Alienware M17 R4 ATI 7970m Graphics problem

Hi all,

I recently bought an Alienware M17 with the ATI 7970m upgrade. So far ive been very pleased with the performance of the system but recently ive started seeing graphical errors with the card. The most recent instance of the problem was while I was playing Skyrim and Hitman absolution, in each game it fails to draw dark areas correctly, instead of stark blacks it has a staggered look, almost like the old 16 bit colour pallet. The blending of colours is also a problem, with the same staggered look. Normal colours or daytime levels are fine, it just seems to be blacks and greys the card doesn't like. This isn't just in games, on my desktop, the Alienware wallpaper shows the same colour corruption and on my steam interface. Im running the 13.4 version of the drivers and have performed a clean install using driver sweeper etc.

I was wondering if anyone else has had problems like this.

Cheers

Jon

 

I think you took screenshots, and since the problem probably isn't OS-level, that's why they're not apparent in what you posted.

When I upgraded to a 7970M, I had lots of visual artifacting, but only on the attached LCD panel (not external displays) [ See Here].

My first suggestion would be to re-flash your vBIOS, then re-seat your LCD's connection to the motherboard (if it's a laptop panel-specific issue), and then a full clean reinstallation of Windows (unlikely to help since completely uninstalled your drivers, but not outside the realm of possibilities).

I concluded that the card I received was defective (I did everything mentioned in the above paragraph with no change), but I'm guessing that's not very prevalent, so hopefully it's something software/firmware related.

 

Thank you, ill try and update the bios, the laptop is still under warranty so im reluctant to open it up and mess around. Ive sent an email to Alienware, hopefully they will have a solution. Ill update when I fix the issue.

Cheers

How would I go about re-flashing my vBIOS? Ive looked over the internet and it seems to be for overclocking the card. I haven't overclocked it yet so im just looking for an official vBIOS download. Do you know where id get one?

Thanks