So it seems my 7970m bit the dust in my Sager 9170 after near 3 years

I started noticing graphic glitches about a month ago, nothing major, while playing Marvel Heroes. Power effects on certain heroes (Dr. Strange, and Venom) would sometimes look pixelated or color distorted. On top of that, I could no longer get a FPS reading from the game as it was showing in the thousands. However, I thought it was due to a patch that happened a couple weeks ago as it started doing that right after (yet the opening video always showed the correct FPS?).

Anyway, I went to load up the game last night, and after about 15 seconds, my monitor shut off. Restart computer via power button and it freezes on the "Starting Windows" screen. Boot in safe mode just fine, but when loading, it pauses on amdkmpfd.sys. Try uninstalling in safe mode but the stupid amd utility wouldn't let me so I used driver sweeper (which wiped my Intel drivers as well despite me selecting AMD -_-). Try reinstalling factory drivers, and as soon as the install process finished, I press Finish and it freezes. So... Uninstalled drivers again and am now at this current point. Device Manager says the device "cannot start."

So anyone else experience similar symptoms when their card died? Or is my card even dead and it's something else (doubt it?) Also, are there any trusted vendors that sell mobile GPUs? Would prefer not to go through ebay if I can (if not, oh well). Also, I'd prefer to try Nvidia for my next card, will that require me to change anything, and up to what generation would work?

 

Yes I have lots of experience with AMD sucking. My solution, boycott AMD.

 

Okay, can I get some more informative answers now, mainly to my actual questions?

 

Take the 7970m and then set it on fire. Do a little dance, piss on it, swear at it.

Then go to NBR Sales forum and get yourself an Nvidia GTX.

 

Great, thanks for letting me know I should ignore you from now on. Maybe you can't read anything over a sentence, I don't know. I already stated I planned on getting an Nvidia GPU in the initial post, but the fact that you only want to troll instead of doing any actual reading on a forum says a lot about you.

Anyway, for other people who can actually read...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-GeFo...882?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3ced3e125a

Thinking about getting that. I would go for a 980m, but it'd be more cost efficient to just get a new laptop at the price it's going for. -_- Still need to know if it's a direct swap or if heat sink modification is needed though.

 

Ask Eurocom. They are the ones modifying 970m for older Clevo.

After buying the 970m, burn your 7970m, curse at it and then piss on it.

 

Thanks, found this site that has cards for specific models. The 970m and everything needed is even cheaper through them than ebay (although the 980m is $100 more).

http://www.eurocom.com/ec/vgas(1)ec

 

You can get the 970M for cheaper then Eurocom from Hidevolution or RJtech...

 

Unfortunately I already ordered one. Anyway, HIDevolution only has cards listed for Alienware and MSI while RJTech only has cards for the SM series while I have EM.

 

Yes... That is Eurocom. Did you burn and piss on the 7970m yet?

 

"Asking Eurocom" would have taken a hell of a lot longer than just using their store.

Also, being extremely biased is good for no one. If you stopped trolling for a minute, people might take you seriously for once in your life.

 

The 7970M wasn't a perfect card but honestly, the amount of crap you are giving it is undeserved.. and your coming across as a NVIDIA fanboy..

 

Sadly there has been trouble on both sides of the fence at one point or another. It's usually best to judge each product as it comes out and ensure you have a good warranty

 

After the crap AMD did with the 7970M and 5870M, yeah, I am not a fan of AMD, so by default that would leave Nvidia.

 

I don't understand what you're saying. What crap? The 7970m had Enduro issues which were mostly ironed out after a few months. I never once had any issues on my previous machine with a 5870m (and if I recall correctly, it outperformed Nvidia's counterpart at the time).

 

My 5870M was flawless and probably the best GPU I've ever owned... The 7970M was a massive improvement on it and with the crap NVIDIA has pulled, I kind of wish I hadn't sold mine.. It did have some enduro problems in Clevo HM series laptops but that was due to it not being certified for the laptop or whatever..

Indeed.. It just appears that Zymphad is a NVIDIA fanboi and AMD bashing troll!

 

5870 crap? With all due respect Sir, but you are nobody for me and i don't care about your opinion of answers of you at all.
Sincerely

 

Nvidia never really had a propper counterpart to the 5870M, it took the 485M really for nvidia to properly deliver a well balanced high end mobile GPU.

 

The 485M was still an oven... In fact all the damm 4xx series Ferni cards were ovens.. I still remember seeing a Clevo with 480M and the thing was 1.5 times thicker then my G73JH and had a massive copper heatsink... In that year, AMD clearly won.. Things went downhill after the 5 series though.. The 6 series was good initally but the high failure rates made it a fail overall..

 

Okay, so I'm attempting to install the Nvidia drivers after installing the card but it's not detecting the device (I found a tutorial on how to add the device ID to the setup which I'm about to do). What is baffling me and making this harder than it should is that the computer is defaulting to the basic VGA drivers Windows installed for the Nvidia card instead of the HD 4000, so I'm stuck in 640x480 with 16 colors. It's really strange since the model laptop is supposed to send information through the integrated GPU that can't be disabled, so wtf?

 

So after installing the drivers using a modified "nv_dispi.inf", it detected the card, installed, and rebooted. Now I'm at my actual screen resolution and have full color, but the device manager isn't detecting the card at all now, and I can't run the Nvidia installer anymore even with the modded .inf file. This is a major headache.

 

Used Prema's vbios to no avail, about to use Prema's bios update.

 

Okay, so before I do the BIOS, I decided to try the latest driver versions (after modifying .inf of course). Got scared ****less when Windows would boot but the screen got hung up on the loading Windows screen with the colorful logo. So I restarted and tried safe mode, same situation but the screen got hung up on the loading driver screen. Thankfully, I was able to load a restore point created earlier today which got me back to the glorious 640x480 16 color display.

This sucks. I'm almost positive this has to do with switchable graphics, but I can't find a way to install the base Optimus drivers.

 

Prema BIOS installed and it defaults to the HD 4000 now, yay. Will attempt to install GPU drivers now and probably brick my laptop!

 

SUCCESS! I should have updated BIOS first and saved myself a day of troubleshooting. 970m is now working properly with drivers and so is the HD 4000. I imagine my 3610qm is now a nice bottleneck on my laptop, lol.

 

The 580M and 485m were hungry but no more so than the 69xx series from amd. I did not include the 480m as it was a bit of a failure.

 

Will the one RJtech is selling work in my P170EM?
It is a GTX970m but says it is for the P170SM-A

 

I know I might get a slap for asking, but have you installed the Intel GPU drivers before attempting the nvidia ones?
Also, in the BIOS, is the card recognized correctly as GTX970m?
Third option, get GPU-Z (the archived version) and check if it sees the nvidia card properly.

Get back to us when you can

P.S Ok, I am too late glad you sorted things out! (note to self: refreshing the page helps sometimes...A LOT)

 

^ lol. Also the BIOS will not recognize the card, even with the Prema BIOS.

 

I'm not 100% sure that your 7970M-card is dead. I have had similar issues in the past, and I found out that the driver for my wireless card conflicted with the GPU when installing drivers. What card is in your machine? The name for my card is "Realtek RTL8723AE".
I'd reinstall Windows and disable your Wi-Fi-device to be absolutely sure that the card is dead.

 

Did you read his post? His GPU was dying over time, he wasn't messing with some wireless card. And I doubt he has a Realtek but an Intel one. It was failing while he was playing games, it didn't just all of a sudden not work.

Not having switchable graphics and having to deal with that BS, bliss.

 

What drivers did you end up using I have a P170em that I upgraded the GPU to an AMD 8970 a year ago and it has never worked as it should since then...

 

14.something.

 

Yes, I read his post, and I have read it again, and it says the same.
As I mentioned, I have had similar issues, and I'm not convinced that the card is dead. And by the way, - I wasn't "messing" with my wireless card. I just used the stock-driver, and it took me a long time to figure out that it caused trouble.
But I know that he has bought the GTX 970M which is a better card, and therefore my suggestion might not be relevant.

 

You had wireless drivers that over time caused you to see graphical glitches and system monitors stopped getting readings and then die?

Wow...

 

When the wireless card was activated with the bad driver, the GPU-driver could not be installed properly, and it caused various graphical issues, - one of them was a black screen. I have no idea why it had a connection.

 

Yeah... No. It had nothing to do with my wireless card drivers (why would it?). Still on stock drivers, never touched the drivers ever. If it took nearly 3 years for the wireless NIC drivers to mess with my GPU drivers, BIOS, and Device Manager, then that is one hell of a glitch. Also I installed GPU drivers fine every time. Installing drivers isn't what caused the failure and I never even hinted at such a thing as I clearly stated it happened while playing a game.

 

As you probably know the drivers are very important because it controls the GPU. I have never claimed that you hinted that it had something to do with the driver, but it was just a suggestion. A couple of times in the past my 7970M could not be detected in device manager either, but it turned out to be caused by a driver-conflict.
As I mentioned earlier I have no idea why the wireless card had such an impact on it, and it took me a very long time to figure out.

 

So is the 970M running properly now?

 

Yes