7970m in a M15x....Why yes

So to use 7xx/8xx i7 processors provide allowe 7970 to take more power rather when using 920/940?

 

Well apparently yes. But you could always use throttlestop to adjust the tdp of the 920XM or 940XM

 

Down to a certain level yes. However the voltage of the 920xm is almost certainly higher than the 840qm down. Because the voltage is fixed and you can only open and close the tap as it were on the supply of this voltage via tdp and tdc settings even at minimum settings it is unlikely a 920xm or 940xm will consume less power than a 840qm down.

I remember doing tests of my own and below certain settings the temps stopped getting lower during Prim 95 runs.

Luckily the 7970M only needs 0.98V to run stock clocks. I value I intend to lower and test out as driver and ATT support gets better. At these voltages the 920xm has plenty of headroom.

 

I able to run 920 at stock clock's with 55/47 TDP/TDC, and 5850 1.15V 870/1200 without fps drops in BF3 and any driver failures.
3dmarkVantage and 3dmark11 is ok with 920 x25 across all cores and 920/1200 1.15V on 5850.
For everyday use i take 920 at stock clock's 55/47 and flashing 5850 to 840/1200 1.1V.

Is 5850 1.1/1.15V realy consumes less power than 7970 0.975/0.98V?

 

Hey.

I just bought a new 7970m last night so I should get it within this week according to the seller. I have a couple of minor questions.
I have been using this 6990m for like a year and before posting this I literally didn't remember if I had a new retention bracket for it or if I used the old one from my 5870m, so I took a look at my 5870m in its little baggie. Turns out, the 5870m still has a retention bracket on it so that must mean my 6990m came with a bracket on it since it works (right?). I cannot imagine I actually installed it without checking to see if it had a retention bracket. So. The 6990m retention bracket should work with the 7970m right? Do I have to do any kind of modification?

Where can I find a link to the vbios that everybody has been using? Or should I just mod them to .975v when I get it? Or, since I have the 720qm, will it work at stock voltage?

I have been using the same heatsink in my M15x since I got it with a GT 240m. I just now read somebody thinking that the GT 240m heatsink is inadequate. I have been using it for years with 5870m, now 6990m, is there a better heatsink for the M15x that I should buy? Or was that person writing nonsense?

Will a GPU this immensely powerful be bottlenecked by my little 720qm? If I were to upgrade the CPU would it make sense to get a 55 tdp 920qm or make more sense to get one of the 45 tdp ones? Is there a big boost from 720qm to 740qm?(I dont really think so...)? Would it actually be worth it to upgrade to a 820qm or 840qm? Or, is it more important to upgade ram size.

Sorry for such a big brick or writing. I type pretty quickly and I hope you can read just as fast.

thanks

 

Yes, the retention bracket of the 6990m works perfectly with the 7970m, and make sure you use only the 6970/6990/7970m bracket.

Well, it really depends how your computer is working with the 7970m before you come to a decision to undervolt it. If your laptop were to ever face throttling issues while playing games, its best to undervolt to a lower voltage. Mine was undervolted because it experienced lagging throttling/lagging issues while playing games. In addition, it also helps the GPU to run cooler.

One thing though, I can't seem to overclock the 7970m after I undervolted it.

But nevertheless, judging from your specs, with a processor of a 720QM, there would be plenty of headroom for you to overclock your graphics card and I doubt you would be facing any throttling.

Here is the link in which you can find various vbios available:

AMD 7970m - modified VBIOS

[GUIDE] AMD VBIOS flashing

Regarding your CPU questions, there would be no significant boost from the 720QM to the 740QM. In fact, its best to buy the 920XM where you can overclock easily using throttlestop. It would be an immense boost from your current processor.

Moving on, there are currently no better heatsinks other than the stock ones. The stock heatsinks work just fine with the 7970m.

My temperatures with the 7970m varies around 40+ while surfing the internet and 60+ while playing DoTA 2.

 

Ah. Thanks for the info. I am glad I am not missing out on a better heatsink these few years! Great links but the vbios flashing one is only useful to situated members of that forum because nonmembers cannot look at some link when it tells you how to make a bootable USB stick. It turns out my usb stick was already formatted correctly from vbios flashing my 5870 years ago! lol. When I decided to undervolt my 6990m I had forgotten how to flash vbios and struggled to find a good link but eventually came to one somewhere here on NBR. (NBR FTW). On the issue of CPU upgrades it seems that since 920xms are the only viable worthwhile upgrade for most people, they also happen to be highly sought after and expensive ATM. I was just searching the web and couldnt find any for under $300! Maybe an upgrade for another year.

 

You can consider buying QS chips which have no significant differences with the OEM chips and are somehow way cheaper:

INTEL i7 920XM 3.2GHz quad QS mobile CPU processor for 55 chipset laptop monkey 0735858211307 | eBay

 

I should think it would be fairly similar but the 7970M might still take more power at full load. The 7970M runs remarkably cool however compared with the previous 40nm generations. The 5850M also has just 128bit bus and half the GDDR5 mem running at a much slower speed to its advantage in terms of power draw.

 

I am hoping it is cooler than the 6990m I am upgrading from, which sometimes got to 90 degrees while playing BF3. Weird how BF3 does that I don't think even crysis 2 gets GPUs as hot.

 

It is alot cooler than the 6990M. I had one before the 7970M and the newer card runs between 10-15C cooler at full load. And nearly 10C cooler at idle.

I found BF3 only got my 6990M to around 85C or so. I was only running stock clocks however and undervolted at 1V.

 

What would be the proper process for installing the drivers and hardware for the 7970M? I am looking into upgrading from my GTX 260M. I've never upgraded a laptops hardware before, only worked on desktops.

 

The process is exactly the same as with a desktop with perhaps the added task of installing the heatsink onto the new card whereas desktop cards often come with their heatsinks already mounted.

So you open the laptop up, remove the heatsink, then the 260M then install the new card ( take opportunity to give the heatsink and fan a good clean with compressed air) apply thermal compound on new GPU die and thermal pads on over the memory modules, then install heatsink again and close laptop up. Start laptop and install new drivers after wiping old ones completely using driver wiper to be certain.

 

Hello, Haramdar, here are some teardown videos you can watch to help you install your card:

Alienware M15x Teardown 1 of 3 **READ SAFETY PRECAUTIONS PRIOR TO REPLACING PARTS** (Official Video) - YouTube
Alienware M15x Teardown 2 of 3 **READ SAFETY PRECAUTIONS PRIOR TO REPLACING PARTS** (Official Video) - YouTube
Alienware M15x Teardown 3 of 3 **READ SAFETY PRECAUTIONS PRIOR TO REPLACING PARTS** (Official Video) - YouTube

Obviously, you don't need to do all that but you get the idea.

 

Thanks to you both!

Going to start getting everything together for when I get new card. Would these thermal pads be adequate?
Fujipoly Extreme System Builder Thermal Pad - 1/4 Sheet - 150 x 100 x 0.5 - Thermal Conductivity 11.0 W/mK - FrozenCPU.com

 

yeah those would work great..... never knew fujipoly make extreme pads im going to have to put in an order myself

 

Ok cool thx

 

Hey. I just installed my new 7970m a few hours ago. When I ordered, I thought there would be no back plate and I would put the one from my 6990m. When it got here I was pleased to see it did infact have a back plate, but was unaware of the clevo backplate issue. Then I tried to screw in the heatsink and realized the screws that were physically attached to the heatsink didn't fit the backplate of the 7970m. I spent like half an hour trying to get those screws off because the seller included 5 tiny screws that would fit into the clevo backplate, but then I ended up switching the backplate with my 6990m. I didn't realize how much effort it took to pry that thing off with the glue! I felt like I was about to snap both cards in half lol. Well I installed the card and ambient temps are like 33 to 38. However when I loaded up a benchmark test by accident from msi afterburner (I didnt realize that button launched kombustor) after a few minutes I got a black screen. I tried ctrl alt delete and went to log off and heard a little log off noise. After that I couldnt do anything and had to hold power to shut off. It happened again when i rebooted as soon as I launched HWinfo. Since then I have had it underclocked to 800/1200 and it hasnt happened yet. I havent played any games yet or done any more benchmarks. Just wanted to know if anybody had a fix for this and to share my experience. Before I got my 7970m I read about the screw size issue and was kind of confused but now I get it lol.

Edit: forgot to mention that the fans dont work. They seem to always be at 100%? msi afterburner wont let me use the fan control on it. I tried to use HWinfo fan control but it looks like it is not changing it? I dont mind 100% very much but I hope there is a fix.

edit #2: I just ran heaven benchmark. Scored more than twice what I just did with 6990m a few hours ago. both stock clocks. Cant wait to throw this baby at crysis 2 when I get the time!

edit #3: figured out how to use hwinfo for fan control.

 

Are you using a DELL card? Only the dell cards have automated fan control so far.

On a side note, try undervolting your vbios to a lower voltage. It may help.

 

The card is from upgradeyourlaptop on ebay. It seems to be clevo because the backplate had screw holes that were tiny and did not fit the M15x heatsink screws.

 

hi bro.. just wanna ask you regarding throttling on m15x and ways to solve it.. im using 6970m, i only experience throttling on open world games like sleeping dogs and all... for dota 2, i dont experience throttling issue... everything is stock and i never overclock or play with the volting stuff and all... are there any solutions to solve the throttling problem for 6970m? my temp usually around 80-85c full load... thanks

 

You can try undervolting. A sure-fire auspicious method to solve any throttling issue. This is most viable solution for any sign of throttling. If remains to throttle even after undervolting, try underclocking the card. 80-85 degrees should not be a problem.

From what I know, most people here in the forum undervolt the 6970M due to it throttling in some games.

On a side note, I did not really experience any throttling in games such as League of Legends and HoN before undervolting.

 

Has anyone tried the clevo card with no catalyst drivers installed for the dp-hdmi out?

Going to tonight when home but wondering as it looks like clevo users have issues with the ati drivers for hdmi/dp out..

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

Hi bro, Thanks for your reply.. but how do i undervolt and what value should i need to undervolt the card ? any guide i need to follow as im not really tech type of person.. games like dota, CS:GO, COD have no throttling issues... the only issues mostly like 3rd person shooter games eg: Prototype 2, Sleeping dog... when i game under non aircon room is 80-85 degree.. if i game under aircon room would be 75-78 degree but also suffer from throttling.. my processor is only i7-720qm.. im not sure whether the card suffering from lack of power? thanks

 

Well yes it seems that the card is having insufficient power. You could try downloading ATI tray tools and read the forums below to get a rough idea on the value of the voltage you might need to set:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...u-need-know-upgrading-problems-solutions.html

 

if my card is suffering from insufficient power, isnt devolting is like reducing more power from the card instead? heh but i will try and see whether it works or not... will update here... thanks

 

Undervolting reduces the amount of power needed for your card to run at a reasonable performance and makes the card cooler along the way.

 

Hello all and thanks for the informative thread. I'm contemplating upgrading from my i7-740qm & 260M to the 7970m and it seems like the main issues I need to worry about are power supply and CPU limitations. It seems like CPU limitations, if they exist, won't be big enough for me to matter. Given the power of this GPU, even if I'm only getting 90% of its power, I'd still be getting significant power.

I'm a little more worried about throttling due to insufficient power. It seems like it either isn't a big deal or solved with some undervolting.

Anyone else with a 740 have any thoughts? The consensus in the thread seems to be that it should work, but I just want to check to be sure.

Also, does anyone have an opinion as to whether I should bother upgrade my power brick so that I'm not heating my house with the current 150 W brick, or should I see how things go and upgrade if/when it melts.

Thanks in advance!

 

I am personally upgrading to the 7970 as well and I have a 920XM. I know several people on here that have the combo with no issues.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

Thanks for the response. In the end, I decided it was easier to bequeath my m15x to my wife and go big with a new m18x.

 

hello guys can i ask fairly easy, what is the best combo for 7970m 920xm or 940xm without having problem?? thanks without undervolts thanks

 

Hey everyone. When I first installed the 7970m I had 4gb ram and I kept noticing fps drops down to like 30 or less in most games. I just upgraded to 8gb and it is so smooth now. It turns out the ram was a huge bottleneck on my setup even with 720qm. I am running the 7970m at stock everything, and its Clevo.
Whats weird about the ram though is that when I had 4gb the most I would see used in the resource monitor is 3.5, but now with 8gb it goes up to 6 or more and can use 3gb just for BF3. The whole system is speedier too!
Just wanted to let everyone know if they are upgrading to a 7970m or even less you should upgrade ram to at least 6gb first as 8gb only will cost you $30-$40!
And as an update to my earlier posts when I upgraded at first, I am not having any issues including black screens or shutdowns except I did have one the other day. The card works perfectly and I could probably OC it more.

 

try to play GTA IV you will see the difference that your i740qm has a limitation if not maybe i should'nt upgrade my i740qm same as yours

 

What I meant is actually that with 4gb ram I was not able to get the 7970m to a consistent 100% load because it was so severely bottlenecked. However, I don't think I have ever seen the resource monitor say I used 100% of the cpu. If there is a better monitoring program for cpu usage, I would love to hear it. I am not saying the 720qm is more than equivalent to 7970m, I am just saying that playing both of them the 7970m is able to max out usage and the 720qm doesn't seem to... Maybe that is a problem lol. I am certain, however, that an upgrade to CPU would increase performance alot, and I would guess that the 7970m would still be able to max load.

You suggest that it is the games I'm playing, so I can try others. I have never played GTA IV and I do not own it but here are some games I do own that I can try benching in.
BF3, FONV(I can run a CPU intensive mod if u know one),all the cryses, I can run a benchmark program if you want, or if you really want I can ultimately gain access to GTAIV to play.

Also, IDK if certain settings in games are more CPU intensive. I just know some of the ones that are more GPU intensive.

 

AMD Radeon HD7970M WimbledonXT MXM 3.0b 2GB DDR5 VIDEO CrossFire DELL Alienwar | eBay

Is that right card?

 

I dont know if that would work or not.. if it did tho that would complement your M15x very nicely!

 

its from dell it looks good to me, but have you looked through the nbr marketplace you would get a better deal and also some help from the previous owner, there are some good people doing business there i would try that before ebay

 

Can someone fill me on on the thermal pads I will need to put my 7970m in my M15x? I was going to order:
Fujipoly Extreme System Builder Thermal Pad - 1/4 Sheet - 150 x 100 x 0.5 - Thermal Conductivity 11.0 W/mK - FrozenCPU.com
My 5850m looks like it uses 2 sizes of thermal pads however. Wouldn't this be the same with the 7970m?
Any help is appreciated!!

 

@Riri-Fifi Hello. You have achieved some very impressive 3DMark 11 scores. Thank you for posting the screen shots as they have let me see the OC figures you have achieved. Do you mind sharing at what core voltage you have the card set to?

From what I've read the card needs to be under-volted to 0.975 or 0.95 to increase stability and work reliably. The default core voltage is 1.05 so if the card is under-volted to 0.95 the card should use approximately 10% less power. This in turn may allow OC to be applied, but with a margin of only 10%. You have achieved much more, very much more. Impressive...

I have a card ordered and will soon be able to do my own testing, but I am trying to do some research in advance. Many thanks in advance.

I

 

What happened to this thread? Took me forever to find it.

Anyway if anyone still looks at it I could use some help. For the first time I have some spare money to spend on an upgrade and I want to go with the 7970m. It's fairly confusing though, as I've never done an upgrade like this before.

If someone can give me the run down of what I need to look for it would be very helpful. From what I've read I should only get a dell made 7970. And then as far as brackets and screws and what not, I have no idea what I will need. I'm currently running a gtx460m. And same goes for power consumption or anything else, I have no idea what I'm doing haha. So some advice would be much appreciated.
I'm running a Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q740 1.73GHz as CPU. I'm wondering whether this will work well with the 7970?

 

I just put a 7970m in my m15x last night, it is working fine.

Lambda:
1. Check the NBR marketplace, if you're not in a hurry to upgrade I'd keep my eye on it for a couple of months and a good deal should come up. I'd get a dell card if you're not confident flashing a vbios.
2. The heatsink and screws from your current heatsink should be fine, although you may need to hammer down the copper heatpipe slightly to ensure a snug fit.
3. The Xbracket can be a pain. I had to heat the card with a heat gun to soften the glue, peel it off and grind the screw stands down (only had to go from 4.1mm to 3.45mm high!) to get the heatsink to seat properly. Alternatively to this you can buy some small copper shims (either of the marketplace or ebay) that "pack out" the heatsink so you don't need to mess with the Xbracket.
4. Power is fine with the 150w adapter that came with the m15x
5. I'm running a Q820 and the 7970 runs fine with that, with a Q740 you should have no trouble at all!

 

Thanks for the reply much appreciated. I'll definitely keep an eye out on the NBR marketplace then.
The X bracket part worries me. I opened my m15x to clean the fans out today and attempted to remove the GPU just so I can familiarize myself with it and it definitely wasn't self explanatory. The thing wasn't coming out so I just left it, I'm too afraid of breaking something. Is there some sort of guide on how to remove it?
And how on earth did you grind the screw stands down?

Will I be able to OC the 7970 without any power issues?
And when looking for a 7970, I'm always confused with the titles given. What's the difference with a clevo one? And what should I be looking for?

 

Hehe, yep it is pretty confusing when you first venture into it.

There is an m15x teardown video on youtube. There are some dedicated guides on this forum and the Tech Inferno forum with pictures showing the GPU removal process.

Did you manage to get the heatsink (with the copper heat pipe) off? I remember when I first tried it was pretty well stuck on, just takes some patience and gentle application of power!

I have access to a full industrial workshop, so finding a grinding wheel wasn't hard, but you can get a fine metal file from any hardware store and grind them down by hand, the metal is quite hard so that might take awhile! If you do it this way you don't really need to remove the bracket from the card first, just be VERY careful while you do it and clean up all the metal shavings! If you don't want to mess with it at all, copper shims are probably the best way to go.

People have had success OCing, I don't do it myself so I can't comment on it.

 

No I wasn't able to get the heatsink off. I pulled a little and it just seemed like it wasn't budging. You think I should just pull harder? It seems like it's those pads that are glued to it, holding it down. I watched that youtube demonstration, the guy just unscrewed the heatsink and pulled it right off, definitely wasn't happening with me haha.

What exactly are copper shims? Sorry I've never heard of them. I looked at some on ebay but don't understand how they help.

 

These?

You use them between the heatsink and the die of the GPU, with thermal paste on both sides. Essentially they are the meat in the sandwich! It will help bridge the gap between the heatsink and the die and ensure there is enough pressure. I believe there is something about them in the behemoth 6970m thread, where some people had the same problem.

I've never tried it myself though, I just ground the posts down!

 

Anyone here playing FC3 and experiencing throttling with the 7970M. Ever since latest game patch the game is now unplayable.

 

With the latest 12.11Beta11 driver and the application profile, i'm getting around 25-30fps at 1080p maxed settings. However, it seems my GPU usage doesn't want to go over 72%, let alone stay within 61%. CPU usage isn't much either, 35% max.

 

Alienware M15x| HD7970M | 940XM | 16GB RAM | Windows 8 Pro | Has anyone used the new driver 13.1 mobility driver for the 7970m? If so, can you post a link to it or a link to the current driver that works best? Thanks!

 

Go to amd's site and you can download the latest 13.2 beta 7 if you want. 13.1 also work fine.

Simply type "amd driver" into google search dude

 

WHQL certified drivers (my brightness works!):

13.1 Mobility WHQL 64-Bit

If you want the latest BETA(I didn't have brightness control on 13.2 Beta 5):

13.2 Beta 7

If you play Crysis 3, the 13.2 Beta 7 will probably give you less problems over the 13.1 driver.