ATI 5870m redeclaring itself

Just as the title says. I have a single 5870m (no crossfire). I finally updated the drivers to the 12.6 Catalyst, I had 12.2 before. Only problem is after the update, the card declares itself to be a FirePro M7820. I looked it up, I know they're are very similar cards.
I wiped all my Display Drivers and CCC...all the way back down to the default VGA-Compatible Display driver that Windows defaults to. Then deleted all the ATI files I could find on my boot drive. I downloaded the default 5870m driver set from Dell and installed it. Installed fine and the GPU showed up as an ATI 5870m. Then I updated to the 12.6 again...and avada-kedavra! It shows up as the FirePro M7820.
I ran the system and memory diagnostics from POST (all the tests) and it showed no errors with the motherboard. I pulled the graphics card, checked it for damage, hit the PCIe slot with a blast of can-air to clean it, and cleaned the contacts of the card as well. Still thinks its a FirePro.
I haven't had any adverse effects...yet. But I wonder if this is a sign the card is going bad.
Thoughts?

 

I think you are going to have to change your signature to FirePro M7820

Sorry had to... try benchmarking both drivers if the new one is performing better, just ignore it and go with it.

 

Har har. Very funny. Sheldon's laugh

I'll benchmark with 3Dmark Vantage.

 

my 5870's in crossfire show up as 5800 series with 12.6 drivers. what bios is your card running?

 

VBIOS version 012.020.000.027.037640 (113-b96101-104)

Oh, that's not good. 3DMark is reporting I have two display adapters linked together (crossfire?). I think the card may be going funny...or the motherboard. It also says my max screen size is 1600x1200. Hmmm.

 

Howdy Radij,

Have you flashed the BIOS on your 5870m? The 'name' is normally derived from the VBIOS and the associated ID in the inf file for the driver. I assume it is a Dell OEM provided 5870m card? Since it goes back to the correct name with the Dell drivers, it might be a bug in the release you installed. Unless you are having performance issues, or unusual graphical artifacting, I wouldn't worry about it. Good luck!

Rich S.

 

I am trying not to worry about it too much. But I tried running 3DMark Vantage and it wouldn't run the benchmark tests. It came back with an unknown error. Suggestions for alternate benchmark tests?

 

Hi Radiji,

Your report does not show that you have linked display adaptors, it is only reporting 1 GPU, so no worries there. Your monitor is configured as a 'Generic Display' with a max size of 1600x1200, so that i s not a problem either. Are you having any performance issues? Is your 3DMark score where it should be? Thanks!

Rich S.

Hi Radji,

If your card is actually having an issue, it should be repetable with the older drivers that correctly identify your card. I suggest that you uninstall the latest driver, and install the most recent ones from the Alienware support page: Welcome to Dell Technical Support and then try and run 3DMark again. Have you tried a more recent version of 3DMark? Thanks!

Rich S.

 

I downloaded the most recent free version of 3DMark. I tried running it again and it still gave an unknown error. I'm gonna go with it for now. If I see any performance or operational issues, then I will rollback to the last know working driver and see if that resolves the issues. In the meantime I'm just gonna have to change my sig :what:

Ps: I have never benched the GPU before so I don't know if 3DMark is the better app to use for an ATI card. But it did say in the very start of the benchmark that I had insufficient system resources to run windows aero...so I don't know how reliable 3DMark was for me.

Sent from my Samsung Epic© 4G powered by Sprint®

 

same bios I am running. wish I could be more help but I am new to these laptops

 

Makes two of us. My temps seem to be within their normal range, so I am not going to stress over this too much. I did have to uninstall GPU-Z though. I had it run upon windows startup for the last 2 month (monitor my temps after my repaste). When I booted this morning, Windows started normally, but when GPU-Z launched, a split-second later my screen went black, and the system stopped responding. I had to hold down the power button to power off. I booted back up right after and that tiem GPU-Z started without any adverse effects. That's when I got the prompt to update CCC and the drivers, which I did. After I went thru my meltdown with the card renaming itself, it rebooted several hours later and again the same thing...once GPU-Z launched, the screen went black. Well, I uninstalled and removed GPU-Z, and it hasn't happened in almost 12 hours. But I wonder if the two instances are linked? Like if what caused GPU-Z to crash my system is also causing my card to misidentify?

 

I think it's a problem with driver.
Install gpu driver from dell website and next intall only displey driver from amd.

BTW You have almost the same config as mine. What temps your gpu has?

 

Got the same problem, showed when i upgraded my driver to 12.7 beta, no performance drop or anything, wierd...

 

Howdy Radji,

Please download the free GPU-Z program from here: GPU-Z Video card GPU Information Utility and see what it says about your video card. If you could, post screen shots of the main screen. I really think it is just an issue with the driver's inf file, but it is weird that 3DMark won't run. There are other benchmarks out there, but 3DMark is a good stability indicator. If you can run it multiple times, and get simialr scores each time your system is fairly stable. Since you can't run it, there could be something else going on. Thanks!

Rich S.

 

same problem here for any update after 12.4

 

Had to uninstall GPU-Z. Occasionally when I launched it, it would cause my screen to go black and my system to lock up...by occasionally, I mean three times yesterday. Once before I updated the ATI drivers, and twice after. Once I uninstalled, no more lock ups. But I have since uninstalled and reinstalled CCC 12.6 and the FirePro M7820 is still prevalent, so GPU-Z is not the cause of the GPU misidentification.

BTW: My GPU temp hover around 60C at idle, 65-68 when I'm transcoding or blu-ray playback.

 

weird. when I went to 12.6 it was after a clean install on my system. I put in the dell drivers first after the install and then upgraded them to 12.6.

 

Yeah, it might just be a bug in this release. I'm just changing my sig and moving forward...for now.

 

LOL your the first one with those cards. You should write a how to.

 

More like 'What not do do'. There doesn't seem to be any difference. I looked up the FirePro M7820 and it seems the 5870 can be softmodded to the M7820. I guess they're from the same die.

 

Often AMD (or ATI ) and nVidia will market the "same" card as a consumer model, and a professional model. With the only real difference being the drivers used, and the VBIOS identifier. The drivers will be optimized for correctness and accuracy vices performance, and are guaranteed a certain amount of accuracy (for things like CAD). The consumer drivers are what most of us are familiar with and sacrifice accuracy for frame rates. We simply don't need to have sub-pixel accuracy when we are playing games

The potential more pressing problem in this case, is that you are unable to run a standard benchmark, and the GPU-Z program causes your computer to crash. These are abnormal situations, and hint at something else going on. I have seen a few posts outside of these forums talking about the latest Catalyst driver causing the 5870m to be 'rebranded' as a FirePro, so it sounds like this is just a cosmetic driver bug, which should not cause any issues.

Rich S.

 

I'm having the same problem with my 5870 showing up as FirePro M7820 except the secondary card shows up as 5800 but when i uninstall the driver the old drivers reinstall themselves and they both show up as 5870's

 

well I just went to 12.7 and now mine show they are FirePro M7820's in gpu-z, device manager and CCC. They show up as 5870's in HWiNFO64

unigine Heavens Benchmark went up 150 points but 3dmarks dropped 100 points. Also went up 6 fps in Arma II benchmark 01.

So I guess it doesn't matter LOL I am happy with them for right now

 

I'm gonna post to this thread instead of creating a new one. SO...my drama continues. I went to watch a blu-ray mp4 from my HDD yesterday. It had all sorts of interframe artifacts (pixelation) and the sound over HDMI was so low I had to turn my TV up to 50 just to hear it. But at that volume level (AMD HDMI Output level is always at 100) there was a great deal of feedback noise. So I tried uninstalling and reinstalling my k-lite codec pack, no effect. I tried other movies, mp3's, etc, same effect. Then I uninstalled all my ATI software and drivers, and reinstalled the stock ATI 8.763 Dell driver package and viola! Everything went back to normal.
So my question is has anybody had any success installing the 12.7 beta catalyst drivers and CCC? I tried downloading a previous version...several previous versions (12.1-12.4) and in all of them, Catalyst Install manager will not update CCC or the display driver, stating both are up-to-date. I've never had it tell me that before. I'd like to try and update everything but am in no hurry since the stock drivers are working fine. I just can't have it misidentify the GPU again since it IS causing problems.

 

I think that all of you should report this issue to amd asap, so they can correct it with 12.8 drivers.

 

Already did. I'm beginning to think it's a hardware failure. My system will freeze on occasion when I open GPU-Z, or a video that uses DXVA. And I'm on stock drivers (ATI 8.763) right now. ME thinks me GPU is dying.

 

sounds like you might be right.

 

And it did it again. Opened up GPU-Z to check my temps and whole damn screen froze. Looks like I'll be ordering a card in the near future. Question is: should I hold off on getting another 5870M until the notebook elders get the 7970M to work with the R2 including the audio over HDMI? And even then I would have to order the card thru Dell, so can the Dell card be flashed with the modified Eurocom VBIOS?

 

Good Questions there radji. I personally am still waiting for parts on the 7970m just to test to see what works. Looking around the threads there seems to be three fronts on testing the 7970m in the R2:

Stability and overclocking - it seems to make the card truly stable requires at least a slight overclock. Strange but true.
BIOS and who makes them - eurocom seems to have the better vbios, but I want to see if my dell card will work over HDMI first.
Crossfire - to crossfire, someone was able to overclock enough to get it to work with the standard power adapter. I found that very interesting.

Oh, and back on topic here, I installed the 12.7 betas and my 5870 became a Firepro 7800. I dont think my card is suffering for it though. Then again I havent pushed it yet.

 

I am debating on waiting for 7970s been reading a lot about them. Just not sure when because for the games I play the 5870's in crossfire work just fine.

 

Hello there

I had the same problem...resolved when dowloadind the Mobile driver instead of the official , so go to amd website and choose mobile driver , you will download the mobile one and the 5870M are recognized as 5870M.

My first post here ^^

 

Dell 7970M in m17x-R2 gives HDMI working , but you need to instal HWinfo for fans...

And sorry for my poor English

 

Thank you for the suggestion, I will try the mobile driver right now.
Let me clarify, I want the audio-over-HDMI to work with the 7970M. Right now, it doesn't. Ichime tested it and is probably working on a fix right now. That is the deal-breaker for me, since I play a lot of movies on my HDTV from my notebook, so HDMI audio would be nice to have.

 

It is working with the DELL one , confirmed on P4G , french forum...

http://portables4gamers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=22397

But you need to read french ^^

I have bought a 7970M from DELL , it comes in 2 days , i can confirm it if you want

 

Yeah, if you can confirm it works right (including audio-over-HDMI) post it in http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...0-your-m17x-r2-single-gpu-crossfirex-484.html. I guarantee there will be a lot of happy souls.

First post here and it was a WINNER!
That's what worked. I had to download the 12-6_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc package (the mobility being the keyword). Installed fine, and now I have an updated Mobility Raedon 5800 Series Driver.