Dead GPU or incompatible vBIOS? (Clevo 8970M)

I recently tried to install a friend's 8970M into my M17X R2; I made sure to replace the X Bracket and apply the thermal pads correctly along with a copper shim for it to provide good contact. The card boots to Windows just fine, but it is unusable due to a terrible flickering/artefacting issue. The card had an M290X vBIOS when I installed it, so I attempted to flash the card to an original 8970M vBIOS, and 2 versions of a Dell vBIOS. None of these solved the issue.

After that I tried reseating the GPU, display cable and reset the CMOS - the issue persists. As a side note, the BIOS screen and DOS display for ATIFlash are displayed just fine, it is only the boot screen and Windows which are horribly distorted.

It seems to me to be the most likely case that the GPU is kaput, unless there is something i'm missing.

 

Before nVidia driver initilalization in Windows GPU uses only small portion of it's power, reduced clocks and small amount of memory. In Windows it goes to full power mode and if some further memory regions are bad then it shows artifacts.

Regards

 

You probably damaged the core. I ruined one 8970M like this, you have to be very careful when installing, very easy to overtighten the bolts and crush the GPU core.

 

To clarify, my friend sold it to someone before he sent it to me. The guy complained of the same issue so I believe he didn't install it properly. Either he overtightened it or he did not give proper contact for the vRAM - or worse: tested it without the heat sink. Its a shame as apart from being able to see nothing the card booted just fine. I'll have a think about whether to stick two 7970Ms in here, weather to find another 8970M or weather to take the plunge and buy an M390X from China (which I believe with 99% certainty that it will work).

 

Can't you just use Nvidia GPU? Almost no one uses AMD nowadays.

 

In the M17X R2 the AMD options are fastest. Its dubious as to whether the 780M will work, and an 8970M is faster than that. 7970M crossfire is a lot faster when its working and the M390X should be almost as fast as a 970M. Not to mention nVidia cards are usually more expensive to buy.

The only reason people don't use AMD now is because there are very few mobile cards available. The M390X is not widely sold and the Polaris MXM cards are almost impossible to find. Nobody is using Vega on desktops because the prices are stupidly high for what you get.

 

Wot? 8970M is same chip as 7970M, just with more memory and EC problems. R9 M290X is a rebrand of 8970M again. 780M is better than 8970M in every aspect and it's much more durable. R9 M390X is a rebrand of M295X that AMD for some weird reason didn't put to MXM.

Crossfire is dead. No more profiles. AMD dropped support for it. There are also problems with forcing crossfire if game doesn't support it and it also suffers from framepacing issues. I wouldn't recommend getting into CF unless you want to waste your money. SLI support is low nowadays and Crossfire is almost non-existing.

Nvidia cards are more expensive for a reason. They're much more durable than AMD counterparts (with few exceptions like 580M). Perf/w is also much higher. As for 780M+ models there are just few complaints about their longevity with hundreds sold. After 6990M + 7970M lottery We stopped buying them. It was too risky to buy a card that can be dead in months. Old 780M models are still alive and rocking. 8970M+ models suffers from broken EC fan control, incompatible heatsinks, drivers, no support from AMD and limited availability.

R9 M390X is just an oven mate. I doubt you will get it running properly in M17xR2. 970M is on par with it with much lower power usage.

 

OK but what you have to understand is nvidia cards do not play nice in the M17x R2 post 680M. 780M had IRQ issues and some models give only a white screen. 880M, only one reported case of it working, others say it was incompatible because of similar IRQ faults. Best card for the M17x R2 is the 8970M period. It is supported out of the box and it has no issues with the M17x R2 EC (native fan control with the dell and clevo 8970M). The GPU die is much better manufactured on the 8970M than 6990M or early 7970M. They do not get hot (max temp full load for me, no heatsink or fan mods, is 73C). Still I think it is worth adding a second 8970M since you can pretty much get two for 300 these days. Very capable card for 1080P or even 1200P gaming and no throttling BS to deal with.

 

Pretty much my point exactly, if the 880M actually worked i'd definitely be considering one - but I have heard nothing but issues from people who have used them. I heard one guy tried to crossfire 8970Ms but did not manage to get them working without crashing. It would be great if they work in crossfire, though even one of them is pretty powerful. I do have my doubts as to whether it will work however.

I have seen some screenshots from a Chinese seller showing the M390X working in an M17X R2. Obviously, not many people have tried that card as the cards are hard to find. I have a feeling that the Chinese sellers are just using W7170Ms with an M390X vBIOS modded into them. But if it works then its about as powerful as you can go for a single card.

 

I would like to get my hands on one of them, but not at 450$ a card......much cheaper to go the 2 x 8970M route.

 

Only some 8970M are better. Others may still die pretty fast and crossfire is dead anyway. IMHO it's wasting money but it's your choice mate.

 

Crossfire isn't dead exactly. AMD killed off the Crossfire name, but they still support dual GPUs - they recently added support for dual GPUs with Vega.

I understand your reservations with AMD though, the 6000 and 7000 series cards especially were pretty horrible for failure rates, and some of the old Catalyst drivers were rather poor. I can't fault the 5000 series cards though, as my original 5870s are still going strong. You could however, say the same of nVidia's old BGA chips though which were also terrible for failing. They also had issues with that one driver update where it was killing people's cards.

I generally do not prefer AMD or nVidia over each other, my only interest in in how the individual card performs. I cannot fault Pascal at all - it is power efficient, performs great and overclocks nicely. I think in comparison, Vega is a big disappointment. It's power hungry, without having the performance to match the high end Pascal cards. The launch too was a complete mess trying to piggy-back on the success of Threadripper. I hope AMD have a reshuffle at Radeon and sort their GPU sector out - it would be nice to have some real competition again. If a laptop can take the Maxwell or Pascal MXM cards, i'd suggest anyone does that over AMDs options as they are far better and more widely available.

 

I think when it was installed it got zapped by power left in the MXM slot. If you do not power drain the board before install, this can happen, thus crippling or killing a card. (Speculations of course)

Edit:
This was meant for the first person installing card, not @Arrrrbol

 

I always drain the power before doing any disassembly. It seems unlikely to be the issue since my 5870s are still working fine after being reinstalled many times. I believe the guy my friend sold the card to either fried it or crushed the die.

 

You did say you were not the first person to install them, correct?

I edited the post before this one to reflect I was not stating you did anything wrong to said card.

 

The 8970M? My friend used that for several years and then sold it to someone a few months ago. The guy who bought it complained it wasn't working and returned it. My friend sent it to me to test whether it was working or not. its not a huge loss, i'm planning on buying another GPU to upgrade it anyway.

As for the 5870s, they have been in here since it was new back in 2011. I've taken them out a few times to clean the dust out and repaste them without issue. Nothing wrong with those apart from the lack of driver updates and VRAM (and the usual Crossfire related spasms).

 

In layman's terms. Not you or your friend broke the card. The person who bought the card did. I hope this clears that up.

I have two of those cards sitting around now.

 

The 8xxx series is WAY more sturdy. The HD 7xxx cards are dropping like flies due to bad decision on the solder on the connection from die to PCB. Never heard of any EC problems with the 8xxx series, unless you try to install dell cards into a clevo or MSI, which is kinda...interesting.

Also no, the HD 8970M is now slightly faster than the 780M due to driver updates (one of the reasons why people love AMD) and considerably cheaper as well. Also better DX 12 support and much better Vulkan support (the card is on par with the GTX 970M in doom for instance).

Both the HD 8970M and the GTX 780m are equally durable. Getting CF HD 8790Ms or GTX 780M also seem like a waste for me, especially since both cards can handle most games on pretty decent settings on 1080p anyways. CF isn't really 100% dead, it's more like a half dead man with 1 leg and arm crawling, but if some people have some specific applications where they can use that kind of setup, then yolo it.

Both AMD and Nvidia have broken cards, as you pointed out the fermi cards where especially garbage from NVIDIAs side (seen countless cards melting mosfets, dying GPU's etc.) and AMD messed up big time with their HD 6xxx and HD 7xxx series due to low cost choice on the solder. The only reason why NVIDIA is more expensive is due to the fact that most people know NVIDIA more than AMD in the notebook market hence prefering them more, in terms of bang for the buck, AMD clear winner, not even a question wheter of not to get NVIDIA.

The M390X is indeed not a very power consumption friendly card. It does get somewhat hot, should however be absolutely no problem for an AW M17x at all.

Single M290x / 8970M in action.


Settings:
1080p, AA on, Hairworks off, everything Ultra except for foilage on medium. Game ran flawless.