MSI GX660 Updated with 6990m!

Reinstalled the OS, installed 11.10 drivers, and still wanted to idle in 2d mode at 250/900. I downloaded MSI afterburner and made some profiles, and am able to lower it all the way down to 150/450 for idle. That will have to do, but still causes me to have a slightly higher than normal idle temp, but its still better than before.

 

have you tried to modify the vbios with RBE?

 

I have opened it and looked at it. I think all these troubles started when I undervolted the card with a Dell bios posted on here. Before I flashed the card I looked at the bios version in RBE, and it was the same bios version, except with the changed voltages. I used WinFlash (I know not too smart) and the flash worked, but hung up, and I had to force restart the laptop. The bios were good and stable, and my temps dropped about 3-5C, but since I didn't have high temps anyway, I decided to go back. I reflashed my original bios fine, and now for some reason my card will not change memory speeds unless I force it with a program. It wants to stay at 900. The core changes, but only seems to move between 715/400/250. I think there are more clocks profiles in there somewhere missing, and I want the 100mhz core to work at idle.

I've tried:

Reinstalling drivers, used driver sweeper each time,
Installed older drivers, well back to 11.9 -- I might go back further
Reflashed bios a few times, even tried the other guys stock bios, which again were the same as mine -- I have no tried reflashing the undervolted bios though, maybe that would help?

I've never done a DOS flash, maybe that would help? I'm sure I can manage it, but haven't even tried it.

 

So you were happy with your temps and yet you decide to use an undervolted bios?

Kids, let that be a lesson to you all.

DOS flash the original (like officially original) stock bios that your card came with. Should always flash in DOS-mode via USB. Unless you want issues like this to happen..

 

Well it can never run too cool right? I'll take care of that and dos flash it later on tonight to see if it corrects the issue. Everything points to some sort of bios issue at this point. OS install did not fix it.

 

Well it looks like everything is fine.. I hooked it up through the HDMI cable to my 23" monitor 1080p like I had it when I was home, and clocks are working fine again @100/150. I'm sort of lost one this one, but whatever, I have it hooked up most of the time anyways so all is fine. Now to grab a screwdriver and do that test for Forge.

 

Excellent stuff! It was probably going back to the small clocks in the background and you were too paranoid to notice

Anyways, I decided to reinstall Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 and now that I have a clean version of that + all the latest drivers I am getting 10+ more frames on every game I play so I am really glad I chose to do that. ESET32 anti-virus seemed good since it had a gamer mode and was voted to use less system resources than anything else so I opted for that and it really delivers in being as minimal as possible.

Anyone on Skyrim yet? I am running it butter smooth at Ultra (maxed out everything) with shadows set to medium (bit bugged you see thanks to a lame console port) and AA at x4 and AF x16. Really really beautiful. I am thinking of flashing my 6990M vbios to the Dell one for a bit more power - 840/1100? Would that be possible on my Clevo card?
Actually I just tried using Trixx - https://www.sapphireselectclub.com/ssc/TriXX/TriXX.aspx and bumped my clock speeds to 800/1100 - that means I do not need to flash the vbios (or at least it saves me time) right? even though the max on the CCC is 740/1000 I can just use Trixx?

 

Geo I'm using Trixx again now too, good stuff. I had it set OC to 800/1100 for BF3. Game was stable and smooth.

I've never played any of the elder scrolls. But skyrim does look interesting. I'm soon goin to need a single player game since multi won't e much of an option. Does that game require and Internet connection or steam?

 

Can't believe I have just found out about it, man it's so beast and neat! Gonna see how the clocks in my sig work out (someone said it was good for Skyrim).

Yeah Skyrim is single handedly the biggest single player game ever. I have like 10 hours on it and i've just been exploring and clearing out some dungeons/caves with a few quests - nothing at all. You can set it to offline mode in Steam and you will never need an internet connection to play it (just to unlock/validate it first). You don't need to have played the others really, it's a different story altogether and you'd just miss some references, no biggy.

Also, afaik it's just you and me with 6990Ms in our Gx660s. We need someone else to join our club

 

I might be joining soon, I am 90% sure of buying the HD6990m tomorrow as an excuse of being my bday haha.

Also I would suggest not overclocking the memory much and try to get the core as high as possible. The memory bandwidth on this beast is huge, and the benefits of the memory clock increase are much lower than a good increase in core clocks, specially since we play at 1920x1080 res instead of even higher res.

Man I need to order the GPU, paste, pads and PSU... thats gonna set me back nicely haha. wish I could order the whole deal in one go tho... with SSD and CPU too. Maybe I will order the SSD on blackfriday/cybermonday.

BTW does the clevo gpu have HDMI out?

 

anything above 820/1200 is non-advisable

 

Ryzeki I do hope you get on board woth the card. I think youll be happy with the upgrade performance over the 5870.

 

I keep pushing my core up after long periods of gaming, lol, currently ok at 830. Skyrim FTW.

Also any idea how to manually control fan on the GX660R? My CPU is idle but when I stream a film my GPU load goes up. Of course the fan is based on CPU temps.. So GPU gets hotter as no fan.

I'll test HDMI tomorrow but pretty much what Talon said. The back plate was incredibly easy to remove, only stuck to the card with very weak glue. Can be pushed off easily, but may as well ask for one w/o.

Damn I want a heatsink with 3 pipes!

 

Ah, hell, Ry's going to jump on the 6990m bandwagon too? Dammit. Peer pressure. I don't really need it. In the last few months, the most graphically intensive game I've played is Killing Floor and maybe five minutes of Resident Evil 5.

But, dammit...

 

Haha, technically im on the same boat. I don't ... NEED it but I sure as hell want it haha. I can play most of my games fine but my GPU is already at its limits and the story won't be the same soon as newer games start pushing it more, and I would hate to play with lower res and settings!

Okay, I will ask them to remove the backplate for me, but if it is as easy as you say then it won't be a problem even if it did come with one!

Those are nice temps! thanks for the advice, I will ask them to remove the backplate for me and thanks also for the tip with Dell bios.

I am almost about to go ahead and order everything but I must first check if I wont be needing the money for anything in particular right now. ITs gonna be a hefty investment! As I will have to order the GPU, paste, pads, and PSU. On and I need a dremel tool too... any other tool I could use in case I lack a dremel?

I also want to wait till CyberMonday to order the SSDs. I literally have this week to decide if I am gonna go ahead and order everything or wait it out! But yeah... im like 90% convinced.

 

Ry, I can't believe it took you this long to get an SSD, haha. An SSD would be my first upgrade to my laptop. Well, either that or a wireless card, depending on what I had.

Anyhow, waiting for that furmark test From Talon. That test would simulate closest my hardware mods, so I'm extremely curious about it.

And Talon, if you see this before you run Furmark, make sure to get an idea of your room temperature. Ambient temps have a huge impact on heat.

 

Yeah me too man, but thats what happens when you are underpaid and with debt, coupled up with some months of unemployment!

 

Yes, but no audio out at default. For that you'll need to flash another vbios.

I still want to know:

- Whether I can manually control the fan on the GX660R
- Why GPU-Z is not seeing OpenCL support
- How can I set clocks to 100/150 so they stay there until I decide otherwise

Also the clocks on this thing are really I wish I could just perma [when required] set it to 100/150 sometimes. It seems it goes up randomly when you browsing, etc, and so do temps when on higher clocks. Even if you set it to 200/200 on Trixx it goes up and then down. With 100/150 temps stay as low as 45 degrees.

 

Hi!

Would anyone with the three-heatpipe version of the gx660 gpu heatsink mind giving me the part number for that? (it's on the sticker underneath the grills) Thanks!

p.s. Am I allowed to ask that? because I know MSI doesn't like to share that info. I'm new to the site so please educate me if i'm doing anything wrong.

 

You have two options for the GX660R fan. First is automatic, hardware control. Fan spins up as stuff gets hot, spins down as it gets cooler. Second option is turbo fan (or whatever the name is), that manually puts fan to full speed.

 

Interestiiiiiing..... Still don't know what to do: buying this 6990m or waiting some months for the next gen 28nm gfx cards from ATI/nVidia? They should also consume less power and being a bit cooler with the new process technology...

 

Isn't this another option to force fan speed?

 

it has no effect on the fan.

 

Exactly what I thought. Thank you.

 

When I run Furmark for 20 minutes on the 6970m the temp is 87c.

What are the temps like on the 6990m?

 

My max temp was 92C on the GX660

In my M17X R3 it's 69C Max and stays at 66-67C throughout 10mins of testing -> Stock cooling, no cooling pads, etc, just a beast re-paste by myself and excellent pad job

 

With or without turbo fan?

 

Yep, it would overheat, power down and maybe even melt? The fan is controlled by the CPU and furmark only stresses the GPU... so you can imagine what happens when the turbo fan is not on.

 

wow this is indeed a great news to know that gx660 are able to use the 6990m

any reseller recommend to get the 6990m from?

 

Hello. I want to buy a 6990M Clevo card for my GX660R. Do I really need to make a modification to the heatsink ( have got 5870m 2 pipes ) or can I just add some thermal pads and not use a dremmel on heatsink ? I am asking because I do not know if I should order a dremmel or not. If I need to, I will buy. But if it is not necesarry, than I will save some money for better CPU. My question is because some people say that changing from 5870m to 6990m is straight plug & play and some says than we need to modify heatsink.

 

Hello. I have got Clevo 6990M card in my GX660. I want to have sound over HDMI. Does anyone have a proper Dell vBios for 6990M that works on Clevo card in GX660 ?

And the second question is, in HWiNFO64 i have got four temp sensors:

1) GPU Thermal Diode
2) GPU TS0 (Disp IO)
3) GPU TS1 (Mem IO)
4) GPU TS2 (Shader)

First three of them are almost equal, but the fourth one ( GPU TS2 Shader ) is about 5 degrees higher than the others. Does anybody know whot TS2 Shader means ? Which area is not cool enough ? Maybe I put not enough thermal pads on some chip on 6990M ?

 

I am not quite sure where that temp sensor gets its readings from, but I can also verify when I had my 6990m, I had the exact same issue. I repasted and reapplied thermal pads numerous times, and couldn't seem to get any difference in temps.

As for a Dell vbios, I still have a folder with my original vbios and a few modded vbios for my old Dell 6990m. Send me a PM with you email address and I'll send over a zipped copy of the folder. Please make sure you check them out before you flash them. I'm not responsible if something goes wrong or they are incompatible with your Clevo card.

 

PM sent, will be great if you can point me which Dell vBios you used in your card.

Edit:

Unfortunatelly, the guy who sold me the card cheated me. He sold me 6970M ES as a 6990M. I did not found out this until I've tried to flash vBios from 6990M. It did not work with any of 4 vBioses I've got. He sold me overclocked 6970M ES

So, do you know what is the latest vBios for Dell 6970M ?