ichime

oh nice! @ichime with the 7970s do you have the CPU OCed?

I have all the CPU stuff disabled (no fsb oc or turbo boost) since power consumption for the system will max out my 240w adapter

EDIT:

Custom matte grille with speaker splitters removed:

Project is not dead yet

Shell is ANODIZED blue, thanks to Rob at Able Anodizing in Brooklyn, NY, looks even better in person!

Also, has two Radeon 7970Ms as well as a Sony Optiarc BD-5850H 6x Blu-Ray burner (a lot quieter than the older panasonic DVD burner I had).

Next plan is installing the custom grille I made that sits below the palmrest. I'll take pictures of that once that's done. In the meantime, I hope you like

Hey, has anyone had any success flashing a Dell VBIOS in a Clevo card?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just read the 2nd to last post, lol

well you'll have to keep us out of the dark on that one... now wont you

Depends on how lazy I'm feeling

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x/526-m17x-project-legacy-9.html#post21475

BTW, project is not dead, but I'm going to be giving this machine a facelift...

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Also, I'm going to try to anodize my old frame (Again, I know). This time, I'm just going to let the anodizing company do all the surface prep since they would take care of all the potential comtaminates and stuff (surface has to be really clean if you want to get a good finish). Hopefully I'll get something before the end of the month.

In the meantime, I ordered the new Sony Optiarc BD-5850H (6x BD-R slot-load) to keep this system up to date along with the 7970Ms (whenever Eurocom decides to ship them )

hmm, i might do just that between now and the time I start school. Thanks friend

(BTW, for those who think Project Legacy is dead...it isn't.)

How much did it cost for the whole process? I might be interested in something like this...

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Hey guys, sry I haven't been around lately. As for this project, I'll probably restart the anodizing portion sometime in the beginning of next year. I've learned a lot about this process and I'll probably get even better results this time around.

Also, to mw's quote, I believe they sold the 240w PSU with the M18x when equipped with the GTX 460M single or SLi.

Tried it, didn't work. I've concluded (or close to concluding based on everything I tried) that it has something to do with the power supply. The drivers probably disables SLi if there isn't enough power available for the system I'm guessing. I'll need that 330w PSU mod to verify this or someone with a M18x and 580M SLi to try using a 240w on it (vs the 330w one) to see if the SLi option disappears.

True Ichime and have you tried a ramdisk for the browser files and temp folder? you would see browser reaction time increase by double atleast.

I tried that but it didn't seem to help much. I'm starting to think that it could be the ram I use too (only 4gb, which is kinda small considering that I put my computer to sleep and rarely fully shut it down).

Actually I went to Firefox because of Chrome, which nuked my SSD and slowed my HDD because of the excessive cache writing and it seems as Firefox is doing the same thing, though to a lesser degree. I probably have to edit a few settings to force it to write to my RAM instead.

But those figures I mentioned are just ballpark figures based on the desktop variants. If a M17x-R3 or M18x provides optimal cooling, it could help such a modded card reach those clocks with some level of stability.

Awesome job Marco! Wish I visited this site more but for whatever reason, Firefox doesn't like this site (minor freezes and certificate errors). BTW 1.15v would open the 6970M to about 950-960mhz core and 1.17v should allow for 1000mhz core.

Thanks for the help, but I tried that and it still didn't work. From the research I've done so far, it seems that there's a different type of SLi Certification/Trigger in the M18x and the Clevo X7200 BIOSes that allows it to install the newer cards in SLi.

I tried using both nVflash for DOS and Windows. The windows version wouldn't even let me type anything and the DOS version says it can't detect the cards. I'm using the latest version for both.

Edit: Nevermind, nvflash DOS works. Apparently there was even a newer version that supports newer nVidia cards. However, after reflashing, it still doesn't activate SLi

1211 580m.zip

Hi, where's Ike C. or anybody? I followed this guide and installed 2 x 6970M cards in Alienware R2. The cards came from Clevo P150HM. However, they don't work in CRX. ATI catalist panel says something wrong with CRX bridge. I tried anything like checking cables, different drivers, no use. Can anyone help?

Since they came from a P150HM, you have to flash both cards to the modded VBIOS or the original X7200 VBIOS (preferable to use the modded VBIOS, however) in order to get Crossfire to work. Part 3 of the guide shows you how to do this. The VBIOS the P150HM 6970M does not support Crossfire.

Awesome stuff man! Something I would love to help out with if I had the knowledge and the patience

I have some 580m VBIOS files from the Dell 580m here... one from the r3 and one from the M18x, found them online, here you go:

Sweet! I'll try them later on today if my driver mods don't work.

I might flash it to the m18x 580M bios, if someone could dump out the VBIOS for them via gpu-Z or something similar. I'll ask around if I come to that.

so wait, you have 3 SLI calbes left to test? LOL nice at least you will make sure it is not the cable

I wonder how low you have to set the TDP/TDC for the PSU to handle an SLI configuration like that (especially when slightly overclocked)

hehe, yep, it's probably not the cable since I just switched one of them. It could also be something more annoying (i.e. nVidia blocking SLi support for certain systems with certain cards).

If I get SLi working, I'm going to start off with disabling turbo boost. I already did that when I ran a bunch of 6970M CF gaming benchmarks that I will hopefully compare to some 580M SLi runs.

Nice man! do you experience any throttling?

Running Vantage and 3d11, no. As a matter of fact, temperatures are pretty good. After adjusting HWinfo accordingly with the sensors, max temp was about 71 degrees after 3d11, 70 degrees after a Vantage run.

Cool, finally installed the driver! Knew you'd figure it out...

Where did you get the proper SLI cable? Keep us posted. Do you have some pics of the lid?

I actually bought 4 SLi cables originally from M17x-R1s. It's possible that the SLi cable I'm using could be faulty, but I'll probably check that later. Since I'm stuck in single card mode, I'm going to play some games to see how temps respond.

Update: Got the lid and base back but not really satisfied as I originally thought; too many wrinkles and spots on the paintjob. I might just give up on this part on the project and just stick with the Lunar Silver cover.

On the otherside, I received two GTX 580Ms. Drivers are a pain in the ass to install, but I got at least one to install. SLi isn't working yet, but here's a quick vantage run of a Single 580M in my R2:

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Just a little update:

Installed a Bigfoot Killer Wireless-N 1103 and it's definitely better than the Intel Ultimate-N 6300, even though I used priority software with the 6300 and opened up ports on my router. The connection is much more stable, pings are better and I don't lose internet access randomly anymore.

I also got someone to powdercoat the lid and base and that's being done now. I should get the parts back by the end of next week.

Lastly, I might be placing an order on some of the more recent high end nVidia (GTX 4xxM/GTX 5xxM series) cards to test in the R2 to see if it works in SLi. Also, if anyone has an M17x-R1 that they would like to test to see if some of the newer cards will work in their system (both the 6970M and the nVidia cards), please PM me. This is only for the M17x-R1 though.

So 6870M VBIOS on an actual 5870M card? Sounds interesting...wonder if it fixes the M15x fan issue...

It snapped when I tried to bend it back to fit back in the chassis. Not sure if the initial distortion was caused by the anodizing or just it siting there for a long time...

I'll probably have the lid deanodized while I order another base to get both parts powder coated.

Here are some pictures. The color looks great in person (think of the nano-suit in Crysis). You can see that the Base is pretty much useless :/