M6000 (7870M) GPU thread

Make sure that when you order the 7970m you get it with the x-bracket. Otherwise you won't be able to mount it properly with your 260m's bracket.

 

Don't worry, im used with pc moding but not on laptops, so when i get money i will make a post for getting some help

 

@Borja I know someone, also in Madrid, who is selling a used GTX 680M for around €220. Would you be interested?

 

Not atm, but when i have money i will contact you the first

 

Well we have a 2nd fatality, cracked the die.

Use .5mm pads on the memory or you will destroy the die with this card.

 

You too huh? Oh well, I guess these cards are just not meant to be on the M15X. Can you actually see the crack in the die. Mine looked intact but it was surely dead.

 

Wow just wow! That is a real shame Can this card be that different to other AMD cards on MXM 3.0B?

 

I ordered an M6000 and currently have it, but after hearing about cracked dies I'm going to wait until I have some thin thermal pads. My 5850 will have to make do just a little longer.

On a side note, any recommendations for thermal pads? I'm thinking of ARCTIC thermal pads:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARCTIC-Ther...F8&qid=1452606774&sr=1-8&keywords=thermal+pad

But if anyone has any better recommendations I'm happy to listen.

 

It's good this GPU is not that expensive. That's the only good in this situation.

 

I think maybe .5mm pads are too thin. Thinner pads will allow the heatsink to be applied with more pressure on the die, especially if you choose to modify the heatsink screws and/or x-bracket.

 

You guys that have broken your cards, are you using the original c-clips on the heatsink or do you have longer threaded screws?

 

I currently use Arctic thermal pads too. I can't comment on how well they cool because I have no way of checking temps on my VRAM and VRMs. I'm sure they perform fine. Problem is, they are extremely delicate and if you remove your heatsink, they might break apart. This happened on mine. They also don't compress as much as some other pads I've used. They are also rather expensive for the amount you get.

I recently picked up some K5-Pro thermal pad replacement paste. It is a really thick and viscous paste that can be spread over modules in place of pads. Again, I can't comment on how well it performs, but it spreads easily and is thick enough to stay in place and not spill over like thermal paste will. It will also compress well. I have used that cheap white silicone paste in the past on desktop cards and found that it is too runny to stay in place. This stuff is not runny at all. You may want to give it a try. It's cheap enough.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/K5-PRO-gumm...679991?hash=item5b06f407b7:g:fqUAAOSw~gRVnVk3

I removed the stock screws and c-clips and replaced them with screws of the same length. I also used .5mm pads on my VRAMs and 1mm pads on the VRMs. I did not see any cracks on the die but I did get a nice imprint of the die's markings on my heatsink

 

It can be difficult to know how much to tighten the screws when not using the c-clip screws. My screws are much longer than the c-clip screws and I'm never sure whether I'm applying too much or too little pressure to the die. I usually go somewhere inbetween.

I've always used Phobya Ultra 1.0mm 5w/mk as they are the gold standard in thermal pads. Never had any problems are they don't disintegrate like other less good thermal pads. I have them on my vrms on CPU side too

 

My M6000 came with the xbracket, I'll have to see if using it as is is actually a good idea, but I'm hopeful. Bought some of the Phobya pads too, thanks fatboyslim. Bought a 1mm and 0.5mm pads, just to make sure there isn't too much of a gap or anything. Guess I'll just be really cautious about it. In Spain until February anyway so can't test it until then.

 

Heres the dead cards die, cracked corner. :/

Don't use 1mm it'll cause uneven pressure on the farthest corner of the die and this will happen.

https://imgur.com/a/ohYjQ

 

My card was pretty much plug and play. Have to say it was a bit tight. The bracket on the back was thicker possibly that's my theory, so it took a little pressure to put down where as every other card i had (260m , 6970m) were easy to push down and screw in.

But i didn't have to file any brackets or use a shim or anything, which i expected i might have to with this seeing you guys reports, but nope, bracket was a pretty tight fit. I went slow, screw by screw just a little turn till they all felt tight enough but not to much, i reckon i could have kept going, but i may have cracked the die in that case.

Anyhow some NSFW pics of my m15x's insides

 

thats weird, I was using the 460m heatsink backplate, what one did you use?

 

Good job mate. Now stick it to 1ghz and enjoy 6990M beating performance

 

lol ill get it overclocked once i see its all good and dandy other than about an hour of benchmarking i have not had a chance to play with it properly . Work and the missus keeps me pretty busy these days, be worse when we introduce kids to the mix , laptop will be in new condition could keep it for a museum.

 

Nah. Kids go to bed at 7pm.

Sent from my SM-A500FU using Tapatalk

 

Would be great to see some benchmarks of M6000.

 

It is practically a 7970M cut in half with half the bandwidth, shaders etc.

Pretty sure it overclocks better though.

Sent from my SM-A500FU using Tapatalk

 

might give mines a wee overclock tomorrow and watch the temps like a hawk

had a wee go the night i used msi afterburner and the max it allowed was 880mhz on the core, didnt touch the memory, and in valley first run on stock it hit a 479 on stock 800/1000, and second run only 481 with 880/1000

Think the 720qm is holding it back ?

 

Can be.
Try to run some software which can show you cpu load and gpu load. HWiNFO64 can show you graphs on your desktop, MSI Afterburner can show information on screen while benching or gaming (just look at options).

 

Or.... just run 3DMark 11.
Where you can get both graphics and physics results as well as total score.

 

Nah it behaves the same as a 7970m, had a play around with a m6000 a while ago in a m17x R3, though the gains in percentage were a bit higher (20% for the m6000):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m15x-gtx-660m-upgrade.784999/page-3#post-10156239

Though my own 7970m overclocks quite well without overvolting it (over 8k 3dmark11)

3Dmark11 with a overclocked m6000:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10654350

Firestrike:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/9693481

 

I know this is slightly off topic, but does anybody know where I can buy more of the tape that is used in the following picture. It is the tape holding down the wires on the back of the GPU fan.

 

LOL, it's the typical insulating tape. Walmart?

 

Damn you're lucky you got a backplate with yours.
Where did you get yours?

Doesn't bother me since im getting a 680M from KOI.

 

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Best...R1-R2-Laptop-for-AMD-FirePro/32330951558.html

Asked the fellow if it came with the pictured backplate, Thankfully its the proper one so im stoked.

More confused that i cant get the card past 880 core, ill install hw monitor later and watch the performance on stuff, games run like dog s***. Even on low settings, and i dont mean like gta im talking like sim city, it was more playable on the inbuilt gpu on my ivy bridge

 

Latest Crimson?

 

yeah 16.5 i think

 

That tape is a fabric tape, similar to gaffer tape, but I am not sure if it is exactly the same. You can get gaffer tape pretty much anywhere they sell professional audio/video equipment or DJ equipment. Another alternative is to use Kapton tape. It has really good adhesion and is very resilient to high heat. Kapton tape is used on laptops on areas that need to be insulated. It's that clear yellow colored tape you see on motherboards or around processors.

 

right with afterburner it will only let me get the core to 880, and the mem to 1100, valley score comes back at 575. Sound about average

EDIT

ok after some reading i downloaded some osd driver, to make sure some stealth mode was off and now runs not to shabby.

 

C'mon, people, show us 3DMark11 results already with 24/7 overclock. Anyone?

 

run my sytem 24/7 like this

920xm Stock.
m6000 880 / 1100

 

Only 880, cmon.

push her harder. Mine did 980mhz 24/7

 

Thank you for results. Can you also run 3dmark 11? To give full picture

 

yeah i can run 3d mark 11 mate will do it shortly.

Cant figure out how to push it harder mate. My msi afterburner tops out at 880 / 1100.

No settings for in amd control center either

 

Thanks! Just for comparison - my 570M at 726MHz on core (could be 740 or 800 with overvolting which I don't recommend).
I wish you could solve the mystery about why can't go higher. Usually helps to choose earlier version of software.

 

It's due to a bios limit, I had to mod my bios to go higher, if hes down to flash a bios I can fix it for him

 

vBIOS? I guess that should work. So that's why _Drake_'s GPU was called as "Generic GPU"?

 

anyone flashed a new bios on the m6000 yet. Would love to get that little bit more out of it ?

 

Installed my M6000 today. There are a few issues with it, but overall it's a great upgrade.

Problems:
- Fan Control doesn't work (In Speedfan, MSI afterburner etc. Luckily the auto profile is fine)
- HWInfo crashes when checking sensors (Sensor #9)
- MSI Afterburner overclocking is finicky
- Overdrive unavailable in Crimson (Would be available if flashed as a 7870M, but I don't have a vbios for this)

GTA V is hammering this laptop. GPU usage very rarely hits 100%, and when driving around it can become totall unplayable. When moving around on foot, FPS is 40-50.

Saw people were doing benchmarks in 3dmark 11 so went and did one. My card is perfectly happy at 1000Mhz without a voltage increase, which is nice. The benchmark was run at 1010Mhz core (tried 1040Mhz which is the max in MSI afterburner but it crashed, then 1020 and it crashed, settled on 1010 and it finished the benchmarks) and 1100Mhz memory.


I ran GRID 2 afterwards at Ultra preset with 4x MSAA, got an average FPS of 35, minimum of 28, max of 40. However, I had to reduce the core clock to 1000Mhz. At 1010Mhz it crashed the graphics driver. Which means it's roughly equivalent to an 850M with DDR3 RAM. However I don't know whether the CPU would be affecting it or not. Considering the price, I'd say it's well worth it if you still have a 240M, 260M, or 5850. I'm quite interested in seeing how far this thing could go with a vbios mod to increase the voltage, but I'm not too handy with this type of stuff.

Also ran 3DMark, but it has some issues. The Ice Storm test consistently gives me a graphics score of 115,000, compared to 145,000 for Stephen with only a clock of 880Mhz, The Skydiver benchmark runs pretty well though.




In Cloud Gate, the graphics score is 2600 higher than the one posted one page back, but the Physics score absolutely ruins it. My CPU definitely needs an upgrade. Overall pretty happy.

If anybody has had success flashing a vbios for this card so that it appears as a 7870M I'd be grateful if you shared it.

 

Going to do all my benchmarks again later on today. I Found out how to work msi afterburner a little better, and gave me the option to unlock the card a bit more.

Done the benchmarks quickly before work. But didnt get to save or screen shot. I got it to pass a few of them at 1000mhz but it crashed the display driver the first time. Second time went through not bad, bit glitcy, see how it performs with a little more power through it.

Not done any bios mods yet, but with the help on here... cant see it being to long.

Ill get the benchies done today and repost. Ill run em at 980 /1100 which went through solid. Just flawless. 1000 / 1100 was a tad glitchy, but ill fire the power a bit higher see if it stables it a little.

 

Ok got it to 980 / 1100. Wouldn't do 1000mhz unfortunately. Maybe with a voltage mod it will do it.

Anyhow the goodies. Solid at 980 / 1100, but was flickery at 990 / 1100

 

Not bad at all. I think the 7970M doesn't get double the score at the same clock speed so pretty good!

You should try to push the vram more? Perhaps you can unlock more performance!

 

Yeah, VRAM could be pushed up to 1250-1300MHz. Take a look at this results.

 

Ran Fire Strike & Skydive with 1000/1300 clocks, Fire Strike went up 500 points and Skydive went up 400.

I don't think I'll be able to get any more performance from this card without overvolting/custom vbios and CPU upgrade.

Overall, pretty happy.




Also ran 3DMark 11 and my score went up to 1262, so a 40 point increase.