M15x & 6970M / 6990M - What you need to know - upgrading, problems, solutions

Does the computer even turn on?

 

ouch kaize, horrible news
svl7 no luck here either.

 

Nope. No light, no nothing.

Already tried battery trick and no luck.

 

Unplug the computer and see whether you have a light on the PSU. It's possible that you tripped (or fried) the power brick instead of the computer. When that happens, it sucks all of the power out of the battery, which results in the computer playing dead. If there is any light on the PSU's LED, however dim, try power cycling the unit by unplugging and replugging (from the wall) several times. That will sometimes bring the PSU back to life. If the PSU has no light at all, try another power brick to see whether the computer responds. Dell motherboards are pretty tough and can take a lot of abuse. Good luck.

 

Sorry to hear that...hope it was a false alarme and you managed to fix it.

I have flashed my vbios with the dell 1V undervolted version. I've seen a good improvement on temperatures on load. They don't go over 80 C on full load. The highest stable overclocks I got on 1V are 730/920Mhz, if I go over that I get a driver crash.

Also, I would like to lower the temperatures on idle cause they are at 50C. Has anybody undervolting the idle voltages through RBE? Is this something safe to do?

 

Haven't had time to try it yet, hope I can do some tests tomorrow. It should work, but don't go too low or you might have problems during boot. I'm not quite sure which clocks get used during the system start, maybe different ones, and in case you go too low the card may not work at all.

Edit: Btw, idling at 50°C is no problem.

 

The trick is to flash all the modes to the 2D clocks, then do all your testing in windows. Once you know where the limits are, you can flash again.

 

Anyone managed to enable overdrive on the Dell vbios? I'll ask over at the M18x forums.

 

running now at stock 680/900 @ 0.95v
my powerbrick has always been fussy and will shut off if i draw too much power.

need to get myself one of those 240w m17x ones.

 

@Widezu: I just realized that the Clevo vbios enables overdrive.

 

Ah but it takes away the audio doesn't it?

 

Yeah, seems so. But could also be the driver, I'm on the leaked 8.86.

 

Yeah those didn't work for me. Clocks stayed at 400/900 most of the time and one shifted down like once every 5 secs for half a sec.

 

Keep in mind that you usually need to reinstall the driver when changing the vbios since it has a different subsys entry.

 

Hmm, no luck with overvolting using the Clevo vbios it seems... too bad. Clocks simply stay at 2d mode.

 

Why do you need overdrive? Is it because the card throttles? Mine used to throttle and overclocking with overdrive plus disabling powerplay made the the card not to throttle.

However now that I moved to the dell 1v vbios it doesn't throttle at all. I Don't need to disable powerplay and I can still oveclock a little bit using sapphire trixx. Plus audio through display port.

 

Running the Clevo vbios at 0.95V (3d) atm, no problems so far, but I have to do some more testing before I can say for sure that it's stable.

 

When doing some benchmarks on overclocked GPU and CPU I usually get sudden shutdowns. Is this something related with the PSU not providing enough power? If I swap to a 240W M17x PSU will those shutdowns go away?

 

I don't think so... I did some quite extreme benchmarks recently and only had some driver crashes because of too high clocks, but never a shutdown because of power.

Might be a thermal shutdown, did you watch your temps?

 

That's awesome!

Why the Clevo vBIOS over the Dell one?

 

Where is it? Could I get a copy of the Clevo vbios?

Edit:NVM

 

Hey,

I was wondering is the 6970m powerful enough to play 3d game. I'm planning to get the Acer HS244HQ bmii 24". It come with 3d glass and it output 3d via Hdmi 1.4 which mean it also work with the ps3. The specification said it's compatiable with the AMD HD3D . I was wondering can I hook this monitor up through via hdmi and get 3d or I have to get that dual link dvi cable thing? Thank!!

 

Probably, I can play the Crysis 2 with a very decent framerate so it's definitely worth a try in 3D.

 

Just divide the framerate you get now by 2, that's how it'll run.

 

Next question will the M15x support 3d through 1.4a hdmi?

 

No specific reason, I was just testing some stuff and that was what I just had on the card... so I simply modded the Clevo vbios so that I didn't had to reinstall the drivers.

 

My card is really stubborn. With the Clevo vbios I get artefacts everywhere even in 2d on the win desktop. With the M17x R3 vbios, When I flash a undervolted version, the voltage kicks up by itself. It's as if it has some hidden agenda. Oh well, at least I can solve my throttling issues with tray tools and have audio over HDMI at the same time.

 

Here, try the sapphire vbios. View attachment Sapphire vbios.zip
It's the original, no mod applied.

Btw, did you ever try to overvolt your card?

 

a little bit of a tangent here, but anyone know of a way to make hwinfo32 load on start up AND set the manual fan controls?
while it's a non issue for me, if a family member wishes to use the laptop chances are the fans will remain at full blast.

@svl7, another bios? i'm starting to loose track of them haha
@widezu69 it might be different ram timing or something. you using the m17x psu? cause the m15x one may get pretty hot with your gig.

 

Yep, that's the original vbios of my card. So far I have tested the following vbios:

-original of my card (Sapphire/PCPartner)
-Dell 6970m
-Clevo P150HM 6970m


And yes, I know how to do this Easiest way is to use my .ini file. When you use HWiNFO32 then use the 32 file, otherwise the 64, pretty self-explanatory.
Maybe you use a different version of HWiNFO, but it should work. If not let me know.

I'll add this to the first page as well.

 

To have hwinfo32 on start up first you need to go into the hwinfo32 config file (it located in your hwinfo32 folder and it between hwinfo32.sys and hwinfo32.) Open that config up with notepad and go all the way down to [setting] and at the end of that add "OpenFanCtrlMin=1" (without the quote). After this open up hwinfo32 and under program (top left) check the box auto start, mininmize sensor on startup, and minimize main winow on startup. Now every time you start your computer it will automatically open up hwinfo32 and minimize it as well. Remember to turn on off your UAC for this to work.

 

Yep, this should work as well.

You need UAC disabled? I never tested it with UAC on tbh. ...

 

If you don't everytime you restart your computer it ask for your permission to allow certain program to run which is annoying to me.

 

Anyone try to undervolt the idle voltages? Mine are 0.9 and 1.0 but if I try to change them to 0.8 and 0.9 they never seem to work, it just boots back to as if nothing has happened. I've verified the values in tray tools so it's not like a stability issue.

 

No, haven't tried this yet.

But I just realized that with the modified vbios (0.95 at 3d) Trixx lets me adjust the voltage.... but the slider is only for values between 1.000 and 1.100...

 

Ok, I've just tried this (with the clevo vbios) and wasn't successful. Voltage gets forced to 0.9V instead of 0.8V.
3d undervolt is still working though... there must be a different table where the card gets its values, otherwise it would be 0.8. At least that's what I suspect.

Maybe I missed your answer widezu, but did you ever try to overvolt the 3d voltage?

 

Sorry I haven't got to that yet. Will do when I get back to Narnia.

 

Temps are fine, don't go over 80C. The shutdowns only happen when overclocking both GPU and CPU so I'm quite sure it's something related with the power.


The only thing that annoys me about HWinfo is that it keeps writing to my hard drive every two secs. I don't know why this happens but didn't find the way to solve it. Anybody experiencing the same?

 

Ok got that fixed disabling monitoring S.M.A.R.T.

 

What are you guys' clocks when running flash video with hardware acceleration enabled? Mine's 300/900 @0.95v. You guys get the same?

 

thanks svl7 and dttran83, +rep when i'm allowed again.

widezu69, yeah mines the same.

 

@:xeroxide: You're welcome, should've added this already a while a go.

@widezu: Same here.

 

hmm, it seems i can get some random shutdowns with my computer. i5 M430 and 6970m. everything on stock clocks and gpu undervolted to 1.0

 

Do you think the crashes are caused by the card? Does it crash while gaming? Which drivers are you using?

Edit: Btw. did you already try the Clevo vbios? I wonder whether it solves the fan issue wit some cards...

 

1: Make sure the card is seated correctly.
2: Make sure paste/pads are properly applied.
3: Make sure you have the latest V-bios and system bios.

 

Im using the 1.5 hotfix drivers. And yes the wery few crashes ive had was during gaming. And im not completely sure but i think the temps have been around 80-85c when the crash occured so i dont think its because of overheating.

No i havent tried the clevo bios. I get kind of confused with all the bioses around hehe. But wouldnt i loose sound through DP with clevo bios?

 

Hmm, could be caused by the undervolt. I haven't really tested my undervolt for stability so far...
Did the system immediately shutdown? No freeze or blue screen?

 

when i had my cpu overclocked (25/25/24/24) and gpu running at full speed with forced clocks through ATT i would get random power outages. i suspected my psu brick.

since undervolting and putting my cpu back to stock the crashes have stopped (touch wood)

 

Yes, the 920xm running at 24x across all cores can draw an incredible amount of power, this could definitely cause some apps to bring the PSU to the limits and above.

 

Pity that I don't have a 240W PSU to test if the power outages would go away with it. I don't want to buy it and then see that it doesn't make a difference.