dblshotty Posted November 15, 2012 Share Posted November 15, 2012 i was just wondering say i bought a Clevo 7970m would i have to do anything extra to make it work for my M18x r1. Also would the fans function correctly and will i still have hdmi output etc. clevo cards are cheaper than dell >.>. upgrading to see if it solves my fan issues Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 15, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2012 Every feature works including the fans. You will need a modded nvdm.inf file but I can supply that.Edit: Ignore the above statement, it applies to 680m. For the 7970m it's plug and play.Sent from my GT-N7000 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dblshotty Posted November 15, 2012 Author Share Posted November 15, 2012 thx for the information i'll get back to you when i purchase the card, going to buy it from ebay tommorow should come next week ~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momosan Posted November 19, 2012 Share Posted November 19, 2012 I have the 6990M in my R1 and I want to upgrade to either the 7970M or the 680Ms. Could you please tell me why you chose the 7970M over the 680Ms? Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 19, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 19, 2012 I have the 6990M in my R1 and I want to upgrade to either the 7970M or the 680Ms. Could you please tell me why you chose the 7970M over the 680Ms? Thanks in advance.Cost would be the only reason.Sent from my GT-N7000 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted November 20, 2012 Share Posted November 20, 2012 Not exactly the only... GPGPU performance is way superior to the 680m, it simply destroys the GTX Kepler cards. Lower power consumption, though I don't think that's a big argument when it comes to decide between those two cards.For pure gaming purpose I'd say the 680m is better, but the additional cost is not worth it imho, at least not in a single card setup. Never had a SLI / CF, so can't really judge this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mazmorbid Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 Every feature works including the fans. You will need a modded nvdm.inf file but I can supply that.Edit: Ignore the above statement, it applies to 680m. For the 7970m it's plug and play.Sent from my GT-N7000Even hdmi works ? I was under the impression it didnt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 27, 2012 Founder Share Posted November 27, 2012 Even hdmi works ? I was under the impression it didnt.HDMI out worked fine when I had Clevo 7970M Xfire in my M18x-R1. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 Even the Dell 7970m work perfect with HDMI out and the M18x R1 Paranoid Galaxy S3 on Tapatalk 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mazmorbid Posted November 27, 2012 Share Posted November 27, 2012 HDMI out worked fine when I had Clevo 7970M Xfire in my M18x-R1. Did you have to change the vbios? So it all worked the same as a Dell 7970? Why some people say hdmi doesn't work? Even the seller says i need to get an adapter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bn880 Posted January 14, 2013 Share Posted January 14, 2013 Do you guys know if a Clevo 7970m will also work as plug and play on an M17x? (I would think so) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TurbodTalon Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 I just installed a 7970M in my M18x-R1 from the eBay seller Upgradeyourlaptop. There is a difference between the Dell and Clevo HM card, so beware. I'm not familiar with what the components are on the card, but the four components (circled in picture) are FLUSH with the adjacent grey components on the Clevo card I got from Upgradeyourlaptop. The card absolutely will NOT work as the secondary card in an Alienware M18xR1. The taller circled components dig right into the heat pipes on the 100 watt AMD secondary heatsinks. I had to install the Clevo card as the primary and use my Dremel tool to cut away a bit of the primary heat sink. The Clevo card with the taller components in that region will work with a modified primary heat sink. M18xR1 owners are better off getting Dell cards for both primary and secondary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 Yeah... you got a card from the first batch of Clevo 7970m (a huge batch... there are tons of those cards). The things you mean are capacitors, and they're not supposed to be stacked in that area, the resulting height in that area of your specific Clevo card is not conform with the MXM specs, that's why it won't fit on the M18x heatsink without getting out the dremel.The explanation for this mess is simple... Clevo just messed up with their 7970m cards, the design they used differs from the Dell design, it uses less parts (resulting in smaller costs), but apparently they didn't test it properly. When the first batch went out they had tons of issues with it, in several systems, so all cards went back to the manufacturer and the additional capacitors got soldered on (by hand... you can see the crappy soldering job). The additional height is no problem for the Clevo heatsinks, but for the AW it is.Performance-wise the card is fine, even though the fix is quite a mess.... I had one of those cards myself and it performed just as fine as the Dell card, but it doesn't look nice. Imo such cards should not be sold as compatible with the M18x, since it isn't really the case... as I said, the height profile isn't MXM conform.Also this is another Clevo story which really makes me think about their system designers and test phase... They should have realized the issue with their card design a long time before they even started to mass produce it. Same with the enduro problems... Clevo blamed all on AMD (true, the drivers were crap) but they must have noticed this during testing, and still decided to release the system like this... AW on the other hand built in a mux which allowed to circumvent enduro and the Intel HD, resulting in a very good performance from the very beginning.... a more costly design, but in the end much better since the customer has a working system. Just my 0.02 about Clevo and some of their decisions during the past year... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TurbodTalon Posted February 10, 2013 Share Posted February 10, 2013 I wasn't aware of all of that information about the Clevo cards. I'll tell you that I was extremely disappointed when I set the heat sink on the card and it was wobbling like a seesaw. The guys at Upgradeyourlaptop are not blameless either, IMO. I specified that I had an Alienware laptop, and that I would be using the card for the secondary slot, and the guy said it was 100% compatible. He then proceeded to tell me he wasn't sending any of the other items in the kit I had already paid for, since they were Clevo parts. I told him to refund part of my payment, because those parts could be sold to recoup some of the cost of the card. He refused to refund any of the payment, and just sent the whole Clevo kit. If I wouldn't have been willing to butcher my heat sink with a Dremel tool, I would have had to send the card back and deal with that headache.Anyhow, woe is me. Thank you for explaining all of that. It makes things much more clear regarding why the two cards are different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TurbodTalon Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 The Clevo 7970M has failed. Started up a game in Steam and the GPU froze. Had to do a hard reboot, upon which the LCD backlight comes on and the laptop just sits there like that. I tried to do a blind VBIOS flash to no avail. I've had other GPUs go bad, but usually there's an audible 'beep' code that accompanies it.I tried an external monitor, also with no results. I ended up slapping my secondary Dell 7970M back into the primary slot. Everything works fine now.Either way, the card is going back and I'm getting a refund. I've wanted to try a pair of 680Ms, so that's what I'll do next.Thanks for all of the helpful information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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