[M17x R2] with AMD 7970M CrossfireX

[italy2200]

Can you still use the HDMI in ports with it?

[StamatisX]

No HDMI in on the M17x R2

[Nospheratu]

So I finally made the jump Two 7970M's. I cant seem to find any info about this vBIOS though. I'm hoping it doesn't damage my screen. These are MXM-Upgrade Clevo cards. @svl7 some help? Is this the P270WM vBIOS?

3Dmark11 Result

CPU at 25/25/25/25 with TDP/TDC at 90/82. GPU's at stock.

[svl7]

Yes, that's the 270WM vbios. Are DP/HDMI working?

[Nospheratu]

Thanks!

I cant test the HDMi or the DP atm but as soon as I can I'll provide feedback.

I tried running Tomb Raider now and I'm getting blue screens with a reboot on the Ultra setting possibly due to the 240W? Or driver issues? I'm coming straight from the 5870M's. Same windows installation with 13.4 Cats.

edit: Its working now on ultra with no bsods... weird.

[Nospheratu]

Did more testing and found out that the BSOD happens when I'm running in fullscreen and I alt-tab or in the case of Bioshock crashes to the desktop. Bioshock used to crash at loading screen on my 5870M's too. BSOD's complain about atikmdag.sys

Another thing is the primary card is running 0.975v and the secondary 1.000v on 3D clocks which is weird but could explain why I've not gotten a hard shutdown yet on the 240W.

@StamatisX Have you experienced anything like this?

[StamatisX]

Fortunately not, I get random BSOD but not under load, they are while idling or with chrome in websites with flash content and that's only with Windows 8. Under Windows 7 the system was rock stable, no matter the load.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[Nospheratu]

Did you re-install Windows or reset the cmos after installing the cards?

What motherboard BIOS version are you on? I'm currently running official A10. Drivers are 13.4 cats and my vBIOS is the P270WM (RJTECH).

I'm trying to find any differences as I'm running Windows 7 and since its the same machine it should be the same.

edit: I'm also using the Clevo MXM-Upgrade cards so there really shouldn't be a problem.

Just fyi I noticed that the capacitors as well as the vBIOS chips were replaced on these cards and manually soldered on.

[StamatisX]

Yeah I did a clean windows installation, now on 13.6 drivers, the vbios is the one attached at the first post, BIOS A10 official as well. I don't know what brand the cards are though...

[Nospheratu]

Hmmm... somethings definitely weird here.

I mentioned previously card 1 is running with 0.975v and card 2 is running at 1.000v on 3D clocks. I did a checksum on both cards vBIOS and both are the same... its seems possible with a minor change if I look at SVL7's vBIOS package checksums. So I dumped the vBIOS from the first card and tried flashing it to the 2nd card and ATIflash tells me the vBIOS I'm trying to flash is already programmed on the card...strange. I force the flash anyway.

Boot into Windows expecting card 2nd card to have 0.975v on 3D clocks... and GPU Shark says its still the same I think maybe there's a cache that its reading from so I boot up HWinfo and run a quick Furmark fullscreen to get both cards loaded. Exit. Check what the vddc max on both cards are.... card 1 is 0.975v and card 2 is 1.000v. No change???

I do the same with dumping card 2's vBIOS and flashing it to card one...exact same result. What the Frack?? Then I think maybe the 2nd card is pencil modded somehow to give it an additional 0.025v... but thats not possible since at idle state the voltage is same for both cards at 0.825v.

I tried SVL7's 0.975v undervolt vBIOS on the 2nd card and GPU Shark cant read anything from the card. Well it can read some header info but that's from the previous P270WM vBIOS... and HWinfo cant read the vddc with this vBIOS.

I think I'm just going to re-install Windows and hopefully things start making sense.

[Nospheratu]

Okay after the windows install and a lot of trial and error I've managed to reduce the BSODs. The main bit of help came with the 13.6 beta2 drivers. And I think also the C++ 2012 Redistributables thats part of the driver install. I've also disabled ULPS and I can alt-tab now without getting an instant BSOD... most of the time.

It only really happens when a fullscreen game looses focus and reverts to the desktop. Which in the case of Bioshock Infinite is the crash on loading screen and also if I alt-tab. I've also gotten the same BSOD running 3Dmark11 recently after the physics test and since 3Dmark constantly switches from fullscreen to desktop between the tests it fits my theory.

Hopefully I can find a solid fix though... I hate the feeling that if a fullscreen game crashes its gonna pull the whole machine down with it.

Here are some Bioshock and TR benches comparing stock CPU vs CPU OC at 24/24/24/24 with 80/72 TDP/TDC. Both games are run at native res on the Ultra settings. Ignore the TDP/TDC on the CPU oc image for Bioshock, its a typo.

CPU stock

CPU OC

[Nospheratu]

Okay some test results for throttling. GPU cores at 950Mhz and XM at 25x on all cores 90 TDP. I'm running 13.4 Cats. I reverted to 13.1 since I received BSOD's again with the 13.6's when trying to change resolution in Crysis 3. I'm still receiving BSODs on 13.4 and 13.6 but not on 13.1.

GPU-Z graphs for the 3Dmark11 run

The GPU's don't seem to be throttling but the second card went a bit crazy during the physics test. If you look at the GPU load there's some activity but the first card isn't affected as much. I cut out some idle time and the Date/Time column to make the graph look cleaner. The original logs are below if you want to check them out, maybe there's something I missed.

I've also run Crysis 3 on high with these clocks and logged using GPU-Z and there didn't seem to be any clock drops. I'm not quite sure how this is possible with a single 240W, I actually need to get a Killawatt or one of its clones to test how much power this PSU is giving me.

Also I repasted my GPU's again and added some thermal padding to the VRM components to the best of my ability. Its still not 100% though. I need some thicker pads for the mosfets.

GPU-Z Sensor Log1.txt

GPU-Z Sensor Log2.txt

GPU-Z Sensor Log1.txt

GPU-Z Sensor Log2.txt

[Nospheratu]

So I got my first official shutdown with the 240W adapter

GPU's were stock and CPU was 24/24/24/24 with a TDP of 90W. I was paying Crysis 3 with everything on high except shadows which I set to low. After about 30 minutes there was some throttling on and off for a while before the complete blackout. PSU indicator light also went out.

[StamatisX]

Hehe yeah that was the psu tripping

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[Nospheratu]

I received a Kill-a-watt clone today and ran some benches with CPU at 24/24/24/24 with 85 TDP and stock GPU clocks. Below are the max power draw on each test.

3Dmark11: 241W

Bioshock Infinite benchmark: 261W

Crysis 3: 274W

Then I got a little bit excited over imsolidstates fix and ran 3Dmark11 with 25/25/25/25 with 90TDP and both cards at 950/1400. Power draw was 270W max on the first test. It seems the first test draws the most power, combined test draws around 245W. I'm running the 13.6 Beta2's. This 240W is pretty impressive.

[StamatisX]

Very nice score for a single PSU!

My last run of 3DMark 11 was with the 12.11 drivers... I am tempted to run it again with the latest ones...

(though someone has to beat that old score fist )

[Nospheratu]

Thanks

The 330W is coming soon so I'll try to increase the voltage on the cards to turn them into Ghz editions I ran the 950/1400 on 1v each so I should still have some room for improvement.

edit: Just finished Crysis 3 on High settings at native res with with 920XM at default Dell settings. The GPU's were at 800/1200 with the primary card at 0.975v and secondary at 1.00v. No shutdowns or throttling at all with this config. The beginning of the game is quite harsh with drops to 30FPS in "Welcome to the Jungle" especially when looking at expanses of long grass. From "Only Human" onward I was getting a solid 60FPS. Beautiful game... beautiful M17x R2

[Nospheratu]

Completed Bioshock Infinite on Ultra at native res with CPU at default Dell settings and FPS was 60FPS on average (vsync on). No shutdowns at all and no BSODs as well. Power consumption was always under 240W when I glanced at the Kill-a-watt and around 220W on average.

[Nospheratu]

ASUS GPU Tweak is AMAZING!!! I overlooked it as I thought it was another generic OC utility but its NOT!

It has the ability to set voltage and clocks on BOTH cards in 2D and 3D mode either separately or through syncing both cards. Undervolting also works. You can also set it to boot with Windows minimized so once you set it up the way you like you wont even realise its running.

I've been struggling to get Afterburner and TRIXX to work on both cards but this utility just works... there's no need for them anymore, well at least on the M17x R2 and 7970M xfire config. I changed everything from the default settings and sync'd both cards in the GPUshark screenprint below.

[StamatisX]

Thanks for the heads up! I just installed it and what's weird is that it reports the memory speed at 5600MHz... :S

[Nospheratu]

Yeah, since its GDDR5 memory they are reporting the effective memory speed = 4x base clock. So your actual vRAM clock should be 1400mhz

[StamatisX]

And that is correct

[Nospheratu]

I just figured out that ASUS GPU Tweak needs the -xcl parameter run with Afterburner before it unlocks voltage control. I also have ULPS disabled if anyone runs into problems.

Another thing is if Afterburner locks up your system (I have no idea why it started this nonsense all of a sudden) run any game and alt-tab out of it and then run the Afterburner shortcut with the -xcl parameter.

edit: Just tried to make GPU tweak work with the 13.6 beta2's and its not showing the voltage even though Afterburner -xcl is activated. Overdrive is available in CCC and TRIXX shows voltage so I know that the -xcl command worked.

I reverted to 13.4 and full control is restored to GPU Tweak, so it may be an issue with 13.6 beta2's. Another workaround to make Afterburner -xcl work if it is locking up your system is ensuring ULPS is disabled. Then disable Crossfire in CCC and once is completely disabled, enable it again. Then try Afterburner with the -xcl parameter, it should work without freezing your system.

Just a side note, it seems that this whole Afterburner locking up the system points to AMD's power management of the second card in xfire. It seems disabling ULPS alone does not release the second card completely and something needs to be done to wake it up properly which the alt-tab from in game (card is awake) or enabling/disabling of xfire does.

If anyone needs some pointers on how to setup GPU Tweak I've listed my settings below.

Enabled Advanced mode to display/edit voltage.

"Sync all cards" toggled on.

Disabled the Monitor window from booting with windows.

Enabled GPU Tweak to boot with Windows minimized.

Under Settings->Tune tab->TuneSetting->Keep setting on for next start on close application: Ticked

I've also configured the system tray to hide the icon and notifications since there seem to be issues with the notification not fading away after logging into Windows.

[Nospheratu]

My new personal best 3Dmark11 I dropped voltage on both cards to 0.975v and 950/1400 clocks with XM's multi's at 25/25/25/25 and 90/82 TDP/TDC. My score is better with lower voltage on the cards which means my previous score there was some throttling going on in the combined test. I was expecting a blackscreen with that voltage and clocks though... I need that 330W bad!

The run was done with 13.4 Cats at stock and 13.5 CAPS.

[StamatisX]

Yeah cooling is insufficient on our systems for such overclock thus the throttling