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M15x & 6970m from MXM-upgrade


svl7

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When Inap and RogueOP (at the "other forum") recently confirmed that a Dell 6970m is working in a M15x I decided to try the upgrade myself.

But as it's hard to get your hands on a Dell 6970m here in Switzerland (at least without having a M17x R3), I decided to get a 6970m from MXM-upgrade and try it myself.

Here's the card next to a 5850m and a GTX 260m:

p1090278.th.jpg

As you see, the layout is pretty much the same and the heatsink from the M15x fits perfectly. (Of course this doesn't change the fact that the M15x isn't actually designed for such a high-powered card :D)

p1090305y.th.jpg

So the installation is pretty easy, no heatsink modding or similar needed to make it fit.

The unsolved issues so far are the following:

- The fans are running constantly, at a high, but not highest speed. Similar to the M17x R2 afaik. The fans also won't go automatically to full speed, even during under 100% load.

- I wasn't able to install the drivers first. I tried the regular from the AMD site, the M17x R3, the 11.4 preview... nothing. I succeeded when Fatal1ty39 suggested to try the driver of the P150HM racer, which worked.

-Audio through DP doesn't seem to work, even with the Dell drivers.

The heat is okay so far, I guess this can be optimized. The memory hit 90°C during a benchmark run, the core 85°C, both with a little overclock.

Anyway, the card hasn't been in the system for a long time, so there's definitely more testing needed. Also the power will probably become an issue as the 920xm already consumes quite a lot under load.

Here are some benchmark runs:

Stock GPU and 920xm with 24x multi across all cores:

6970mstock24x.th.png

With a little OC and stock 920xm.

6970m105occlock920xmsto.th.png

Anyway, I'm still testing the card. What I need to add is that so far the support from MXM-upgrade has been very quick and helpful.

And a big thanks again to iloveb00bs and RogueOP for (quickly) testing it with a Dell card in the first place.

BTW... we need some more M15x users over here... the M17x users are a little bit in the majority :D Too bad the M15x seems to be a dying species. Shame on you, Dellienware.

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Nicely done svl7! For the fans, did you try mumak's hwinfo32? I'm not sure if it works with the M15x but it should. The scores are pretty good, almost like the R3. And yeah we definitely need more M15x owners here, it's got a huge Alienware + M17x owners slant :) Keep spreading the word and hopefully more people with M15x's and other brands will migrate.

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Thanks guys!

CCC says: "Driver Packaging Version 8.80-101110a1-109153C-ATI " Now that I have working drivers installed I will see whether I can now install a different version. I'll keep you updated.

I'm using HWinfo32 for a while now, it works very well with the M15x and it's essential until I find a solution for the fan control (Hopefully I will).

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Great keep posting your results. What respin rate did you use for HWinfo32? I ended up using 13000Milisecs which doesn't seem to go out of sync for me set at max speed all three fans. I figured other M15 owners would like to know.

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Well so far, I haven't a lot of time atm, so I'm still using HWinfo32 for the fan control, but hopefully I find sometime during the 1 week vacation over easter (no university ...though I should probably study during this time :D)

Gaming is great with this card, haha!

Today I got something to roughly measure the power draw of the system (the measuring error is about ± 10W, but that's ok as it was a cheap device). Haven't measured a lot with it yet, though it seems the system uses about 120-130W while gaming on stock (both GPU and CPU). I'll keep you update when I have some more numbers, hopefully in a couple of hours.

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It's a 150W PSU... in extreme benches the system can draw up to about 180W (ask iloveb00bs for example :D) I need to be careful with OCing the system as the 920xm can drawa lot of power. I recently run a 3Dmark11 at about 800/1000 and got P3500, but when I also OCed the processor with TS to 24x across all cores the score was only about 3100...

I'll make so measurements today or tomorrow and let you guys know about the results.

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It's a 150W PSU... in extreme benches the system can draw up to about 180W (ask iloveb00bs for example :D) I need to be careful with OCing the system as the 920xm can drawa lot of power. I recently run a 3Dmark11 at about 800/1000 and got P3500, but when I also OCed the processor with TS to 24x across all cores the score was only about 3100...

I'll make so measurements today or tomorrow and let you guys know about the results.

Congrats that's a nice score on the M15x, keep us posted.

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Voila ... P3602 in 3dMark11. The power meter reported about 160 to 170W during the combined test... (± the measurement error of about 10W)

Clocks at 830/1100 and the CPU at 22x across all cores (76/62 TDP/TDC)

Pushing the core speed harder only caused the driver to crash during the test... hmm.

3dm118301100920xm22xcom.th.png

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Voila ... P3602 in 3dMark11. The power meter reported about 160 to 170W during the combined test... (± the measurement error of about 10W)

Clocks at 830/1100 and the CPU at 22x across all cores (76/62 TDP/TDC)

Pushing the core speed harder only caused the driver to crash during the test... hmm.

3dm118301100920xm22xcom.th.png

Looks like the sample you have may not like going over 830 mhz. Inap has been pushing 880 on his but the one I had in my R3 maxed out at 845 mhz. Pretty decent run too, are you turning off AMD tesselation in the CCC? If not try doing that and see what score you get. Technically it's cheating but all of us do it for a max score.

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Haha, no, didn't realize this. I'm more or less new to AMD cards and benching :D

You mean uncheck "AMD optomized" at the Tesselation option? I can do that at the next round, I'll keep you posted. Hmm... it's a feature of the card, should be allowed, hahaha ;)

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Ok, unchecked "AMD optimized" at the Tesselation option... hope that's what you meant. I actually got a little higher score even though the clocks are lowered a bit (but I pushed the CPU a bit more). I don't think it makes a huge difference... Maybe I do the same run again during the next benching session, with the AMD optimized checked, to see the difference.

Here's the score:

3dm118251050notesscpu24.th.png

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Slv7 congrats on 3630.

Guys one more, look for the option to optimize flat surfaces I belive it helps! It's in the ati driver 11.4beta on this forum.

Edited by mw86
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So i decided to get me a Dell one @ ebay.

I can confirm:

Hdmi/dp audio works

Throttlestop detects temp sensor (which it didn't do on my dell 5870, for some reason)

Runs at about 52-55 C idle, haven't tested any games yet

Fans run fine for me aswell

Had to install the M17xR3 drivers before i could install AMD drivers

svl7 how did you try to get audio through hdmi/dp working? Coz both my 5870 and 6970, it didn't work out of the box.

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Strigae - so basically it's confirmed that the dell 6970M works fine in M15x without the need for hwinfo32 for fan control? IF so that's pretty awesome.

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Sorry guys, posted in the wrong thread & can't seem to find delete post option.

That's awesome about 6970 + m15x working though!

Edited by Jimbo
Wrong thread!
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Yea just like inap's card, i needed to swap the metal thingy beneath the card. ;) (used one from a dell 260m)

The fans adjust just fine for me.

Temp goes from 52 to 85 C, a little bit hotter than my dell 5870m. (think it was topping about 75).

I like that throttlestop is able to see the temp sensor.

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Great, that's quite an accomplishment for you Strigae and Inap. That puts M15x quite a bit higher on the Benching block. I think we are building a Fleet here at T|I...

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So i decided to get me a Dell one @ ebay.

I can confirm:

Hdmi/dp audio works

Throttlestop detects temp sensor (which it didn't do on my dell 5870, for some reason)

Runs at about 52-55 C idle, haven't tested any games yet

Fans run fine for me aswell

Had to install the M17xR3 drivers before i could install AMD drivers

svl7 how did you try to get audio through hdmi/dp working? Coz both my 5870 and 6970, it didn't work out of the box.

Great to know!! Inap already confirmed the fan control, but it's good news that DP/HDMI audio works.

I'm on the latest preview driver (11.4) and it doesn't work, I tried installing the Dell 5850 driver (only HDMI audio part of course) but it didn't make a difference... I'll try it again tomorrow or so, maybe I messed up something, but chances are that it doesn't work. When I connect my TV to the M15x I always get a notification which says that audio won't work for this connection... mybe it's even a thing with my TV. I never used HDMI/DP audio, I only wanted to try it to confirm whether it's working or not... usually I connect my sound system with the 3 stereo jacks (my Logitech z5500 doesn't have a HDMI in)

Now I'm curious about how far you can push your card... show us some numbers!

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