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

also what happens in the crash, does it freeze, bsod, reboot?

 

When it crashes it just shuts down. No freeze, no bsod, no restart, straight black screen and turned off without notice. Fortunately it only happens when CPU + GPU overclocked gaming or doing benchmarks, so it's not a big deal.

 

To interject, this is the exact same experience I have on my x7200 when I overclock my CPU and GPU to the limit and only run on one PSU. It does sound like, imo, your PSU is tripping.

Do you need to unplug and plug your PSU back in the wall after this happens or can you just restart (not sure how AW tripping mechanisms work, but I'd need to reset my Sager PSU after this would happen)?

On a related note, I'm on the cusp of trading for a m15 with a 6970m and was looking to pick up a heftier adapter. Does the 240w m17x adapter work out of the box, or is there some sort of mod needed?

 

A 240w adapter will work, you just have to go into the bios and disable the PSU beep and it should be fine. I don't think you'd need it though, svl7, dttran3 all have ordinary bricks and they use theirs fine.

Where did you get your card @mig? Haven't heard any other reports of shut downs etc on the regular versions of the card (I get shut downs because of my extra shaders when overclocking CPU and GPU therefore extra power requirement). Shame no one has a Dell version to report in this thread. I'm guessing it would be the best match with fan control as well.

 

Right now I'm running my cpu at 26,26,20,20 and TDP/TDC at 72,72 and my GPU at 750/950. I never had a problem with shutdown with those setting. The only time I had shutdown is when I ran my gpu memory to 970 but it only happen in 3dmark vantage. For 3dmark 11 it ran just fine.

 

hi guys, I have bought a DELL card and will get it tomorrow.
I hope it hasn't the problems of fan……（Though I have learned how to use HWinfo32 to control it )

 

Nice one! Lets see how it compares to the rest.

 

Thanks for sharing your experiences, no need to unplug and plug to reset my PSU, I just restart and all is back to normal. Maybe this discards that is something related to the PSU.

I got it from upgradeyourlaptop in ebay. Pity that the autofan control does not work on any card except the ones from dell. I have kindly asked the guys in bios-mod.com to have a look to the Alienware M15x bios and see if they can add support for all type of 6970m. Since we are many of us having cards not coming from Dell it would be good that all of us put a little bit more pressure on their forum and request it.

The link to the forum is Bios Mods -The Best BIOS Update and Modification Source - Phoenix Unlocking Requests

Yes, I had the shutdowns with 3Dmark Vantage having my CPU on 26 all cores and 750/950 GPU. I also had two shutdowns gaming on 750/950 and having my CPU a little bit overclocked (TDP 62W). I put my card on 730/925 and I've been playing for hours without having any problem. So as I said it's not a big deal since it only happens when I carry my machine over the limits. MrValle reported that he had the same issue running GPU clocks on stock. He actually has a i5 processor so it shouldn't be something related to the power. Maybe he can keep us posted and see if he managed to sort it out.

 

Hey great!! Let us know how it goes! You won't have any fan problems, that's confirmed.
I'd really like to see some benchmarks, you should be able to get the highscore if you're lucky, the Dell cards seem to be able to clock higher, especially the vram.

You're sure it's not caused by heat? If so then it's probably really because of the power.

I can't remember whether I asked you this already, but did you try the Clevo vbios, just in case (solved the fan issue with 6970m in a M17x for some cards...)?

 

Didn't kaizenmx have the dell version? And then his mobo fried?

 

I didn't try it yet. Will give it a try today if I have some time later on, since my card is coming from the same seller as xeroxide (upgradeyourlaptop - ebay) I'm not expecting any succeed.

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

Hey mig, I found something. Shut downs happened with the 6970m when tested in a W870CU, see here:

Clevo W870CU

Scroll down to the part with this image:



It mentions something about padding the underside. I'm gonna try this myself to see if it solves my problems too.

 

Nice research widezu! Makes sense actually! I'm quite busy these days but as soon as I can I'll put some thermal pads on those components on the back part.

MrValle was having the same problem so that may help him too. Thanks a million. I'll let you know if it works.

 

I will change the card few hours later, so I wanna some advice~
Which driver should I choose? 11.4(adjusted for AW by a forum administrator，using no problem and support 6970m on m17x-R3 ), 11.5b hotfix or 11.6 of AMD? If I use the same driver, need I uninstall it before removing the 5850m? The last but not the least, need I flash the vbios for the DELL card? THX^^

 

Install the latest 11.6 ones from the Ati site. You also should uninstall your previous 5850 ones. Flashing the Dell vbios is a good idea as it gives you sound over DP/HDMI.

 

I heard that 11.6 from AMD may bring some problems on AW original notebook, is it OK for a 6970m exchanged M15x? Is there any possibility that the DELL card has the R3 vibos already? If not, can you give me a vbios to download?

 

If you have the Dell card then it is fine. I am running 11.6 in my system. No problems.

 

Thanks man, I'll have a try

 

Is it true that Dell cards use Hynix rams and the Clevo ones use Samsung? svl7 what brand chips do you have? I seem to have hynix ones despite coming from Clevo.

 

That's true for all the cards I've seen so far, yep. And the Hynix seems to be able to clock higher, the Samsung seems to crash at about 1125MHz.

 

It seems the card cannot be delivered tonight……(18 pm. now)may be I have to exchange it tomorrow morning

 

For all the people who are still looking for a 6970m:

There are two 6970m on sale on ebay, according to the seller they are both Dell cards. Price is reasonable imo, especially compared to the other Dell 6970m I've seen on ebay. Here's the link in case you're interested.

I'd love to get one of those, but since I already have a card and still need to sell the 470m it would be pretty stupid to buy another one, lol.

Edit: Seems that there's only one card, I thought there were two up for sale from the same dealer.

Sucks. Hope it arrives soon! Let us hear about your experiences and post some benchmarks

 

I recently fixed the motherboard issue. Looks like I was dealing with just bad mobo, not a gpu related problem.

Where exactly is that vbios?

 

At the end of the second post.

 

I have exchanged the DELL 6970m, everything is ok and there is no fan issue. But when I running the furmark a few minutes or playing BC2 for a while, the notebook will be black screen and restart. I think it isn't the temperature issue, may be the notebook reach its PSU limit? Beacuse I use a machine to measure the PSU power, and when furmark is running, it always above 150W for a long time and then restart itself Bad Company 2 is also a game which need high power from PSU. Maybe I undervolt the GPU can solve this problem?

 

Can someone tell me whether stealth mode working with this card?

 

Undervolting will help as well as a link I posted above. It seems that one needs pads on the underside to avoid shut downs

 

Do you have a DELL vbios for R3 which undervolted at 1.0v? I wanna try it...

 

Sure here it is:

 

I love you man~ I also have a strange problem:card keep at 300/900 when idle, but after I close the powerplay it return to the 300/300 I remember the condition should be the contrary.

 

er...how can I flash the vbios? I never use this kind of vbios before

 

The bios is inside. A guide is on the second post of this thread.

 

I just found it myself, thank u all the same!

 

Is the following process right? (I worry about the mistakes...)
1.Extract the file and copy it to a USB stick
2. Reboot from the USB stick. (Assure that system is on AC power.)
3. At the DOS prompt, type "atiflash -p 0 Undervolt.rom" (no quotes) and press Enter.
4. Allow time for the flash -- DO NOTHING until instructed to reboot to complete the flash and returned to the DOS prompt.
5. Remove USB stick and reboot into Windows.

 

That's the idle clocks when a second display is attached. There's sometimes an issue that this card somehow thinks there's a second display even there isn't a monitor connected.
Right click on the desktop, screen resolution, choose Display: 1.Mobile PC display and Multiple displays: "show desktop only on 1"

It's also described in the first post, at the end.

 

No, not exactly, this will give you an error message when you want to flash the Dell vbios on a non-Dell card. Follow the guide in my post here.

Make sure to make a backup of your vbios before flashing.

 

I just did, and happily find it became to 100/100. But unfortunately black screen or chaos appeared when I am in windows sometime, especially when right click and choose resolution or ccc.

 

But mine is Dell card, can I use this method to flash it?

 

Hmm, I guess you mean 100/150. What vbios do you use at the moment? Is it undervolted? And which drivers?

 

I haven't flash any vbios yet, it's the original one with 1.1v. The driver I used is 11.6.

 

Hmm, weird, I never had such issues... is powerplay activated? Temps are fine? Do you use some special skins?
Maybe the driver didn't install properly, you'll have to install it again anyway when you flash the Dell vbios, maybe it will be solved afterwards.

 

When I setting the screen as you say, the clock is 300/300 instead of 300/900 before without powerplay. After i enable it, clock is 100/100 and the issue appears. I think flash the vibos and reinstall the driver is better. please tell me the way to flash a Dell card.

 

Crazy. In this case the issues are most probably caused by the too low memory clock.

You have a Dell 6970m?

 

yeah, I just got it.

 

Cool! But in this case you won't need to flash the vbios, except they changed something, but as far as I know there hasn't been an update.

Can you post a screenshot of the first GPU-Z tab? There you can see the vbios version, then someone with the R3 vbios can check whether something changed.
I'm using a clevo vbios atm.

 

Here's the GPU-Z
I wanna flash the undervolted vbios because when running furmark or playing some 3D game(such as witch 2, bc2), the notebook will restart itself. Recording to the machine I used to measure the power from PSU, I think it occurs when psu drawing more than 150W for a few minutes.

 

Ok, I'm sure someone who's running the Dell vbios can soon tell you whether it's a different version or not.

What are your other specs?

 

Most of things are fine, idle temperature is 52 with clock 300/300, when playing Dirt3, the highest is 69. And furmark is about 75 before it restarted. The score of 3dmark at 680/900 is nice, too. The issue of restart is the most serious. I hope to solve it as soon as possible. How can I flash it correctly?

 

Ok, yeah, should be possible to solve somehow. The card works very well for me, even when I play at stock voltage.

For the flashing procedure take a look at my second post in this thread. First of all you'll need to make a DOS bootable USB drive.

Then don't forgot to make a backup of your original vbios before flashing the modified one.
Command for saving the vbios is: atiflash -s 0 orig6970.rom


For flashing you can use the one from my tutorial and simply omit the -f since you won't need to force the flash:

atiflash -p -f 0 FILE.extension


Please post some benchmarks in the benchmark thread!

 

I currently have the vbios from Dell that svl7 posted on the first post and it is a different version than the one from destinymax that it's supposed to be from dell as well. Find below my GPU-Z screenshot.



Could maybe this vbios fix the autofan issue?

Destinymax, can you please share with us your current vbios version?