M15x + ATI 5870 (MOD)

Where do you go to change the resolution?

 

Launch it, go to options on the left, then test options and set the resolution there (as a note I do have the professional version).

 

I did that but on mine it won't let me change anything. Do you have the basic version?

 

Professional paid version, probably why I can change settings

 

haha yea I think that the reason.

 

Try to run it on 1600x900 and see what you get? Because that our native resolution.

 

Will do I'm going to take her back to my bench and reapply paste and check the thermal pads (maybe add more and thicken them up). Thing doesn't feel like it's piping enough hot air out like the cpu vent does.

 

The difference in CPU test 2 is due to not having PhysX on the ATI cards.

 

thanks scook9 just wanted some confirmation, I was assuming it was a nvidia physx thing (on the physx cpu test). Kind of make's a "CPU" test pointless if you use the GPU to help with the physx lol! Kind of like cheating :O

 

I agree, that is why no one compares scores with PhysX enabled. You can run it with nvidia gpus with PhysX disabled to make it a level playing field

 

Here is a test run with a 5870 at 1280x720 for comparison purposes. Big difference from 1280x1024.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

1280x1024 at stock clocks should get like high 7k's or 8kish

 

Here's stock run:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

Man I feel so left out. And I don't plan on going to the 5870 for a while so I'm left out even more lol...No one is gonna care about my 260m OCs!!

.....

I better wow you guys with something spectacular then...

 

It's just data collection and has meaning only in relation to similar setups. Well, and a sense of general capability.

 

@TheMarkness

GPU scores are almost identical, as they should be. The transplant was successful. Congratulations.

 

Yep that's what I figured they would be around (I'll get a straight stock test tomorrow with an external lcd). I re-did the thermal paste (mx3) along with adding a bunch more doubled up thermal pads all over the heatsink and notice now with stock 3d clocks in windows just surfing and what not i'm pulling 59/60c. Going to do some more testing and see how it handles.

Edit: Bad Company 2 online 32 player match for twenty minutes pulled around 78c and max was 82/83c so that's way within acceptable. I'm afraid to run furmark again it's a heat building machine lol (94c and rising i cut it off didn't know when it would stop lol!).

Well after about a solid 5 minutes of furmark I'm back up to 94c and it seems like it wants to keep climbing (but much much slower and more gradual). Now I'm running 1.8.1/1.8.2 which is suppose to be optimized to be more stressful and produce more heat (lol?).

 

When you're not testing or gaming, but just fooling around, surfing the net, email, etc., do your card a favor and downclock it to 250/300. It will drop your idle temps 7-8 degrees C.

Edit: Sounds good - very good - in BFBC2. I agree, Furmark is torture for no real purpose.

 

I'm going to rest at ease that these are managed temps and say we are good to go. Hopefully we'll see the real fix for the clock drops in 2d/saver mode (sure do miss that from the nvidia drivers!). I did use AMD GPU clock tool and it works great to knock clocks down and it puts my temps around the 55c (max 57c) doing normal things in windows.

 

To everyone who having installed the mobile 5870. Have you installed the graphics card from the Clevo Notebooks?

On the first picture, on the first page, white stripes can be seen there. Which functionality do these have?

 

Why are the shader clocks grayed out on the ati HD5870 card?

 

If Sensor 0 is the core, then my temps are outstanding

This is after 1 hour of a Crysis session (single player) res @ 1080 and all settings on High.

79 Max on the core is very good, IMO. Looks like my MX-3 is doing it's job once again. Love that stuff

 

Nice... Will be upgrading to 5870, soon, even though don't really need it lol!!!!

 

After layering some 1mm thick ek thermal pads and reapplying mx3 (added more too might have went too thin first time) my temps are pretty good; after a good 20 minute session of bad company 2 online maxed got me 78c average like 80c max.

Hopefully tonight/tomorrow when I get a good all nighter game session with the friends I'll get some good logged temps (and some good burn in on the thermal paste, etc.).

 

Just remember: when applying a TIM, less is more

 

Yep true sleey0 but comparing thickness of as5 to mx3 the mx3 is much thinner. Think first time I went too thin (applying a layer) as when I went and removed it to reapply there were bald spots on the gpu removing the heatsink (probably not getting great contact), again I'm used to as5 and it's thickness. I ended up just adding a drop in the middle and applying additional thermal pads on the memory/board and temps seemed much better after that (leaving what was already in place as it was pretty thin looking).

Running furmark hot as hell edition I was able to run almost 6 minutes before hitting 94c afterwords (compared to roughly 60 seconds or so before lol!)

 

I'm not sure which sensor is reading what, but TSS 2 in Clock Tool always tracks, more or less exactly, the GPU core temp in Hardware Monitor. From that, I have assumed that TSS 2 is the core reading. FWIW.

Pretty good temps, any way you look at it.

 

So question for all your m15x 5870 owners (all 9-10 of us ). Have any of you successfully gotten the CCC panel with any version of the drivers available? (10.3, 10.4 preview, 10.6 alpha/beta)

I'm currently running the 10.6 alpha/beta and after installing from the setup.exe I got no video drivers and CCC panel just all the other stuff (profiles, hydravision, etc.). I manually went to device manager and installed the 10.6 video driver and rebooted. Of course still no CCC panel.

I'm all for swapping to a different driver if it means getting all the goodies working right but from what I've gathered regardless of driver version no go on the CCC panel for us right now. Maybe laptop2go driver forums has a modified inf driver that takes care of these woes?

 

Don't have an M15x, but I'm running a 5870 with the 8.74 driver set (aka 10.x aka 10.6alpha aka 10.5/10.6), the monster 340MB+ download. I installed through Install Manager launched by the Setup.exe file (407KB) (4/06/2010) in the topmost folder after extraction. There are a lot of other setup files sprinkled throughout that omnibus D/L. Ignore them. The express installation installs it all. The only glitch occurs at the end when you're in VGA mode. It tells you the installation failed and it can't find any ATI hardware (or drivers for the hardware, forgotten which). Ignore that and reboot. When the computer comes back up, the drivers, etc. are installed and everything works. There was no magic involved. CCC, with Hydravision and the new video converter, is installed in the process.

There have been others who had your experience and found that they needed to update their vbios to the February version, after which the installation worked fine. It all else fails, that might work.

 

Anyone have the updated vBIOS they could send me?

 

Yep. I'll find it and point you to it. Take me a minute to remember where I put it.

5870 VBIOS

1. Straight from Clevo: ftp://usftp.clevo.com.tw/ALLBIOS/W8xxCU/

Have to use Chrome or Firefox to get in. With IE8, it will ask for a username/PW. Once in, click on "ATI_018.zip", and it downloads automatically. BEST, SAFEST SOURCE.

2. Rapidshare D/L: http://rapidshare.com/files/378430936/ATI_018.rar

 

So for the ones that had the M15X with 4870 and then upgraded to 5870. What was the increase in benchmark numbers? How about in gaming performance?

 

Not sure if anyone had 4870 in M15X, lol.

 

I thought a few people on here did. If not then it will be hard to compare the real performance upgrade the 5870 brings.

 

Official 10.3's installed CCC just fine for me.

This was on a clean install, FWIW.

 

I'm visiting family tonight but I wanted to hop on here to comment on the vbios. Is this ATI_018 a newer version of the vbios than the one that ships on the clevo/sager cards?

Thanks for the response and info I'll be home tomorrow after lunch. Plan on digging into this soon as I get home .

 

As was mentioned in another thread, if you have the bios that's pictured below then you don't need the update. I did not need it for mine.

 

Only way to tell is to look. The Clevo/Sager cards can have either one, presumably depending on the manufacturing date. Without CCC, you'll need a utility like HWInfo32 or GPU-Z. The current vbios data is reflected on the screenshot above (looks familiar, LOL). The earlier vbios is dated January 19, 2010. The ATI_018.zip files contains the new vbios, the old vbios, atiflash to use to flash the card and a DOS batch file to automate the process. I suggest you retrieve and save a copy of the card's existing vbios before flashing to be certain that you can recover in case something goes awry. It's not a big deal. My card came with the new vbios, but I have flashed it several times to change clock speeds and then flashed back to the original vbios and settings. Again, you may not need it.

 

My Ati HD5870 is on it's way from hemi, what drivers do you recommend to install and where can I find it, and also what is this vbios thing about.

 

Congratulations !!

I would recommend starting with the official 10.3 drivers. Get them here:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

It is unlikely that the vbios update issue will affect you. If you have problems with the driver installation, then it is a possible remedy. You can check the vbios at that time, but don't worry about it now.

 

Will do, thanks

 

Can anyone tell me some average FPS you guys are getting with the 5870m? in popular games like badcompany 2, farcry 2, BioShock 2, Just Cause 2, Left 4 dead 2, Moder Warefare 2 etc...?

+ Rep to whoever does also please state what settings you were running the game at

I'm just convincing myself that i should get one

 

Sorry I can't give exact numbers, but I can tell you that L4D2 runs like butter all maxed out.

Also, Crysis is butter smooth at native res and all settings high, 2xAA.

Again, I don't use fraps or those kinds of things - I use my eyes and can tell when a game is too much for a card to handle.

The 5870 is just an amazing mobile GPU and I couldn't be happier.

Honestly, I don't know how nvidia is going to compete. Even if fermi turns out to be a good mobile solution, it is going to be much more power hungry and will never, ever be able to be put in the M15x. I would go far as to say that mobile fermi might even have trouble staying cool in the W860 (this is for the high-end/top-of-the-line fermi whenever it finally gets released).

 

I don't have all the game you have but for left 4 dead 2 everything max out at 1600x900 (native resolution) I get around 70-140 fps. When there alot of action the lowest is 50 fps.

For battlefield 2 running at 1600x900 with DX9 everything on high with 1AA, 4AF, and HBAO on. I never dip below 50 fps, that for online and single player.

 

Sorry, this may sound like a stupid question, but have you tried DX11 in BF:BC2??? If yes, does it run worse than with DX9??? Thx in advance

 

word. Was just playing the new campaign and everything @ max with 1600x900 and FPS was 70s-100+ no probs.

just get it already jstarnino.

 

thanks guys! and sleey0 i will rep again when i can!

And i know i know... i've decided. Im getting me one of these...ASAP!

can't wait!

 

I'll hopefully join you guys on monday as soon as my m15x arrives.

 

Cool! That's when my M15x arrives too!! LOL staying home from classes...I'm bad I know.

Hey I'm in Sac, what part of CA are you from Rengsey?

 

Haven't try that yet. I will try it later and see what the different.