[GUIDE] Installing and Overclocking the AMD Mobility 7970 in the M17x R3,an illustrated guide

I don't know that much about how GPUS work exactly, but I know about electronic circuitry. Each part has a tolerance, say +- 2% for example. One card might be have every component pretty close to spec while another card might have components that are closer to that 2%. All of those tolerances stack up resulting in different performance outside of stock clocks.

I'm not sure if that's how the GPUS work or not, but that's how I look at it.

 

I think some 7970s need a tad more voltage to run aggressive clocks...hint 1.075v

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Im just getting cold feet on the 1.075 voltage... You really think its the problem solver for me? You think its safe to run?

I really appreciate all your help guys honestly. Its awesome to have a community that helps each other out with things not all of us know about

 

StZu, your card looks it maxes out earlier than mine. You have to remember that the card works at the advertised 850/1200...there are no guarantees from the maunufacturer that it will do more.

1.075 seems fairly safe.

Why don't you do this. See if your card is enough for you. See if it does everything you need it to do as far as games go. If it does, then no need to do anything...however, this is something to think about for the future

 

is it a possibility that if its maxing out now so low that adding voltage wont help?

BTW I just froze on Crysis 2 running 900/1300 so, so sad...

 

Hey Slick, i was following your guide but i still have some Problems with OC the 7970m.

i'm actually using a p150em but everything worked so far until the last step.

i changed the afterburner config values to the eula stuff and "1"

then i went to registry and changed the enableulps value to "0" (only had 0000 and 0001, enableulps was only found in 0001..)

when i save and open msi afterburner again i all of a sudden doesn't show the clocks anymore (can't read them anymore?) and i can't change anything.
(before changeing to 1 & eula it showed me 850 & 1200 mhz on core and memory)

any help? :/

btw: hwinfo is showing me 300 & 150 mhz?

edit: i've never oc-ed so i guess the reason could be that there is no bios available atm for disabling enduro? although i have an option with the modded 12.6 beta drivers that uses switchable graphics (3dmark score was good!)

 

Don't be sad bro! the 7970m is beastly as it is. Anything is possible, but if your temps are good (and they are great) i believe it is a power issue that is holding you back. Keep the voltage mod in your back pocket. There is no need to do that now, but at least it is something that you can address in the future if you like

Most of the issues that I have seen is that there were issues with the MSIAfterburner.cfg.

Sometimes, a duplicate copy is created or it is accidently renamed to .txt instead of .cfg...or sometimes, they editted the EULA incorrectly within the .cfg file

Double check the folder with this file in it and make sure that there aren't any extra files or the file is renamed wrong

 

well there's a MSIAfterburner.dat and a .cfg but i guess the .dat is not important to this case.

double checked all the settings but still looks like in the attachment.
(top = no eula and "0", bottom = Eula & "1")

as i said before. there was no possibility to disable enduro, might this be the problem?

 

Core, can you attach two screenshots:

1) an open folder screenshot of your msiafterburner directory
2) the MSIAfterburner.cfg file where you editted the EULA

The guys with the Clevos are using this method to overclock and it is working for them

 

I just got my 7970M in from Dell today. I am very excited to put it in. I do have a question. I did not get a tube of thermal paste, but the heatsink appears to have a thin layer of grey paste. Would I be correct to assume that it is thermal paste? Sorry about the noob question, but this is the first time I have ever done a GPU swap.

 

I would assume so, as the heat sink is made of copper.

You'd be wise to invest in some good thermal paste though.

 

if ure thinking about "reusing" that old paste, dont! always completely remove the old one and apply new paste when swapping components / reinstalling the heatsinks

 

SkylineLvr, i'm confused...did your 7970m come with a new heatsink or are you reusing the old heatsink.

If it is a new heatsink and it came with paste on it, you can use it for the time being and see how it fairs temp wise. From what Rev and a few others have told me, Dell is now shipping top end paste with their heatsinks giving very good results.

But like Jack and Jaybee said above, don't reuse the old paste off the old heatsink and it is always good to go and get yourself a $10 tube of thermal paste just incase you need it.

What about the thermal pads? Are they in reuseable condition?

 

My order contained everything needed to upgrade from the 580M to the 7970M. So new card, heatsink, brackets, pads. I know better than to reuse old paste. Just spoke with the engineer that helped me out and he says it's the thermal paste.

 

Then you are good to go. The paste that dell is including now with their heatsinks is top notch.

 

here you go:

 

hmmmm, it does appear that everything is in order. I assume that you have rebooted the machine and it still didn't work?

My only advice is to PM someone who has a p170 or p150 and ask them what they did...i'm pretty sure that they are using this method too, but it doesn't hurt to ask if they had to do anything else in their sager/clevos

If you do figure it out and had to do something, please udpate this thread and let me know. I'll put a note in my overclocking guide so other sager/clevo owners will benefit from your trials

 

yeah, of course i'll do ;-)
only reason i can think of is the 12.6 driver but on the other hand that shouldn't be the problem... and afaik there's no option to disable enduro on the clevos in bios so that can't be the problem either :/
I'll let you know what i found out!

 

Just installed my 7970M and all went well. Currently my idle temps are between 50-55C. I haven't done any OCing yet. Not sure if I will. The only benchmark I have ran is Heaven on stock clocks. I'm pretty happy with the score. My 3DMarkVantange is getting an error; PhysXLoader.dll is missing. Guess I need to reinstall it.

Spoiler

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So far not extremely blown away by this card. I fired up FFXIV and didn't notice any increase in FPS. I'm just hoping it's just a driver issue right now. I haven't tried any other games yet.

I do seem to have a very minor issue. My screen seems really dim even with brightness turned up to the max. But when I load up HWiNFO my screen brightens up. Any idea why this is?

 

Dear SlickDude. Half of my excitement about the 7970m was overclocking it. It runs great right now, no problem, but I have not been able to unlock the overclocking feature despite following every damn step you have noted here! Edited the .cfg file, the registry keys, did a reboot. Tried on both stock and 12.5 modded drivers. NOTHING happens. Stuck on 850/1200.

Including a screenie.... pweaaase tell me what to do this is killing me, lol! Everybody is able to overclock besides me. epic fail



3DMark 11 score - P5897 on stock

 

oh, now that i see the desktop icon: do i need to install that MSI Kombust-thing, too?

 

that runs gpu-specific stress tests as far as i know don't need it, can use it if you want!

 

When you saved your Msi cfg file, you saved it as all files type and not txt file type correct? That was my mistake.

 

Bump. Anyone have a similar problem?

 

lol same here... I dont know why that happens... but the screen can always be set to be so bright...

 

nkdv, double check your file and make sure it saved as .cfg NOT txt as Jwim suggested. Also, i noticed that you set ENABLEULPS_ something to zero also...set that back to 1

I think everyone with the 7970m is experiencing this. I think its a driver issue when you run on the dedicated GPU only. I keep my screen pretty dim anyways so it doesn't bother me.

 

Okay, I solved the issue rather unconventionally.

My cgf file was fine, no problems there. I checked double triple quadruple checked, even reinstalled afterburner and did the same thing. Next, the registry keys I fixed as well. But all this made no difference. I was bamboozled to say the least! Reboots didn't help.

Now since I have two installations of Windows, one on my SSD and one on my stock HDD, I booted into the stock HDD and made the same changes, and this time it worked. I didn't install afterburner, just used the same folder on my ssd windows' drive. Overclocking worked. I noticed that the structure of the registry keys in both my installations was also different. Note, I made the same changes to the EnableULps key

Next, rebooted into SSD windows and afterburner was unlocked. I don't know how this happened, but hey I'll take it. My 7970m doesn't seem to overclock that much or give as high scores as everyone else :/ The highest I can go is 960/1430 and I consider this the highest I will go - benchmarks CTD if I go higher. I'm considering overvolting but that would require flashing a modded vBIOS, correct?

Not on my alienware right now, am at work but will post a couple of screenies with benchmark scores. They're good for me, just wanted to know how they stack up against other 7970Ms

 

very interesting...i'll have to add that to my list of things to check. There must have been confusion in the registry with 2 sets of entries, one per windows installation

The thinking right now is to not go above 1.075v. Stock is 1.05v. There is a 1.075v vbios. StZu just did his and he's very happy with the results...however, we was only able to get to 900/1300 on the stock voltage. if you can get to 960/1400+, do you really need more?

 

Yeah, I mean even though that's decent, I don't see a very big improvement in performance in-game compared to others which was why I was considering this option, perhaps as a something to think about later on..

Beats me what was wrong with the registry, here is what I noted if it may help you in any way. -

Stock Windows Installation || Stock Drivers => 0000, 0001, 0002, Properties - these are the entries I have (same on the SSD installation).
However, 0000 does not contain enableulps, 0001 and 0002 do.

SSD Fresh reinstall || 12.5 modded drivers => 0000 and 0001 contain enableulps and 0002 does not. Strange. I exported registry entries from the first one to replace these and try it out, but like I said, I didn't have to do that because it worked, mysteriously..

Here are my benchmark results, let me know what you think of them and if its a good (relatively) score for my 7970m

3dMark11 - Stock Clocks 850/1200 - 12.5 modded driver - P5923

3dMark11 - OC 960/1430 - 12.5 modded driver - P6542 [I'm sad about not being able to hit P6600 at least..]

EDIT: Thought I'd add, I am certainly very happy that it clocks up this high It just baffles me why it fares worse than other who are getting P6600+ scores overclocked... what might be a bottleneck here, if any?

 

hm did u hit Fn+F7 to disable enduro? it really has a significant influence on alienwares as far as 7970M perf is concerned...

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Just thought I'd add, I leave it on 950 / 1400 when I play Battlefield 3, etc. to be on the safe side and not fry anything. Just curious as to how far this card can be pushed.

And yup, did the fn+f7 and running 7970m only all this while.

That said, since I am relatively unfamiliar with overclocking and you guys have had your 7970Ms for longer and are also better schooled on the topic what do you think of my scores / OC capabilities? Would feel good to know that I haven't got a crappy card, haha

 

So far my card looks promising. My best run with Vantage on stock voltage is 1000/1450 clocks. I get the black screen when I up the clocks to 1000/1500.

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2760QM Processor,Alienware M17xR3 score: P22878 3DMarks

I'm not sure which drivers I should try out. Currently I'm on 8.951.1.0. Do you guys prefer a newer driver, or does it not really matter at this point?

 

i have exactly the same issue. I own a Clevo 170 with 7970m, and i can t OC useing the Clevo drivers and doing exactly all the things listed in this guide. I tried to install the set of drivers provided in this 3d, but the notebook crushed and i got blu screen, so got back to Clevo drivers, but even doing anything listed in the guide, i wasn t able to OC at al, and i got the same screen as u.

Could it be cause we can t disable enduro? If not, can any Clevo user post their suggestions plz?

 

950/1400 is what i game at. It gives very good performance...in fact, there are many games that don't even need this. For example in diablo3, i'm gaming at stock clocks because i'm already getting 100+ fps in that game maxxed @ 1080p

James, i think you should post this in the Clevo forum to get a faster response. And when you find out how to overclock the card, can you please update this thread as I will update my guide for the sager/clevo users

that's a good card. Anytime you can run 1ghz core on the stock voltage, you've got a good card...i've only seen a handful of cards here (including mine) that can do this on stock voltage. Most can achieve that though @ 1.075v.

I find that my best performance is at about 990/1550 though, maybe give that try

 

I'll try that out. I'm downloading 3dMark11 right now. Gonna give that a run next.

 

Here's my first run at 3DMark11 with 1000/1450 clocks.

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2760QM Processor,Alienware M17xR3 score: P6447 3DMarks

I hate how it shows my clocks at 300/150. Next up I'll try 990/1550 as you suggested Slick. Probably wont do it tonight though. Gotta put my toy away and spend time with the wife now.

 

Hey SlickDude can you do me a favor? Can you bench BF3 on ultra with 12.6.9 7900 Mod driver and ENDURO enabled (no overclock)? I just want to compare alienware with enduro on with my clevo p150em. just reply or PM me the results, would appreciate it man.

 

can any1 try this? ill do that too now

"One of our customers used this method:

Install the official Clevo 7970M package without installing the actual display driver. Then install only the display driver from the Guru3D package. This results in a disabled CCC and disabled Enduro + the expected increased benchmark results."

Copied from Clevo forum.

 

currently im gaming at 975/1425 with temps not passing 67c so its safe to say Its just 7c over stock. Also I'm on 1.075v

 

Amazing! As soon as I get mine Ill be overclocking lol! Not that the performance is anything to complain about as comes!

 

LOL...bro, this is the smartest strategy...keep her happy or next time you want to buy something, she will ninja the purchase!

very interesting...but then you have no CCC? or does CCC return with the new drivers installed. I assume that you get CCC with the beta Guru3D package. This may be the workaround...thnx for the info

 

well me and another user tried it, but still doesn t seem to work sadly.....too bad drivers are so bad atm

 

It says it can't detect the driver or it's not supported right? Did you install the clevo package without GPU driver AFTER A CLEAN WINDOWS 7 INSTALL? because if you haven't I'll try it out. How come no one replies to my comments? lol can you guys see my posts?

 

ehy mate the problem seems solved ahahah. since we Clevo users can t disable enduro (u can see this via Speedfan cause whren the GPU is off it can t detect the Temp) i set inside CCC to High Performance the FutureMark app, then launched it and i noticed the GPU temp was ON, so i launched MSI afterburner and voila i could see the GPU clocks and change those....


now i have to go, but later on ill try to OC a little bit, thx again for all ur help dude so far

 

that's excellent. So let me understand. You went into CCC and set the afterburner app to high performance and it solved your issue? Overclocking is enabled?

 

Sorry doble post

 

Not exactly. U know clevo can t disable enduro, so when i launch afterburner on a Clevo u can t see the frequency (at least i have this theory), while launching future mark should enable the 7970m and in this way if u Made all is written in the guide u can see and change the clocks (while if u launch MSI afterburner without previously launching future mark u get 0/0 core/RAM clocks). When in back home ill tru to oc a bit and then ill post some scores. I hope i have been useful to clevo users with this


Let me know guys if i can oc then

 

so basically u just need to put some load onto ur machine during MSI afterburner startup so that the amd gpu is activated and properly recognized good to know

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thx for the info. i'll try it when i'm back at home

 

didn't have to for me, you just have to make sure you run as administrator for afterburner (after modifying cfg file and enableulps value).