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

I DID IT! I purchases the radeon 6990m! In a few hours I am heading into best buy to grab myself a headset and some ram(if it's cheap). Anyhow, I know this is off-topic (so please don't get ticked about it). I just wonder which headset I should buy.

this one http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.225974700
or this one http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/headsets/devices/7248

I know this is very off-topic, but it seems like the people on this part of the forum are very knowledgeable about these kind of things! Thank you guys so much! This forum has truly changed my life, I know so many things I didn't know before I checked this out, so I just really wanna say thanks!

 

Congrats on the purchase, hopefully the installation goes smoothly for you.

As for headsets, I always find it is best to go to a store and try them out first to make sure they fit you comfortably, then hit the net to find a good deal.

 

Congrats as well on your purchase

6970m: Did anything new come up for you guys?

 

running a 11.12, no change in the shutdowns though...just gotta downclock to 620/800 to run anything intense for a good time. Still...a vast improvement over the 260m!

 

don't give up yet ninefingers, i'm sure we'll find a way out of this sooner or later. oh well for now i guess us both have to live with this for a while haha

 

Hi, people.
I have one question.
Ati 6970m is worked without retention bracket?

 

You can use the retention bracket from your old graphics card, although it will be a tight fit.

 

Hey guys, I am wondering when installing the radeon 6990m, if I need to have thermal pads, and if so where do they need to be put? This question was probably covered somewhere in the thread, but I lack the time to check all of the pages.

Thanks guys, and sorry to bother you!

 

There should be enough on the ram chips (the big square chips) to fill the gap between the card and the heatsink.

Other than that nothing else really makes a difference, I've covered most of my card in pads cos I had some left over but it hasn't made a difference really.

So RAM first
Then just start covering other things as your pad stocks allow
There are some pics in this thread somewhere not so long ago if you're still not sure, shouldn't take too long to find (set your posts per page to 50 under options in the user CP to make trawling posts a bit faster)

 

Hey, I was wondering where I can get some thermal pads, for the ram on my 6990m, i've looked everywhere, but I cant find any of them. Thanks!

 

These are excellent. Fujipoly Premium System Builder Thermal Pad - 1/4 Sheet - 150 x 100 x 1.0 - Thermal Conductivity 6.0 W/mK - FrozenCPU.com.

 

Sup Rev? Happy new year to the M15x veteran!

And happy new year to everyone else as well

 

Hey, svl7. Happy New Year to you too. Slow going lately.

 

Happy new years all

Would OC'ing the card have the possibility of preventing shutdowns? :s

 

What would be safe settings for OCing the core and memory clocks in the card? You think OCing it would increase BF3 FPS/performance?

 

I sometimes OC to 800/1000, I remember seeing somewhere that it is a safe beginning overclock. It does increase FPS and performance a bit, but what I'm looking for mainly is to stop these shutdowns.

 

I've tried a few different overclocks hoping I'll hit something stable, but anything above 620/800 gives me shutdowns.

I did get a cheap ES card though, so I'm just guessing there it is something to do with my card.

 

Ninefingers,is it a clevo card you have? I noticed samsung have a laptop with the 6970m aswell,wonder if its generic amd card or ... Wish I could have a look at it.

 

nope, it is a dell card, just with an ES prefix "ES 6970m" i think it means enginneering sample or something like that

 

Hey guys my radeon 6990m should be here any minute, but I don't have thermal pads Do you think it would be okay to install without them, and under-clock the memory(or gpu). Would my temperature be dangerous to my card, or would it be fine. I remember someone on this forum saying they used it without thermal pads, but it was hot until they put them on. I am really anxious to test out my 6990m, so I kinda want to put it on without the thermal pads. could you guys help?

 

It's all depends if you feel like risking it. If you can wait a couple more days till you get thermal pads it would be a lot safer.

I mean how are you going to really test the card if you can't run it at 100%? Unless your just talking about getting it all setup so all you have to do is take it out put the thermal pads on then reinstall it and go.

I personally would just wait.

Where did you order the card from anyway? I'm looking for one myself.

 

Orded it from table21. Do you think it be ok to severely down-clock it? Even when down-clocked it would be about twice as fast as my 5730m. The 5730m is a fail of a card.

BTW anyone looking to buy the 5730m, it's a great backup card.

 

use the pads from the old card, if not i recommended double sided tape with foams in between. those should be better than none at all.

 

I guess thats what I will do. Thanks I called my computer store, and of course they don't carry anything like thermal pads. I guess i'll be ordering from frozencpu.com

 

Those fujipoly pads are good.

I just used the pads from my existing card while I waited for them to arrive.

Also was there any verification that the 820xm CPU helped with shutdowns?

 

So what would a stable OC be with the 6970M? I had shutdowns/restarts today after playing Skyrim with 750/1000 and unchanged voltage.

 

sorry repost

 

Kazalor, that is the problem we're currently trying to figure out: a lot of the newer games have been crashing with the 6970m, would you mind posting your PC specs?

I've heard that 800/1000 is good and safe though, so you can push your card a bit more. I've tried 800/1000 and it still crashed BF3 for me, however (but then again, any other setting still crashes BF3).

I read through your post on another thread, why is everyone except me able to play BF3

 

I think I'm going to shoot for the 6990m. Install is the same and the price is just a tad higher. I wish the GTX 580 would work in this thing because I would rather go that route but of well.

Hopefully the 6990m will have less issues but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 

Ok, well I just reset my 6970M to default settings and in the middle of BF3, I got a couple weird pitched beeps, which I thought were thermal warnings for my GPU, and then my computer screen went black, however, the laptop was still on. I had to manually power it off, but really strange, earlier I was playing BF3 with no problems with stock clocks.

 

This is the 6990m I'm looking at getting. So from what I understand I can take the bracket off my 5850 and use it on this or do I have to get the bracket?

Also does anyone see anything wrong with this one? Going to be ordering it real soon just want to make sure its all good. Says it works with Alienware down at that bottom but that really doesn't mean anything to me.

EDIT: I just looked at some other threads and it looks like a lot of people have been buying from this seller on eBay so I guess the card is good. My only concern now is getting that AMD backplate. Any ideas?

ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 6990m GPU MXM 3.0 Type B | eBay

 

Looks fine damstr, you might be able to find it cheaper in the marketplace on this forum though. Your old backplate will work.

 

So my 6990m is here... BUT the thermal paste isnt here!!!!! I'm rather ticked off atm. Think anyone here can cheer me up with some good news?

 

Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucus yesterday.

 

Yippee (catch the sarcastic in my voice?)

 

^^ well are you going to keep the existing backplate or switch it out? you have plenty of time to pull the 6990m backplate.......

 

The paste should be here tomorrow. So I don't really have time to get a new backplate. Also what drivers do I use? Do I just use the drivers that people use for 6970m (the one that he put a link to). Or do I need to go to AMD and download the drivers for the 6990m

 

Wouldn't all the 6XXX series cards use the same drivers?

 

Hey, you guys with the 6970M in your M15x, what are you getting in BF3/what are you running the game at? It seems like I can run it at high to ultra settings in 768, and medium to high in 1080p, you think something is up? Should I be getting better performance?

 

huh.... are you sure you did your research right? anyways im running 11.12 beta(11.12 official are the up to date drivers)

 

How dangerous is it to set 6970m voltage above 1.1? Just more speculation for crashes..would that possibly prevent it?

 

an updated for those who faced the same problem as me.

when you flash your vbios, save your flash file as .rom instead of .bin

i manage to get VDDC reading back in GPU-Z after the flash.

 

.ROM or .BIN makes no difference at all.

 

for some reason doing so makes my VDDC reappear. Oh well i guess it was just me then.

 

Did you change your drivers?

 

i did reverted to 11.7, but that's before the flash.

the VDDC only reappear after the flash.

 

When I get back home from school i'll be installing the 6990m. Anyways I know this is a totally noobish question, but how do I uninstall drivers. Also how do I check to make sure I uninstalled them? Thanks

 

1) download and install driver sweeper from guru3d.com and cccleaner from piriform.com
2) uninstall current drivers in control panel
3) restart in safe mode
4) run driver sweeper first, then ccleaner to wipe all the data
5) restart and install the new driver

 

^to add to that above, turn off automatic windows driver installation otherwise when you reboot into windows it tries to download and install a driver automatcially.

Just thinking about it, the only thing I haven't tried is flashing the vbios.

I'm currently running vbios: 013.010.000.009.039462 (GPU-Z)

Is this the same as those running stable 6970m's?

 

Are all of those steps really necessary, or can I just uninstall from windows control center?

Edit: besides I can't when I go to select location there's nothing there to select!

I DID IT. The 6990m is in my system, my frame rates have quadrupled, and the card never gets above 65 degrees! I am so happy!

BTW i'm using a laptop cooler that sits under my laptop. It keeps everything nice and cold.