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alienware m17x r2 dell 7970m problem


Luigid

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Hello everyone, I purchased a 7970M for my m17x r2, mounted the card it works fine but when I try to open a game or benchmark windows 7 the system shuts down, having the 150w adapter that was what I thought but now having bought from 240w to the same thing happens ... the bios is 015 022 and I know that is not compatible (unfortunately I read it just now) but I made a downgrade and I did not have any problem even at 015 017 but the problem remains , the board is of, I hope that you give me some advice thanks!

ps: battery also works all the games just that your video card does not go to full speed by entering maximizes performance

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Welcome to T|I Luigid :)

Is there any strange colours or anomalies on screen before the laptop shuts down? I remember a while back another user could only get the loading screen of Sims started before the machine shut down and that was due to improper installation. I suggest you remove the card and re-install the heatsink.

After you installed the heatsink look at the card from the side to make sure the heatsink is making proper contact with the vRAM and GPU die, then install it into the laptop. Best of luck.

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hello, it was precisely the problem (I came to this conclusion before your message), at the beginning I thought an issue of driver / software since the battery (even though he was castrated very say 2/3 of its actual power was all well) by disassembling the laptop and pemendo by turning on the heat sink I saw that it is not perfectly pressed on the gpu, this is not a problem but you have to change the mounting screws of the heatsink. This is because the 5870m uses an x-bracket with mounting low while the 7970M has the media high, the fix is ​​to remove the screws from the series and change them with any of the important thing is that come without any kind of problem, I do not understand why not it says this in the various installations r2 leave some photos:

th_541031247_961049_10202817006017795_520031010_n_122_192lo.jpg th_541035355_10008364_10202817005977794_2094511900_n_122_467lo.jpg th_541039751_10149314_10202817005897792_691185643_n_122_38lo.jpg

th_541044820_10173198_10202817005937793_364473676_n_122_343lo.jpg

maximum temperature with 100% underload (sniper elite 2 filters, and more all at the most) 83 degrees (much more fresh 5870m)

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Glad to hear you fixed your problem Luigid, I'm about to attempt the same thing on mine (M17x R2 with 7970m). The strange thing in my case is that I've had no problems for the past month or so - Witcher 2 runs fine, Titanfall, you name it. Then I installed Elder Scrolls Online and even that was okay for a few days, until I BSOD'd (0x0..16). Nothing but trouble since then. I even installed Windows 8 on a fresh drive to completely escape my current install, and things have been even worse - without any specific AMD drivers installed, I still artifacting. I assume that's something to do with the Win 8 generic drivers.

Alas, the things we do for our machines. I'm hoping mine may have just had a little "bump" or something... fingers crossed.

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if you have artifacts on the screen is a problem with your video card, try to see the temperatures in my case because even at idle were much less than the 5870 but just started a 3d boom shut down suddenly, I thought so too a problem / driver but in the end was the temperature that spurted from 40 degrees to 90 and could not even monitor (because as said battery worked perfectly even in games!), I suggest you take the laptop apart (only the keyboard) and put pressure on heatsink of the video card and see if at least the test 3d windows goes smoothly

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Yeah, I was trying to convince myself it was merely a driver issue. It's funny, with the symptoms, it really could go either way. The strange things for me are the following:

1) It's been fine for weeks - no problems at all. This is a recent issue, and nothing has changed either software-wise or hardware-wise.

2) Temperatures didn't seem to have a great deal to do with it. Artifacting was present at all times under Windows 8, and never under Windows 7 (safe mode). Win 7, booted *with* video drivers artifacted and crashed fairly predictably. Furmark at 450MHz (battery) was reasonably stable, though artifacting. Furmark at 850MHz resulted in a grey screen with lines after seconds. I always monitor temps, and artifacting and crashing occurred as low as 40ish C.

3) The crashes seemed to correlate with the step up to 850MHz (running on battery at 450MHz presented minor artifacting but no crashes). Of course, correlation doesn't imply causation; there are other factors involved in the step up, including a voltage increase.

Anyway, today I was going to re-seat the card and figured while I was at it I'd replace the thermal pads and repaste the GPU. I noticed the inductors on the board don't look to be of the highest quality. Infact, one has a chip off the corner. For all I know this could be within spec; I'm no expert, but they appear to be ferrite, which is notorously fragile. Nonetheless it's concerning.

Anyway, after repasting and starting up again, I'm idling at ~29C (which is probably 10 above ambient), and Furmark at 1920*1080 ran for as long as I had the patience to run it (about 5 minutes).

The moral of the story (for me, anyway) is not to be lazy about taking it apart and getting into it. I could've saved hours had I followed my instincts and repasted/reseated in the first place, rather than messing around with a new Windows installation and about 35 different driver installs.

The next step for me is to flash an undervolted vbios (probably 0.975) to get temps down as far as possible under load.

Cheers to everybody here; this place truly is a font of knowledge!

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