Upgrading the GPU in my Clevo P170EM to a 7970m....

Heyy,
I just bought my first gaming laptop. and im getting it back from RMA tomorrow, only had it 2 weeks, bought it 2nd hand but discovered the first hard drive port didnt work, so its been away getting a new motherboard!

well currently fitted is a GTX670m and id like to upgrade it, best option is looking like an AMD HD 7970m

ive found one i think is about the right price for me, it came out of the primary GPU slot of a Clevo P370EM

will this be difficult to make work in my p170em? what will i have to do to make it work properly?

hope you guys can help me

Thanks, Rob

 

Bump

Please someone help me?

 

It should just work so long as you do the thermal pads right.

 

ask the seller how high it can be oc first

 

Most sellers wont know.

 

yeah i thought that! well i just tryed overclocking a laptop GPU for the first time and ive acheived 749MHz on the core and 1700MHz on the GPU and from what i can tell its stable and doesnt get too hot while gaming and having 100% GPU useage pretty good increase on GTX670m but still want more power haha. really tempted by a GTX680m as im really liking Nvideas software, i have an offer in for the 7970m but the seller isnt responding even though ive upped my new offer significantly and isnt much less than he asking. as i said, i wouldnt mind getting a GTX680m as i hear optimus is much better than AMDs equivelent. no idea where i can pick up a 680 from though lol. cheers for all the replies so far guys

 

was negotiating to buy a GTX680m for £300 and almost was about to buy it when the seller of the 7970m finally came online and accepted my best offer of £260 right at the crucial moment lol so i guess it was meant to me, had no choice but to take the 7970 after! felt bad for the guy selling the GTX card though...as he thought he had a buyer!

 

can someone please send me the correct vbios and flashing method for a clevo 7970m with enduro enabled? im 90% sure this card ive bought will need flashed!! Cheers

 

if it came out of clevo p370em and you have p170em then you don't need to flash it. it's plug and play.

 

Heyy, thats good to hear!

Was supposed to be getting the card today, but they f'd up at cardiff mail center >< payed for special delivary before 1pm and waited and waited...called them up but something happened so now gonna have to wait in tomorrow and waste my only 2 days off being stuck in the house ¬.¬

never have luck with royal mail!!

 

Lol, well let us know how you get on.

 

well got the card at last and fitted it and booted into windows fine, but the bios on the card was defo for a p370em so i flashed a p170em bios file to it in windows the CRCs didnt match so managed to force flash it and now the CRC is 0xC400 which i believe is normal. so seems to be working ok, but struggling to find out what driver i should be using? i have this installed "AMD_Catalyst_14.3_Beta_V1.0_Windows_B22_March12" but i have problems in the new eldar scrolls game, only seem to be getting 60-70% GPU useage :/
What driver is best on enduro laptops and any mods i need to do to get things running smooth? had a few blue screens but i think they were driver related...had it working earlier running crysis 3 and seemed to be going ok.

 

What FPS were you getting in skyrim?

 

it was eldar scrolls online i was playing and was getting 40fps +-2fps constant with everything turned up full at 1080p
Whats the best drivers i can be using right now for my setup? currently i have installed are 12.13 mobility drivers and not had a blue screen since i put them on. what drivers would be better? could do with better compatability for the latest games

 

i think you already have done some research regarding the never settle enduro problem before upgrade?

 

yeah i have and the problem doesn't seem that bad, just the under utilization sucks a bit. although most games are running really well. ESO runs perfectly smooth 40fps at max settings, im just not happy seeing my card utilizing a lazy 70-80% useage. need to test more games and see gpu useage..
just found a post on another forum, with a patch for enduro machines on catalyst 14.3 beta v1.0 so i might install those drivers and try the patch, apparently it works like magic for DX9 games

 

doing further research, the Eldar scrolls online problem, appears to be with the game not using the cpu properly. when playing im only getting 25-30% cpu useage. appears to not like multicore/multithreaded cpus! to test this, i dropped my cpus frequency to 1.6ghz from 3.5 ghz and my frame rate was basically cut in half, looks to me like the game isnt using the cpu properly and not enough data is being sent to the GPU. this problem is affecting AMD and Nvidea cards alike, everyone reporting low GPU and CPU useage.

 

Yeah, looks to be that way, pretty standard far for elder scrolls games if you look at their history of bugs Did not realise you meant the online one.

 

yeah! well hopefully they correct the cpu useage issues. just installed 'AMD Catalyst 14.4(14.200.0.0) Mobility SG. modded Driver (Enduro/PowerXpress Fix)', and laptop seems to be running better over the 14.3 betas. more stable, running nice so far and seems to be swiching well between laptop gpu and dedicated gpu, with the 7970m currently looking swiched off. gonna try a game.