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

Hey, that's great, now let us see some benchmarks

 

OK，I'll do it later. I am sorry for your card again.

 

My 6970m didnt post anymore. So im back to a 5870m now. Seems the card was faulty somehow from the start.

Trying to get it replaced but not sure if ill get a new one.

Really great performance though, gonna miss it.

 

Could be why Clevo venders discontinued it.

On the bright side: 6990m...

 

So...this shut down thing. Any solutions out there? Been trying real hard but that one bench @775/1000 was a massive fluke been trying to replicate everything but still no dice! Always getting shut downs in higher overclocks. No problems running stock though. Running out of ideas here.

 

So, just to clarify, does the 6970 work without problems in the M15X as long as I just run it stock? Or, should I be looking at other options?

Been thinking of buying a 6970 off of MXM upgrade, but everyones 6970 seems to be dying.

 

The Dell 6970M works flawlessly in the M15x (at least my M15x) at stock settings (680/900) with a 920xm. Mine works very well with overclocks up to about 800/1000; physically, it will accept overclocks on up to about 840/1100 on air, but there is very little benefit to the higher incremental settings -- little or no increase in scores, accompanied by higher power demands and increased heat and sometimes instability, even crashes. With the 6970M at 750/950 (the sweetspot for mine) or 800/1000, there is plenty of room to overclock the 920xm. But you can't use max o/c's on both the 6970M and the 920xm at the same time; it's a balancing process, so getting the best performance from the system requires judgment and feel to a greater extent than most systems. I'm still trying to figure out the performance calculus, but the fact is the 6970M delivers an enormous increase in M15x performance. So far, pushed hard, mine scores about P4,300 in 3dMark11; about P15,350 in Vantage and almost 21,000 in 3dMark06, which is almost the equal of 6970M equipped M17x-R3's for a price of about $500-600. Amazing performance value. With everything dead stock, it provides P3,500 in 3dMark11, over P12,000 in Vantage and around 17,000 in 3dMark06, all with low temps and dead solid stability. It only gets flaky when you forget the power envelope limitations and push too hard, and then it crashes with a blackscreen shutdown. Just remind yourself that you have more power at your disposal than you can use and that the limits can vary some from time to time. Get one, particularly a Dell version if you can find one. It's a blast.

 

I have been looking around for Dell 6970's, but I cant seem to find them. Or I just suck at looking for them.

I dont really want to get into that whole flashing the vbios thing to get the card working like a dell card. I'm in no hurry to upgrade, I'll get by with what I have.... for about another month or so.

Maybe I'll give Dell Canada a call... see what they can do.

 

The Dell 6970M's are hard to find, but worth the effort from my perspective. They just seem to work better. I found mine on eBay thanks to svl7, but probably the best method is to find a friend with a M17x-R3 or M18x and get them to serve as proxy. Not easy even then.

 

I think that if you go for the mxm upgrade card you can ask them to deliver with Dell vbios

 

Exactly what I was thinking. Worth it to wait and find the Dell ones that pop up every so often.

Unfortunately, I know no one with an Alienware Laptop of any sorts. So, no luck there. Waiting is no biggie. I got by with a 9500M GS for 2 years, the 260M is light years ahead.

Really? Do they flash it for you, or send you the disk to do it? I sent them an email, I really should have asked about the Vbios. Woops

 

See here (end of the page): Alienware m15x upgrade guide HD6970

 

MXM Upgrade will flash the 6970M with a Dell vbios upon request. I had almost decided to buy from him after two months of looking when the Dell card popped up. But flashing a video card bios is very easy and a handy skill to have when dealing with high performance cards. Lots of folks here can walk you through the process and answer any questions that arise.

 

Thank you.

Whats sad, is I have been looking at that page for about an hour now.... Read right past it. I swear I can read.
+1 rep if it means anything from me

I was also thinking this site has a ton of helpful tuts for this stuff lying around. I did not want to risk 400+ dollars turning into a brick. I'll start reading through some of the stuff, get ahead and get an idea in case I do decide to go that way.

 

So MXM-Upgrade got back to me, looks like it'll cost about 550 dollars for the card, comes with free paste though. About as much I paid for the Laptop itself. 600 dollars.

Just wondering, is this a good cost?

 

It is a decent price for what you get. Plus they will flash the correct bios for you as well. I paid slightly more for mine although mine is a bit different. I say go for it unless you can find one made by Dell themselves.

 

I'm guessing the only way to get the version you have is Ebay?

Is the difference worth the cost? Would you know?

 

Dell charges ~$570 + tax/shipping. MXM Upgrade handles the AMD/PCPartner cards, which seem to be the next most reliable line, plus IIRC shipping is included. If you don't want to wait for a Dell card, this is the way I'd go. It has served svl7 and others very well (if you can avoid the temptation to flash it with some experimental bios with an unknown provenance. )

 

You won't find an ES on ebay atm, but there were some available on taobao a while ago, maybe the seller still has some left. This was discussed in this thread, you'll need to go back some pages.

Edit: Here for example, check out the die... it's an ES version, so it can probably be unlocked to have 1120 shaders.

 

Yes, shipping is included in the cost. Well, in the email I got. I'll post it here just to confirm.

Hi,

The heatsink you have fits just fine according to our info.

Your purchase does include premium paste, though.

The 410 euro price tag includes DHL shipping already as well.

br,

MXM Upgrade

Removed his name just to be safe, but other then that, direct copy and paste.

Also, I think I'll be ok . I might try OC'ing it... given that I have a 720QM, I figure I must have more wiggle room compared to the people running with the extreme processors. Other than that, not much I'll be doing with it. Just enjoying the massive upgrade.

 

Thank you.

I'd rep you if I could, but it appears I have to wait to rep you again.

 

That's a point that tends to get lost amongst all this talk of overclocking and benchmarking. These 6970M's deliver massive graphics power out of the box. There is absolutely no need to ever overclock them for any real world use. Plus, they are reliable and well-behaved at stock clocks.

 

That's totally true, I never overclocked the card for gaming, the performance is fantastic, an upgraded M15x is still a very high-end machine and outperforms almost all 15.6 inch systems...

 

I dont plan on doing anything to it out of the box, other than putting it in my Laptop.

Even OC'ing it, I dont think I'll ever end up doing it. I'd like to, just to see where it takes it me, but I am not as comfortable with OC'ing laptops as I am with Desktops. To scary to endure.

 

Undervolting is here it's at.

 

yup
undervolting on the 6970m is pretty impressive too
able to drop down to 1v with no issues at stock, 0.9v would cause the occasional driver crash for me. it really helps with the temps and power issues which arise when pairing the 6970m with the extreme series cpu.

 

But when I undervolt to 1.0v, I can't overclock a lick. Does remove temptation I guess.

 

Please help me, maximum resolusion is missing.
My M15x has maximum resolusion full hd 1080, but after i install new card 6970M from dell, max resolution is 1600x900. I already install m17x r3 driver, and then install catalys modded 11.5a. Please help me.

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5939/card1.gif

 

You have selected "multiple monitors".... choose "show desktop only on 1" (1 should be the "mobile PC display" ) and you should be able to get to 1080p.

 

Problem resolved. Many many thanks you alot.

 

Trixx doesn't work? I always assumed you could use that if you really wanted to scale up for a game.

 

Yeah, Trixx does work, but using it to increase voltage locks the 2d/desktop voltage to the 3d level instead of downclocking to .9v, resulting in higher idle temps and undoing the original benefits of undervolting. Can be fixed easily enough by rebooting, but that's not always convenient.

 

Would this processor work on the 15x ?

Intel® Core™ i7-2920XM Processor Extreme Edition
(8M Cache, 2.50 GHz)

 

No it would not. It is a 2nd gen i7. A 920XM or a 940XM however, would work very well.

 

No, that's a sandy bridge CPU, second generation core i7... M15x only works with the first gen i7s. Best you can get is a 920xm or 940xm.

 

Hey widezu, did you have any luck with overvolting your card?

 

Oh yeah, got my 6970m back to life, everything seems to work fine so far, keep my fingers crossed.

Got the programmer yesterday. So today I desoldered the chip, programmed it and put it back

Time for some more vbios experiments, hahahaha.
No, seriously... the procedure is too time consuming to just start flashing any vbios, but it's great to know that it works, so it would indeed be possible to make some crazy experiments in case there's a new vbios around.

 

I am assuming when you flash the 6970M to that of a dell, you would use the driver for the M17X? Does it matter which revision you choose? Is this even right?
Here is what I am referring to.

 

Wonderful news. First time I've seen a DIY vbios reprogramming and recovery from a bricked state in these forums. Very impressive. +Rep. (Needs to a SuperRep for this sort of thing)

 

No, you don't want to use the Dell driver, except for the HDMI driver. The Dell A00 driver is buggy, when idling it causes the card to change from 2d to 3d clocks all the time.
For gaming and performance get the latest AMD driver.

Thank you very much! I'm really glad it worked, finally got my card back in the M15x

 

good to hear man!
1 question, couldn't you have soldered an ic socket instead?
u know, for easy removal in case you need to do it again.
i haven't actually looked at it and just thinking now perhaps it's too small for that, but anyways it's great you got it working again.
we

 

Yeah, thought about this... but the only sockets I found are used for ZIF-adapters (for programmers) and those are way too big.

The socket would need to have the same pin layout as the IC itself, otherwise I couldn't solder it to the PCB. Don't think this exists, but if you find one, let me know.

Maybe it would be possible to make a DIY socket somehow, but that's not easy.

SMD parts aren't made to be in sockets... therefore I think it doesn't exist, or at least isn't easily available.

 

Quick question, has anyone with a dell 6970m flashed their card to a clevo vbios successfully?

 

Ahh, ok. Gotcha.

Rep when I can.

 

Congratulation! That's really a good news!

 

ah bummer, oh well.
oh did you manage to take any screenies?
and i'm curious do you have a link to the programmer?

why do this?
don't the dells work perfectly well in the m15x?
*edit* oh the driver issue? like having to install dell -> amd drivers?

 

I bought the cheapest SPI programmer I could find, $30 on ebay, it's called "EZP2010". It doesn't officially support the chip I have on my card, but I found out that it supports a different chip which is almost identical to the one on my card... same SPI modes, memory management etc., and well, it really worked.
Screenies? What do you want to see? I wrote a little summary about the procedure here, there are also some pics. Let me know if you're looking for some specific pics.

 

cheers man, yeah i was just really curious about the whole procedure.
your summary is great.

oh and that's a really nice workstation you have there!

 

Thanks!! Yeah, I really like the solder station, it's not a professional one, but a very good amateur station.

The hot-air station is a recent purchase, from ebay, it works fine so far, but was really cheap... hope it lasts and doesn't die soon.

 

Hey man, I have't really had chance to overvolt anything yet. Been moving house and been quite busy. I have a question, say if I got my card into a bad flash, will you be able to recover it for me? Gonna stick the 6990m vbios on when it comes out and see what happens