7970m in a M15x....Why yes

thanks interns. is the marketplace here pretty much the only place where I can find a dell 7970m??

 

It's a good place to start. Don't worry about hurrying though. Prices will start to drop soon and also AMD have yet to release drivers so it means hard work once you have the thing at the moment. I have yet to get the card working properly.

 

king of interns why not just install the m17x r4 7970m drivers?

 

I have just got it working. The first error free installation. I used 12.6.9 7900 MODDED as none of the others worked for me including 12.7 leaked and 12.5!

WEI now reports 7.9 for graphics and interestingly the HDD has gone up too to 7.6. Lowest score is the lowly 920XM CPU lol!

 

How is P5355 for 3Dmark11 score everything stock?

edit: such a shame tried to run 3dmark11 with 25x multi and get hit with gpu throttling in combined test! The score would have been well over P6000

Time to try undervolting further

 

Did some quick tests with 3dMark11, combined test at extreme presets. Max power draw was 140W, average about 132W.
CPU and GPU stock, though my GPU is running at 0.975V instead of 1.05V.

 

Anyone tried undervolting? I tried a 3dmark11 run at stock gpu at 0.975V and cpu at 25x across board and in the last combined test the GPU was very obviously throttling intermittantly. So it seems my machine does suffer the problem! The score as a result dropped hugely as the combined score was poor!

Perhaps someone has tried 0.95V? SLV7 mate?

If it is possible to run 25x multi and the gpu at stock clocks at a working undervolt could be a big step for us M15x users as the potential of the GPU opens up with the CPU running faster. I know 25x is very optimistic but if I get it working it means there would be some headroom for an overclock still on the GPU say at 22-23x

 

Good to know, thanks!

 

I know battery life isn't really that important to you guys, but would you do a test for me?

The AMD 7970M has zero-core technology, which means it uses very little power, very close to an IGP, in fact, at idle. I wanted to know two things.

When surfing the web and such, do you have better battery life with the 7970M than the card you came from?

Is there a way to lock it to the very low idle state, and if so, can you still surf the web, etc?

I loved my M15x, but couldn't deal with the battery life. Maybe this would allow me to get another one..

Thanks in advance.

 

Zerocore only really makes a difference in crossfire configs, the 7970m is still going to get around the same battery life was the 5850m setups do.

If you want battery life, get an M17x R3.

 

Or get a 9 cell I get a good 2.5 hours on the battery, sometimes longer now with 12% battery wear too! This is by far the longest lasting battery I have experienced on a laptop I have owned! Yes I have only owned power hungry beasts with small batteries lol

 

That's pretty good! I had an M15x with a 5870M that never went to idle and a 6-cell that lasted about 45 minutes, with no wear, ha.

 

Well I just pulled the power withe 100% battery and with screen at full brightness and typing this message on the web it says power will last 2 hrs 11 mins. Not bad for a lappy toting a 920xm and 7970M. If I were to stick brightness down it increases to 2 hrs 30 mins.

 

Buddies, I have a serious problem with my new out of box 7970M (a Dell one) in my M15x : the screen stays white/blank after boot up but all is fine on my external screen (using the VGA port).

Temps are good, I'm using my GTX460M X-Plate.

Any help welcome .

 

First question is what system bios are you using. Is it A09 ? This is the latest one.

Perhaps if you are running an older system bios this happens.

 

Very, very bad idea. This bracket doesn't fit and you're likely to short some caps on the back of the card. Besides it results in quite a bit pressure on the card when you mount the heatsink.

 

Svl7 : you're my god .
The card runs perfectly without the GTX460M X-Plate (already tap-insulated). Which bracket should I order ?

 

An X plate for the 6970M/90M as well as 7970M should be fine.

AMD Radeon 6970M / 6990M MXM 3.0b GPU Spreader / X-Bracket M18x | eBay

Like this.

 

I know that it works if installed carefully. It worked pretty well with the 6970m but it doesn't work well with the 6990m / 7970m. Some users killed cards by doing it that way. Just saying...

The bracket in the link above will do fine, the price is outrageous... but in the end I think it's worth it.

 

That's true, my 6970M worked fine with my GTX460M X-plate.
One last question : my 6970M came with a Clevo bracket, my M15x screws were too big, so I'm wondering, is upgradeyourlaptop's bracket compatible with these screws ?

(upgradeyourlaptop, the seller on eBay of course )

 

Nope, you need the smaller screws for the Clevo bracket... but you can buy screws in your next hardware store. If you already have the proper 6970m bracket then that's probably the cheapest way to make it fit properly.

 

So, upgradeyourlaptop's bracket is compatible with my Dell screws (from the M15x), isn't it ?

Thank you for your patience svl7 !

 

No, it isn't, it's the Clevo bracket and needs smaller screws. That's why I suggest just buying screws - cheaper.

 

Where are you getting the cards from? I sell two on eBay at $700 each.

 

Hi guys I have just installed this card in to my laptop. The highest temperature I ever experienced with this card was 72 degrees Celsius while playing Starcraft 2, Dota 2 and Diablo 3, all maxed out.

However, I do in fact have some questions.

I am able to observe that the GPU usage is not always above 90% and fluctuates significantly. Is this normal?

While playing Diablo 3, I sometimes feel that the game is either throttling or beginning to slow down as I fight huge mobs. I'm not sure which one it is, but it only happens with Diablo 3.

Other games perform flawlessly. I'm currently using the "9.00-120612a-7900-MOD" driver and MSI afterbuner to observe the temperatures.

Thank you in advanced guys

 

Wow I am very impressed with what I have heard so far, however I have a few questions. When playing a game such as metro 2033 on max settings dx11 how hot does the card get. My 6990m gets as hot as 90-100C before it shuts down.

Are there any shutdowns with the card?

Does the DP work? My 6990m doesn't support the DP, or it doesn't work anyways.

Where do I get the card? I have looked everywhere, but on ebay they are $650 which is ALOT.

If you have a 7970m for sale or want a 6990m PM me, and I would love to do business.

Also does anyone know if the gtx 680m works. (I'm an nvidia fanboy)

 

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If you were to use a Dell card, HDMI through DP would work flawlessly. I'm currently experiencing shutdowns at 70 degrees. It may be caused by vram overheating due to insufficient thermal padding, or maybe this means an undervolt is required. Will see to it when I'm free.

 

it is the vram. I had same problem when I used the wrong heatplate screws meaning the heatsink wasn't tightly screwed down.

Add 0.5mm padding to all the vram and then tightly screw the heatsink down to the card.

 

Will try when my thermal pad arrives. But I ordered those 1mm pads though. Will it make any difference?

 

1mm should be fine. I can't remember which I use. But usually more is better than less.

 

as long as the 1mm pads are squishy and not hard there should be no problem

 

Bad news, I still get my white and blank screen with EUROCOM bracket (the 6970M one, it fully matched with my 7970M).
Screws aren't so tighten, I put some phobya pad for RAM and MX-4 for the die, I'm running out of ideas mates

 

Hmm. Perhaps you should ditch the 6970M bracket and buy the proper 7970M bracket and screws. You haven't tightened the screws properly? You should tighten them to the point where once you can't tighten them easily do one more rotation on each screw with additional force to bring the heatsink down into contact.

 

I got my x-bracket from upgradeyourlaptop which shipped with the matching screws. Worked fine without any problems.

 

Wooow, thanks King of Interns, screws are properly tightened now. Time to play ARMA2 with >30 fps on my M15x, thanks everyone for your help !

 

No problem mate. Enjoy the games

 

All signs of slowing down and random frame rate drops were solved by undervolting the vbios to 0.975v!

 

Cheers!

 

This is awesome, to think I could still have my M15x from years ago and be able to use a 7970m is pretty insane. Great job.

 

====
WHY NOT USE 35W CPU WITH 7970M?
LIKE I7-640M WITH 7970M(1.05V) ,7970M have more power for OC

M15x+7970m,
920xm=24,23,18,18，55W。OC 7970m=1000/1275，3D 11= P6039!!

 

Hello

My The Best score M15X

I7 820
7970M

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-820QM Processor ,Alienware score: P6189 3DMarks

 

hi
what was your clocks?
and how you oc an i7 820qm

 

Hey guys,
I recently bought the 7970m and put it in my m15x. I tried it and was able to run BF3 at 60 fps on full ultra settings, so I know it works. I reformatted my M15x's hard drive though yesterday and reinstalled the amd driver for the 7970m and i decided to benchmark the card.

These are my results: AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-740QM Processor,Alienware score: P2541 3DMarks

Any idea why they're so low? :/

PS. I got a higher score with the 560m before......

 

Try undervolting the card it may be throttling. I scored near to 6k after I undervolted to 0.975v

 

I thought that AMD cards don't really throttle all that much? I may be wrong though ha.. Were you getting similar scores before you undervolted? and would it effect my gameplay at all if i leave it as is?

 

i benchmarked my 7970m in an m15x with a 740qm and this was my score..

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-740QM Processor,Alienware score: P2541 3DMarks

this seems really really low.. is the 740qm bottlenecking the card? or is this low score due to something else?

 

My card was unable to achieve a 99% GPU load before undervolting due to it throttling. And yes the scores were much lower. Check to see if your card is able to achieve such a load using MSI Kombustor.

Games such as Just Cause 2 and Dota 2 would experience random FPS drops as well and random throttling at some point.

On a side note I would experience random shutdowns before undervolting as well.

 

My card hits 99% all the time without undervolting... Does that mean I'm fine? or what? haha, I re-did my 3dmark11 test and got a P5162. Idunno what happened on that first run but I seem to be fine now. I'm guessing the fact that I scored in the lower 5000s is because of my 740 qm. Besides that, everything seems fine. Would undervolting raise that score?

PS. I'm assuming your random shutdowns were due to temperature issues.. At least, I've had that problem in the past with the 560m and fixed it by keeping the temperature really low with IC Diamond 7.

 

Oh you are good to go then. Since you are using a 740qm you could over clock your 7970m to even higher clocks to achieve an even higher score since the 740qm uses less power with a tdp of 45w.

Apparently the shutdowns were caused by the VRAM overheat and it has been solved by changing the thermal pads.

 

Have you checked if PowerPlay is set to "Maximize Performance" while plugged in?