you beat the AMD benches at the benchmark thread.... ALL THE BEST PAL !!!

 

That is great news. Good for Mumak.

 

Thanks Sgt.!! Yeah, great card, but expensive... but I just had to give it a try after Inap reported that the Dell card works.
When you take a look at the benchmarking thread you can find some numbers, also with the GPU overclocked... I posted some vantage and 3dM11 runs. My card hits the limits at about 830 MHz core, Inaps card can go much further if I remember correctly... I should do some more runs, haven't tried benching with the 11.5 drivers yet.
Too bad I can't overvolt the card... doesn't seem to work.

I'd recommend everyone who wants to power up is M15x to get a 6970m, it's an expensive upgrade but it brings your machine to M17x levels... and now thanks to Mumak fan control got pretty easy.

 

Hey slv7,

Did you get it to work with the gpu temperature. It read my cpu temp right and adjust it accordintly but some how when I set for the gpu it stay at 2000rpm. Which drop down did you pick for the gpu? Mine it said ATI GPU[#0] and there four of them. I try all four and all of them stay at 2000rpm.

 

I took the third diode, should be the MemIO (which is the hottest one usually). I know, you can't see all the text... it gets blocked by the window. The text is simply too long ("ATI RADEON HD 6970M (BLACKOMB XT/PRO) lol... it's a detail, but I'll let Mumak know.

Haven't tried a different diode... this works well for me so far.

 

I try the third one and it still stay the same . The different about this version is it didn't actually install. After I extract the file I just ran it. Did you install your slv7?