frostie

Hi everyone. I am looking for a Vbios chip for a Dell 7970M 2Gig GPU. Would anyone be able to sell me one? I can Paypal you the money. Needs shipped to Liverpool, UK. Cheers, David.

@gokica. I now understand why you were asking about power draw and loading. That's a nice laptop you have, just been reading the review on Notebookcheck.net. Towards the end of the review they state the peak load at 138 Watts, so your PSU has plenty of headroom to OC. I previously had an Alienware M15x with a GTX670M and a 45watt i7. I used to measure the power usage with a current meter and found that under full load I was averaging 133 Watts. I upgraded to an extreme i7 so a 55watt chip that could be OCd, and with a 40% OC on the i7 and a 10% OC on the 670M I averaged 154 - 168 watts. The only way to really know your power draw is to meter it, but I don't think you need to with a 180 Watt supply. Your GPU load temps are excellent, on the M15 with the old Fermi technology the 670 averaged 75C for me and rose to 80C with a 10% OC. I wish you all the best with flashing the vbios, you are brave with it being an Asus custom fitted GPU board. Have you removed the bottom cover to see if you can locate a vbios chip, just incase anything should go wrong and it needs reprogramming?

@gokica. Good to meet you here on TI. I wondered that very same thing in relation to maximum safe temps so I contacted Nvidia Support direct. Really good bunch of people and you can open live text chats with a support representative. I was told that anything up to 85C is considered safe and healthy, 85C - 105C is considered to be critical, and quoting from memory, 105C and above you can expect to see smoke coming from your GPU!! Nice!. In relation to the power side of things, you are correct in saying that the primary side of the Alienware motherboard would be under less load due to the absence of not having to charge a battery plus running the system...., but I'm sure there will be clever feedback circuitry in there to regulate the flow of current into the battery while sustaining the correct supply for the main system. The Mosfets and Buck Converters used to down convert the primary supply are thermal and peak current limited to safe guard against failure, so in my opinion I don't think you will burn out the power supply side of things. Although protection is in place sadly nothing is perfect and failure can still happen. Failure is more likely to occur the greater the loading placed on a circuit. I would say keep the battery in the system no matter how heavy you plan to overclock, I don't see it affecting performance. Hope this helps.

@MrValle. Graphically there is usually very little going on in Main Menus so Frame Rates will be super high. What frame rates were you getting in game? If you have Vsync enabled and the native refresh rate of your display (in this case I assume your M18s dispaly) is 60Hz the game will be capped at 60 FPS. If the GPU struggles to process 60FPS then Vsync will force it to drop to 30FPS, if still struggling then to 15FPS. Most GPUs default to using 2 frame buffers to perform Vsync, thus the halving each time of the frame rate. To improve on this there is a process called Tripple Buffering, where 3 buffers are used to perform Vsync. You can enable this by launching the Nvidia control panel and uder 3D settings there is an option to switch on Tripple Buffering. This will help maintain Vsync and keep your Frame Rate up. I have a M17 R3 so am unfamiliar with the M18 bios, but I am assuming that you can disable the Alienware integrated graphics chip?

@MrValle. Think my head is beginning to hurt too. I've re-read your posts and there sure is alot going on with your 680. It doesn't sound like a card that is developing failure. It appears to be performing beautifully during bench marking. I am running Borderlands 2 without issues, and you have ran it in the past without issues so something in your system, OS, hardware or firmware has to have changed for it not to be running properly now. Sorry for stating the obvious, but when you try so many different things to find a solution, it starts to get unclear just how exactly the system is behaving. I would recommend that you start over from the beginning. Start by re-flashing the M18 motherboard bios, and re-check all the bios settings. Next perform a clean install of windows, and at this point only load the Cougar 66 chipset driver and nothing else. Then install the Nvidia 680M driver. Next install 3D Mark 11 and Nvidia Inspector and perform some benchmark tests. If results are good then install a network driver to gain access to the Web to download and I install Steam and Borderlands 2. Do not install any other drivers, no windows updates, no anti virus, absolutely nothing but what is required to get that game up and running. Then game and see if throttling occurs. Test and change only one thing at a time and build the system up slowly. I'm happy to help compare settings and gaming performance if we stick to Borderlands 2 as we both have it. If it helps PM me and I'll give you my Skype details so we can arrange to perform testing live as it will greatly speed the process along rather than bouncing posts back and forth in this forum. Have a think and let me know.

@MrValle. Just thought of something else you could try. If you suspect the PSU failing, remove the battery and run on the PSU alone. If it’s dropping out you’ll notice it this way.

@MrValle. If your GPU is throttling in 3D Mark 11 then it will throttle in modern games. My stock bios also didn't allow an OC to be applied. I think you are near a stage of needing to change out hardware as you have pretty much tried everything else. Try the latest Nvidia driver from Laptopdrivers2go.com. Have you a spare GPU you can test the main system with? Ideally you would need a 100 Watt card to test it equally in relation to power draw. I had a 7970M go faulty in the same manner, except it deteriorated alot faster. It too started throttling and eventually wouldn't run 3D clocks, then died. Cards go faulty, Over Clocked or not. My advice would be to flash SVL7's modded bios and apply a decent Over Clock, 100 - 150 Mhz on the core. Uncheck any Vsync options in your games and drive the card hard. If it is dying you may as well kill it and get to a final conclusion if the GPU is faulty or not. Judging from other members applied OCs, 150 is mild, so Crank it up.

@MrValle. Hopefully that will restore your system to proper working order, but sadly I suspect not as I've ran Afterburner with the 680 and had no issues. If my GPU continued to throttle my next step was to revert to the default vbios. I don't have access to it at the moment but if you need the default bios let me know and I will upload it for you. Is your 680 throttling in all games you play? I noticed all the titles you mentioned are Online Multi Player Titles, try playing a game totally Offline and see if throttling occurs. Edit: I will run Afterburner and HWinfo again on my system tonight to see if throttling returns and post the feed back tomorrow.

@svl7. I am currently running your modded 80.04.33.00.32 no OV bios. I did try the 80.04.5B.00.02 no OV bios and found that it dropped my 3D Mark 11 score by approximately 90 points. I immediately reverted back to the older bios but never gamed on the new bios to see how stable it was for me. You mentioned in one of your posts that it was recommended to run on the new bios as it was more stable. What are the main differences between the Old and New bios? Its was in one of your posts you mentioned Nvidia Inspector, I just started using that and I'm well impressed, it is a great software tool for the 680, so thanks for the heads up.

@Vlad Fomitchev & Sirana – Thanks guys for your help and support. Last night I got in about an hour and a half of gaming and this how I got on. I had HWinfo and MSI Afterburner set to launch at Startup, the first thing I did was to close both programs. I then downloaded Nvidia Inspector (as recommended by some members in the forum, thanks guys), first time I’ve used it and I really like it. It has a nice interface and could be described as GPUZ and Afterburner all in one. I used this as my new GPU monitoring tool. I then launched Planetside 2 throught Steam and began gaming. I run FRAPS to keep an eye on frame rates and for ten minutes my Frame rate stayed in the high 40s and no throttling was present. I then decided to up the anti and push the GPU a little harder so I OC the core to 858 and proceeded to game in PS2 for another 40 minutes. No trottling at all. NInspector graphed the GPU at a constant usage at 70 – 99%, just as I would expect in PS2. I then decided to run Borderlands 2 and gamed for about 30 minutes and no trottling, with my frame rate at an almost constant 60. I may have cried wolf a little too early, but I was definitely experiencing trottling on both game titles yesterday. Hopefully it may have been as I expected a Steam update or windows update in the background. @MrValle. I checked my system details and I am running SVL7’s modified vbios 80.04.33.00.32 and driver version 310.90. Thanks to the guys at Laptopvideo2go, I download my Nvidia drivers from there, so I recommend giving that a go. I backed up my GPUs original firmware so if you want I can give you the unmodified vbios if you would like to try that, just let me know. My 680M is a the 2Gig Dell version. I really do hope you get your GPU running OK. Any help at all you need just keep posting here or PM me, and I will try my best to offer support. Over the next few days, if I get a chance to do some more gaming, I will post any issues I may have.

Sorry MrValle for I meant to say that it is good to meet you here and thank you for posting in response to my issue. It is always easier to find solutions with more help. I tell a lie, I did flash the other vbios, immediately tested the GPU with 3D Mark 11 and got a lower score on the new vbios. I ran the benchmark a couple of times just to make certain the results were coming out the same, and found that my score dropped by approximately 90 points with the new vbios. I immediately reverted back to the older vbios and left it well alone. The fact that you have performed a clean install of windows and the throttling issue still remains, cancels the possibility of software incompatibilities or software updating causing the issue. Thanks for letting me know I won’t roll my system back now. How long has your GPU been experiencing throttling? Are you only getting throttling in some games and not others?

@ MrValle. Ah.... I was going to try the 80.04.5B.00.02 vbios tonight, as in a post SVL7 did mention it being more stable than the earlier one. I ran out of time last night to begin properly testing the GPU but I did run Darksiders 2 on maximum settings with Vsync Off and it utilized the GPU to 99% usage continuously without any throttling. I did notice though that temps never exceeded 63C. The GPU throttles most in Planetside 2 but PS2 does make it reach 72 – 75 degrees C, more than Borderlands 2. I might use Hwinfo to control the fans and purposely slow them down to increase the GPU temp when running Darksiders 2 to see if throttling occurs. I had a spare PSU to try and I can say now it made no difference. I use Norton Ghost to backup my system so I can quickly and reliably skip back a few weeks to when my GPU did not throttle to see if it all runs smooth once more. You never know what nasties good old Windows Updates bring with it. MrValle, what version of windows are you running, and what version of Nvidia driver are you on? Do you game through Steam? I use Steam and I am slightly suspecting it, or a combination of it and the background applications I have running on my system. I am on UK time so will try and do some testing tonight and give you feed back early morning. At this stage, to me anyway, it doesn’t look like hardware failure. Hope fully we get it sorted, two heads are better than one and all that hey!!! @svl7. Please may I draw upon your experience here, does throttling only in some games sound like possible hardware failure or software issues?

Hi All, I am running a 680M in an Alienware M17 R3. I have SVL7s unlocked vbios on there, but am currently not overclocking the GPU as so far it has proven powerful enough for my gaming needs. I have HWino and MSI Afterburner launching on startup to monitor performance and temps. Last night when playing Planetside 2 and Borderlands 2 the GPU was constantly trottling. The core clock never dropped below the default maximum of 758Mhz but the GPU usage/load would drop as low as 30%, constantly adjusting itself back up to 99%, up/down, up/down.....all the time. Is this know as throttling if the core clock never drops? I checked for unwanted programs running in the background, restarted games, un checked Vsync options to try and force the GPU to full load at all times but it still throttled alot. Nothing to my knowledge on my system has changed since it functioned properly. Any ideas what might cause this? My GPU temperature in both games sits around 65 – 72C. It can’t be brought on by thermal throttling at these temperature could it? I ran 3D mark 11 when it was throttling but my score was normal 6120, and Afterburner graphed the GPU usage at 99% during all GPU tests. Strange!!!! Any help much appreciate guys. Thanks.

Hi All. I upgraded to the 7970 just days ago and run a 920XM by it's side in my system. I've read the posts and am slowly starting to learn how to set the system up for the best results thanks to great software tools such as TS, HWinfo and Afterburner. @svl7, your advice is spot on, I'm finding every game is different and the system needs to be monitored and tweaked for each game in turn. Thank you for your modified vbios files, they work great and I will buy you that beer once I get my rig setup a little better. :-) I installed Catalyst 12.10 and my average best result (everything at stock clocks and GPU at 1V) in 3D Mark 11 was 5443. Last night I found a beta Catalyst 12.11 AMD Catalyst. Installed it and (everything at stock clocks and GPU at 1V) in 3D Mark 11 my score shot up to 6021. Nearly fell off the chair!! What an improvement, get it now. It improves GPU performance but sadly doesn't improve throttling. @loafer987 Upgrading to a 240W PSU will not make one bit of difference to solving the throttling issues. I have both and have been testing across both and see no difference in system performance. @nidcuim What are your core multiplier values TRL in Throttle Stop for playing Border Lands 2, and what version of Catalyst are you running? @unclewebb The log that TS captures, is that a record of core 0 only, or an average of all the cores combined? Thanks for all your help guys, really appreciate

@hitokiri_jaguar. In one of your older posts, you mentioned the technician thought that some transistors on the motherboard were damaged. Is your Alienware working again? If so what did he do to repair it? I agree with mw86 that it sounds like he is worried about the power draw of the 7970 on the voltage rails of the motherboard, causing voltage regulators to stress and over-heat. Most voltage regulators have internal thermal protection and load protection to prevent damage. I really don’t think it needs to be of concern, don’t modify your card. Components do randomly fail, and as luck had it unfortunately one of your components failed. I'm still waiting for my 7970 to be shipped but judging by this forum and other forums there are plenty of people running 7970M in the M15x and experiencing no such voltage regulator issues. I'm still interested in hearing what the technician has to say, please keep us posted. @svl7 As mentioned I am still waiting arrival of my 7970 to do my own testing but from reading other peoples posts it appears that the card throttles when running at stock core voltage 1.05V. Under-volting fixes this issue, and I can understand why as the card will draw less power from the motherboard supply rails and the voltage will stabilise as a result, and less thermal energy produced. Then I read posts where people have over-volted to 1.1V and have managed to overclock as a result. This will lead to a higher power draw than at stock. This leads me to believe that the card is not throttling due to thermal throttling but due to voltage rail monitoring with set voltage values to bring on throttling…? I just find it really interesting. I have to admit that I have no experience of the in-depth effects a Vbios has on the operation of a card or different driver builds. Maybe the answers to my questions rest with these elements. I understand you are busy and don’t expect time to be spent on this, I’m just glad the card works and can’t wait to get my hands on one. Anyone else pondering upon this?