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

Which are your idle and 2D clocks? Mine are 100/150 and 300/900 Mhz.

Has anybody managed to lower the voltage on the vBIOS for the 2D clocks? I think the standard voltage for the 2D clocks is 1V, and currently I have the same voltage on the 3D clocks. I would like to lower it to 0.95

 

for 100/150 mines set to 0.9v

 

You can't go lower than 0.9V as far as I remember, the VBIOS doesn't allow it. And I'm not sure if the undervolting really works, I haven't measured it directly so far, but I guess it works.

If you want to go lower than 0.9V you'll have to do a little hardware modification.

 

When I play some videos from youtube or watch a movie my card works at 300/900 Mhz, is it yours the same?

Those clocks work at 1V as far as I know but I would like to lower the voltage for those clocks to 0.95V. Will the vBios allow me to do such modification?

 

^^^ Yes, if hardware acceleration is selected; otherwise, they'll usually remain at 100/150.

The 300/900 clocks operate at .95v in stock configuration.

 

My GPU only goes up to 400/900, not to 680/900... and I have absolutely no idea why. I even reinstalled windows on a different partition. Then it worked when I quickly tested it with vantage, now it doesn't work anymore. Only thing I changed was installing 3dM06 and 3dM11... any ideas how to fix this? It's so annoying.

 

This may sound stupid but 400Mhz is the max speed for running on battery. It could be that the drivers work as if you were on battery. Unplug your AC cable, run a 3D application, then plug it back and check if they are working at 680Mhz.

 

Tried everything before reinstalling, checked powerplay, windows performance plan, plugged, unplugged... anything I could think of.

I reinstall windows twice now, and once or twice I've seen 3d clocks, but after a while it just drops to 400/900, hate it. No idea what's wrong.

 

I understand your frustration... So you did a windows clean install in one of the partitions and you still have the same issue?

 

Yeah, I reinstalled windows twice, and even though I see the 3d clocks once in a while it always drops back to 400/900 for a reason, and after a restart the system is usually still at 400/900...

 

Only way I can duplicate your experience (other than unplugging) is with PP enabled and Plugged in set to maximize battery. On the other hand, I have seen 400/900 at startup with HW64 set to Autostart before bumping up to 680/900. I'm wondering if there's something in the last set of Cat 11.8 that's confusing our cards.

 

Hmm, thanks. Haven't resolved it yet... actually I wanted to test my volt mod, but I ended up to try and fix this problem... damn.

So the only fun I had today was some quick CPU benching and killing some old records of DR650SE, I couldn't let the dice just melt away completely... still sucks cause I wanted to push the GPU to new levels... awwwww.

 

Hey slv7,

Try go into your ccc and uncheck the powerplay button. See if that help your situation.

 

maybe stealth mode causing it? because my 3rd clocks when stealth mode enabled is 400/900..

 

No, definitely not, I checked this several times, and on the new installation I didn't even install the CC.

 

LOL. Stealth mode. It could be, svl7. It catches us all sooner or later.

 

Disabling PP did what it's supposed to, the GPU stayed on 2d clocks. Re-enabling it brought back 3d clocks... then I overclocked and started Vantage, clocks dropped back to 400/900... wth?

Even with the voltmod removed, same behaivour... most of the time 400/900, and very rarely 680/900.

Any more ideas?

 

With my card I have to leave the powerplay uncheck in order to get it to work correctly. If I don't have it uncheck then the computer would only go up to 400/900. So I thought you have the same situation as me. Also try turn the stealth off/on if you haven't done that already.

 

Have you tried a powerdrain? It fixes so many issues, that it might aswell fix this one?

 

Yes, was among the first things I tried...

 

Hi，guys! I have a wonderful news! A guy of our chinese forum has developed a 6970m moded vbios which can create 960 fictitious extra shaders, on the other word, it can make full use of the all physical shaders. When it comes to the M18x 6970m cf (overclock to 800/1000), 3DMARK11 has a dramatic increasing from P6900 to P8500 and more!!! The vbios can also uesd on our M15x if you use a DELL card. I will ask him for one soon. If the vbios works well in games, it's really a fantastic process!

here's the link: M18x AMD Radeon HD 6970M CrossFireË«ÏÔ¿¨Àï³Ì±®£¡³¬¼¶»ìºÏVBIOS¿ªÆôÐéÄâºËÐÄ£¡£¡-´÷¶ûAlienwareÍâÐÇÈËÂÛ̳-´÷¶ûÂÛ̳

 

Wow 1920 shaders! I wonder if it can transform mine into 2240 shaders?!

 

@destinymax: Wow!!!! Let us know when this is completed or in case you get your hands on a copy... +rep

 

Sure, I will

 

This sounds a little too good to be true?
Wouldnt this mean extreme powerconsumption and excessive heat?

 

wowzers please keep us posted.
only dell cards?
no 3rd party? how about those which can use dell bioses?

 

Wow! I HAVE a Dell card. We should get like at least 5,000 with a single 6970M? Maybe 6,000? Hybrid Virtual VBIOS sounds sooo cool. I can't wait!

 

It's only the early version and has lots of bugs, especialy in games. If this technology succeed, it seems to be able for all AMD cards.

 

I just talk with that guy, he said that wanna sell the technology to AMD if it really work well in all conditions. In this case, we cannot get the sample from him

 

Well it looks promising anyway. So are all the 1920 shaders active or is it there as an overhead to include however many shaders the particular chip has?

 

It only use the 960 physical shaders. The extra ones are only the fictitious sp, he can also turn into 4X=3840 sp, but has no improvement. AMD cards cannot always use full of their shaders, and the technology try to activate these idle shaders and let them work at the same time, then the cards will work at full load and have a increasing score.

 

I was afraid that somehow we would be unable to actually see or test the Hybrid Virtual VBIOS, but that's usually the nature of virtual breakthroughs. So I guess there's not much more to be said about this one.

 

Yea I was super happy now super sad Lol

 

Svl7, did you manage to fix your issue with the 400/900 Mhz clocks? I hope you got it sorted

 

I;m having problems with the clocks as well. However I just installed my GPU and CCC isn't working for me. Initially the GPU was running on the proper 680/900 clocks. The next day when I turned it one, I notice my HWInfo showing idle clocks at 100/150 and then the normal clocks at 400/900.... Trying to reintall catalyst to the older 11.5 and then the 11.8 and see.

 

Have you closed the stealth mode?

 

Stealth mode was never ON at startup. Power management is set to maximum performance.... Any ideas ?

 

Sometimes the card actually works at stealth mode although you have never open it. You can look over the bus interface of GPU-Z, if it is X1, you have to push the stealth mode key twice, then it will be ok (X16).

 

Hey. Yes I pressed the stealth button twice and its back to normal.X16. I wonder why it startsup in stealth? You face it too?

 

Sorry, I have no idea. I faced this condition only few times. However, some guys who also use the 6970m always find their cards work at X1 after startup.

 

Oh I see. May I know the driver version you are using and the type of card yours is?

Mine is a DELL 6970 and Im running on BIOS A.09 and Catalyst 11.8.

 

Interesting question. When using the 5850M in my M15x, the bus interface was reported as PCI-E 2.0x16@x16 2.0. With the 6970M, it is reported as PCI-E x16@x8 or (occasionally) PCI-E 2.0x16@x8. Same computer. Why the difference? Why not at least x16 with the 6970M?

 

My 6970M states {PCI-E 2.0x16@x16 2.0} in GPUz in Bus Interface

 

I think I would rather be like you, I just don't understand what causes the difference.

 

Actually I didn't know there was the difference til you mentioned. Also didn't know about the clocks issue until Svl7 brought it up and I had to experience it. But does the difference in bus interface affect your performance?

 

Not that I am aware of. I vaguely recall past discussions that concluded the bus has such a large capacity that there is no chance it will be congested or overloaded by any of our video cards, but I don't recall the details or explanations. Didn't think about in this instance until your discussions directed my attention to the setting, and now I want to know why the changes occur and what, if any, effect it has. There are people here that can explain these things to us.

 

my 5870m (clevo) would always report pcie 1.1 rather than the 2.0.
benchmarks were unaffected. as you said rev, the bus is not the bottleneck so it wasn't an issue.

as long as it didn't hinder the performance of the card i didn't care.

 

Got hit once with the 400/900 clocks issue which did not allow the Stealth button trick to work. A restart later and its back to normal 680/900. I wonder if updating command centre is essential?

 

I use the same card and BIOS/Catalyst.

 

The PSU is always the bottleneck of overclock performance, I can only keep the card absolutely steady by undervolting it to 1V. If I use the 1.1v and push the card only a little, then it will have the performance issue. Such as clock up and down during furmark which cause a instantaneous low FPS in the games, and low GPU load in crysis2(50%~80%) cause the permanent low FPS. What about yours?