AMD 7970m - modified VBIOS

[Red Line]

Tried the overvolted 7970M to 1075v vbios and it tend to be not stable for me. First i ran Unigine 3.0 with 1040/1500 then bumped a little and the system crushed. Tried all the settings down to 1000/1500 (my stock voltage clocks) but none of the games was stable. So i reverted back to start) Anyways, nice job svl7!

[svl7]

Thanks. Yeah, I think at this voltage the power supply circuits on the card or on the board get to their limits... Don't think you could push it a lot more without a crazy mod.

It seems to work for some, for others it doesn't. A lot may depend on the quality of the die, and possibly also on the rest of the setup. A 3610QM is usually more power hungry than a 3720QM for example.

[Nemesis]

A short question. When I overclock my 7970M manually using MSI Afterburner (950x1500), the GPU runs with 400 MHz in Idle-Mode but the RAM still runs with full 1500 MHz.

When I'm using the stock configuration (850x1200) the GPU runs with 300 MHz in Idle-Mode and the RAM with 150 MHz.

What is when I use your modified BIOS ? Is the system able to automatically downclock again ?

In German:

Ich sehe du kommst aus der Schweiz. In deutsch kann ich besser formulieren was ich meine.

Wenn ich meine 7970M mit den Standardtakten verwende, taktet sie sich im Idle-Modus automatisch runter auf 300/150 MHz.

Das passiert aber nicht wenn ich sie übertaktet habe. Da geht dann zwar der GPU-Takt zumindest noch bis 400 runter, aber der Speicher läuft weiter mit maximalem Takt.

Das ist schlecht, da so natürlich auch der Lüfter mehr arbeiten muss und zu laut wird.

Wie sieht's mit deinem modifizierten VBIOS aus ? Nimmt die Karte dann noch den normalen Idle-Takt an und taktet nur unter Last so hoch ?

Oder wie verhält sich das ? Du kannst mir auch gerne per PN antworten. Danke !

[svl7]

Hi, welcome to T|I!

Sounds like a driver related issue with MSI Afterburner. Which version do you use? Can't test it at the moment since I got a 660m in my system, but maybe someone else can help out.

With the modified vbios it will clock down to the 2d clocks which are set in the vbios. However if you use a modified vbios and MSI AB then the issue might still occur, but as long as you only use the modified vbios you won't have this issue.

Also keep in mind that if you have a second monitor attached to your system, the memory clock will always be at 3d level.

[Jahnsinn]

If you use svl7's vbios files it'll be possible to downclock the core to 2d clocks to keep the temps low. But as soon as you touch MSI afterburner, even if just apply the current settings, it'll stay at the maximum clocks you set (850, 950 mhz, whatever you applied).

[mikecacho]

Notebook in question M17x R4

My checksum using your instructions reads 0x9300 for my bios which does not match the 0x5700 in your modded Dell7970m-900-1300-1075.rom. Is it still stable to Flash my card or am i missing something here?

[svl7]

Check the previous pages... I already tried to explain this several times... seems I fail doing so. The checksum I included is only for the vbios which I modified, I have no idea about the checksum of your vbios and it doesn't matter. All you want to do with the checksum is to make sure the vbios you downloaded didn't somehow get corrupted. This means you calculate the checksum of the modified vbios you want to flash and see whether it's correct, if so - flash.

The checksum of your current vbios doesn't matter at all.

[mikecacho]

Sorry for the lack of understanding, i did read the previous post, but fell short of a true understanding since my knowledge is not as conditioned.

[upgrademonkey]

I also want to download the Dell7970m-950-1400.zip. and have a look. but no permission.

[moral hazard]

Hi Svl7, I have a clevo 7970m in my sager np8150 (p150hm).

Currently I have a modded vbios that was flashed by the seller in order for it to work in my sager.

Is there any chance you could mod this vbios to increase the voltage for me. I have the GPUz dump here:7970clevoHM.zip

[svl7]

This vbios has not been modified, it's completely untouched

Anyway, let me know what voltage you want.

[moral hazard]

Wow I didn't know it was untouched, from what I read, the 7970m had to have a special "hm" vbios that disabled enduro for it to work in the p1*0HM notebooks.

Currently the core is stable at 970mhz, is there a voltage you would recommend for 1050-1100mhz?

Maybe 1.1V?

[svl7]

Here's a 1.075V and 1.1V version. The 1.075V will probably be enough to get you to 1GHz. 1.1V might draw too much power for your board, I don't know... you'll see. Let me know.

Clevo_7970m_P1x0HM_ov.zip

[moral hazard]

Here's a 1.075V and 1.1V version. The 1.075V will probably be enough to get you to 1GHz. 1.1V might draw too much power for your board, I don't know... you'll see. Let me know.

1.075V was enough to get me 1030mhz, I'll let it run overnight like that. Maybe tomorrow I'll try it at 1.1V.

Depends on what the max temp will be after a few hours.

Thank you svl7!

[moral hazard]

Just an update, tested 1.1v today. Got 1060mhz stable, but temps went from 85C max (with 1.075) to 94C.

Not worth 30mhz to get such big jump in temps.

[svl7]

You probably could improve the temps quite a bit if you slightly mod the backplate in order to increase the pressure between heatsink and die.

[troid]

Thanks slv7 for the modded clevo BIOS, can't wait to try it myself. Btw do you know if the no HDMI output issue is due to the vbios used with no enduro or because they use the iGPU for HDMI output in the newer P1x0EM series?

[moral hazard]

That's a good question, not that I use the HDMI output myself.

Just in case slv7 doesn't know about the issue, basically the HDMI output doesn't work when the 7970m is installed into a clevo p1*0HM notebook.

Oh and slv7 I will definitely look into some cooling mods when I get a chance. Right now it's stock except I put some copper tape over the area between the heatsink and fan just to keep the air from going through that small gap (foil tape mod).

[svl7]

No HDMI? Well, that had to be expected... The vbios on the card is not optimized for the P1x0HM at all, in fact it is the vbios of a different system. It seems that they just used this vbios because they realized that it makes the internal screen working with the 7970m in this system.

For someone with the proper tools and especially documentation about the system it shouldn't be too hard to fix this, but I'm afraid I can't really do anything about it. I could do some experiments, but as long as I can't test it myself it's not really worth the time, and you guys don't want to brick the card I guess

Clevo resellers generally take what they get from Clevo when it comes to drivers etc. , they don't do any BIOS / VBIOS optimization, at least I've never seen such a thing or custom job in the past. Though it'd be pretty cool if they did. Let me know in case I'm mistaken.

[troid]

Well SAGER was the first one to come out with the modded vBIOS , later we found out that it was just the P270HM vBIOS for the 7970M. Only time i heard about a Clevo reseller modifying the drivers was with SAGER trying to get rid of the enduro issues with the p1x0em series. But i guess that we should consider ourselves lucky that their is atleast a BIOS out that lets us use the 7970m in our machines, having no HDMI out is still better then having nothing at all

[moral hazard]

You're right, the vbios is from the Clevo P270WM isn't it?

Kind of funny in a way.

[troid]

You're right, the vbios is from the Clevo P270WM isn't it?

Kind of funny in a way.

Yes it is from the P270WM

[moral hazard]

What happens if we flash the dell vbios?

[troid]

What happens if we flash the dell vbios?

Curious about that myself.. But i doubt that it will work Dell uses different RAM modules on their GPUs as Clevo

[svl7]

The Clevo card works with it, at least with the first revision of the Dell vbios. You will still be able to blind flash it back in case it doesn't work out as desired.