6970M Undervolting

So lately I have been playing around with undervolting the 6970M and have come across some pretty spectacular results that I thought I would share. Ever since I received my notebook for whatever reason my 6970M seems to run a good deal hotter than others from what I've read around the forum. After repasting the thing about 30 times with two different compounds and still ending up with higher than normal temps, I decided to download ATI Tray Tools and try undervolting to save a few degrees. Little did I know the surprise that I was in for! Now I've been playing around with the voltages on this thing at max performance state (680mhz core: 900mhz ram) for several days and have manged to get it as low as .910v (default is set at 1.10v, a huge difference)! To put that in perspective the card runs at .900v at lowest performance setting (100mhz core: 150mhz ram). You're probably thinking, 'That can't possibly be stable.' Well, I've done several 3DMark11 runs and have played hours worth of Dragon Age, Crysis 2, and a few other games with no ill effects, and have managed to knock off anywhere from about ~8C to 15C off of my temps. I tried going as low as .900v but the system locked up, so .910v seems to be the lowest. I haven't played around with the other two performance states much but they can be undervolted as well. Went as low as .800v at 150mhz core (down from .900v) and .850v at 300mhz core (down from .950v). However, if the max state can be undervolted as much as it has proven then I 'm pretty sure the other states can go a good deal lower as well. I had made a comment about this in another thread and just thought I would share just in case anyone else wants to give it try, I mean it never hurts to run cooler, not to mention longer battery life. These cards undervolt so well it makes me wonder why AMD set such them with such a high threshold.

 

Could you post temperature (min/max) readings of before and after undervolting?

 

@DemonRage

Sure. I wont be around my notebook until later this afternoon but when I get the chance I'll fire up HWMonitor and post some before and after screenshots.

 

The Clevo 5870 was the same deal, they set it to 1.15v, but could easily do 1.00v at stock.

 

Interesting findings... I wonder how this would affect the notebook in battery life in real world situations. I just might save a profile on the afterburner for classes .

Edit: Wait how did you get it to 100/150 :O? I could only get mine down to 340/450.

 

I just did the undervolting thing. What happened when I undervolted was that I lose some performance while running Furmark. A lot of performance lost while running at below 1.0V

Can you see if you lose some fps too while undervolted?

 

OK, just did some 3DMark11 runs and got two screenshots. First screenshot is taken after running 3DMark11 at the stock voltages. My laptop had been off all night and as soon as I booted it up I opened up HWMonitor, then I ran 3DMark11 and took the first screenshot.

Gave the laptop about 30 seconds or so to cool, closed HWMonitor, changed voltages, opened HWMonitor back up to record the new temps and voltages, then ran 3DMark11 again. After the second run is when I took the 'After' screenshot. As you can see I only maxed out at 71C, compared to 80C the first time. Also, as noted in my first post, my card seems to run exceptionally hot (notice how in the first screenshot after sitting all night as soon as I boot I'm already idling at 46C), so normally temps should be even lower for you guys maybe. One thing I have noticed is that lowering the voltages doesn't seem to affect idle temps that much, but when gaming and benchmarking it helps me a great deal in keeping things cool.





@mrPico
No, I haven't noticed any performance lost. Very strange. All games still run at the same fps and I still get the same score (3204 points) consistently when I run 3DMark11.

 

Temperatures look really nice.

From 1.10 V to 0,91 V is quite a step. If 0,91 V runs fine for a little while (1 run of 3DMark 2011?), I wonder if continuous gaming for 2h straight will too.

 

Yeah.. my bad.. Didn't know applying would apply the clocks in the same menu too.

 

Trust me, I've done about 40 3DMark11 runs in the past few days or so, mostly due to the fact that I was paranoid about something being wrong with my card (which there may be based on my temps, but that's another story). About 6 of those runs have been done at .910v, with consistent results. I've done some extensive gaming as well: several hours of Arkham Asylum, Crysis 2, and Dragon Age Origins (all which are somewhat demanding on the gpu, especially Crysis 2) with no noticeable performance loss or stability issues. Now, I still think my temps are rather high (got to 80C after about 3 hours or so of Crysis 2 at modified voltages) , but hey, it's better than high eighties and +90C which is what I was getting before.

 

80C after crysis 2 for 3 hours seems reasonable to me.. i think others have reported upper 80's to 90's when gaming hard for lengths of time

be interested in what kinda battery improvement you could pull from undervolting

 

Yup. Regular clock and everything at default and I get 75~85 most games. I believe around 85 for crysis. The highest my gpu ever went was 88~89 for Metro.

 

Never gone above 85c with standard cooling (not Fn+1) on maximum allowed OC on AMD Overdrive.
I did a crazy OC once with Sapphire TriXX and it would crash running Unigine Heaven benchmark with settings low. xD
Quickly rebooted and GPU temps where above 90c.

 

Haven't tested battery since I'm plugged in most of the time. You would think it would add a good amount of battery life, but honestly there probably won't be a huge difference. I've undervolted many laptops, from gpu's to cpu's (never as much as this though) and have never noticed much of an improvement in battery life. I'll perform a test run on the battery at modified voltages and see how long I last.

 

Hmmm... I'm starting to believe there's no significant difference between max temperatures on the 15,6" and 17,3" models, when running at stock settings. I only don't know what thermal compound you and TheGreatAnonymous are using.

 

But is having GPU/CPU running at 80'C ++ considered normal and safe at full load?

 

I've tried both Thermaltake TG-1 and Artic Silver 5 thermal compounds. Artic Silver seems to work best (I'm talking a 1-2C difference consistently) so that's what I'm using now. Also, 80C should be safe, especially for a mobile gpu where temps are obviously going to be hotter than a desktop, although personally it is in the upper limits of what I want to see. I would be happy if my card never hit anything over 75C. But I've even read about some desktop guys hitting the high eighties and low nineties, depending on their casing and cooling methods, and for the most part they didn't seem to care much. GPU's normally can stand temps up to about 110C. However, you do want to keep them as cool as possible due the fact that high temps shorten the lifespan of the chip. 10C can be the difference between your card lasting 5 years and maybe only lasting 3 years. That's just an example, and the numbers may be nowhere close to this in reality, but you get the point. It would be interesting to see someone perform a scientific test to see how long a chip would last at different sustained temps.

 

before i had an entertaining experience to undervolt my 9800m GT on Clevo M860TU and that saved me around 10C, cause it gets pretty warm in summer here. Also My CPU temps went down by 5C or so becasue of GPU manipulation, but that laptop had only one fan to cool all the system down...
Usally i set defaul/undervolt/overclocked profiles on my system, even on desktop!
Great to know you can shave few degrees off the 6970m, hope to see same results on 485m)

 

The Thermal compound I'm using is IC Diamond Thermal Compound. Ordered it from xotic and they did the paste for the gpu and cpu.

Nice picture...

Pretty sure 80's are fine, its the 100's and high 90's you should worry about.

 

Actually, I was thinking this slightly higher temperatures is because of tropical climate in my area, which is Singapore.

but does having external cooling such as blasting 2 12v fans into the GPU/CPU air vents helps drop the temps?

 

If you blast air in from the back vents than probably not.

From the underside... I'm not too sure. It probably would help a little.

Could you post some temps? I also live in Singapore and would like to know what to expect from my NP8150 with the Radeon 6970M when it arrives... Btw it has IC Diamond.

 

Haha. I got almost the same specs as you. I will post the temps slightly later.

 

Btw, is ATI Tray Tools the only one that can tweak the voltages? Any other alternatives?

 

Tray Tools is the only program I've found that works. No other program even gives the option. I have tried Afterburner, Trixx, GPU Clock Tool, and ATITool. ATI's own Overdrive is supposed to be able to tweak voltages as well but I have never seen this feature. There is something called Radeon BIOS Editor that can change the voltages and clocks permanently by editing the BIOS directly, but I do not recommend trying this. I successfully used GPU-Z to capture and save my BIOS to a file, and Radeon BIOS Editor read it correctly when opened, but I won't dare make the changes and reflash it. Maybe some brave soul out there will try it.

 

Erm. I dun really know how do I use ATT. The voltages, am i able to save a profile for it? Seems like there is no option to save just voltage profile.

 

Hey. I just got my new temperature readings.

No Fn+1 max fans though.

CPU 89-90 'C
GPU 82-86 'C

IMO, i think is abit too high for comfort.

 

1. Right click the tray icon. 2. Go to Hardware > Overclock Settings 3. Now on this screen you will have to select both your clocks and voltage, since Tray Tools saves them both to together. I just setup profiles for the 3 default clock states: 100mhz core/150mhz ram @ .750v, 300mhz core/900mhz ram @ .850v, and 680mhz core, 900mhz ram @ .910v. You can save each profile at the bottom. There is a text field where you can enter a name for your profile, then click the little floppy icon to save it. Once you save your profiles you can set hotkeys to enable them or just right click the tray icon and select them through the menu. Keep in mind though that Tray Tools doesn't allow for dynamic switching, so once you select a clock/voltage combo it stays that way until you change to another profile or disable it altogether and go back to the default clocks/voltages.

 

Excellent news cant wait to under volt my baby next month >_>.

 

Cooling devices can only help so much. Depending on which you get, and even then (it depends because its effectiveness varies from notebook to notebook) maybe 2~10 degrees?

Just remember to look for a high rpm/ dual or even triple fan for a notebook of 15" size.

 

Ahhh... Thanks for that! I was shocked last night to find that room temperature was 31.5 C. Yes, that's right. Over 30 degrees at night. O think i'll be using Fn + 1 a lot XD

 

your CPU temp is surprisingly high
have you tried elevating the unit for it to have "breathing space" ?

 

Yeah, that CPU temp seems way out of the ordinary. My 2720QM has never seen anything over 75C, and that's when stressing it with programs designed to do so. It hardly ever goes above 70C, even when gaming, and that's using the standard thermal compound. GPU temps seem about right, as I have hit low to mid 80's without max fan speed enabled.

 

Help me out, with using the Tray Tools. Where do you go to access voltages?

 

What tool are you using for the undervolting? Most of the overclocking related tools I run across don't work properly with Vista/7.

 

At least read the 1st post of the thread.

 

That's what I get for skimming. :/

 

See this post:

Also, you'll have to type in the voltages manually. For example, if you want .850v you'll type '850' in the dialog box where you input custom voltages (click the little box with the three periods on it that sits next to the voltage dropdown box). Then you just save the new voltage and you'll be able to use it in a profile.

 

I dunno why, when i used balanced power plan and performance power plan, the temps are hell lot of difference.
Am i really forcing the CPU to run at max speed with performance plan?

 

Thx for this guide. temps drops very well.There is some MX-3 on the heatsinks.
76C no fn1.
70C Fn 1 enabled.
before no fn1 81C/83C
76C fn1 enabled 71C
mayby a option 2 makes some speciale bottom for pulling cool air in and than the temps wil drop 15C more...
if someone have done it let us know what the temps are.
i have gamed about 1 hour and there is no performance lost.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...eneral-information-thread-40.html#post5941087

 

Is it possible to have the Tray Tool automatically switch between profiles?

 

Amazing results with undervolting, great find!

 

i have 2 switch by hand between the profiles

 

No. This was one of my main issues with undervolting, the profiles have to be manually set. I haven't found a program that can do this automatically and maintain the PowerPlay switching. I mentioned earlier in the thread that you could try Radeon BIOS Editor to permanently set voltages and clocks, but I haven't tried reflashing myself so I couldn't recommend this. However, some Alienware users have reported that it works, but playing around with the BIOS can be dangerous.

 

No tanks m8. i will do it manually...

 

Smart man. But I have to admit I wouldn't mind seeing a guinea pig try it on these laptops to see if it works.

 

LoL agree

What do you say about this guide? it a old guide i have done before on a old M17. It worked very well. The temps dropes about 10 to 20 degrees.
I also have done some test whiteout the bottom. Right on a laptopcooler fan.
FN 1 enabled a had 12 to 15 degrees drops..

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...eneral-information-thread-40.html#post5941087



http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/568478-clevo-p170hm-amd-radeon-6970m-goodness-d-18.html

sry for the bad englisch. iam getting dronk atm...

 

LOL! I have trouble with English when I'm drunk and it's the only language I speak.

 

Yeah, I saw that thread. It would be amazing if someone could do a bottom cover mod like that for the NP8170. I think it would look kind of strange, but I'll use it for the sake of keeping temps lower.

 

Ati Tray Tool
You can make a game profile. Go to: Game profile,manage profile-Gernale tab select the game exe. Settings 3d ( ihave quality)Safe the profile.
Go tab hardware.Overclocking-manual overclock Before( here i select the profile 0,91 Voltage and stock 3d clocks. Than after overclock i have select the 0,71Voltage that start with windows 100/600. safe this as well. i created a shortcut for this..
So i have the profiles i created before in the hardware overclock tabs.

This works for me whene is start a game and whene it stops the game it will downclock it to what ever you like ..

good luck Ill hope you guys know what i mean..

 

Undervolting my card too. Running @ 680gpu 950mem, 950mV using ati tray tool with profile switching. Also repasted my gpu using zalman stg2. Used arctic mx-3 also but worse reports. Running metro 2033 for about 3 hours, gpu not reaching 65C. Ambient room temp is 22C.