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

try configuring stock clocks with 1.05v to see how work

 

I'm using it at stock clocks. Playing WoW it is now settling at about 84c but on diablo 3 it's sitting right under 80c. I actually satisfied with the temps since I haven't had any real problems with any shutdowns.

 

hi all, please give me some advice, I think my GPU fan has error, i see it never exceed 339 RPM, and i can not play any game because temp is very high (~90)
i repaste thermal paste with MX4, and thermal pad on vram but temp still very high.

 

Nope your fan is functioning properly. You are looking at the wrong place. Look further up the rpm displays 4500rpm. 5000rpm is the fastest it goes so perhaps your heatsink just isn't making contact well enough.

 

I tried emailing mxm-upgrade about the card a couple weeks ago but have yet to get a reply.

Does anyone know if they are still in operation? or if there are any other way on getting the card?

Thanks
Matt

 

which card?

 

They are still in business, and they still have the 6970m in stock. You can directly order it on the website, no need to email them.
Still, if you don't get an answer, maybe try contacting them per twitter or similar, they had some issues with emails in the past.

 

Hi, now I can confirm HDMI works through DP converter, video and audio. DP direct to the display do not work. I think this could working on cards from MXM-upgrade or others.

 

I will do this upgrade soon.. Thank You guys.. Very usefull!

 

Ah the pure bliss of being a M15x owner what next... 16GB or HD7970M or perhaps a new killer networks 1103...

My decision to go second hand to a M15x once more I do not regret

 

Sorry if this had been asked and answered before, but for the HWinfo32 auto fan control, do I keep the 100ms respin interval as per the screen shot from the guide? or do I also need to change it to 11000ms as well?

My new card just arrive and want to get all my information right before I open my baby up.

 

It doesn't matter, as stated in the guide you can set it to 11000 to minimize HWiNFO CPU usage, but you won't really notice a big difference.

 

Hi. I did not take the time to read the entire 240 pages of this thread, but I would like to add to it. I am pretty sure this issue has not been addressed successfully in this thread and possibly in others. In fact, I think I made a whole thread about it like 6 months ago and we(other people with the problem) could not really come up with a real solution(link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/623251-m15x-crashing-6990m-bios-a09-2.html). So I installed my 6990m in my M15x like nearly a year ago, and I think immediately I started having random shutdowns. These occur mostly during gaming, but I have also had them while idle. There is no BSOD and it just instantly goes black. As time progressed, the issue would sometimes be bad and sometimes absent. I have been having the problem a bit much the past few days and was just hoping somebody might come up with a new idea. Also, does anybody think that random instant shutdowns are physically harmful to the computer? I think it performs the same as a year ago.
Thanks and sorry if this is out of place or if i should have just resed the old thread.

 

yeah, the issue has been stated in this thread for quite sometime too, and unfortunately doesn't come out with a final solution yet. The most logical temporary fix points to a powerdraw issue; lowering your GPU clocks and undervolts it a bit does help to a certain point. I also had this problem of sudden shutdowns in game, and it's not from overheated hardware. It was merely 65-70 degrees when the issue occurs.

What i did was dropping my clocks to 650/900 at 1V. try it and see if it helps

 

Hi! I thought the problem was solved already. I had a card from mxm-upgrade and I had shootdowns with 65-75ºC. When I bought a card from Dell it shows 75 -85º running at 680/900 underclocked at 1.05v an I never had shutdowns.

I want to settle this question, the shutdowns are caused by temperatures ​

The temps shown depends from the card, mxm-upgrade cards do not show temperatures good. Also mxm-upgrade cards have 1120 shadders what increases temperatures and consumptions so you need to do an undervolting and underclocking more aggressively.

In all card types is necesary put thermal pads behind the card, specially in the memory and doing a good thermal-paste job.

So, I´m going to try explain as well as my english level allows me:


All card types:

Thermal pads. You can see on this page: http://forum.notebookreview.com/8148325-post1513.html

The first picture is very important, it can disipate a lot of hot. Also is very very important put thermal pads in the memory.

I used 2 Fujiply thermal pads, 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm (I have a Dell´s card)

Once you have your card installed, if you want conect your laptop to an external montitor through DisplayPort you must to use the DP to HDMI adapter.

To increase or decrease voltage or clocks is better to use Ati Tray Tools. With that you can create a profiles for idle clocks and high performance clocks.

Once time you have the thermal pads installed;
For a Dell cards:

clock 680/900 1.05v

For MXM-Upgrade cards

Begins with 500/900 at 0.95v if you dont have any shotdown increase the clocks slowly, I think you can safety at 680/900 at 1.0v. I tried with 500/900 at 0.9v and I never had a problem, but when I had this card I had no thermal pads, so if you have, you can try to increase voltage and clocks.

I think is time to update the first post

 

We have an Nividia 240 in the M15x and got a Dell 6970 from Aikimox as my son's HS graduation present. He included some Bergquist pads. We used Arctic Silver for the GPU and put the pads on the memory pad area of the heatsink and left the pink tape on the pads.

We used a static pad and wrist strap.

The Bergquist pads are twice as thick as the OEM ones that Dell used for the 240.

We moved the x brace from the 240 to the 6970. The x-brace has the black plastic insulation.

When we booted it up the three lock LEDs flashed indicating "A system board component is faulty.". We pulled it out and redid it and same deal.

We put the 240 back in and it boots up fine. However running DiabloIII the 240 is at 86 Celsius.

Any ideas? Are the Berg-pads too thick?

I was thinking of cleaning the GPU card with 90% iso and a small paint brush in case any residual compound if f-ing things up.

I was also thinking of wrapping the xbrace with tape. The first post says "thin" tape. Is that scotch tape or black electrical?

Thanks,

Jim

 

btw, we tried a 560 a few weeks back that turns out to have been a Toshiba card and it didnt work. But it failed by tripping the blue ring on the power plug, no flashing LEDs.

 

Nevermind. We are on A01 and I was sure we were on A09. But when I tried to upgrade it gave the ridiculous "unknown error" when we tried to Flash the BIOS. Have to get A02 first. I'm guessing some months ago we had tried it and it failed and we just chalked it up to Dell's amazing support.

 

Everything seems to work now post BIOS upgrades. The thread was very useful and I appreciate everyone's contributions. I would suggest adding "Step 0 - Check the version of your BIOS" with descriptive text pointing to the how to upgrade the M15x BIOS thread since Dell hides A02 and A08. As mature as this thread is the passionate and skilled enthusiast are likely all upgraded and the remaining folks will be newbs like me!

Thanks again

 

I'm currently running CCC 12.4 and was wondering is there any performance to be gained with the 12.5 or 12.6 beta drivers?

 

Double post!

 

I created an account on here just to get info on this card and in my m15x , right now I have Ati radeon hd mobility 5730m I forgot what the exact number is for the card but Im pretty sure thats correct. I was asking if that series heat sink and brackets will work for the 6970m . Thank you please reply

 

Hey guys, I bought this card.

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picture hosting

I got this 6970m card super-cheap from an auction, however, I think the screw holes are soldered on? Sounds quite messy! Can anyone confirm from the pics? I don't mind so much because it was so cheap but want to know in advance.

 

not enough info to tell, but judging by the stands it doesnt look like it.... check the back of the card if it has a backplate connecting all 4 screw holes than its not soldered on.

 

Can't see the pic. Can you upload a pic of the back and front of the card using imageshack? Cheers

 

Hi guys. The card is soldered. I think the best way forward is to either drill through the soldering or to modify the heatsink slightly by cutting off the old screws and replacing it with the appropriate one. I have bigger problems though, I connected the card in just to see if it would work anyway, and I just got a black screen, no bios or anything. I think the guy might have killed the card with poor handling before sending it.

 

Hey guys got an update the drilling was a success. It fits perfectly, however, I'm still getting the black screen, nothing else happens apart from the CAPS lights flashing.

 

I am really baffled with your approach to your supposed problem! Judging by the picture there is (was) nothing wrong with the card. Although even after asked you didn't upload a pic of the back of the card so we could have a look.

Why didn't you just find suitably fitting screws for the backplate already fitted to the card? You should have found correctly fitting screws first; an easy task at the local hardware store before even attempting the first installation as an improper heatsink to card connection would mean heat would instantly stop the card functioning to protect it.

Drilling it is a sure way to kill the card! I have read before that mxm upgrade once drilled a mxm 4670M card to make the screw holes slightly larger to fit a different backplate = dead card...

Sorry for my rant but it seems you rushed into this without allowing us to give proper advice first. Mexic00ls already told you the backplate was unlikely soldered on, drilling it could have been avoided Perhaps I am wrong here but it seems you also have mishandled this card.

 

Okay, no comment on the drilling... your backplate isn't/wasn't soldered on.

Anyway, blinking CAPS actually indicate a problem with the RAM (if only the CAPS is blinking), not the GPU. Try reseating the RAM modules, changing them, or only booting with one of them.
If it doesn't help it might be a system board problem.

 

As noted on page 237 we got the 6970 card running but have been experiencing the black out shut downs. Running MSI Afterburner, GPUZ and MSI Kombuster we were seeing 90c for the GPU and 130c for GPU2. That's with clocking it down to 600 and 800 with Afterburner. We also changed the fan curve so that it is 80% at 60c and 100% at 70c.



We used Artic Silver on the GPU and the 2mm thick Berquist pads on the memory. GPUZ doesnt know what GPU Temp2 is.

Any suggestions?

Thx

 

2mm pads are way to thick you need .05mm pads at most 1mm pads, 2mm pads will prevent proper contact

 

That was my suspicion so I appreciate the confirmation. I'll run by Fry's and pick up some .5mm thermal pads.

 

some findings regarding the upgrade : if you compare the amd 5850m to the 6990m in hight , you will see that the 6990m gpu die is raised slightly if compared to die of 5850m, so the actual die of 6990m is raised. wich wil cause the ram chips to not make proper contact with heatsink, as the 6990m die is lifting the heatsink ever so more ,
so one needs to add thicker thermal pads, can not use same thermal pads on m15x heatsnk, as the 6990m is raised more, creating the gap on memory chips,
after i added another layer ofthermal pads the ram, memIO temps came down ( hardware monitor app)
where it used to be 10'celsius higher than my other gpu temps.

 

That maybe true but I never had the conflict in temps when switching from .5mm to 1mm

 

mexicools whats your max memIO temps gaming? mi
ne gets to 95 -98 celcius and gpu core 85. before my mem temp got to over 100. this is a huge concern to me. i even downclock core to 650 mem to 800 and volt to 1v , still mem temp is 95. i use heaven benchmark and check temps with hwmoniter and gpuz

 

the most demanding game i play is bf3 the core does run about low 80's, mem might hit 91c but i also game with a color under the lappy, i have it undervolted to 1.05 but no downclocks, but i dont really game on my m15x now since i have my aurora, and i have never ran heaven bm

 

Hey guys, I was wondering if someone can help me out. I've been googling nuts for days.

So just recently I upgraded my GPU from a 5730m to a Clevo 6990m.

Everything was a breeze and temps are doing decently good, hovering at ~45-47 at idle. However, I realized that I wasn't able to flash a Dell vbios successfully onto it..

I did manage to reverse it through blind flash of course, but I need to be able to connect to my Dell monitor via DP. Has there been any ways that people were able to make use of the DP port?

Weirdly, yesterday I tried connecting my DP cable with a DP>HDMI adapter to my HDTV, and surprisingly it was able to display. However, it doesn't seem able to go full screen as there were some black bars around the display... But I felt, that was some progress

Its possible with VGA of course but once you get used to DP/HDMI quality, I can never go back And my m15x isn't able to detect it properly... but that's another story

 

have you tried scaling thru ccc or resizing thru you monitor menu screen options?

 

Nope, its like as if it can't detect the m15x so it displays nothing on my Dell monitor. I can't seem to get the CCC to identify the monitor too. I believe it has something to do with the Clevo card, which was why I wanted to flash the Dell vbios..

I might want to try a DP to DVI adapter to it but that adapter's kinda expensive and there's no guarantee of it working.. and this Dell monitor doesn't come with a HDMI port so I can't try it like how I tried with my HDTV

Thanks for replying, by the way.

 

Hey, I've resolved this issue.

So I had the Clevo 6990m as said earlier.

I hooked up a DP>DVI adapter and presto, it is now displaying on my Dell monitor. No vbios flashing needed.

Thankfully it was money well worth spent and the trip down to the store well worth it

 

guys can you help me i format my laptop M15x since last year when i format my alienware command center did not work and my laptop did not light completely when i open CC its show
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.closingApplication()
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.controllerMainFormFormClosing(Object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnFormClosing(FormClosingEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.RaiseFormClosingOnAppExit()
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ExitInternal()
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.OnThreadException(Exception t)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProcException(Exception e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnThreadException(Exception e)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.SendMessage(HandleRef hWnd, Int32 msg, Int32 wParam, Int32 lParam)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.SetVisibleCore(Boolean value)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.set_Visible(Boolean value)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(Form mainForm)
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.Program.Main(String[] args)

 

Guys help me when i format my laptop M15x the Alienware command center did not work completely no light the keyboard,etc.. after i install the CC when i open CC there is a window pop-up this its shows......
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.closingApplication()
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.controllerMainFormFormClosing(Object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnFormClosing(FormClosingEventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.RaiseFormClosingOnAppExit()
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ExitInternal()
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.OnThreadException(Exception t)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProcException(Exception e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnThreadException(Exception e)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.SendMessage(HandleRef hWnd, Int32 msg, Int32 wParam, Int32 lParam)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.SetVisibleCore(Boolean value)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.set_Visible(Boolean value)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context)
at System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(Form mainForm)
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.Program.Main(String[] args)

 

Where did you install cc from? Resource disk or support.dell.com?

 

i install from resources disk and i download from support dell but same erro eveytime i open CC always shows the program microsoft net.frameworks i see the details its show........

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.LightsZoneController.SupportChangeBrightness()
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.configureTrayIconContextMenu()
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.initializeTrayIcon()
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.controllerMainFormLoad(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
at AlienLabs.AlienFX.Controller.ControllerMainForm.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


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************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.

 

what should i do im tired of fixing my laptop M15x its almost 1 year i dont see the light of my laptop

 

if you had the latest version of command center installed before you formatted, and reinstalled command center from the restore disk then you have corrupted the MIO and you require a new motherboard ! sorry i just corrupted the MIO on my own m15x
what u can do is start command center and if under FX you can see/change the keyboard lights but they dont change you need to uninstall command center and and switch laptop off remove mains and battery, then remove the bios battery (coin size battery on the motherboard) then press and hold the on button on the laptop for a min of 2mins to clear all bios settings and it will complete a full ower drain. once done put the coin battery back in and the laptop battery, reconnect to mains and switch on, then redownload latest version of command center from dell for the m15x and install it. once done DO NOT OPEN command center, switch laptop off, remove battery/mains lead and coin size battery from motherboard and press and hold the on button and do a bios clear and full power drain (dont forget to hold on button for 2mins at least) once done put coin size battery back on the motherboard and the base cover, reconnect the battery and mains lead and swich laptop on, open command center and if your very very lucky it mite work, if it doesn't the MIO is corrupted and you need a new motherboard ! as i do, new motherboard on ebay are about £100

 

Same guy sold me my radeon 6990m and i installed it on my m15x everytime i play a game it shuts down i did thermal paste and everything i check my temp while playing a game it goes up to 91 and shuts down after that...i have a cooler if i dont turn it on it shuts down..it is so frustrating..btw im using the screws and the bracket from my 5850m that might be the problem?

 

wow that's awesome man.. i have 6990m and my m15x keeps shutting down i was thinking what to do..it is very frustrating..where do i get the correct heatsink man? it gets to 91 degrees and shuts down

 

if you update your bios to a09 it wont shut down until your temp reaches 91C

 

so... what happened with the very useful information from the OPs ? does it still exists, maybe offsite ?