ATI 5870 Crossfire Driver Issues with Alienware - Discussion Thread

Dell ATI Drivers vs Official ATI Drivers? - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

 

That says nothing. All it says is that Dell have made some modifications to the drivers, but won't say exactly what those modifications are.

Considering that Dell's 10.5 drivers work and the reference drivers don't, it certainly looks like there are some compatibility tweaks in there. Aside from that and the HDMI audio drivers, only a small number of people inside Dell know what other changes have gone in.

Chances are it's nothing else, but there's no way of proving that.

 

It's actually a separate program inside the RivaTuner folder. Navigate to the installation folder and you'll see it.

 

I think all Dell did was tweak the powerplay settings (since they're broken on Clevo and Asus systems) and alter the voltage in the bios. I doubt they did much more than that.

 

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/p/19333306/19700337.aspx#19700337

I think Dell-Chris M was being honest, and very diplomatic and revealed a great deal. Its not only what he says but how he says it.

1) His words are very short and to the point that Dell does not endorse Official ATI drivers. Saying they don't know what would happen is a polite way of distancing themselves.

2) Always modifying the drivers to fit Dells needs could be construed that they are modifying the drivers to make compatible with modified hardware (both gpu or other hardware) or to limit their potential for warranty purposes. Either way that doesn't sound good for owners. As I have been saying all along the driver are MODIFIED and Chris's statement proves that unequivocally.

3) Saying they don't know what would happen is a nice way of saying your on your own we can't help you. That is the polar opposite to we are working on a solution.

4) Saying the Dell version and ATI version is different implies exactly that. Those differences are what causes so many conflicts.

5)Not answering the question whether they cause compatibility issues or not is a nice way of saying they work sometimes and sometimes not which is exactly what I have told you.

Sorry but I don't see a lot to get excited about especially when that statement was released May 19, 2010. Forgive me for being honest. I encourage anyone to call Dell, Alienware, or Catalyst and report back anything they hear otherwise.

 

Thank you, found it.

 

Cheers Iamduff

Not sure if the problems are watered down hardware, shipping before a proper burn in, or just poor drivers. I think too many people are complaining about too many problems to find a common solution. Some customers are being offered replacements or GPU replacements which would indicate that there is more to the story than a simple fix. If the GPU's are watered down which I suspect they are than we will forever and a day be having this back and forth conversation why the Ati's official drivers are messing up. The Dell drivers may be chocking the GPU's for good reason, lack of PSU power. And the Catalyst Mobility drivers may not dig dells version of the GPU. Neither of those problems will be solved with Catalyst Mobility.

 

For the record, I have the dual 5870s and have never seen flicker in WoW.

 

Folks, I created this thread for your use to come together and discuss details on: what driver version had what issues with which titles, etc.

This thread is not for discussing opinion on voltage tweaks, how to obtain warranty service, or anything else other than what I listed.

Again, if you are having flickering issues, issues with enabling crossfire with specific titles, post about it and include your specs along with which driver you are running and how it was installed.

Any further posts outside of this will be removed. This is the second time I've asked to stay focused.

Lets solve these issues instead of debating back and forth over who is correct and who isn't. you want to do that, then take it to PM.

Questions related to my post - PM me. Do not post asking/commenting on it as it will be removed for being OT.

Thanks.


Before you ask, yes - several posts were deleted as they served no purpose other than bickering.

 

I've noticed the only problem games are DirectX rendered.
But so far i can only think that it's an issue with hardware
1) not everyone has it.
2)Everyone has drivers. Hopefully dell, or ATi, but Windows won't let you not have drivers.
3) i would sincerely hope that if you have issues you updated your drivers already.
If the problem still persists, which i would say is safe to assume it is still persisting, then i would say it's hardware, and dell replacing GPUs only backs it up.. not much, but still.
Logically, because it isn't a specifically bad component, drivers could fix this if someone knew the exact thing to tweak, it may be bad shielding in cables but the rendering isn't matching perfectly with both GPUs, i think.
I'm not sure to what extent RivaTuner can overclock cards,
but here:
RivaTuner
I wouldn't know if it can tell if you have Crossfire or not. >.< Hope it does though, i can't seem to find many programs like it, at all.
If that's no help, then i'd use triple buffer and vsync, with as little pre-rendered frames as possible. That should hopefully quit the screen problems, if not, up the pre-rendered frame by one, and again if necessary.
If you can't live with that, demand a refund.
If that doesn't work .. sell it? lol, idk, or just send it in and buy new Xfire's which would be much cheaper than a whole system, or you could wait half a year to a year for Alienware to do something about [GeForce] 480M's; but that's another thread.

if/when i get an Alienware, i'll dig alot deeper.

 

thanks for sharing your input duff - even if its from a non-owner perspective

Every bit helps...

 

Hi guys, one thing I've is references to the HDMI audio, which in the way I read them inferred that this is an Alienware/Dell specific feature [apologies if I misread, I am at work].

Quite frankly unless something has changed recently, this is rubbish, this is NOT a vendor specific feature at all(as long as a HDMI connection is provided). The technology as such has been embedded in ATI cards (Realtek technology, you can download drivers from them also) since the 2/3 series cards, and I had the functionality to utilise PCM audio in my 4850m crossfire setup as well as my desktop 4870, I've also played around with it on other ATI cards both mobile and desktop.
I have seen no notice when looking about to suggest the functionality has been removed from the mobile cores, which are effectively harvested desktop cores built around a different PCB (ATI produces and supplies the chips, the OEM supplies the memory and PCB). Drivers will of course vary from the older 4 series cards, as the HDMI logic recieved an update during the series progression, to be capable of transporting bitstream HD audio, whilst older cards were limited the PCM.

I will be testing this out in the near future with some 5 series mobile cards, as PCM HDMI audio is a feature I use and appreciate. It's certainly cleaner than analogue output!

If you check here:
ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 5870 GPU Specifications

You will see that an integrated HDMI audio controller is part of the reference design, and is in fact nothing to do with Dell's modifications.

 

I know this may be slightly unrelated, but I've tried posting in the tech problems section with no reply as yet. I'm pretty sure I have a busted GPU here, as I'm running 5870s on an M17x in Xfire, and games simply refuse to run smoothly, or more to the point, they sometimes achieve decent frames, most other times not (20-40 fps in Portal on mid settings most attempts).

I've formatted and reinstalled 3 times, followed reinstall instructions to the letter, and nothing improves gaming performance, with the exception of using AMD's generic drivers, which fail at installing CCC. I get a 3DMark06 score of around 15000, as I understand it should be nearer the 20-21k mark. Same goes for PCMark Vantage, scoring around 6000 for an i7 820QM with 6Gb RAM.

Tech support so far have been very unhelpful, asking me to run all manner of diagnostics, reinstalls and benchmarks, which have caused me to miss the 7 day product replacement window. Their further response is that "you still seem to be achieving high scores, so we can't really see a problem", and have reluctantly agreed to replace the GPU, with a month wait and no promise it'll remedy the issue.

I'd appreciate any suggestions. Cheers.

 

Sorry for your trouble
But thanks to you, i wont be getting a Alienware m17x
will go for a laptop with single card

Im thinking of Sager NP8850
has a better CPU than the AW

 

lol what? where did you come to 'understand' that? 15K is perfectly average.

stupid question but.. have you tried disabling crossfire?

 

OMG I was reading this thread as I am thinking of buying an AW M17x with dual GPUs but honestly after this tread it seems at least the ATI CF technology is a "dead product" - only problems and not the performance boost I expected. Is the Nvidia SLI solution better as there might be an AW M17x with GTX460M in SLI mode or are the same problems to be expected??

 

Honestly it's not that bad at all. Most people blow things out of proportion here. All my games have awesome performance with dual 5870s. There's a few games that lack proper Crossfire profiles and the wavy lines show up. The easy fix for that is to run it with vsync (via the ATi CCC) or use RivaTuner's D3DOverrider program which uses triple buffering vsync (the better choice). The Dell drivers are based on Cat 10.5 which tend to run games a lot better than the latest AMD reference 10.6 drivers (which are really only good for benchmarking).

You may read various speculations about hardware configs, watered down drivers/video cards/vbios etc. but it's not accurate. This is what I believe is happening:

1. The modifications Dell made to the vbios were based on powerplay timings + voltage. Because of the changes in powerplay, the reference AMD drivers do not work because the second GPU doesn't switch to 3D clocks when it is supposed to in most games (some newer games like mass effect 2 work fine). The blame really lies with AMD because they shipped 5870s with broken powerplay to vendors and it was up to them to fix it. Asus and Clevo still have broken powerplays and users of those systems have had to create batch files and other workarounds to get their video cards to clock down when not gaming--in fact Asus is still stuck with GSOD'ing 5870s. Dell fixed this and the cards properly underclock when they're in desktop/2D mode but that means they also have to account for that at the driver level. The Catalyst 10.6 do work when Rivatuner is used to force the second GPU to run in 3D mode constantly. My fix specifically addresses that for anyone that wants to use Cat 10.6 The lower voltage is so the cards run cooler, it doesn't affect stability or function at all. In fact, they can be changed via RBE to 1.15v (vs 1.05v) if one chooses (though it's pointless unless you want to overclock).

2. The wavy lines have been persistent in Crossfire since it's inception. If you do a google search for it, you'll find it's plagued desktop Crossfire systems for quite awhile and it's never been properly addressed. I believe it's inherent to the way Crossfire is designed and the remedy is for AMD to write more extensive Crossfire profiles and tweak their AFR method. Even my 4870s had flickering in some games (Frontlines Fuel of War).

People speculated it could be the PSU being taxed too much (it's not, I checked with Kill A Watt) or the power ("dirty" power lines can cause similar artifacts) but it's neither.
As for nVidia, they have their own share of problems but personally I believe they make a superior dual card solution. If they release a dual 460M setup, it may not be as fast as dual 5870s but it would probably scale better and have better drivers.

 

If I order my AW M17x now with ATI 5870CF can I later upgrade it eg to nvidia GTX460 SLIs or the new ATI 6xxx CF series??
Btw congrats and kudos an your M17x configuration with an i7 940 (did you upgrade this later - is this easy?? as I am thinking an ordering one with the i7 720 which I want to upgrade later to an i7 840)

 

If Dell releases Crossfire 460M GTX then you should be able to downgrade (I say downgrade because it will be slower) though it could be costly. The CPU for me was very easy to replace but I've opened up the system countless times. Alienware has some tear down videos they made which will guide you through it here: YouTube - Alienwareservices's Channel

I bought my system with an i520 and got the 940xm off eBay and am very happy with it. For the best price/performance, I'd go with a 920xm off eBay.

 

But what about the driver issues with the ATI cards and the better gaming support with nVidia GPUs (I like playing Civilization and eg Civ4 clearly has advantages with nVidia cards). I once had an ATI based notebook and the driver support was horribly and most of the games had errors in the graphic displayed.

 

The drivers work well for the majority of games out there. There's a few like FFXIV that people have had issues with but I'd say overall the number of games that have problems with ATi drivers now is very small. I've got about 38 games on steam alone and every single one works great with the Crossfire setup. A couple of them do require the D3DOverride fix to get rid of the wavy lines and it is a bit annoying but nothing that can't be solved easily.

 

Makes me wonder why mine doesnt work correctly.....

 

I haven't been around NBR much lately so I don't think I've read up on all the issues you have. I'll reply to you once I get a chance to go over it unless you want to summarize real quick. I'm moving to NY very soon to begin clinicals so my time on NBR will continue to shrink unfortunately.

 

Would appreciate that Joker...should I PM you or what?

 

I'll add you to my list so that you can. I temporarily limited my PM's since I'm not around and don't want people thinking I'm ignoring them on purpose.

P.S. Random OT but I recently started watching Doctor Who, great show! I didn't know UK had such great Sci Fi shows.

 

I am also interested in your solution suggestions because I am still undecided because of the ATI driver issues. And god damn do I want an Alienware

 

Thanks alot Joker, i dont know wether to give you my whole saga cos its probably quite lengthy, i am in the process of dealing with corporate over this whole matter with a view to replacemment / refund....

Is it just my gpu issues that you want to write about LOL

 

Yeah just send me a summary of the problems you're having with the system. If we get those resolved then maybe you won't have to deal with corporate.

 

You have 21 days to return the system if you don't like it or it doesn't perform as it should.

 

Thanks Joker, yeah we do have some good stuff on the "gogglebox" over here in the UK....doctor who is a must for anyone!!

Will compose a summary of my probs/issues but at this point in time, i really dont know what to do..my system is now just 4 wks old and, well, maybe a replacement is just better all around....you can advise on that too if ya like!

Thanks very much for taking the time to have a look for me....will get a PM to you ASAP - might not be right away but will do it today.

 

Not in the UK - all i was told by all AW UK staff is 7 days without exception.....seems a bit of a short time to me....

 

If we get it with single Ati 5870s
will we still have these Issues ?

I understand it wont give a performance like dual
But hoping it will have less chance of stuttering & wavy lines, correct ?

Thanks

 

Yes it seems to be a dual gpu issue. Single will be fine.

 

My crossfire has the horizontal lines rising up the screen like waves when enabled but tis disappears when i use solely the primary gpu so yeah, i think one gpu would not have issues....at least when i use mine as such, its ok....just pretty gutted that i forked out £350 more for a setup with problems !!

 

Thats just my point
why pay more & get all these issues

Thanks guys

 

Just disable crossfire & have a try

 

Has anyone tried rolling back their drivers to 10.4? I've tried and can't get W7 to recognize the drivers.

Right now, I'm using Dell Stock 5870 Drivers.
I've downloaded the 10.4 drivers because I remember having good experiences with them when I had my G73.
I've tried using the 'workaround' solution that was used for 10.6, but it didn't work via the CCC wizard. I also tried manually installing the drivers via the device manager, but was unsuccessful.

Is there anything I'm missing? Not that it's a huge matter, but I just wanted to tinker around with the different drivers.

 

afaik, 10.5 was the first driver to implement support for Crossfire 5870s

 

Oh ok. That would make sense. Thanks.

 

whats the point in paying £300+ more for a x/f setup just to disable it to make it work lol!

 

I was reading a few google links on problems which sounded similar to this. Can one of you who is able to reproduce this (wavy lines, analog type tv distortion, whatever it is you call it) consistently, disable PowerPlay in the CCC control panel and check your results? Check multiple titles - titles which you have observed this behavior having.

See if that removes the funk. If so, then we can point to the driver as the cause.

No flaming now... just trying to help.

 

Driver ver 10.6

Thanks for the suggestion... tried it in crysis and napoleon total war, which were the biggest flickerers for me and it does lessen the issue... but instead of the tv-like refresh streaks it turns into very faint little grey lines that flash horizontally. It's really acute and no where near as bad as before but still there slightly.

This definately seems to be a driver issue...

 

Well, now that is interesting. Just from the point it did 'alter' the display issue tells me its in the equation.

Ok, thanks for the confirmation. I need to google more - will post an update if I can track anything else down.

Keep the tests going folks - be sure to note which driver, symptoms, game title, sys config.

oog, you think you could give this a go with the 5870 driver off the 17xR2 driver support page and see if there is any difference vs the 10.6 force install?

 

I have just tried disabling powerplay when plaing metro 2033.....i am using dell stock drivers ...in fact everything is as stock as i havent done a thing to change anything since i got my R2....

I noticed a dramatic slow down in cursor movement on the menu page and the game play seemed alot slower too.....

Regarding the horizontal lines, what i seemed to notice is that there was still some kind of "line" across the screen moving fairly rapidly up and down the display...a bit like what was described earlier....not the black lines i am so used to now but lighter in colour but more rapid in frequency....

I will try to test with crysis cos on the menu page, thats where i seem to get the worst flicker/line from the 3 games i have tried.

Im sorry i dont have a huge library to test out on but rest assured, i have a stock machine running all dell stuff as the system i got got dellivered on 21st June....havent done a thing to it.....

 

Thanks Stevie - interesting. So instead of seeing a reduction you see a mouse/general slow down. Weird.

You know what we lack here guys? A youtube video which shows this - a good quality video which shows this exact behavior. anyone?

 

The menu in metro2033 uses the games advanced lighting and fog calculations, which is very CPU and GPU intensive for the M17x, the mouse in Metro2033 is hardware accelerated which means when the FPS drop, so will mouse movement.

 

I have just ran "crysis" with powerplay disabled, loaded to the main menu and was just as bad as it has been with jittery horizontal lines flickering all over the place.....these arent quite apparent in gameplay (acute is a good way of describing it, unfortunately i cant uplaod a video but i did post a link to a youtube video of the kind of effect i am experiencing...i will try to find it and post it here.......

I went into options/advanced and turned on vsync and confirmed, went back to the main menu and the flickering lines have stopped.

This was happening prior to doing anything with powerplay so it doesnt seem to have much effect for me wether its on or off...

The only thing that makes my "lines" go away is either vsysnc or disabling crossfire, which in itself, is an absurd fix to make games run or play without these "line effects" that i see.....

 

Good point lol

 

Although this is pictured on a blank display, these are the type of lines i am getting on all games...they constantly scroll the screen horizontally as you can see in this video.... YouTube - Fallo samsung f86

Mine vary in frequency and how far apart they are spaced between "waves"...sometimes they are quite rapid and close together, other times, not so..also, they appear to go UP rather than down....
Either way, thhe only way i can get rid of them is with vsync or turning off x/f whichh in my opinion, i should not have to do.

If i could post a good high quality image/vid, i would but have no means of doing so sorry....

PS...has any one noticed that my keyboard adds to many h's to what i type...like thhe and hhello.....im a good typist and this is beggining to bug me also....LOL

PPS...spoke to Joker and he is of the mind that it is a driver issue and not harware related from what i gathered.

 

I posted this in a separate thread but figured I'd add it here as well in case some of you didn't read it. This pertains to the wavy line issue:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found this while reading the Guru3D forums: RadeonPro BETA: Automating 3D settings - Guru3D.com Forums

It's got a ton of nice features that almost everyone will find useful and it's very complimentary to the CCC. Pictures speak a thousand words so take a look:




For those with multigpu setups, the force vsync + triple buffering option is a gold mine since it will allow you to setup the game profile inside radeon pro and then it'll automatically detect whenever you launch a particular game and enable triple buffering. This remedies the wavy line issue without much increase in input lag or performance loss.