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

Eek...best of luck Hel20eS! I'm currently deliberating whether to shell out for a 6790 and seeing your problems isn't helping.

Heres hoping you get it fixed.

 

it's not the card that's faulty, so don't worry. and i'm the only few that's having some issue. as an update, i'm now playing bf3 with no shutdowns for 3 full games already. i guess it's some game related issue. i have shutdowns on deadisland and payday: the heist (which is an epic game)

*UPDATED* shut downs on campaign @ bf3 lol

*UPDATED 2* been messing around whole day figuring with ati tray tool and voltage, with one of the setting last me through a few chapters of the campaign in battlefield 3, but still shut down. i was thinking of formating, wondering will it help or not. just some of the ideas left in my head.

 

I used to use the 11.10 drivers, but had low fps so i installed 11.9 and my fps jumped way up.

11.10 p3 came out so i decided to try it out, i installed it and my fps went back down so i reinstalled 11.9 but my fps is still the same as it was with 11.10.

I cant seem to find the source of this problem

for example

i used to get 37 fps on furmark, im only getting 28 now.
i used to get fps in the 40s on bf3, now im getting 22-24

 

Make sure you completely uninstall and remove all AMD software and then reinstall 11.9

 

Yea i did that, about 5 times, didnt do anything, also, if i put the game on low, it still runs on the same fps

 

Check or log your clocks during the game, is the card running at full 3d clocks or only at 400/900?

 

running at 730/930, def not that

 

Can you make a GPU-Z and Throttlestop logfile while you're gaming and upload it here as attachment please? I want to take a closer look at it.

 

here you go

EDIT:

i found the problem, it was actually my cpu thottling and the timers being off.

i fixed both and now im playing at 40-50 fps on ultra, great. Thanks for your help anyways

EDIT2:

Well this is strange, im running bf3 at 60-70 fps now.

 

Ok, awesome. Glad to hear that it's working now. The more fps the better I'd say, hahaha.

 

ES 6970m on the way to kiwi land.

Getting paste.

For a tidy $225 CAD care of Mr. Table21

 

congrats! welcome to the clan. Anyways try searching ebay for MX-4. It's cheaper than the price in your link unless you can't wait for another 2 weeks for it from overseas.

 

Yeah I found it quite a bit cheaper on trademe.

Let the wait commence. D:

 

Ok, so I've been trying to bully Dell into selling me a 6970 all day and I've come out of it with nothing but a bill for about 2 hours on the phone.

They did however quote me £267.62 for a 5850 which seems somewhat absurd when Eurocom (I believe) are selling 6970's on eBay for a mere £10 more including shipping costs. Can anyone confirm that these eBay cards don't have the smaller screw-hole issue? Also, am I right in thinking I would need to flash the vbios to get audio over DP to work correctly?

BF3 ran like utter crap on my pathetic 260M and I know Skyrim is going to want some serious punch to max the settings (despite the fact that it is DX9 - thanks CONSOLE GAMERS!). So now I've finally got myself work and am earning some buck I think this long awaited upgrade is getting the green light.

Just want to make sure as hell that I get the best possible card for the best possible price and thus make the procedure as effortless as humanly possible.

Love ya, thanks!

 

eurocom gets a go from me. you just need to request them for the one without the soldered when you order. they don't provide you the x-plate and the paste/pad. so get yourself ready before then.

 

Thankyou!

+rep

 

i'm trying to flash the bios to make the HDMI sound work. I type in the command for checking the checksum, it shows 0xC500 instead. Download using different browser is still the same. what did i miss ?

*EDITED* nevermind, i successfully flash it anyways. haha

 

Hahaha, lol, sorry... my bad, I messed up with the instructions. The command checks the current VBIOS file and not the one you want to flash, will fix this when I come around to.

 

lol so that's why hahaha, and i was like stuck on the crossroad for a while whether to give it a go or not.

 

thanks for share~~about to upgrade to 6970m~

 

i bougth the 6970m , but my m15x doesnt boot after i set it up. should i install the modbios or did get the wrong GPU?

 

try your old card, see if it works. anyways before upgrading did you update your bios to A09 EC1.8 yet ?

 

latest bios should work (any which support the 5850m) also any error codes with the scroll, caps and num lock?

a general question for those with a 6970/6990... tried dual mon yet?
things get out of hand for my temps with a dual monitor setup running 3d.

 

Yep, when its running dual mon the clocks go to 400/900 and he temps sky rocket. Best thing to do is use a bios mod to lower the clocks in dual monitor mode.

 

a09 is the bios im using. when booting the moniter blacks out and the caps, num, scroll led flickers.what kind of is this? is it because my m15x can't use the 6970m? should i get a refund?

 

Okay so I just checked out euro-com on eBay and the prices got me very excited, they are excellent. I am still wondering if I should try putting a 6990m in the m15x. If it would work i'm willing to do it, but i'm worried about heat and power issues. If anyone has tried a 6990m, and it worked then that is what i'll do, but if its not going to work to its full potential then I don't see the point.

Please respond as soon as you can.
My current card is a 5730m, will the jump in frame-rates be significant (3x 4x maybe even 5x) I want to be able to max out crysis and be future proofed for games with next gen graphics.

Sorry for long post.
BTW what I mostly want answered is the question about 6990m
Thanks!

 

I currently have a 6990m running in my M15x and it works just as well as the 6970m I had earlier. I'm running a Dell ES 6990m, but the Clevo version should work as well.
Just make sure that the 6990m doesn't come with the backplate soldered on to the card (see first post).


You will see a significant jump in fps, also the 69xx series is DX11 capable which makes another difference in games which use this, but maxing out crysis won't work afaik, you will at least have to lower AA, but I never played crysis on the 69xx series. Anyway, I rarely even have AA activated on the 1080p screen of the M15x, the pixel density is very nice, AA isn't that important.

 

Thanks will this work?
ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 6990m GPU MXM 3.0 Type B | eBay

The prices are less money for 6990m then they are for 5850m in some markets.

 

Ok this may be ridiculous, but my mom wanted to do some video editing and photo-shopping on her 10 year old desktop which barely loads facebook, she said she it wouldn't work "for some reason" (shes not a techie) I told you need a stronger computer. I asked her if she wanted to use my m15x and she said nah, I don't get that computer...

Anyways I told her I could upgrade the ram and get her some move making software, and she said... "hmmmm, sure ill try it"

Now anyways I was looking at ram and I found this
Newegg.com - CORSAIR 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 Laptop Memory Model CMSO16GX3M2A1333C9

16gb might not work but I think she would make good use of it when editing high res movies and such.

I probably wouldn't pay for it but, she might.
Do you guys think it's worth it?
Also does the m15x even support 16gb?

sorry for bad grammar.

 

Yeah, should work.

M15x supports only up to 8GB Ram.

 

all three lights flashing?
according to the error codes, a system component on the mainboard is faulty

it might be a long shot, but i remember some people had to install the dell official drivers for the DP out to work. i don't know the steps but it was something along the lines of
install dell drivers
install new drivers (custom - do not install new hdmi/dp driver)

maybe someone who had this issue could enlighten.

 

What drivers do I need to download when installing the 6990m?

 

when swiching to the 6970m monitor blacks out, and the the LED for scroll and NUM flicker while the CAPS LED is constantly on. i can't check the error code on the DELL site because the image breaks up. when using the 260m, which i was using before, there seems to be no problem. i think the 6970m is failure. what do you think?

 

That card is the same card Eurocom sent me as my warranty replacement for my 6970m. It works fine, but you need to use hwinfo for fan control. Also you need to flash the bios if you want sound over display port.

 

That LED error code indicates an LCD problem during initialization. Try reseating the LCD cable.

 

Is it necessary to flash the vbios if you don't use DP/HDMI?
Because that's the only thing that keeps me from buying a 6970m. I'm new to these things, so i'm kinda scared to start flashing things.

 

no, a vbios flash is not needed is you dont use audio through dp/hdmi.

 

ES 6970m arrived today! going to get cracking with the install tonight after work.

 

great thread

 

ES 6970m installed and running...sorta. Tried benchmarking with vantage and laptop restarted towards the end of the first scene.

Checked temp log and maxed at 86 before shutdown.

Going to check the paste, the heatsink also didn't seem to tighten up, I think people have an trouble with the stubby screws before, need to get longer ones maybe!

EDIT: checked the paste and it is fine, heatsink still doesn't feel tight enough so i bent the wings on the heatsink out slightly to make it tighter.
Ran vantage again but got a restart towards the end of the 2nd scene, max temp was 78.5. Going to try different drivers.

EDIT2: tried to run bf3 on ultra and temps hit 79 before shutdown. These temps don't seem that high...so i dunno what is causing the shutdowns, currently on 11.10 drivers

 

so shutdown happens to you too ? Anyways the best solution i found is to lower the voltage. Around 1v is a good spot

 

Power tripping due to wattage pull? At least it sounds like it to me.

 

Starcraft 2 running fine it seems, although I have had it hang on me during loading.

BF3 shutdown again at 77 deg! It can't be a temp problem.

I will try playing with the voltage.

My power adaptor is pretty beaten up (2 years old, been around the world with me), it could be a problem.

I may need the larger m17x power block right?

EDIT: I've installed Trixx but I can't change the voltage with it, is there another tool I can use?

Also the vbios is version: 013.010.000.009.039462

 

How do you lower voltage? I'm getting BF3 shutdowns around high 70-low 80s too

 

Not too sure yet, neither Trixx nor MSI Afterburner let me change the voltage

EDIT: Just got this error while trying to load BF3: See attachment

Argh .

 

I download Trixx and it says my GPU voltage is at 0 also..o.o

 

Reverted back to 10.5a drivers that I first used. Still shutdown at 76.5 deg after running SC2 on ultra for 2 minutes.

Hmm could be BIOS A08? Suppose I should upgrade that.

EDIT:

Updated to A09, still shutting down after 2 mins at 79.5 deg during Vantage.

Still can't modify voltages in Trixx or Afterburner.

 

ATT (ATI Tray Tool) for testing out the voltage, find the most stable one that play without shutdowns for more than 3 hours, then flash it using USB. The guide can be found in the 2nd post follow the link from the revelator.

I'm flashing my 6970m to 715/900, 1.025V. Played without shutdowns for 4 hours *touch wood.

 

Hel20eS, when I try to run ATT, it says that it can't find my low level driver or somthing, and I need to reinstall without UAC..? Something along those lines. I've been trying to get past this for the past 15 minutes, how did you do it?

 

Been using ATT to play with the voltages.

Tried 680/900 at 1025, 1000, 975 and 950mV. Nothing is working, still shutdown after 2 mins of high load, temps in high 70s.