whats going on with the 6970m

Well it seems that I SHOULD NOT worry about the 6970M I will have in the brand new laptop in two days. Its what, 1 in 100 chance to have a significant issue isn't it?

 

First of all the 6970M is not phasing out, I've ordered from Clevo just this week 4 of them.

Second, yes, there may be a defective batch from 6970M. I noticed that in all my new orders of 6970M, there was a phrase in Chinese : "Remark:出貨前請務必再嚴格檢測, 謝謝." I google translated it and it gave : "Remark: Please be sure to re-strict pre-shipment inspection, thank you.". So I guess they are talking about the bad batch. But in any way, Clevo gives 6 months of warranty, so there is no fear, if they ship a defective one then they will replace it with good new one.

 

Directly from clevo or through sager? or what

 

A better translation would be: "Another round of strict inspection and testing mandatory before shipment, Thank you!" Google translate like most machine-based translators only goes so far.

My guess is that they've discovered something internally at Clevo and are covering their bases to make sure they don't invite trouble with poor batches.

My build is being burned in, I'll have to assume the reseller I've picked are satisfied with the card's performance otherwise I'd be notified about further delays to shipments.

 

I didnt mean to start a panic, I was just sharing what I was told. I was set to be happy with my own 6970m. Until it was "backordered". When I asked for an ETA I was told that for now they had "gone with the wind" due to "stability issues". When I asked about the 485m I was told it was backordered. With the refresh likely soon this also makes sense. I did not mean to bring panic just fact. My apologies.

 

Interesting discussion going on here. Few people having problems with their 6970M cards around the same time both GPU companies are phasing their high end cards out for newer replacements and then all of a sudden, the 6970M has stability problems and is a bad card.

I actually bought two 6970Ms yanked from Clevo P150HMs, dropped them in my Alienware M17x-R2, which doesn't even support these cards to begin with (let alone two of them) and is designed to cool a max of two 75w cards. I did this 14 days ago and since then, I haven't had any major problems with these cards at all (aside from no audio over HDMI, but that's a VBIOS issue). I installed Cat 11.6 from AMD's website and had an issue involving the use of in-game Vsync; so I reverted back to 11.5b (also from AMD's website). It's not unusual for me to game for four hours straight, which I've done with this setup and again no issues. I even tried overclocking it (not too high) just to see if I can find potential stability issues. I did furmark as well and I also did alot of GPU swapping with my system because I'm selling my 5870Ms and I had to reflash them to make it work in the systems of the people that bought it from me. So I have two 6970Ms running pretty well in an abused M17x-R2 using a 920XM and a 240w PSU.

My point here is not to brag about how great these cards are, but to point out that most of these cards are going to work properly. It's not like nVidia cards are any better because you'll see similar isolated incidents with the GTX cards if you visit the owner's lounge. Would that mean that the nVidia cards are also unstable? I look at it this way; if any of the mentioned cards had any stability issues, Clevo/Sager wouldn't have manufactured/sold them. That's why they never officially sold a Radeon 4800 Series equipped machine.

In regards to the "shortage" of these cards...it's probably due to the relative popularity of the card vs it's competitors (the GTX 470M/GTX 485M). The 6970M is cheaper and is/was available in more systems. It's also used in the Apple iMac 27 inch. More people/vendors sell the card by itself than the 470M/485M. Put all these considerations together and you can start to see where the shortage is coming from; all the components used to make the card (namely the Barts Pro die, capacitor, voltage control module) are being gobbled up by the mentioned entities in a sense. And since this card is popular relative to its price point, buyers are gobbling them up as well. So this "shortage" is probably just a struggle to keep up with the demand.

Because there are some Barts XT cores left around, you'll probably see the 6970M's replacement using 1120 shaders.

 

directly from Clevo Co. in Taiwan

Thank you for the right translation

 

I will upload it for you, if you want. Send me a PM and I'll do that.

 

Just to make something clear: (changing from CF 6970m to SLI GTX 485m)
I am not pleased with the crossfire 6970m, that´s true... but I think that are driver problems and it´s all not very good figured out by AMD...
The single 6970m seems to be stable, whenever I had a problem with CF, I did run it without cf and nearly everything was fine then (except that you can´t run NFS Shift Unleashed in highest settings anymore for example, or Dragon Age 2 etc.), except the "Red Alert 3" shader bug that I have with or without the second card.
What I want to say: I don´t believe my cards come from a defective batch or something... just bad CF driver...

 

Status update: my laptop has arrived in my hometown in Portland, Oregon. It looks like a two-day shipping rather than three-day shipping UPS stated earlier, perhaps it's because the package was in tractor trailer whole time straight to Portland. I can't wait, I feel like a kid again.

 

i can confirm that the card has been pulled by certain companys in the uk as of immediate effect.

 

I bought my 8150 with 6970m about two weeks ago and it's working fine with stock driver (sager site). I want to update the driver to 11.6 from the AMD site but when i open the, it says "Incompatible software/hardware"... why is that ? I'm pretty sure i picked the right tabs from the download site.

 

Stick with 11.5b. 11.6 drivers are giving a lot of people BSODs and such. Including my friend with a desktop 5770.

 

^ Haven't had any troubles with 11.6 yet, but I haven't played alot since update.

 

Hi guys!
I got my Sager NP8150-S1 about a month ago. My exact specs are:


* 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display features 95% NTSC Color Gamut in Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080) [$45.00]
* AMD Radeon HD 6970M GPU with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory
* 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.00GHz)
* IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
* Genuine MS Windows® 7 Home Premium 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
* 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 2 X 4GB
* 500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive
* 6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
* Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Combo Module


I must say that I have NEVER been happier with any other computer ever!

I use it for daily emails and skype as well as GAMES YEY!!!

I've been playing Crysis 2 everyday for a week now, sometimes for 2-3 hours in the evening and never had a single issue. Have the game set at 1920x1080 at MAX details and all and it runs smooth as butter! Though I noticed one issue last night, but it was software related... i had chrome browser opened with some flash running in it and it killed the performance. After I closed the browser and ALT+TAB'bed back into the game the frame rate was back to normal, aka smooth as silk

I also play Duke Nukem Forever, HL2, FEAR 2, and couple others and all games can run on MAX RES MAX SETTINGS and I'm amazed at how well the hardware handles it!

I'm running all stock drivers that came installed with the laptop though, and don't really have a desire to upgrade unless I'm certain they will be stable.

I can post temperatures of CPU and GPU tonight if you guys are interested, though I can tell you for sure that GPU is running hot! The laptop stands on a kitched bar, and when I step in the kitchen and am behind the laptop I can feel hot air coming out, even when standing few feet behind the computer.

Anyways, I'm also worried about 6970M being phased out...

 

The phasing out sounds like a bad rumour to me. The 6970m is a beast!

@mvorbrodt: If framerates never drop below 63 fps (panel refreshes at 63 Hz) or just are rediculously high, turn on vsync and experience absolute smoothness and lower temperatures too.

 

Chrome has a high tendency to eat up RAM/CPU usage per open tab. It shouldn't mess with something as weak as Crysis 2 though. I'm curious, what speeds do your CPU cores run at during gaming times? And the temps?

And 11.5b for your AMD card should be the best bet and you can always rollback. Might squeeze more performance out of it. 11.6 seems to be the death march of cards.

 

Normally I'd admit to it likely being bad rumor but with both myself and someone else saying Sager is pulling the 6970m, I personally wouldn't doubt so much. I told my reseller about this thread, whether he choses to confirm what I say or not is his decision. basically I wouldn't expect the ATI cards to be avilable in sager machines in the near future.

 

Whether the phasing out is a rumour or not, I have already seen at least one reseller confirm they are no longer supporting that card at all. Reasons given were a high failure rates found during their testing. It sounds like it was a popular card but their 48 hour testing of each machine may have highlighted reliability issues. For a reseller to pull their most popular and cheapest card with regards to price Vs performance will surely be a last resort.

I don't know whether the above is in relation to the rumour of the 6970M being phased out though. I wonder if other resellers have found issues.

 

This is the same thing I was thinking. Even if people *do* get end-result "good" cards, they might be from resellers that do that kind of power testing and only pick good cards to ship out. If they aren't one, people get bad cards and RMA them. Either way, it's expensive for the resellers to keep replacing such expensive cards, especially with them being so popular.

 

I got this file from amd.com:

amd_catalyst_11.5b_hotfix_8.85.6rc5_win7_may25

is this the one I want? can i install it on top of what i already have installed?

 

actually if the card is defective, the company just send you another, its like this in any business.

 

This is true, however eventually this gets expensive for someone, and as the buck get's passed it goes higher and higher until someone pulls the plug. These cards aren't free, even to the mfg's, eventually someone would say enough if they had enough problem units. Thankfully our resellers are usually really good at ensuring we get working product out of the box.

 

the cost is actually distributed to both parts, the mfg and the reseller, since the delivering times get delayed, they lose customers, the mfg loses the income on defective products and the shipping, which would be faster, if they do their things in the right way

However to actually compute the cost to the reseller is not only difficult, but is a guesstimation, based on the downtime of the services and the loss of income

 

My order's been affected, my reseller is taking no chances and is pulling off all options for the 6970m off the order website and probably informing all customers like me to either change to the 485m, wait for the new Nvidia card out middle of next week or cancel.

The news is a bit late compared to this thread, but I am in no position to argue against people who know better than I do regarding system building.

A shame since the 6970m was really competitive in pricing compared to the 485m with little to no performance difference.

 

Well, I guess the cheaper price justifies why it disappeared (bad quality maybe)

 

Reviews for the 6970m were really, really good. However reviewers don't hold cards for very long after the review is finished so it's up to users to figure out how long the cards will run for before they give out.

It's not that EVERY card was a failure, but the RMA rates for the 6970m have been very high all of a sudden and this has probably forced AMD/Clevo's hand in phasing it out.

Bad news for AMD/ATI on the whole since they have nothing now to compete with the 485m and the upcoming 580m if the 6970m is removed from retail channels completely.

 

Says who? I don't mean to sound critical, or offensive in any way, but we really have to stop speculating a worst-case scenario.

While resellers haven't said much on the forums, from what I gather, it is a SUPPLY issue.

 

I have seen and heard very little that supports all of this "6970M is a time bomb" talk.

 

The UK reseller I know of that has stopped stocking the 6970M states that it is due to a high failure rate and nothing to do with supply.

 

I'm implying this from what my reseller has told me regarding my existing order and the reason it has been pulled from their order page, of course this is one reseller's experience and is not indicative of the wider market.

Indeed, most of the resellers in North America are still offering stock on the 6970m. However, pkhetan had a note on his delivery emphasising the need for more stringent checks prior to delivery so it might be a production issue whereby AMD/Clevo have had to cut corners on the quality front to match the overwhelming demand for their top-end card.

There's a few isolated user-reported failures of the 6970m on this forum which I can't remember off-hand.

I am in no position to question my reseller or to comment on the situation regarding the 6970m, what is known publicly is that the card is either:

a) VERY short on supply hence the inability to order the card from some Clevo channels (Alienware for some reason don't have a problem)
b) The card is being recalled because of some inherent hardware problem which is not yet public knowledge
c) A bad batch of 6970m cards has been released and AMD/Clevo failed to realise it until it was too late, however this is small scale and not yet worth reporting to the wider public.

The above is purely speculation and based on what information I have at hand. Take from it what you will.

 

I doubt it when plenty of other companies still offer it and it is still available. People are really paranoid here....

 

Just thought I would chime in,

We have pulled it due to the high failure rate (over 40%) So far all but one have been caught pre-dispatch, this combined with the limited availability means we have no choice. Getting hold of new cards for new orders isnt too bad, its getting replacements for RMA's thats the problem and with a failure rate like nothing I have ever seen before we dont have the option to just replace them without causing a considerable delay to a customer who is unfortunate to have a faulty card.

Sager have also pulled it from their notebooks, check their site

custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks -- For example

Pman

 

Im suprised to even hear about issues with the HD 6970m.
But i do know my card performs like a champ, so guess i got one from the good batch. ;d

Btw what are the symptoms for the failures, is t like the ticking time bomb 8000m series from Nvidia or something?

 

If it were a ticking time bomb, we wouldn't be hearing of failure reports this soon after the product launched.

 

If it fails, RMA it and get a better card replacement. If it doesn't - have it, use it and be merry. What's a big deal?..

 

When you RMA can you request for em to change it to a better card? Wouldn't you have to pay full price for the new card? Or will it be just whatever the difference is for the 485m? I'm RMA'ing mine right now, so I'm curious.

 

The big deal is paying an extra £200+ for the better card replacement or waiting for another to be released that doesn't cost 3x as much.

 

If it was us normally we would replace like for like but in these situations we have to charge the difference in upgrade costs

I imagine that is the same for all resellers although I am sure they will confirm

Pman

 

I'm in the situation now, where I need to RMA my notebook, for non-GPU related issues.

I'm holding out to see if AMD comes out with something new, so I can make an upgrade while the machine is sent back to the factory.

I love Nvidia chips, but I can't support these overblown pricing schemes.

 

hope mine fail

 

Well, that's not good at all. I hope US resellers don't suck as much.

 

After hearing nothing but great things about this card (performance for the price) I went ahead and ordered through Xotic on 6/11. I went into phase 2 on 6/13 and that's where I sit. I'm starting to get worried

 

^^If you're in Phase 2, call XoticPC and talk to them about it.

 

I'm still indifferent to the reports of "technical issues". Wouldn't this and the Alienware forum be flooded with failure reports, if there was truly the epidemic I'm asked to believe?

People have been receiving 6970Ms weekly, for months, and there hasn't seemed to be a batch that suddenly had a mass failure. I just can't buy it yet, without having seen the data.

I wouldn't panic because someone said you should.

 

My laptop is coming to my house via UPS in next 1-7 hours with 6970M. I purchased Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Mafia II, and Civilization V last night. I will play Battlefield first thing to check how my 6970M will perform

 

We're not asking you to believe anything Kevin. Several resellers have indicated they're pulling the 6970 from active service. With failure rates being noted in the 40% range. Remember these are failures on the test bench and are not making it to the consumers. Our resellers are taking the brunt of this inconvenience, not us. It's not just me that's saying it anymore, I got my info from my reseller, but Pman and a few other have indicated the truth behind this. We will never see data on the failure rate of this kind of equipment.

 

I messaged them a day or two ago and was told that since my order was placed before the card was pulled that my laptop should still ship with the card. If something were to change, they would contact me.

I just don't know how I feel about paying the kind of money that I did for a product that will be shipping with a card that has been pulled for stability issues.

 

Congrats on your new system Hello!

You will not be disappointed in the beast that is the AMD Radeon HD 6970m™

 

That's too bad. I was hoping AMD would give nVidia a run for their money by replacing the 6970m with a new GPU that would kick the 485m/580m butt.