Upgrade a G73-jh to 6970?

If you would like confirmation of all the sections that are covered by thermal pads on my 6990M I can take a screeny of the thermal pads and sections if you like?

I dont know how this will compare to the 6970M however as I assume it would have a different layout.

 

the JH cooling solution isnt sufficient for the 6990m you will need to cool the vrm with ramsinks and that is the less you can do to get less heat on those cards however you can try to flash the card with different bios and give it a shot and for the 6970 and the 6990m they got the same board and layout.
try to get less temps and have a look at the card chip and see if there is any gray color on the glass layer like what hapened to DH48's card, I just hope that its still good to try again and GL.

 

etylina19 can you get into safemode? If so i can tell what will happon next
You will get artifacts....and then no boot. Your card might be dead already. I got into windows just fine and after opening a video i got GSOD and well the rest is the same as you + after some time trying to boot i got artifacts and then dead

Now that i start to think about what i did wrong is that moded heatsink might have not coverd some of the resistors and that killed my card.....but i have no idea why the gray spots came on the core

Take the card out and but it back. Then you know if its dead 100% or part of it is alive. (same if you get into safemode with the JH) The 2D part of the card works.

 

Sad to hear about such problems.

Still had no time to swap to my 6970.
Btw.: Is it really necessary to cut the upper parts of the JH heatsink? I don't see a prob there with the coils, VRM's or whatever.
Are there parts which are to high so the heatsink could not sit plain enough?
The 6970 doesn't look too different to me.
And I don't understand the big difference between 5870<>6970 the must in cooling of these VRMs. The heatsink of the MSI 5870 just covers the GPU and VRAMs. No other parts benefits from cooling.

 

Well there is the problem, you shoulnt run any game before be sure of the temps of the card, also the stock jh cooler need some mods to fit the 69xx card, and the vrms NEED to be cold before run any test

 

I can't see any spots and any gray color... If I get into safe mode I can see teh card but it was before I ran the game...

 

My card and the gray spots


Did you test the card with windows safe mode?
Let us know if it still works in the original notebook.
If the card is dead then thats the second "Brown" 6970 that died like that

I got a replacement and its the same brown GPU like before.

 

can you circle the gray spot out? as i failed to see anything abnormal about it :-s

 

The locations should appear on the last post in a few minutes. Photobuckets photo editor takes time to take effect.

The gray spots are the one gray line on the top corner and the small gray spot on the lower corner. To me it looked like it had burnt it ....form what? I have no idea....might have been voltage.

The gray spots were not on the core but inside it. On the surface it was smooth.

 

maybe the card from dell is not compatible only the clevo?

 

Dell does not make them. They order them from AMD.

Strange thing is If ou look at the 5870 and 6970 socket pins. The right side... on the 5870 there is one big pin and on the 6970 has 2 small ones.

I realy hope it is not a rare case were only one brand works

 

yep that weird, and have no idea what is the difference between one wide pin and the 2 small ones however i think all 6970m are identical maybe board colors are the difference . and if the dell's bios is not working well other bios will be a nice choice to flash to.
but the 5870 and the 6970m got the same gpu + vram position and size so the JH heatsink shoud sit just fine if tighten well and because the JH fans are less powerful than the MSI fan even they got a single one the VRM cooling is a must thats why MSI upgrade doesn't require any additional mods to the cooling to cool the VRM the fan is more than capable to do it.

 

Today I had disassembled my JH. Now I see, that the stock JH will not sit plain without cutting the upper small cooling bridges. It's weird, because I still not see a difference in high. Don't want to mod the one heatsink I have. So I have to buy a replacement. :|

I have both GPUs in front of me and I looked for the pins.
The Asus 5870 just has the 2 pins merged together till the end (only upside). At 6970 the pins are connected too. Look closely.
It's the same on the Clevo one here.

 

what about the 5870m is the heatsink sitting well on it or got the same problem?

 

If anyone was willing to send one to my office, I could get the design techs in on it.

 

Hi Chastity! we miss you here btw if you can help me to find a way to cool down the 940xm gonna be apreciated now runing good but i dont like it sometimes hit the 90c :s my 6970 is running smoooooth never get more than 84c

 

Short of a laptop cooler, ic7 diamond thermal paste or lapping the heatsink & cpu, there is not much else that can be done.

 

Extra heatpipe and bigger fans or better intake for the vents. Out put is actually good on the notebook but the intake is the worst. I usually have the notebook on a cooling pad with the lower cover removed and the does the trick.

There should be some sort of opening were the vents suck air in as at the moment the GPU and CPU fan cool each other and the system too.

It seems that ASUS in the EU is slacking off or something 4 weeks and they had not sent my JH heatsink to the shop. I called the shop yesterday and they told me the sent the order to ASUS but no heatsink so far.


@Chastity
To bad your in the US. Would send mine ASAP
As you work for asus a I have a question ( i think a lot might already have asked many times) The fans on asus notebooks. Why is the fan speed restricted ? Also as the notebook is by R.O.G who are overclock nuts who change everything even the fan speed. Before going from desktop to notebook i had many ROG rigs and you were able to change the fan speeds. Did ROG overlook this or they were not able to change it too?

The way asus notebook control the fans is strange. The bios only show fan control for the CPU but if you look for the GPU only thing you are able to find is that the MXM slot will be filled by O.E.M So other vendors add the GPU ???

 

I see you guys have made lots of cooling mods to g73. So i was wondering if any of you measured the max high between the VRM chips and the highest point of GPU heat sink? This is dues to my wanting to add small heat sinks on those chips that are not covered by GPU cooler. So i must choose them by height first.

 

I posted the info a few pages behind Sputnick, also my mods and i thing every info you need for the mod, also lot of pictures of the mod you have to do to the original vga cooler, is really easy to fit the card on this machine, the problems we have here are: hight cpu temp (i940xm) working close to 90c on gaming and DELL 6970, 2 users allready kill the card right after they install them on the laptop, well hope more users can post more info about it, if everyone need some info i can help, merry christmas to all

 

The ROG notebooks are handled differently from the mobos. The BIOS controls the fan speeds, and Asus frowns on modding the notebooks.

 

Hey All,

Long time, no see!

I've been away from my beloved Asus for awhile, playing in the land of desktops. But I brought it with me while traveling (So impressed with the R.O.G. backpack and how it holds "everything" to game on. Including a G13 and 2 XBox 360 pads. Not great for the plane, but if you're road tripping like I am, you can't go wrong)

And I stumbled upon this amazing thread. First I want to say congrats to all those that pulled a successful mod.

My question is the same as a few others have asked around here which is: What are the true performances gains gained from these new cards over the 5870m? Enough to make it worthy to take the risks and void your warranty for?

Or is this more, one of those mod's where the satisfaction is gained in the performing and completion of the project itself as much as the results?

I ask, because I'm still getting pretty impressive performance results from the 5870m. And while the upgrade addict side of me and the hustler side of me are screaming at me in my head to take a crack at this, my hardware experience is limited to putting desktops together and have zero experience with machine cutting and soldering, etc.

So, what kind of performance gains are we talking? 50% improvement or 15%-%25 improvement? Or less than that?

If the gains are worth it, I might take a crack at it, or pay somebody with the experience to do it for me.

I'm also equally, if not more so, interested in trying to switch out the display for a 120hz one and need to Google/search the threads to see if that was ever accomplished.

Yet, if I really want to do both, I'm wondering when you factor cost of parts, potential labor if I hire someone and/or time spent putting it all together, if its not just better to sell this one for a fair price and upgrade into a whole new model.

I guess I need to go search reviews on the new 6970m and see how it benches next to the 5870m and then decide.

Really impressive work though. Congrats to all involved. You are tempting me!

 

Hi! were you can see a really performance gain are in games like World of warcraft 25man raids, crysis2, bf3 etc on max settings, like every new gpu you can see an overall 25% performance gain, up to you to decide if you wanna waste money for that, for me is fine and thats why i did it, is a good upgrade if you dont wanna waste in a new system, i posted some game performances a few pages behing go check it out, ill try to post today results over SWTOR

 

Well the fan setings are the same on bouth ROG and standard asus notebooks. Funny thing is I can mod the CPU fans speed just by lowering the trip point but there is no info on the Gpu.... or am I just blind?


Today ill get the jh heatsink. Will have a go at swaping the 6970 on the weekend.

 

Did you test it?
You can change the values in Bios, but without effect.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-ami-bios-editing-tool-g73jh.html#post8155970

Is it a local shop? I need a replacement heatsink too.
How much you paid?

 

Have had no need to do it so far. I read a bout the bricking thread. If it is true I'm lucky I did not try to flash the bios.

I talked about the jh heatsink a few posts back. Local shop that does repair work for asus here and cost me 29 euro.

 

Oops, sry.

Good luck with your "new Dell" (?) card.
The guy who sold me the 6970 and swapped to 6990 has a dead card too now. He has a Clevo and buyed the card from a Clevo reseller.
Still bad batches out there?

 

lol now i got 4 heatsinks two of each




@tilla The 6990 died ?

Damn i am starting to get worried if the cards keep on dying like so.

 

wow too many dead cards, 70% sure is a install problem not the cards itselfs

 

Thats why the next attempt will be slow and ill double check everything. Also i will solder a new screw mount for the GPU so it will sit in the slot and will not move.

Now that I got a replacement JH heatsink I have something to look and compare with so the moded heatsink will fit and cover the GPU as it should.

The last time some of the heatpipes were touching the case of the notebook and that might have lifted the heatsink of off some of the parts. Its a theory ...will see after i have done everything.

Well ill be able to boot up no problem. The real test will be a video or a game

 

any news about the new 7k gpus?
I see lot of dead cards out there last week a member tried the swap and ended with a dead card I dont know it that about bad batches or bad installation process or nether bad cooling mods.
will wait till the new cards are out then will get one if they will use the same MXM slot.
the new cards will be on lower nm and consume less power and will get less heat i think so that will be helpful.
just waiting not eles I can actually afford a 6990m right now but want to wait.

 

Based on that HD 5870m is simmilar to desktop HD 5770, this (or even more) is the performance we can expect from a HD 7970M

 

yes you are right about the 5870 based on an underclocked 5770 chip also the 6970m is based on the 6850 desktop chip while the bigger brother 6990m is based on the 6870 chip if the same scenario we might get the 6990m performance from whatever equal to the 5870 like 7870 maybe

 

Well I started my second attempt. As i said before im building 2 types of heatsinks before i swap the GPU.

1) Will solder the JH heatsink heatpipes to the R3 heatsink like before but will fill the empty gaps (as R3 has 3 pipes and JH only 2) so heat transfer will be max.
At the moment just need to sand the heatsink abit and then can solder the JH heatpipes to it.



2) Will solder part of the R3 heatsink to the JH heatsink. Wil have to grind it a bit and then can solder it to the JH heatsink.



After bouth are done ill see witch one is the best to use. I think the heat is not a problem. Just have to install the card right. Will try to get a second mount tower form a old laptop tomorrow. Like i said before taking it slow....measure 10 time...cut once.

Had to make a mount for soldering as the undeside of the R3 is not flat + if do not use something to press the copper plate to the heatsink it will fall out and you do not want that to happen. Its a real b... to solder it back




Strange is my stock temps spiked up 6c yesterday. Idles at 56c now and games run at 79c. So a good time to try to swap the card.


Thanatospy how is your card holding out so far ? You have the fans at 100% or added a manual regulator?

 

Nice job there I think this time you will success. well I hope that you will

 

Nice DH48!!! good to see you still wanna try the card , my card have no problems so far, right now im playing SWTOR at max setting@1920x1080 AA8x with plenty of fps , my fans still at 100%, 0 heat problems so far

 

Good to hear no problems with your card.

Yes i still want to try this. Might be my last test if the card dies again. If so then it has to be a bad batch of card and ill just wait for the 7000 series to come out.

Today I had to kill my old HP palvilion ze4400 for parts . I think i found the perfect mount tower for the GPU

Just have to grind it down to the correct size + the good thing is i can just screw it to the JH motherboard as it has a thread through it. It was solderd and screwed on the HP ze4400. Makes it much better to remove to if i want to go back to the 5870 as i do not have to solder it.

And some other candidates for the job



Better to have more then one type ready

I also found this: It made my brain go into Dr.Frankenstein mode again lol
The fan is really quiet. Might help to move more air into the JH case ...or solder it in the middle of the resistors and mem. chips . But at the moment ill just keep it as an idea

 

Hi there! well, SWTOR run awesome on my system, max temps were 81c for gpu/cpu, normally it stay bellow 80c

 

7000M high end is the Pitcairn GPU which is directly taken from desktop 7870/7850 series.

Will have tops 1536 Shaders or 24CUs (compute units) XTX version
The lower end will have 1408 Shaders or 22 CUs XT, this one will probably come first before the former which then comes later on. Clocks will be 100Mhz lower than the desktop versions. Around 800-850Mhz.

But remember the GCN cores are superior to the Cayman chips with the same number of Shaders in total. They are not directly comparable for this reason.

 

Has anyone tried to use copper shims instead of thermal pads on memory and VRM chips? Another idea is use them on GPU and CPU to better heat transfer at least by increasing pressure applied to these chips ? Or is it not worth any attention?

 

Still waiting for the heatsink from Asusparts.eu
(1-4 weeks from 29.12.?)

Just desoldered the 2. mounting point. It's also srewed on the backside, so no worry. Had made some pics.



Also with pics, why the heatsink won't fit without cutting.

Galerie: G73 6970M - abload.de

 

Nice job

Question. Is that a self made cover around the GPU or is that stock ? My GPU did not have that

You are talking about ASUS. I waited 5 weeks for my heatsink.

I will be able to solder one of my heatsinks on Saturday. If lucky will be able to have a go at swaping to

 

Good luck man! we want to see more 6970 swaps!

 

That is stock. IMO this is just to reduce the mess with squeezing thermal paste over this small electronic parts.

 

That metal frame protects the edges of GPU chip from breakage caused by improper placing the cooler or improper screwing of mouting screws.

 

The mental frame i get it was the plastic that i did not know about.


Been a busy weekend but managed to make one heatsink
Not the best soldering but you try to solder the heatpipe without it expand to much



Soldered



The pipes are flat on the heatsink and the pipes still work.

Had to solder part of another heatsink to fill the gap + cover the GPU copper plate.

Still need to clean it a bit and then just need to make the mount and ready to swap.

 

looks promising i hope that you manage to swap safely .

 

Did not have time to swap but did find out that i have to resolder the CPU copper plate so it is nice and flush with the heatsink. The copper plate does not sit on the metal sides of the GPU ! so if you are using the JH heatsink you need be be careful not to over tighten the heatsink screws.

On my G73 the heatsink the notebook came with was about 1mm out of place on one of sides but both AW R3 were flat with the heatsink.

I did not pay attention to this with my last try so it might have been to tight.

 

source
no 28nm GPUs?

 

U r right. Just updated 6xxx.
But that's not part of this thread.