G73JH 6970M upgrade infomation

Just posting to let everyone know that I got a clevo 6990m working in my g73jh with a 920xm. I haven't overclocked the gpu much yet. It ran fine for over 5 hours of solid dota2. Fan control is perfect. I haven't had the chance to test hdmi. I used all the information in bis thread. If anyone has any questions just drop me a pm .

 

more info about this please
plug and play?

 

Sounds great

Could you post some benchmark results / temperatures here? Are the fans working as they should?

 

fans are working perfectly. Idling at 51C in a room at about 19C. It may need to repaste as I know the paste job I did wasn't excellent. maxed out at 95C in kombustor stess stest. It is running fine on my 150W adapter surprisingly. Its surprising due to the fact that my cpu is running at 94W.

a negative though, HDMI IS NOT WORKING. Not at all. I think @tilla got it working on his clevo 6970m. Idk how...

I will edit this post with benchmarks in a little while.

while 3dmark11 downloads ill share my specs for the benchmark.

CPU: 920xm QS@ 3.2GHz on all four cores (94W).
GPU: Clevo 6990m @ 740MHz core 1000MHz memory.
Power supply: stock 150W asus.
RAM: stck g73jh ram (8GB).

edit: I will also add that the card's 2d clocks are 100/150. There is no instability even at these low clocks.

edit2: I will add that I used 1mm 7w/mk (I think) thermal pads for the vram and icd7 for the die.
I will also add that I can run skyrim on ultra (with shadows on high, aa to 2x and af to 12x) and get 60fps at 1080p at ALL times.

edit3: 3DMark11.
SCORE 3654 3DMarks
GRAPHICS SCORE:3386
PHYSICS SCORE:6676
COMBINED SCORE:3374

Seems a bit low... What should I be getting for the graphics score? According to this i should be getting 3572.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6990M.57308.0.html EDIT:I read it wrong, that score is about right.

edit4: 3DMark Vantage.
score:14791
gpu score:13684
cpu score:19529

That score is on par with the one listed on notebookcheck.

 

Good to know about another working 69xx.

HDMI works for me after I'd flashed the Dell vBIOS for the 6970.
But no sound over HDMI!

My system scored:
680/900 (stock)
3DM Score: 2977
Graphics: 2838
Physics: 4087
Combined: 2865

800/1000
3DM Score: 3401
Graphics: 3298
Physics: 4048
Combined: 3385

Have fun.

 

I'm fine without hdmi for now. I may fiddle with it later. I got my card up to 850 on the core earlier. I didn't bother benching. it was stable in kombustor for about 5 mins (all I bothered running it for). ill stick to the max clocks through ccc for now, att is a hassle.

Thanks for the scores btw.

 

@Carulli

Those 3DMark scores for stock 6990M are fine fella I saw about the same they are not low. My highest I reached are here.

Very nice work been waiting a while to see someone implement my beast in a JH good to see it works.

In regards to Skyrim I have 122 mods installed on top of Skyrim maxed at 1080P and see above 60fps You should have no problems it is leaps and bounds over the 5870M.

Just reinstalled BF3 with the latest patch and with my overclocks I now see an easy 50-60fps + in battle with everything maxed as long as AA is kept off.

Lastly the idle clocks for this card are 100/150. I normally switch powerplay off to keep them at that and I have never had a crash from them.

Enjoy

 

Where can I purchase a Clevo 6970M?

 

Sorry for the long awaited reply. If any of you have any questions I'll be happy to answer. As far as my experience with with the 6990m on the G73jh. I finally got it to succeed a fur-mark run. Firstly, I force flashed the vbios to Clevo. Secondly I used IC diamond thermal paste. I triple stacked the thermal pads for better heat dissipation. Last but not least I slightly modified the heatsink. I did this with a dremel and some heatsinks I had lying around. I used thermal glue to keep them in place on the card.

Unfortunately I will no longer be able to provide pics on this G73jh as I have sold it on ebay. I am currently preparing to build another custom G73jh. I will provide pics as soon as I get all the parts. This one will also be built with the SW touch pad. I am wanting to take a shot with the 7970m, unfortunately I am having difficulties finding one for sale.

 

You don't need to purchase a Clevo 6970, you can purchase a Dell Alienware 6970m or 6990m on Ebay and force flash them to Clevo.
P.S. Excuse the double post they are regarding two completely different subjects.

 

I thought the DELL card wasn't recommended because of the HDMI problems, the fan control and the more frequent failure people experienced?

 

Here's a 7970m for sale check it out: AMD Radeon HD 7970M 2GB FOR CLEVO, alienware etc upgrademonkey-in stock | eBay

 

Hmm, I never tested hdmi before it was sold.

I will say, however that the guy that purchased my g73jh is extremely satisfied.

Here's my video of it passing furmark http://youtu.be/izMYd_uW4ZY.

 

Just checking back in. The Clevo 6990m Is still going strong. It is however running pretty warm. I lowered my OC to to 740/1000 to keep it cooler. I am going to do the cooling mod that DH48 did at some stage. I also plan to flash the Dell vbios to let hdmi work. in in no hurry for it though.

This card is a BEAST. I have not seen less than 60 fps at all in diablo 3, dota 2 or skyrim (all on max settings with at least 2xAA) at all and it hold up very well in most other games. I will edit this post with its performance in BF3 once it is finished downloading.

I also want to thank EVERYONE who contributed to this thread. without everyone's input and experience this mod would not have happened for me. I hope my experience can become useful to the next person. PM me if you want to ask questions .

 

Hey, I created an account just to thank you guys for the hard work and effort. I've been following this thread for the past month or so, and as of yesterday, successfully upgraded my G73JH to a 6970m (Clevo). Haven't had any problems so far, a success attributable to the experiences that you guys have had, and your advice!

 

Well most are going for the 7970m at the moment but as they do not offer it here I found a bargain for a Clevo 6990m (just under 150 euro) and will be swaping that in the G73JH as soon as it arrives This time should have almost normal fan control.

 

150€ for nearly double GPU performance is indeed a great deal, gz

 

Yea I payed for 400AUD my 6990m. Good deal. Mine is still running great with a really nice overclock.

As an update. I completed at similar cooling mod to DH48's mod. I didn't cut the plasic out and add mesh, instead I drilled many 2.5mm holes over the fans. The card runs about 10-15C cooler (on load) than it did before. It still idles at 51C on the core and and shader and 48C on the mem IO in a 26C room. The card gets to about 90C at full load with my current overclock of 835/1075, at stock it sits at around 83C at full load. I can get my card higher without crashes but ATT detects artifacts at anything above 840 on the core.

This graphics card combined with the 920xm (@3.2-3.6) makes for a massive beast. the only games I dont get 60fps+ (high to ultra) on are BF3 and ARMA2.

 

Okay, yet another update. I felt adventurous this morning so I decided to try and flash the Dell 6990m VBIOS to my clevo 6990m hoping to gain HDMI video output. At the same time I was hoping to raise the AMD overdrive maximum clocks from 740/1000 to 860/1200 so I modded the VBIOS using TechPowerUp Radeon Bios Editor as i was sick of using ATT for my overclock.

Before I did any modding and flashing I extracted the current working VBIOS from my card using GPUZ just in case something went wrong. I then opened up the Dell VBIOS I got from here. I changed the maximums for AMD overdrive to 860/1200 (way higher than I need but what the hell) then saved the VBIOS and used the "no hash" option.

I then flashed this VBIOS to my card and... no video output at all, not even to my native LCD. I had prepared for this so all I had to do was blind flash the stock VBIOS to the card and I had video back. I then just went back and changed the overdrive maximums of the stock VBIOS to the higher values and flashed that. It worked like a charm. Now I can go back to using CCC and get rid of ATT. I am sure this would work for the 6970m also so anyone who is overclcoking higher than the overdrive maximum with ATT I recommend trying this if you would prefer to use CCC.

Another thing I noticed while doing all of this was that in TechPowerUp Radeon Bios Editor I didn't have the option to edit fan settings for the Dell VBIOS but I did have the options to do so whit the Clevo VBIOS (not that I tried). This may explain why fan control only works on the Clevo cards and not the Dell ones.

If you do attempt this make sure you have the knowledge of how to blind flash. If you don't and the flash fails or the VBIOS is bad you will not be able to unbrick your card... BAD!

TLDR: Dell VBIOS didnt work but i was able to raise the AMD overdrive maximum clocks from 740/1000 to 860/1200.

 

Hi everyone, I few days ago my 5870M in my G73jh (2y 6m old) stopped working, laptop powers up (fan noise and keyboard lights showing) but screen remains black and also external monitors vga or hdmi have no signal.

I was looking for the clevo 6970m, because seamed to have less problems but I cant find one, there are a lot of dell and eurocom on ebay.

I read on other threads that eurocom perform fine did anybody try them?

Could you suggest the best GPU I could mount and where could I buy it?


Thanks in advance

 

Im planning to purchase to 5870m from ebay, did you flash BIOS to be able dell card work on this machine? If yes my I request for link or guide on how to make dell card running on Asus G73. My gpu died a week ago bad thing is Im currently here at Muscat, Oman parts is not available locally. Below is the link of the item

AMD Radeon HD 5870M Slot MXM B | eBay


Is the above item will work? Please let me know before I put my payment. Thanks in advance

 

Question, has anybody been able to get HDMI to work properly? At the very least get picture out of it?

 

@dencio
This Dell card should work as evgasr2 stated.
If you are interested of an original Asus 5870m from my G73, I would sell it.

@F9zSlavik
HDMI video out was working after I flashed the Dell vBIOS to my Clevo 6970m.
HDMI audio out isn't working.

 

I am very closing to buying either a 6970m or 7970m.

I should of been more specific, with the Clevo, can you get HDMI working? I am assuming yes since you said you flashed a Dell using a Clevo vBIOS. Is your fan constantly running at 100% or was that issue fixed? My GPU died and I am deciding whether its worth spending 500 bucks for a GPU upgrade (7970m) or 260 for a cheaper upgrade (6970m)

 

Oh Man that's great news!!! is the card needs BIOS flash? How much are you willing to sell your original G73JH card let me know plzs.

 

Guys I bought a Clevo 6970m that should be coming in soon. I still need to buy thermal pads and thermal paste.
I read a few pages back, you guys recommended that IC4 NOT BE USE, is it still not recommended? I had used it on my 5870m. I may just go with Artic Silver 5.
As far as thermal pads, I was thinking of going with Phobya Thermal Pad XT 1.mm, what do you guys think?
Phobya Thermal Pad XT 100mm x 100mm x 1.0mm - 7W/mk (1 Piece) (17134) - FrozenCPU.com

I still need to look for some small heatsinks for the chips. I have a question about that, do I need to buy thermal tape or what did you guys use for stinking the small heatsinks? I'm thinking of using copper. I'm hoping to order this by tuesday so I can have it by or before Friday. Would be awesome to have this as a project to work on this weekend Let me know guys thanks

 

Guys, i'm following this thread for a little, and i want to know if this procedure with a G73SW is possible
I want to change the old GTX460m to a brand new 6970m or 7970m.

Is it possible???

with links and so on... i really only find stuff about JH never about SW :/ and i really love my SW, this baby is with me for almost 2 years and its getting outdated

Any helps i really appreciate!!!

 

I need help please....

Just got 5870M from Dell MXM 3.0b Slot, and I installed it on my machine. The machine boots but the color are washed out



I also enclosed VBIOS version...



Is the VGA needs to be flash?? If yes may I know the correct BIOS.. any help is much appreciated..

 

@evgasr2

I saw your post on this forum ASUS G73Jh HD 5870M DEAD fail vbios flash - Page 2 how did flash theBIOS? It is directly downloaded to dell website? My I know the procedure?

I also facing washout colors using dell 5870m VGA (refer to my above post) and I have no idea whats the current bios of the vga.. so my I ask for your kind assistance..

 

Even if you flash the wrong vbios you can blind flash it back if you prepare yourself. I wrote a batch script to do it. ALso that looks like an LCD problem not VGA.

 

@carulli
Damn hope its not.... do know you were I could find dell 5870m VBIOS? I will to flash it and see if its work..and do you have a guide to..please I need help.

 

I do not know sorry, try searching the alienware section of these forums. Before you do flash it though learn how to blind flash. It is so important, otherwise you could end up with a dead card and no way of fixing it.

 

Hi guys! I always read a lot os stuff on this forum but las month my 5870 died
So I wanna buy one card for my g73 and if I buy one 6970 i Need use a notebook cooler under mine? Because I think the heatsink isn't enough for the card or am I wrong? If I could I will buy a 7970 but it's so expensive for today. Do the guys know somebody who is sell a clevo 6970? Sorry about my English because I from brazil!
Great job here on this forum!
Best regards

 

@ carulli

I already fix the problem by flashing its VBIOS to A00 and now its work like a charm. My question is while the fans are running at full speed (a bit annoying) there is no sensor reading found in HWmonitor and HWinfo and I have no idea what is my idle temp and full load temp.. any idea guys on how to fix that??? need help please....

 

you idle temp is whatever the "current temp" is in hwinfo and the load temp is the current temp while the card is under load (it will show a the max temp if you leave hwifo running while loading the card).

 

please dont flash dell hd 5870m to clevo because it bricked my card.

I'm glad that you have already falshed with a00 vbios.
also there is no fix for fan issue.
thank you

 

@evgasr2

Yeah finally it works..thanks for your post and also to carulli. My baby now is resurrected and still kicking. More power to this forum.!!!

 

he's gone he got banned

 

Hi guys! Anyone know where is the 7970 topic? Thanks
It's gone

 

Hi Guys any updates on upgrades????

 

Howdy!

First off I would like to thank everyone involved in testing this for the rest of us! I really do appreciate it! :thumbsup:

I have finally got around to moding and installing a 6970m I got for cheap in my G73JH with the 740 cpu.

I am using a clevo card with a modded Dell Vbios. Everything seems to work though I haven't checked the hdmi. I am using the stock cooler modded with thermal tape and an old corsair ram heatsync I cut up to fit. Oh, and super glue... BE CAREFUL is all I have to say about that... >.>
I am also using a clevo card with the screw mounts soldered onto the pcb. I just used the clevo screws with some arctic silver. I "Borrowed" some fingernail polish from my girlfriend to stop the screws from backing out over time.

Idle is 65c If i am not doing anything at all it will drop to 49c. Gaming will reach temps of 77-81c all of this is undervolted and overclocked . 700/1000 at .975V
Fans kick on and off as they should.
I am also using the stock 150watt power adapter

Problems...
My laptop always thinks there is a second monitor attached.. always... I can dissable it but it still shows up in settings. No mater what Vbios Stock Clevo or Dell.
My guess is it has to do with the way the hdmi is set up on the stock asus card... nothing I can't live with.
The stock clevo vbios would not let the clocks get past 400/900 1.0v no mater what. I had to downgrade to the x7200 vbios I found floating around untill I found the Dell Vbios.
The Clevo card I used came from a crossfire setup, so I'm not sure if that was the cause or not.

The biggest problem I faced is if I overclocked at all with the stock voltage 1.10V My laptop would just shut off without warning or nor bsod. My card would be stable in furmark at 800/1200 but if I played crysis 2 or bf3 it would shut off randomly this was the same for 700/1000 with 1.1V. It's not a heat problem, my temps where all lower than 80c. I was logging in gpu-z and had hw monitor in another monitor.
I checked my ram with memtest and check my cpu with prime95 for well over 5 hours with no problems either times.
Only when I undervolted below 1.0V would it let me overclock in peace.

My guess its either a bad psu, too much power draw for the psu, or motherboard can't handle the load.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post this just in case someone else had a similer problem(s).

Edit...

Happy new year everyone!

I ended up plugging my G73jh into a hdmi capable tv. Worked Great!

Only problem was, even though there was sounds coming out of the tv, there was also sound coming out of my laptop...
Again... nothing I can't live with or disable manually

 

If it helps I don't think that's related to the upgrade in any manner. My g73jh is unmodded and it will randomly play sound from multiple sources despite being set to always switch to a single source. Just one of those things that sometimes works fine and other times doesn't.

I did get a G73SW I'm planning on putting a Clevo 6990m into since it has the newer processor than the JH.

 

i have a question. i have an Asus g73jh with the stock 5870 series AMD gpu. I was trying upgrade to a clevo hd7970m. Apparently, the OP welk documented showing how in the 6970m upde and there are two heatsinks that work w . The stock one with some modding or an Alienware m17x R3 gpu heatsink (AT0fj0060C0). The question is will the m17x card work with tje clevo hd7979m gpu? to answer this i need to know if the footprint (form factor)of the clevo 6970m and cleco 7970m are the same.? May be someone could help me if they have both cards avail to compare. Thanks

 

Hello everyone,

I'm new on this forum. I have Asus G73jh but for last two weeks it's not working because my graphic card went to graphic heaven After reading all of post from here about card swapping from 5870m to 6970m, I've decided to buy dell 6970m for my asus. But after installing it in my laptop only display's blue backlight, power and wifi diode are periodically flashing. And that's all. But when I've mounted my old, dead card, laptop was trying to start up. It doesn't happen with new dell 6970m. I thinking it can be caused by broken card or the problem is somewhere else like broken mainboard... (I've tried different RAM and different power adapter(180W) but it doesn't helped.) Do You have any ideas what could be the reason?

Thanks

 

Getting the 6970M now seems a bit odd, also keeping in mind how failure prone they seem to have been.

 

The 6900 series are known to fail ....and fail a lot. If you are planing on going with a 6970m or 6990m you need to fit the heat sink so that there is an even pressure on all the screws and it is not screwd on to tight as it will crush the core die and heat will just damage the solder points. With proper tools i know some ppl have fixed the GPUs but it would fail again at some point.

And as Meaker pointed out a 7900 series would be a better option.

 

I`ve been reading this thread for awhile and my stock gpu went out on me a couple of weeks ago. I ended up ordering a Clevo 6970m and was wanting to use the @tilla method for connecting the JH heatsink finding the Thanto method not to work for me. It seemed the Thanto method I could not get to press down far enough on the gpu and RAM for whatever the reason despite following the instructions to the letter.

I had some questions for those of you using the @tilla method:

1. Were the JH screw springs reused as I can't tell from the pictures?

2. The @tilla method mentions grinding/cutting but it seems unclear where exactly? All the instructions say is "the bottom" of the gpu. If I have to grind/cut anything how much or how far?

3. The @tilla method seems to reuse the original gpu cross brace for the screws as well since the Clevo one is unusable. Were the holes around the Clevo gpu made larger somehow so the original cross race could fit though them on the bottom on the card?

I've read miles of posts in this thread and can't seems to find these answers and my G73 is down until I can get the sink attached reliably. I'm open to suggestion and I am new to the forum. Please help all you experts!

 

Hi,

I'm still around here.
1. Yes
2. Here is a gallery of my taken pics: Galerie: G73 6970M - abload.de
I think it's clear then.
3. I had to reuse the crossplate because of the reused screws. The screws of the Clevo mounting are smaller.
But also there would be a huge gap if using the clevo plate. You can see it at the pics too.
Here is a view, where you can see the already mounted G73 plate. It doesn't really fit in the smaller holes of the clevo card.
So it is a bit rough to press down the screws later. But it works.

Good luck

 

@tilla: Thanks for the pics of the card swap, but as far as questions #2 and #3 the pics did not help much. I still have no idea where you grinded/cut anything down on the card to make anything fit. Did you mean the mounting holes? I'm sorry I don't understand, but I've got an entire solder/cable repair shop at my disposal to mod this card with. What exactly am I grinding? What did you use to widen the holes with? I tried to get the heatsink to screw down with just lining the original one up and using the screws but I can't get it the screws to reach.

 

Ok so I went out on a limb here (pics to follow later) and used a pin vice and a drill index set to slowly widen the cross brace mounting holes by hand. After I got the holes wide enough for the original cross brace, I wrapped up the cross brace in ESD tape to prevent arcing on the components on the bottom of the card. I placed the JH heatsink screws, springs and c-clips back onto the heatsink, put some 1mm thermal pads down on the RAM, AS5 on the GPU and pressed the JH heatsink on. I torqued the screws down as far as they would go and backed off a quarter turn. The sink appears tight and since I'm at work I don't have the ability to test the 6970m again in my laptop, but will report back later.