Clevo P170HM: AMD Radeon 6970m goodness. :D

Are these temps with the Fn+1 max fans enabled?

 

Btw, does powerplay still work while overclocking with Trixx?

I kinda just want to leave the GPU overclocked without affecting my battery life too much...

 

Yes.

I'm using Trixx, and my card automatically clocks down to 100/150, even with my overclock set.

 

-Huge sigh of relief-

Thanks! I'll be happy to run a few benchmarks when my com comes so feel free to ask!

 

No, i did not use the FN + 1 function while running furmark. I just had in on automatic and the fan wasn't even blowing at full speed from what I heard. I think the fan only ran at full speed when it was 95C before I repasted.

I chose Thermaltake TG-1 because of this review:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/thermal-interface-roundup-1_12.html

I was kinda lazy to paste it myself at first, but then decided to do it anyways because I already bought the paste for around $15. After opening the bottom and looking at the heatsinks I saw that it was really easy to replace the paste. The heatsinks are not attached to the fans so that made it really easy.

 

Last question. On what resolution and settings are you running Furmark?

I went with the stock paste, and I've been too lazy to pull out the ICD7. One of these days.

 

Full Screen 1920x1080 with 8x MSAA. Burn-In Test.

With HWINFO32 I see these temps after running Furmark for 8mins at 800/1000:

Gpu Thermal Diode: 81.0C max
GPU TS0 (DispIO): 81.5C max
GPU TS1 (MemIO): 79.0C max
GPU TS2 (Shader): 87.0C max [I wonder what this is. Is this the actual GPU core?]

Note: I ran this in an air conditioned room around 22C.


You should apply the ICD7. It was really easy to remove the heatsinks. The whole process only required loosing 12 screws(including the 4 for the cover) and cleaning the chips and heatsinks.

 

I repasted with AS5 compound and got to 88C after a 5 min Furmark run. I idle around 43-45C. They say Artic Silver takes a few days to break in so my temps should decrease a bit over time. It would be nice if the 6970M ran as cool as the 2720QM. That thing never goes above 68C and idles around ~39C.

 

thanks for sharing.
my machine scored 12654 in Vantage and P3088 in 3Dmark11.
The reason I ask is because I want to know if my card is fine or not :|

when it comes to temps, all in Celcius:
Furmark max 87 after 15minutes burn in test,
3Dmark06:78 Celcius
3Dmark11:79 Celcius
3Dmark Vantage :80 Celcius
AMD6970m idles at 41 C

Shall I repaste?

 

To find out where your card is, ignore the overall score, and only compare the GPU scores with what's been posted for Vantage and '11.

 

Thanks Kevin for info.
Just checked and it seems to be OK (GPU score is 11.589 for Vantage).

 

I have a P150HM and I overclocked to 800/1000 and ran furmark. Went straight from 15fps to 40fps. Only problem is that I also went from maximum 80 degrees to maximum 98 :O. Is that way too hight to have on the P150? I also ordered the icy diamond paste and I expected lower temps. Maybe they didn't put it on right. Also the fan only kicked in to sounding like 100% when it hit 98 and I also can't manually control the fan. Nothing will do it so it has to stay automatic. What is the maximum temperature the 6970m can take? Thanks for any help

 

Yes! That is wayyy too hot. 95-100C is what is called the "danger zone" where you have a chance of frying your components or melting your GC.

As a rule, keep your GC under 90C if you expect it to last longer than a year.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Hey guys, has anyone run their system with 3d out to a 3d compatible monitor ??? We are looking for some feedback here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...cards/577763-please-help-me-setup-3d-amd.html

anyone with personal experience giving a testimony would be appreciated.

 

yeah I thought it seemed way too hot. So I guess a 800/1000 overclock is too much for the p150hm with icy diamond. I guess I will test the maximum safe overclock where the temperature does not go above 90. It seems that the p170hm has a better cooling system because everyone else seems to be able to clock even higher than that on this forum and stay below 90 degrees. Does it have a bigger heatsink or is something wrong with my laptop. It is brand spankin new.

 

Remember that every laptop and graphics card is different. People will be able to do different things and have different results on different machines.

Don't worry and enjoy your system

Mr. Mysterious

 

Don't worry I enjoy it a lot. I'm just wondering why it is so drastically different and if where I bought it from might have failed to put on the thermal grease correctly because that could be problematic. Otherwise it is a great system. I got a really nice screen with it except that when it came I had to pop the bezel back into place in a couple of places because that was not complete so xoticpc did a little bit of a funny job with the screen replacement. That is the only reason I am also worried about the thermal grease/temperatures because I want this laptop to last a long time with me.

Edit: also I just looked at pictures of the bases of both the 170hm and the 150hm and the heatsinks look the same. One more question: Can any of you control the fan speeds? because I can't.

 

Doesn't look like anyone can control the fan speeds, except for hitting FN + 1. That turns it up to max fan speed...

Mr. Mysterious

 

Really? Pressing that only disables my touchpad or enables it. I do not have a fan control shortcut.

 

FN + 1. Not FN + F1.

Mr. Mysterious

 

FN +1 not FN +F1. Fn + the number 1.

 

If you can't get that, you might not want to be overclocking. Just saying.

 

OH wow that worked. Weird thing: When the fans are at maximum speed, about every five seconds the speeds fall and rise again so I can hear the fans whir up and then down for a milisecond, and then back up again.

 

Much better, eh? I love that feature on my 8130. Now sit back and watch the temps plummet

Mr. Mysterious

 

That is a pretty cool feature. Temps dropped FAST. Do you get that funky whir up and down that I hear when you do it?

 

Wow man sry I just missed one letter. I'm trying to figure this out and study for two exams tomorrow. I have also been overclocking my desktop for quite a while. I just have no idea what the safe temperatures are for a laptop and especially for this gpu and why my laptop (with upgraded thermal compound) here seems to get much hotter with lower overclocks than others.

 

Yeah, I do, and pretty much everyone who owns a Sager NP 51xx or NP 81xx has that fan issue as well. It's not something to worry about, but apparently it bothers a lot of people.

I'm reasonably certain it will be addressed in a BIOS update soon.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Slightly bothers me too. Just doesn't sound smooth, but I'm sure they will fix it given some time . Hopefully they will include some way to manually control fan speeds as well or just allow it .

 

Ok with no overclock and furmark for 7 minutes I climbed up to 95 degrees and stopped it. Is that normal with no overclock?

 

Ummm, I'd say yes, because programs like furmark are designed to be the absolute worst-case scenario for whatever components they are testing. That's why they're called benchmarks, lol, to push the component as far as it goes.

Again, it makes me cringe whenever you (or anyone else for that matter) hit any temperature above 90C so please stop and keep your computer safe...

Mr. Mysterious

 

I know furmark is one powerful benchmarking program. It would be nice to get input from someone with a 6970m as well so I could know if they hover around the same maximum temperature with furmark though. I'm not really worried though because I'm sure I have no program that could possibly use the gpu as intensively as furmark does. Also I get your avatar pic. Clever

 

I get to about ~93C after five minutes in Furmark. I never go any longer than that and always quickly hit the Esc key. Some games push the 90C mark too, such as Witcher and Crysis 2. These temps are without max fan speed enabled. Also, I idle around 46C to 50C.

 

Thank you for that. I was trying to compare. I idle around 53-55 and get up to 95 if I run furmark that long. I don't really dare run it much longer than that either. Do you have stock thermal paste or a better one? I wonder why I idle at a higher temp.

 

Your idle temps do seem quite high. Mine aren't great either. Others have claimed they idle at around 40C and never hit anything higher than 80C. Right now I'm using Artic Silver 5 paste, and have also tried Thermaltake TG-1. However, both compounds result in pretty much the same temps. I think it's possible that perhaps there were/is a batch of 6970M's with some kind of manufacturing defect or something that causes them to run a little hotter. That's the only explanation I think of regarding the vast temp differences from others on the forum. If you are using the stock thermal compound you might want to try repasting though, more than likely those temps will lower.

 

You might be right. Is there a way to distinguish the cards? Maybe a model number somewhere? In that way we could see if this certain batch is faulty compared to someone who idles around 40. I would love to have lower idle temps because then the fan could run even slower and quieter and I wouldn't have to worry about overheating. Also I have icy diamond thermal compound. I didn't put it on though so who knows what type of job the builders did. I don't have any replacement though so I can't redo it. I only have arctic silver 5 with me. So it does not make sense that my temperatures are higher than yours or than most people's especially with this compound.

 

For example take a look at the idle temps on the review of the eurocom version of the P150HM with the 6970m - Review Eurocom Racer Gaming-Notebook (2720QM / HD 6970M) - Notebookcheck.net Reviews It is clearly lower than ours

 

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. And it's not the paste because it would not make that big of a difference. At most you would see maybe a 2-5C difference between compounds if you're really lucky. As far as any kind of serial # or the like that could be used to identify a particular batch of cards, I'm not sure. Never really looked, although the card is very easily accessible by removing the panel underneath. I might just have a look around and see what I can find. I've tried not to worry too much about it but when it's all said and done lower temps are definitely better as it ultimately extends the lifespan of the card. A cooler running chip will last longer than a hotter one.

 

Yeah and since we have a high quality paste on our cards, we should essentially be seeing similar below 50 temperatures with the same card. Although the difference is not huge during idle, it still makes a difference. We also see higher temperatures when under load so that is actually bad for us because of potential overheating and shorter lifespan. I might take a look as well when I have time and see if there is some type of difference from the photos on notebookcheck page.

 

If you are not happy with the temps under volt the card slightly that should knock the temps down to 37-44.

Its an easy fix if you dont intend to play games 24/7 a day and also your frame rates should decrease by 1% does 1% or even 2% even matter ?

I cant link you because under volting a card is serious stuff to try and find out your self.

 

Undervolting does help under load but it makes no difference with idle temps. At least not with me. Somethings definitely up. I've gone as low as .700v and still idle at around 46-50C. And my load temps while undervolted is borderline what others hit at stock voltages, lol.

 

Yeah I don't necessarily want to undervolt just to get the temperatures others are getting with stock settings. I really wonder what the root of this problem is.

 

I've been searching around to see if anyone else has been complaining about temps with the 6970M, mainly on the Alienware M17x and Gaming forums here, as well as Google but haven't come up with much. The 6970M is basically brand new though so if there is a hardware issue with some cards it may not have really surfaced yet. Also, try keeping the back of the notebook as elevated or on as flat a surface as possible. There is a vent underneath the gpu fan that helps pull in air. That can actually save you a few degrees. Also take into account ambient room temps, i.e. hotter room = hotter notebook. Right now I'm idling at around 44-45C, which is still slightly off. I had a look at the card itself and did not see any numbers that could be used to ID a particular shipment, but I basically just eyeballed the area around the heatsinks. I really want to avoid having to do anything quite yet involving removing the main heatsink due to the fact that I would have to repaste, and I spent a good hour on the last paste job getting everything as absolutely perfect as humanly possible in order to achieve the absolute best temps I could get, lol.

 

I idle at 51 degrees with an elevated back

 

Well, I have a P150HM, and mine idles at 55 deg +..

But the load temps at 80 with Furmark extreme burning mode.

 

59 degrees for a P170HM, and the elevated back dropped it only 1 degree, gg.

 

I stand corrected, down to 54!

 

Mine is at idle 49c btw then upto 54 dont worry mate its fine the card is not going to die on you AMD cards as you know love heat better than Nvidia the cards can up stand the temps dam i had a 4870 desktop idle at 59c all the time the machine was a server machine that means it was on 24 hours a day and it still runs to this day !.



Hope that helps another good thing to remember is try using less thermal paste and re check the thermal diode.

 

Don't even let idle temps bother you. They mean nothing, because it's still too low to have any effect on the GPUs health and longevity.

Mine is currently idling at 41C @ .750V

EDIT: Ambient is 26.5C

 

Idle temps are the least of my concern, just part of what seems to be a problem. Load temps, which is the big issue, should not be anywhere near what they are. Gets kind of annoying having a gaming notebook when you can't play games without worrying about the gpu melting. I'll probably be upgrading to a 7000 series card around the beginning of next year anyways. The high end mobile 7000 series is rumored to be up tp 34% faster than the current 6970M, and it's supposed to be MXM 3.0, so I'm hoping it can be used in these notebooks without a problem.

 

Hey

Iam looking for a repast guide. i have some mx-3 here and load temps on the gpu 90C . the cpu around 76C. For 30 min BO.
Any one have seen a good guide for the P170HMx?
Cant find 1 for this model. i think cos is pretty new..

THX for the help.( sry for the bad englisch)

I have repast the cpu and gpu. there was some sticky stuff on it. Look like AS5
Temps are better now.
63C for the cpu load and 83C for the gpu load.

Many THX

BTW this 6970M rocks