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

thanks for the heads up flo, looking forward to the result. hopefully it is solved.

 

@vipereyes, I believe the cards you posted are fine, but you need to ask for the seller to not solder in holes for the heatsink. Also, they are not Dell cards so you would need to find a fan program, which should be at the beginning of this thread.

 

Okay so i played BF3 single player for an an hour and a half with no shutdown. My temp got up to 90-93 at max (most of the time hovered in the 83+ range. As I said before, i'm on bios A08, not sure how that would really matter but it's the only difference i've noticed from everyone else. I used the mx-4 paste and kept only the pads on that the 260m had (didn't pad the back of the card or anything like that). I'm using the 11.5b driver.

As i said before, i'll keep playing games but so far i haven't had any issues with my card. I bought it from ebay with no soldered screw holes and haven't done any mods to the heatsink.

 

Good stuff flo, definitely interested to see what happens.

What did you pay for your 920xm?

 

@owen thanks for the result, can you try other games also? i don't have much trouble with bf3 but i do have trouble with skyrim, if you have a copy of the game, do you mind testing it out? thanks

 

I think you meant owvp...yeah i have skyrim, i'll start it up now and let it run for an hour. I'll post results.

 

@Ninefingers:228 euros (laptopmonkey)
The problem with these shutdowns: they can happen anytime during play. For example, i've played skyrim for two hours today (with i7 720), no problem.Tomorrow they might happen after 20 minutes!

 

ugh......

well, i played skyrim for 25 minutes and then got the shutdown. Damn it. Wonder what it could be.

Assuming it's the processor...if i wanted to upgrade to the 920xm, i'm seeing them go for 235-300 on ebay. Is there anything special i need to know about installing them or is it just like a normal CPU swap?

I will say this, i don't mind spending the money to upgrade the processor. At least we have to spend money on upgrading that (assuming that is the problem) instead of something like power. If you're going to spend the money, might as well be on the brain.

 

Just read the first post... whether a card works in a Clevo system is no relevance when it comes to the compatibility with an AW system. Totally different hardware and firmware.
You don't want to depend on an application to control the software... I ask you why?? HWiNFO is the most easy and comfortable solution for this, you're lucky that it has fan controls for the M15x. You can create a custom fan table and let the program start automatically on boot and you'll never have to worry again about the fan.
I used it with for more than half a year for my 6970m, works like a charm.
Of course you can modify the fans to automatically regulate their speeds, I was actually about to do this when HWiNFO got update with the automated fand control, since then there's really no reason to do this, a mod would cost you quite a bit money and consume time for all the work.
It's not too hard, but as long as there's HWiNFO it's simply not necessary.

All links are ok, I recommend going with the 6990m. I have no idea whether you're going to have shutdown issues with a 720QM, but at the moment it almost seems as if there's a correlation.
Audio through HDMI will only work with the cards you linked above when flashed with a Dell VBIOS.
The 6990m has more shaders and additional texture units, which will make a noticeable difference at stock clocks. You need to overclock the 6970m by about 120MHz to get to 6990m levels. And it still depends on the application whether it can keep up.

 

Thanks so much

 

i sure hope the xm processor helps u guys, but like i stated before im running an xm and a 6990m and had shutdowns myself before

 

Hey guys, I also have a 740qm, my 6970m should come in tomorrow and i'll let u guys know if I have shutdowns as well.

 

@owvp haha, sry type there. anyways i think it can be conclude that those with lower i7 than 920 with experience shutdowns.

@Mexic00ls so now the issues is solved because of the thermal pads you put in the recent post right ?

 

Hopefully the problem is not with the CPU, I'm on a tight budget and don't really want to upgrade to 920xm... >.< RAM has no place in this problem right?

 

ram and psu has already been proven to no effect on solving shutdowns.

 

Yeah pretty much. I never had shutdowns at idle only @ max gpu load, pretty much only playing bf3, and usually right at the end of the round

 

i don't think people have shutdowns on idle or watching streaming videos. I guess only in games that i've seen so far.

 

flo just ordered the 920xm right, after he installs it we'll wait for results and hopefully it fixes the issue. if not well then....that blows

Also, yeah i stream videos almost all day and i don't get any shutdowns during that time. So far i've put a lot of time in Batman AC and BF3 and neither have shut down on me. Skyrim is the only game that has shut down on me as of now and that was after 25 minutes.

 

I've got a 720qm laying around, might put it in my system for some testing if I have time.

 

BF3 is the only game that has been causing shutdowns for me, other than that I really only play HoN and LoL which aren't very taxing.

 

svl7 that would be awesome. It'd save us from all waiting plus we know everything else is fine with your system so if the 720 didn't work in yours then we know that's definitely the culprit and not anything to do with heat.

At least this happened before xmas that way some of us can get cash as a gift and spend it on a new cpu if need be.

@kumquat - have you tried Skyrim? Are you crashing on single player BF3 or Multi? I haven't had a single crash in single player BF3 (haven't tried multi)

 

I don't have Skyrim sadly, but BF3 multiplayer is the one that crashes for me. I've tried single player to test and it's been completely fine.

 

So at least we know that it's not every game. Right now it looks like Skyrim and BF3 (multiplayer) crash for sure.

 

It would be great!

Before pading everywhere like MexicOOls did, crysis warhead was the most problematic for me! The computer used to shut down after 25 minutes.

 

720QM is back in my system, played BF3 for a couple of hours and no issues at all, works perfectly. Might try some crysis tomorrow, in case I have time.

 

Started using my card today. i get 70 C using GPU-z on Ultra for witcher 2.

I get around 72-73 on bf3 multiplayer. Played around 30 minutes witcher 2. Played around 2.5 hours of bf3 just now on ultra. No shut downs. Im on a 740qm.


Hey svl7, would you be so kind to answer a question? So i put my 5850m backplate on the 6970m. It covers some transitors and ends up being some what uneven.. if you know what i mean. The screw holes are slightly uneven sticking out. Is that okay or should i get a 6970m backplate asap?

Thanks

 

Edit* im on bios a08 (too lazy to get a09).

 

i see, seems like a08 might help. other than that for those who want to tell the shutdown killer game, try skyrim for at least an hour.

 

svl7, are you on BIOS a08 or a09?

 

One strange thing...Look at the intel PCH max consumption: 133.829W!!!! What does that mean? Usually it's around 35W...

 

I used my 6970m with the 5850m backplate all the time, it worked very well. Just make sure that you've got the black rubber thing on the side of the backplate which makes contact with the card, you don't want to short those capacitors.

A09

 

I guess that probably takes BIOS version out of the equation as well...?

 

What about the SSD? I don't know much about that kind of thing but I notice that seems to be one of the only differences with svl.

Has anyone with an SSD had a shutdown?

@svl what have you done to your card? Overclock, voltage change, etc? Do you have Skyrim? Perhaps if you don't one of us could buy it for you so you can use it to help troubleshoot while using the 720qm.

@kumquat bios was ruleD out with me when I said I was running AO8 and had the shutdown during skyrim.

 

Ahh sorry about that owvp, I forgot about it.

 

Okay fellas, help me figure this out, I got some interesting results. I just ran Skyrim for 1 hour and 35 minutes. Temps got to about 83. No shutdown.

I did 2 things differently than before. The first is that i was no longer connected to an external monitor, has anyone had the shutdowns while NOT using an external monitor?

The second thing is that I actually had the hwinfo32 installed and configured but i'm running a 64bit system. I uninstalled it and installed hwinfo64.

So it's either one of those things or i just got lucky this time running Skyrim for so long. Before it had always shut down 20-30 minutes.

 

I have shutdowns both with and w/o monitor, and I have hwinfo64 as well..haha. Test it a couple more times, maybe you found something that works for your card?

 

I updated the VBIOS, went wrong, black screen, you can retrieve the card?

 

If the system still POST you can try to blindly flash the card, if not I could help you.


EDIT:

No, I don't have Skyrim, and I run the card at stock voltage, usually without overclock. And still no shutdowns, even during an extended BF3 session on a 64 player server.

 

Maybe svl7 is just a god haha.

 

Ugh this is so damn frustrating. There has to be something different between svl's setup and mine (ours).

720qm
4GB 1333 ram
6970 no overclock/voltage adjustment
External monitor
Hwinfo64
Windows 7 x64

Svl, are you using an SSD? I'm not. Has anyone with an SSD had shutdown issues?

 

Yes, I'm using an SSD and else the exactly same setup (well technically a 6990m at the moment, but works also just as fine with the 6970m)

 

Can SSD affect the computer that much, from previous experiences? I'm just wondering if it can have that large of an impact, obviously since that is a possibility.

 

No, just black screen does not go ahead.

 

Ok, did you try to blind flash it?

 

Yes, a negative result.

 

Too bad...

I can reprogramm the card for you, PM me if you're interested.

 

ok..........

 

Could be an issue of ambient temperatures or possibly hot motherboard power components? Maybe svl7's mobo has a good set of VRM chips that came out above spec.

 

Just a random question; how can I uninstall Nvidia drivers on my computer given that I currently have the AMD drivers? When I tried from Add/Remove, Nvidia said that it couldn't detect an Nvidia card and therefore was not able to uninstall...

 

If the uninstall from the control panel (Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features) doesn't work, try it from safe mode (if you haven't already).