Nospheratu

Thanks for the info guys, I'll update the mod with Dells latest versions. edit: @J95 , @buellersdayoff I've updated the mod for R4 and 17 users with the Windows 8 version. Please let me know if you experience any problems. Check the first post for the updated mod.

Thanks J95, does the latest version fix any problems you were experiencing?

imsolidstate returned to investigate his 330W mod and fixed the problem that limited the PSU to 240W. He detailed it on his website here. Basically all that needs to be done is ground the ID line coming from the 330W and the PSU works to its full potential delivering up to 440W before tripping. Its a very easy fix for the 330W mod but you will have an uphill battle trying to get a second 680M to work in the R2 with the SLi certification issues. I actually took the 330W mod a bit further and made an adapter so I can use either the 240W or the 330W PSU with my machine. I'll put up a guide once I have some time.

I've successfully completed the 330W PSU mod! M17x R2 - 7970M Ghz Edition CrossFire 920XM at 25x on all cores with a TDP/TDC of 90/82 and GPU's running 1000/1400 @ 1025v with the latest 13.11 Beta's. No driver tweaks, stock standard CCC apart from the clocks set in OverDrive. Seems the XM is holding these cards back at these speeds. Max power draw was 325W on the first test.

The higher voltage may affect other components apart from the from the GPU die but I'm not exactly sure. I know from personal experience after running my 5870M's at a +0.025v overvolt for over a year it suddenly wasnt stable anymore and I had to drop voltage and clocks back to stock. Desktop components cannot be compared to laptop components. They are built for an entirely different environment, not the tightly spaced areas we deal with in a laptop. After my 5870M's lost stability with the overvolt and overclocks I did some research and found the above information. MXM cards cannot be compared to a desktop GPU with regards to tolerances. Of course they may be exceptions to the rule but when dealing with such expensive components I'd rather play it safe and run the card over its design limits for benches only. The checksum is merely for checking if the vBIOS file has not become corrupt after download or copying it to a flash drive, nothing more. I'm unfamiliar with ATIwinflash but I know the command for the regular DOS ATIflash is "atiflash -cf biosfile.rom" where biosfile.rom is the name of your vBIOS file. You should rename the vBIOS to an 8 character file name before flashing. After executing the above command, ATIflash returns the checksum value of the file which should be 0xF400, if it is different you will need to re-download the file as it is corrupt.

My opinion is based on personal experience after running my 5870M's overvolted permanently. I think a reasonable overvolt would be fine for short periods such as benchmarking. For continuous use such as gaming I would advise against it since it will degrade your cards performance over time and you will have to lower your settings for stability.

If you do manage to find a proper fix for the Windows 8 issue please let me know as I may have to update the version of the exe or add the fix to the first page.

Welcome to T|I asperger Chances are you are running the same vBIOS this mod is based on. There are no changes apart from voltage and OverDrive so if this stock version doesnt resolve your problems the modded files won't either. Did you remove and re-install the card recently? You may need to reinstall the card again just to rule out improper installation. I suggest you open up a new thread under the CLEVO section for more appropriate help.

The guide you posted seems a bit generic for Alienware systems. The steps I posted is specific to the M17x R2 and no other laptop. It was created after a lot of trial and error from various R2 users. Personally, I think the Breed theme is outdated. There will be no updates or support for it. The design was never as clean as it should have been and screams tacky. The Invader theme was much cleaner but unfortunately it wasn't built/ported for 7 as far as I know. My advice is to forget about the Breed theme. Install the OSD mod on the first post, replace the Start button with the alternative I attached to this post and try to get the Alienware Invader icon pack. I've also added a wallpaper I made for myself in the zip. Start Button and Wallpaper.zip

Welcome to T|I jukematt Yeah, the install order of our drivers and apps after a clean windows install is important in order to get everything to play nice with each other. You can use the below for future reference, its specific to the R2. Restart where necessary. 1. Intel Ibex Chipset 2. Video card driver 3. IDT audio driver 4. LAN network driver 5. Wireless card driver 6. Bluetooth module driver 7. Synaptics touchpad driver 8. On-screen display (OSD) application 9. Intel RAID manager aka "RST application" For those who do not have a RAID setup but have just a single hard drive its optional (Slower than windows default disk drivers) Note: Those with solid-state drives may have a controller to be installed for the drive. 10. Free-fall sensor driver 11. Ricoh media card reader driver 12. CIR/infrared driver 13. Install your antivirus program 14. Windows Update/Service Packs. 15. Install the Alienware command center

Its sad to see you sell that beauty but I wish you best of luck with your studies and hope to see you back here soon I would also like to thank you for giving M17x R1/R2 and Clevo users the only successful 330W PSU mod. If it wasn't for your in depth investigation I doubt we would have this option available to us today.

What driver version are you installing? Try selecting custom installation and only installing the driver. Deselect CCC and all the other additional components. You may be missing one of the prerequisites for the complete install or it may be corrupt.

No this mod does not in any way change the functionality of the original OSD provided by Dell/Alienware. It is a purely cosmetic mod. Taking into consideration the symptoms you are experiencing, I would think you may be using the incorrect OSD version for your model of laptop. edit: I read there is a BIOS update and an OSD update for the new 17 if that's the model you have. Try updating.

What drivers are you using? Stutter is normal in 3Dmark. The beta frame pacing drivers alleviate this problem for me in 3Dmark11. Your result will be marked as invalid though as 3Dmark do not support beta's.

Please check the revision of your card. If you took a photo of the back of your card before installing it, have a look at that instead of going through the process of disassembly. I know of one other user who experiences the exact same problem with revision v1.1 of the CLEVO 7970M and the standard P270WM 7970M vBIOS which this mod is based on. Most users have the v1.2 revision of the CLEVO 7970M. You can try using this tool to mod the Catalyst Driver package for your card while you have the above vBIOS loaded with the standard VGA drivers in Windows. Then try to install the modded driver. If that fails to work I would suggest swapping the card with another user with a different laptop who doesn't have any issues with the v1.1. You could also sell it and buy the v1.2 CLEVO 7970M which has been proven to have no issues.

@by_cleiton Have a look at my Clevo non-Enduro vBIOS pack.

I think I have a good PSU mostly. And for gaming I didn't really need the clocks to max out detail on TR, FC3, Bioshock Infinite and Crysis 3. Those games run mostly at 60fps except in certain areas which I think fps drops due to being CPU intense. Some areas where the fps drops just aren't optimised well. For example in TR there's an area I test with where the fps drops to around 33fps. So I overclocked only the XM, then only the GPU's, then both together and the fps still hovered around 33fps for all scenarios. That extra bit of CPU score allows the 7970M's to breath a little more in benches imho. It's crazy that you managed to trip the PSU with one 7970M though!

Yeah, I recorded up to 275W power draw with my Kill-a-watt without tripping. I can't game at these settings though, for benches it runs fine. For gaming I'm running the GPU's and CPU stock and its completely stable. edit: My GPU's aren't really stock as they are running undervolted with the 0.975v vBIOS. Check this thread out for my 7970M CrossFire trials and tribulations ... and benchmarks... and power draw.

Try 13.1 Cats and drop the XM multi's to 25 across all cores and lower that TDP slightly as your physics score seems to be lower than it should be. I suspect some throttling may be going on even though that TDP seems sufficient. Also run the bench straight after boot up without running any other applications. I managed to get a physics score of just over 7000 with 25x and 90/82 TDP.

I think Laptopmonkey may have tested with the 770M and assumed the 780M would work as well since its from the "same" family. Assumption is the mother of all f...

Lol! I'm just glad I could help. Congrats on the awesome score man. What TDP did you use for that run?

You could try one of the modded vBIOS from my modpack. It's based on the CLEVO P270WM 7970M (exact same vBIOS that you linked) and OverDrive is enabled so you can set whatever clocks you want. Just pick the stock voltage vBIOS with OverDrive enabled in the "Normal" folder and then set your clocks in CCC. It's here.

I've seen your screenprint of HWinfo and I see that it recorded a vddc max of 1.00v. Does the voltage change as well when you're using DP? edit: Nvm, I didn't see that you have 3D clocks there too so you probably ran an app that triggered 3D mode and the voltage. So judging from your screenprint DP works with 0.825v with no voltage change at all? The reason I ask is I'm trying to figure out what other states these cards have. GPUshark only reports the normal 2D and 3D states.

These modded vBIOS's are based on the Non-Enduro CLEVO 7970M vBIOS that was created for the CLEVO P270WM laptop. It's commonly referred to as the "RJTECH" vBIOS. The reason I created these were primarily for myself but also other M17x R2 users that were using CLEVO cards in their machines. This is the only proven safe vBIOS that doesn't damage our RGB screens. I also experienced a weird black screen with what looked like brightness on full after a few boots when using the Dell vBIOS from svl7's mod pack so I've been using the stock vBIOS ever since. This vBIOS should also work for the P170HM users as well (no HDMi though). There are two different sets in this pack. The first is for users who's cards voltage behaves normally, reporting the correct 1050v stock voltage. These are located in the "Normal" folder. The other set is for users like myself who's cards refuse to work at stock voltage and experience 3D voltage "stuck at 0.950v, 0.975v or 1.000v". These are located in the "Forced" folder. I have not adjusted any clocks as Overdrive is now enabled on all the modded vBIOS files included in the pack apart from the stock vBIOS in the root of folder. You may need to re-install your Catalysts in order for Overdrive to reflect correctly in CCC. You can then use it to set the clocks you prefer**. There are a few variations on 3D voltage ranging from 0.975v to 1.100v in 0.025v steps. Instructions: For flashing refer to svl7's guide: [GUIDE] AMD VBIOS flashing All the files have the same checksum which is 0xC200. You will have to rename them to an 8 character file name before flashing. Please make sure that the checksum of the file is correct using ATIflash before flashing. Flash at your own risk, you are responsible for your system and the changes you make on it. That said, I have tested these modded files on my machine and they work as intended. I would like to thank @svl7 for all his work. Without him, this vBIOS pack would not exist as I used his edited vBIOS files as a reference for creating these modded files. Thank you for creating the READ ME file as well that's included in this pack which I used as a template from your Dell vBIOS pack. I would also like to thank test2013, a Russian member on people.overclockers.ru who's guide helped me understand where the clocks are. Also kahboom, a member on overclock .net who's guide helped me understand where to find the voltage table and how to fix the checksums. And lastly @Aikei, thank you for your guide. It helped me understand more clearly how to fix the checksums. ** If you experience a delay from Overdrive setting your clocks at boot open Regedit and go to... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Wow6432Node -> ATI -> ACE -> Backup -> Settings -> CLI There should be a "Delay" Key with a value of 300. Change the value to 0. This is applicable to Windows 7 x64. Clevo 7970M vBIOS - P270WM - Mod pack.zip