~GX660(R) Owner's Lounge~

Thanks for the offer think German keyboard would melt my brain trying to use it though

Those temps are not to bad for the 7970.

 

actually you can port any of the buttons to your own keyboard chassis, or vice versa

these temps are not bad yea but I was expecting more of something like others reported barely hitting past 70c and idle on 30c with no turbo cooler... im bit lost

Here's some photo work from yesterday:


In one of the images you see the black marked areas that I shaved off and cross lines slightly grinded down.

From my old 5870 pads placement you can see not all areas would press down evenly even on original pads, when first time I took heatsink off i decided to give some MX4 on them pads so it makes better contact where it had less imprint from heatsink and chips, so in one of the photos you can see same gap situation when using 7970m card, hence I added 1 more level of 1mm pads making some places 2mm(pads are extra soft so if pressed down they flex to required height)
you can see I also polished the gpu heatsink area to close as mirror shine for a better contact. in some photos it looks like my heatsink is not in level not all areas down to proper height, when it actually is in sorta best level it can be, but I have a feeling my heatsink is warped from factory...

this morning 1h of iddle/web surf/emails/daily office tasks, iddle GPU temps 39-40c ...

 

It took me several attempts to get the pads right. I ended up using sheets of 0.5mm pad laid directly onto the card itself and the 1mm on the heatsink where pau1ow's layout said to layer them. This has worked well for me. I used antec forumula 7 nano diamond paste.

Try the 12.7 official beta and CAP - supports the 7970m and is 10fps faster than 12.6 for me.

GPU-Z 0.6.2 does not support the 7970m and needs to be updated. I use HWinfo64, afterburner (latest beta) to monitor temps.

O'C wise you havent enabled overclocking in afterburner - see the upgrade 7970m in m17x thread for instructions.

I did a bit more modding myself lastnight - added some more alu heatsinks ontop of the cpu heatsink. Seems to have worked - managed a prime 1024 run with 8 threads at multi of 20 at 85/80 tdp/tdc - temps maxed out at 94 deg. Still very hot but its the first time I've not had to stop a 1024 prime run at anything other than stock multipliers for fear of frying something!

 

going to shop around quick for some 0.5mm right now. Im so uncertain about areas needed the thermal pads, so I added everywhere, maybe that made bit mess out of my cooling setup. can you see the BIG sandwitch at the far corner of the card? referring to image how I shaved off the heatsink its different to pau1ow's image, however I noticed that after I shaved places off and cleaned off, fall in t a bit stress but thought theres nothing like sandwitch cant fix... if yous could grab my card image and guide me accurately which areas must be covered by pads and which not I would appreciate it alot

thnx

alternative 12.7 beta link
www.mediafire.com/?03fsp8064mg82m6

oficial ATi site link is down...

 

I followed the pad layout picture posted by pau1ow in the 7970m heatsink modification thread. Its linked to in the sticky at the top of the forum.

 

Those temperatures are exceptionally well. Remember that all cooling systems behave differently and unless you have much more info from GX660 owners using the HD7970m, you can't conclude you are doing something wrong.

For starters you have better temperatures than stock HD5870 with a higher power, much more powerful GPU.

I plan to upgrade soon so I can give you my input too.

 

well today at the end of the day iddle gpu temp approx 42-43c all day long, approx 10c less than 5870m previously... It seems it uses way less power than 5870m as in office I use laptop on standard 120w psu, since I have no time for games at work its ok to use just 120W psu, other than that I tried few game runs for 20mins this evening after upgrading to 12.7 beta drivers, and I have not encountered PSU outages as before! it seems its not going past 120W pull from PSU with my current combo or something?? I will measure at home...

PS I have 2.2.2 MSi afterburner, it doesnt alow me to OC gpu yet, and I havent seen any newer MSI Afbrner yet not even 2.2.2.+ beta etc...

My vertex4 ssd requires me to flash my own customized bios that I have uploaded here earlier so it can be detected properly, but it kills the table reading of my previous installation SSD and the most important 1TB secondary HDD which has ton of vital info on it, windows just prompts "do I want to format my drive ... ?? " LOOOOL, its full like black hole 80MB free out ot 1TB lol ... so I reverted bios and will try install os freshly after very carefull backup and will then reinsert my 1TB hdd back so maybe it will operate, otherwise BD burning night will begin tonite

so far so good I have not encountered any enormous temperatures without load, no shutdowns or artifacts (few flickers during ultra loaded scenes of cryses and rainbow six vegas4) but other than that I believe its driver issue and it runs smooth yet... worst is Im worried about my gpu heatsink, i have a bad faith in it since I seen it fastening not 150% perfectly in my eyes... abvious factory or assembly fail... more likely factory manufacturing... gpu part is in place but surrounding areas are dodgy...

 

UltraGSM,

Why haven't you used my simple layout ? I think this is just good enough and provides very nice temps - though yours are good.

The max. temps I ever got with the 7970M was after 3hrs of BF3, 79°C for the GPU.

 

lol, I duno, I guess when I took out the gpu heatsink and all went trough google on wifes laptop first thread came uo with Meakers 7970m heatsink mod page so I followed that...

PS, just had Black Dark Screen Of Death... , same happens instantly if I run HWinfo64 tool, display crashes during software startup sequence where it starts to scan hardware and comes to GPU's .
PC was idling while I was having dinner and came back found it like that unresponsive. Im going to inspect thermal pads again...

 

Can someone tell me why it laggs like i have 200 ping when i have like 50 ping at BF3 servers. Is this network bad as that? Look at this video: Battlefield 3 flying jet, mouse jumping? - YouTube

It is not my network i think. Because when i was at dreamhack it laggs like hell too. I have 100/10 fiber network.

Sry for my bad english. I am very angry... If i havent sold my PC desktop i would desthroy this **** !

 

hey guys,

im planning to upgrade my gpu to 6990m for my gx660 (non R), i know that it has to be mxm 3.0b card, and i will need to modified my current 5870 heatsink, but does it matter if the card PCB color is green or black, or whether it previously comes from dell or clevo?

thanks

 

color does not matter as far as I know, as long it fits your laptop its ok. but why 6990m? Why not 7970m? reviewing benchmark scores 2x6990m in CFire barely beats 7970m alone, and 6990m will cost just as much as 7970m and it will consume way more power and will be alot hotter card... but its your call

 

i know, its crazy how amazing 7970m is huh?

actually i just got 6990m for 250usd so its more than half of the current 7970m price, i thought it was a bargain and i could proly sell it again for some profit that i could use to get 7970m ^^

do i need any custom bios tho for 6990m or 7970m?

 

thats nice man, really a bargain for that price I doubt you need any mods like BIOS just heatsink mod thats all, and dont forget 180W psu

 

Do someone know why it laggs like hell when i play pc games? Even if i had good internet/ping...

 

Are you gaming on the battery? You need to be plugged in to get decent FPS. Also make sure the power profile is set to High Performance.

 

Hi once again, so I have spent some time today and made my go,

here is absolutely fully unlocked including all hidden features , unlocked BIOS for GX660 / GX660R users.
There are absolutely all features enabled, so be very very cautious what you do inside BIOS, enabled all hidden sub-features and options, there are so many of those shown now, you may want to enable your turbo fan while browsing via your new unlocked BIOS menu as it will take you some time , and while in BIOS settings your CPU is always is set to MAX TDC/TDP and max clocks, so it will heat up alot and may cause you laptop to power down if not cooled off properly(note: this ain't no bug or new feature its the way CPU behaves while in BIOS for a long time) Be warned.
I have personally tested this BIOS and Im using it it works perfect.
I have taken standard latest GX660R bios and I have not touched absolutely any of the settings but I have only enabled/unlocked all to the very last features of the BIOS menu&features content.
Some fields may not contain any useful settings or may not make sense but just use options you feel needed, like enable certain features in SATA options to get your new yet unsupported SSD to work, XMP profiles now are enabled to control regardless of memory supports it or not, so please be very careful.
Of course in worst scenario if you mess up your BIOS so much that you cant power on your PC, you just let it cool off for approx 10mins, and take out back panel of your laptop, and then remove unplug your laptop from power cable, remove laptop battery, remove BIOS battery and press power button on laptop several times, so BIOS/CMOS clears the settings, then wait few minutes and reinsert BIOS battery, laptop battery, and reconnect power cable, BIOS will initialize setup defaults and you're good to go again.

If you feel this BIOS upgrade is worthy say thanks/+rep me

Thanks


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

 

awesome, thanks for that ultra

 

weird but Im getting "BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH" once in a while with my new 7970m, it doesnt matter if I use my laptop or its iddle, it just hapapens anyway and must say pretty randomly, Ive now reinstalled OS and all the softwares to a new SSD vertex4 (sadly my GX660R has only SATA2 3GB/s controller so I top out at ~250MB/s R/W anyway... ) but this time I used fresh copy of ATi 12.7 beta driver axer straight away on a clean OS setup and this BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH problem still persists... first I thought it could have been unclean installation of my drivers and etc, but I was wrong.
However I can use it for all day and it wont happen, then next time I start my laptop and use it or leave it iddle it will occur out of nowhere unexpected... pretty confused!

Anyone else with GX660/GX660R using 7970m and having any or no such problems???

 

ohh. I wanted to upgrade my GT663 but now when i have read this, i dont want to do that xD I think i will buy corsair 1333mhz 2x4gb ddr3 and a cpu.

I think if i should buy this cpu: INTEL i7 820QM 3.06GHz quad QS mobile CPU processor for 55 chipset laptop monkey|eBay

I have a question.

Do I need to buy a new cpu heatsink? Look at my cpu: http://i00.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/978/759/389/389759978_645.jpg and compare it to this: http://i01.i.aliimg.com/photo/v0/490370817/Intel_Core_i7_CPU_Mobile_I7_820QM.jpg would it fit? But only give bad cooling?

 

same sink should be fine, flip.

ten

 

The only black screens I get are when overclocking. Stock clocks has been very stable - no CTD's/driver crash etc. Currently running 12.7 official beta.

 

I havent OC, neither would be able to OC as MSI afterburner wont allow sliders of CORE/MEMORY to move anywhere further stock speed. however I dont mind that its powerfull card why would I want to OC yet maybe in a few years time when it gets slower regards newer upcoming cards... but I cant do it, some sorta fail I see forecoming lol

however Ive spend big time reading forums yesterday and people say they either live with screen blackouts, they downclock stock GPU speeds, others with no warranty tinker with overvolting undervolting and OCing via bios flashing, and others with warranty just sent their machines to dell to get cards replaced. Those who got cards replaced explained they got lower core temperatures than before, like in my case this morning is about 18c ambient room temp, laptop GPU iddles @42c+ and its only set to 800MHz core clocks (such speed trying to avoid blackouts)

PS: few days ago I sourced fine 0.5pads thermal pads locally and retrofited gpu heatsink probably over 20 times to find best height for every chip thermal pad needed, and in same time reapplying dot of compound in the centre of gpu so when heatsink fitted and fastened if dot spreads to ultra thin even square shape of gpu IC spot, means its perfect fit, so I did same till all chips and thermal pads were making good contact and then I left such setup till now, yet no changes in temperatures, and still getting the blackouts, these arent often but who knows if they will begin to reoccur more and more frequent...

 

As I've posted previously, you need to unlock afterburner to overclock - details are in the 7970m in the m17xr3 thread.

42 deg at ambient 18 deg seems a little warm to me - I got 31-33 deg in balanced powerplan mode and on AC over the weekend at ambient temps of 15-20 deg.

FYI info I used the dot method for the TIM.

 

ok can you please explain the last sentence what did you mean by saying TIM?

Yea thats how I feel like its runing hotter than any other 7970m Ive seen before, and my heatsink is better on too its 3 pipe version... and theres really nothing I can do to lower temps even if I tried all the best things made perfect height pads setup and also taped them with extra MX4 compound to make better heat transfer... im out of options.

I dont want to OC, I cant get it stable without blackouts in stock MHz what would happen in OC I can only guess ... lol

 

@ultra
have you tried undervolting the gpu? btw with you unlocked bios, can you overclock cpu from it? or we still need to use throttlestop?

btw, does anybody know if the gx660 has a free mini pcie slot? or only one that being used by WLAN?

thanks

 

No I havent, I really dont wanna mess with bios flashing, altho I believe I may still have some sort of warranty from seller... dont wana mess that up.
with unlocked bios, absolutely all to the very last features are unlocked, I havent tested with non-Extreme edition cpus like QM series but it may work... experimental really, but with my 940XM it worked , I just like more flexibility thats why I chose to use throttlestop instead, every feature is unlocked, altho some settings doesnt save for some reason, solely bios build by msi error I believe - features like keypad numlock state always stays OFF even if set to ON and saved when exiting from bios, and few other minor things.
This is the BIOS version to be had in every GX660 GX660R and compatible models, gives you all the control you may want to have.

 

TIM = Thermal Interface Material i.e. paste!

 

@ultra
180W LITEON Targus PSU = adapter yes or no?

 

yes , power supply for your laptop
PSU - Power Supply Unit

it was terribly hard to find one...

 

thank you

 

Okey! Thx

Is a QM cpu a good upgrade? Because i dont think i would upgrade my gpu after read that Ultra have some problem

I need help with throttlestop. I have disable intel speedsteep and the turbo OC in the special BIOS. But i can't set the multiplier over 19. After 19 i get the TURBO speed. So i cant OC my cpu?

What do you guys say about these memorys? WEBHALLEN.com - Corsair 8GB DDR3 PC3-10600 1333MHz SO-DIMM (9-9-9-24) (CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9) (2x4GB) it would work i guess? I think i would buy them today.

 

because I have problem but nobody else has you should not back out, its over all the most awesome upgrade you can do to your laptop!
In general 6-8 GB Ram is more than enough for gaming and even i5 - or low end i7 like 740QM 720QM cpu is well enough for playing games if combined to 7970m graphics card it will be reborn as all new machine believe me. other than that its your call.

 

Any ideas on overclocking a 460m? I'm using the factory RAM so that might be a bottleneck. I used SetFSB to get the FSB to 145 but it won't go beyond 145.

 

Okey, i will think about it Would the memory work in my laptop? And what i have understand i dont need tripple channel with I7 cpus? I can use dual channel?

I need help too to overclock the i5 460m. But i use throttlestop. I can't get it higher then the turbo is at...

 

QM is not bad, I dont know the entire range but go for a quad core if you can, it just makes using the computer so much nicer. You can find XMs on ebay pretty cheap, especially engineering samples which run just fine (I have one and its a beast).

Not played with throttlestop in ages to be honest, but there is some info near the start of this thread by me and another couple of guys who were playing with it last year.

Re the gpu upgrade I think its only poor Ultra having this issue. Others have done it with no problems. Worth the gamble I think

ten

 

I can get a quad core. But which cpu would be best for the price? Most bang for the buck

Okey, i will se what i find

Okey, but i will think about it :/ What do a heatsink cost?

 

best bang for buck is 920XM ES , not thats honestly hands down , earch ebay

heatsink should not cost more than 50quid I imagine

 

I would go for the 920xm or if you can get a nice price on the 940 go for that. I dont know much about the QM range though so maybe someone else can advise on that.

If you have the gx660 you should have a compatible heat sink already for the 7970 and 69xx i believe, although you need to file down a few parts to make it fit perfectly. Not a difficult job but time consuming.

That ram should be fine by the way. Yea our range of chips only supports dual chan, not triple.

 

Okey, the 920xm cost about 2500 SEK right now. But for a month ago it cost 2000 sek?

I have a GT 663...

 

Oh OK. I dont know what sink comes with the 663. Could do a search on the web (might be some info on this site actually) or start a new thread on it.

ten

 

it come with the GTX 460M heatsink. and look like this

 

Ah ok. Probably need a new sink and bracket for it then.

There is a bunch on ebay right now, some in UK some in USA. Just do a search for 7970m and scroll through. Pricey though!

 

Yes, you need the 5870 heatsink, using the 460m heatsink would not be a good idea - too much modification. I got mine (both card and new heatsink) through pau1ow here at NBR.

 

Hi there, I recently bought myself a Medion X6811 and was hoping to upgrade it in the future but at the moment I'm trying to fix an issue I'm having with it, currently the power jack socket wont hold the power jack, I've taken the laptop to my local shop where they've taken it apart and have ordered a couple of power jacks in but so far none of them have fitted, does anyone know the part number for the power socket for this machine? the model number is ND9446, thanks for any help in advance

 

Hehe look who sell msi heatsink at ebay MSI 5870M-7970M Heatsink|eBay

EDIT: in winter i will buy a 7970m and the heatsink and a new powerbrick and if the cpu cant give the gpu power i will buy a 920xm

 

very well, clever choice, Im nearly sure only GPU upgrade will keep you happy enough

 

@Fordy:

Try RK Computers-MSI-Asus-Sager-Clevo-Compal - Custom Gaming Notebooks - Custom Gaming Laptops - they stock MSI parts - you want the one for the MS-16f1, GT663, GX660.

 

for MSI laptops try hit on bios logo:
ctrl + alt + shift + insert [od delete ] and go to advanced tab, change max OC to 24% and lower ram speeed to 800MHz

 

Anyone owns here a WD Scorpio Black 7200 RPM 750GB? Is it noisy?