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I'm in modding mood :D

We (me and a friend of mine, G73JW owner) just put a 6970m in the G73JW to see whether it works. The system POSTed and loaded Windows, but unfortunately the screen stayed blank :(

Some background infromation about this whole story... When I exchanged the CPU of this machine a couple of weeks ago I decided to take a look at the GPU as well, as the system was already disassembled. (Note, it's a real pain to take apart this machine... totally unlike the AW systems... you have to tear it down completely, take out the mobo and then turn it around to get access to GPU/CPU...)

Anyway, the GPU has nothing to do with an MXM-card... except for the connector which seems to be the same (at least physically, I have no idea whether it's the same electronically)... but see yourself:

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As you can see, the connector is physically identical, but the die is positioned differently than on a standard card... As the G73JH has the GPU at the MXM-conform place we got a heatink of the JH model. After some cutting and grinding it did fit the 6970m. The problem was that you can't fix the card with screws since the holes of the G73JW 460m are at totally different places... but that's nothing a little bit duct tape cant fix :D The important thing is that the heatsink can be screwed on very well.

But well, like I said, it didn't work... a couple of hours work for nothing. So we had to disassemble the system one more time to put the 460m back, lol.

I knew the chance of the 6970m working was small... but since the G73JH (5870m) can run with a MSI 5870m as well, I thought it's worth a try.

Maybe it's only an issue with a hardware ID, I have no idea... like I said, POST was fine, system booted, but screen stayed black.

If anyone of you have an idea to get it working, let me know!

There are two more pictures as attachment which show the 6970m on the mobo and in the system, if you're interested... just as "proof" :D

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Love it Svl7, nice job working on modding... not sure what made the pc just display a black screen. Did you guys try vga mode and taking out all video drivers, seems like if you got windows to boot there's a chance. You obviously have the will, so there's probably a way.

Edited by mw86
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Yeah, uninstalled all drivers in advance.. and I even tried to get the picture on an external screen (just for the case that I messed up with the display connector...). Too bad it didn't work. I'm not sure whether it's usual that windows boots when the GPU doesn't get recognized by the system...

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Hmm, actually no, didn't think of this... but there wasn't even a boot logo showing up, not a single pixel :D I guess it wouldn't make a difference. But next time I run into similar problems I'll give it a try.

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  • Founder

Yeah if you can't boot into safe mode means that the BIOS is not recognizing the card. If VBIOS was the problem then you should be able to at least boot into safe mode but under normal mode you shouldn't be able to install drivers

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It wouldn't have POSTed if it was a bios problem. Seems to be driver related if the Windows logo looked fine and not distorted. Safe mode might be worth trying. Also, try removing the cmos battery and clearing it to reset the system when putting the 6970M in it.

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Hmm, I'm not sure, maybe Windows was set to "no GUI boot"... but I don't think so since there wasn't even the Asus logo showing up.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So, since I had no more ideas so far to get the 470m working, I put the 6970m back and made sure every cable was plugged in correctly, especially the display connector.

Still the same symptoms, no picture at all, not even the Asus logo. Pretty crazy... with the 470m I can go to the BIOS, boot DOS from a USB drive and use nvflash etc... it just doesn't boot Windows. But with the 6970m I don't have a picture at all, but it seems to boot Windows, it's driving me crazy!!!

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So you said the 6970M in a M15x will stay at 2D clocks and won't go to 3D... Maybe it detects no gpu usage etc and doesn't scale itself up due to that. Can you flash the vbios with RBE and set the 2D clocks to the 3D speeds? So the card runs 3D speeds all the time no matter what? Or are you limited to 2D voltage.

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So you said the 6970M in a M15x will stay at 2D clocks and won't go to 3D... Maybe it detects no gpu usage etc and doesn't scale itself up due to that. Can you flash the vbios with RBE and set the 2D clocks to the 3D speeds? So the card runs 3D speeds all the time no matter what? Or are you limited to 2D voltage.

No sorry, the 470m works only with 2d clocks in the M15x, but the card is definitely in working order (that the card runs only in 2d mode in the M15x is a known issue). The 6970m works still perfectly in the M15x :D

I'll try to get the 470m working in the M15x as well, but it has been tried already by Inap and didn't work so far.

But it's weird that I have a picture with the 470m in the G73 and with the 6970m not even the boot screen shows up.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Yeah this is very weird if a gtx 260 can work in a G50V-T then i don't know why it can't work with a G73JW stupid Asus always trying to make things complicated. Put that 6970 in that M15x i agree with unreal you know you want all that power!!! Too bad the GTX 470 doesn't work with our machines that well it would of been a great benchmark card to compare to the 6970.

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Well, the 6970m seems to work in the JH, but there are still some problems...

I only tested it in the JW, and unfortunately I wasn't successful. Maybe it would work when flashing the JH BIOS on the JW, but that's too crazy, lol.

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Well you can always get a spare one to be just in case. How many machines do you own? You sound just like me lol. But aren't you flashing the VBIOS after you extract it from gpuz? You should try what your suggesting just take your time with it if your take determined though. What problems are there for 6970 in the JH? I would love to try that but i really am not good with opening machines usually it ends up either going to the depot, or a tech comes out and fixes it lolz.

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I only own an Alienware M15x, hahaha. All the stuff I tried with the JW was on the machine of a friend of mine, who was kind enough to let me rip apart his precious system, lol :D I was talking about the system BIOS, not the vbios. The JH and JW have similar mobos, so the JW may work with the JH BIOS, but that's a crazy idea. I only thought about it because the 6970m seems to work in the JH, but not in the JW, even though they are almost identical hardware.wise.

But I can't just flash the JH BIOS on the JW, it's not my system and I don't want to brick it. :)

Some guy at NBR finally tried to put the 6970m in his JH and it works, but it won't go to 3d clocks without manipulating the clocks and the performance seems to be less than it should be.

Disassembling the G73 is not really easy, especially when you do it for the first couple of times. You'll need to disconnect all cables from the mobo, remove an incredible amount of screws, (about 4 different types, no counting the special GPU screws) and take out the mobo from the system to get access to the GPU. The heatsink needs some modding, otherwise it won't fit on the 6970m.

- A lot of work, and nothing I'd recommend doing withouth ESD protection and a steady hand. It's easy to mess up with all those fragile cables, but if you're working concentrated it's totally possible to exchange the GPU, but it's really time-consuming.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry for not answering man my father died, he was in a lot of pain been somewhat of a difficult time. Yeah man the G73JH is a real pain to change the parts even to put a SSD in the drive bay sucks you gotta reverse the caddy it's so stupid and they always give cappy seagate for drives not like Scorpio black WD drives best hard drives not hating seagate either but man thank god i bought me some new external cause that Segate 1TB Go Flex was going to die on me good thing i got it fixed though and i know i digress. Before in the past the G50 series was so much easier to work on they want to make it so hard to replace everything and you gotta have a steady hand because some of those cables can really mess up the machine that's how happened when my friend was pasting mine didn't go so well which resulted in a 2 month wait to fix it. Happy at least the new G743D has a higher illumance, black levels and brightness over all, and contrast the G73 has horrible brightness but great black levels but whatever. Well hopefully with the new G74 you can try it out i wish they went back too ATI those cheap bastards looked like the G73JH was really the best bang for your buck. What's new with you? Got any games to reconmend? I really got bored with gaming for the summer lol. And also it's only good to buy one of these Asus from people in good conditon cause it's just not worth it to buy something that is manufactured so cheaply and not to mention the warranty lol.

Edited by freedomofthedarkendheart
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My condolences to you as well, @freedomofthedarkendheart .

The G74 got the card soldered on to the mobo, you won't belive it... but it's true, a 560m directly on the mobo... only Asus can do such things.

There's not much time for gaming atm, I should be learning for the exams, haven't tried any new games recently.

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