Get your Catalyst 10.7 (non-WHQL) here

Brian,

As always thank you for your updates. We all appreciate them here. I think we just wish you had more power over at Dell... We would feel that you would negotiate with ATI on our behalf and convince Micheal that it's a necessary step for such expensive systems to have access to the catalyst monthly release.

Anyways, thank you again.

 

Its good to know that you are doing your best to help us Brian....I do feel a lot better but it still doesnt alter the fact that most ofus have spent thousands on a GAMING laptop which is supremely sub standard in terms of what it should be.

I am not having a go, but i wish (along with other manufacturers of other equipment) that rigorous testing should take place PRIOR to a launch....I mean, you dont get Ferrari releasing a car that they say can do 200mph and then its customers finding out it only does 150mph....same thing goes here....we have all paid "top prices" for the very best in gaming latops, the fact that they currently do not provide excellence is extremely disappointing to say the least and alot of people, like myself, who are first time alienware owners find this a huge turnoff.....

If someone came up to me now and asked me "would you buy alienware?"...i would have to say "no way....they cant provide what they advertise"

Thats me though, just my feelings on the whole thing since i had my 1st system on 21st June.

 

I am sad to say that I agree with you and mainly due to the driver issues.

 

Even with a lame driver this laptop is by far an amazing system because it has many things most laptops don't. I will definitely buy another one day and I love my alienware laptop.

 

But you have paid top dollar for sub satandard performance...i dont see how you can be happy....that doesnt make sense!!!

Its tant amount to saying your happy with a porsche that does 10 miles an hour top speed just because it has nice heated leather seats........

 

I opened my laptop last night to put on some arctic silver and some ducting mods.

I noticed that both the 5870m cards are not built by dell - they are plain jane oem AMD built cards.
This further leads me to believe that we should ALSO be given the vbios that originally came with them, for the sake of the power users here.

AMD already responded to my email and said I have to ask dell, but... yeah, I doubt I would get a response.

Anyway, looking forward to at least something.

-Ash

 

I wonder if these vary....i mean do we all have plain jane OEM cards or is it something that can vary? - maybe could account for some people having issues and some people not???? - just a thought, maybe poor manufacturing of other cards just like my power adaptor problem with flextronics a/c???

 

You know what I find funny is the fact that AMD advertises the M17x on their website yet they don't have a few in house to test their MOBILITY driver releases? I'm not buying it. Besides, the INF file isn't the problem, the 10.7 Catalyst install just fine. It's the fact that the M17x vbios was altered (along with the system bios to accommodate those changes) and that's why reference drivers only give partial function. These cards are OEM AMD manufactured units who's vbios was altered by Dell. Clevo has a dual 5870m system (X8100) that's arriving in a few people's hands in a few days, lets see if they have reference driver issues. We all know Clevo is FAR smaller than Dell so if it works for them, then Dell is all out of excuses.

The performance is not substandard. The laptop has reached 100% of it's potential since day one with stock drivers. The problem is that the stock Dell drivers had visual (wavy lines) issues that couldn't be resolved without an updated driver. I think the blame for that largely is with AMD since they're the ones that write the drivers and they corrected it with 10.7 in most games (it will never be 100%). It's great that Dell is shifting course and providing beta's to Alienware users, we should thank Brian for his efforts in convincing the engineers to do so.

The biggest and most glaring issue is the inability to use reference drivers. The hardware in the M17x is entirely reference, it's a regular PM55 chipset with regular OEM 5870s, there's no reason we should have a custom vbios mucking things up. Even if Dell releases beta's every few months, it likely won't keep up with AMD's monthly schedule. Thus it would be far better if we were allowed to use their reference drivers from the start. Like I said above, the true test will be if Clevo's dual 5870 systems work fine with reference drivers or if they require Clevo modded drivers. If it's the latter, then we can assume that these need a vbios/system bios modification in order to work correctly for their respective configurations. However, if Clevo can pull it off without any changes, then we know Dell should be able to do the same.

 

Which brings me back to my point. CALL ALIENWARE!!! tell them you are unhappy about your computer. Tell them your thoughts, keep their ears full and eventually they will listen.

1 800 Alienware

 

Guess only time will tell if Alienware sort things out....I hope they do and I hope Brian can pull a preverbial rabbit out of the hat regards to vbios if thats the culprit.

 

Thanks for the info Brian, this is what majority of us have been waiting to hear and hopefully Dell/Alienware are working towards a positive goal and trying to make amends with their customer and fan base.

 

It runs alot faster than most other brands. I am a little angry over the driver issue but that doesn't over shadow the fact that Im happy with the build quality and that it tears up every application i throw at it.

 

Performance/Stability wise they are excellent machines. They dont get grey screens of death, they dont blue screen, they dont overheat, they run most games, they just have trouble with certain things that are fixed with proper drivers.

Mechanically, physically, they are excellent machines, dell just need to do their job and support them. Then we will all be happy.

Dell need to understand that Alienware are not just another name for Dell. Alienware is an elite high end brand that implies better support and quality than all the other dell stuff.

It sounds to me like - with brians help - they are starting to realise that. Maybe late, but better late then never.

Notebooks are becoming a bigger and bigger portion of the market. 2 years ago if you told me you could get an 8 thread laptop with desktop graphics performance I would have laughed at you.

Now, my laptop is nipping at my desktop's performance and to be honest I havent even switched on my desktop since I got my laptop.
I have always been a custom built heavily modded desktop guy but now... Ill never buy a desktop again.

The question is, can dell redeem themselves in the issue of customer support when it comes to their premium brand? if they cant, next machine I buy is a sager.
The high end notebook market is only getting bigger and bigger and if dell want to be a part of that they need to pull their finger out.

Sounds like they will... but time will tell.

-Ash

 

This pretty much echoes my thoughts and feelings. The performance has never been substandard for the M17x in any configuration and Dell has done a damn good job of stretching out a design that is over a year old to accommodate the latest and greatest hardware. If they gave us a concrete commitment to support these systems for at least 3 years with continuous driver updates (at least 1 beta every 2 months), I think most of us would be very happy. I wouldn't even ask for an OEM vbios with that kind of commitment. It sounds like Brian is nudging the higher ups in that direction and I'm hoping that's what the end result will be and it won't end with a few beta's to stave off criticism.

I also stopped using my desktop system and plan to give it away to a family member. Gaming notebooks like Alienware cost a premium and as such should provide premium support and build quality. They do with the latter and the support will hopefully catch up. If not, then like Ash said, there's always Clevo who build rock solid systems as well.

 

hey guys, I installed 10.7a in hopes of solving the disappearing units in starcraft 2. However, after installing the driver, I couldn't open CCC. I uninstalled the stock drivers which I was using before and did driver sweep in safe mode. I installed the 10.7a drivers using the workaround solution. Anyone else experiencing this?

 

This has happened to me in the past but not with the 10.7s. The best way to get CCC back is to reinstall the Dell drivers with the CCC and then install the 10.7's on top of that.

 

To solve the disappearing unit you will have to go into CCC and set AA to Max. Updating your drivers to non dell stock drivers will cause more problems.

 

I can't seem to find the AA options when I reverted back to dell stock drivers but thankfully the CCC works now. Is there a certain profile I have to download?

 

AA is listed under 3D Performance. As for upgrading drivers, since you're new to it, I'd suggest waiting on the soon to be released Dell betas.

 

Wao, this interface is really confusing. Anyway, thanks joker, found it

 

I am going step away from the crowd and be different.

The performance of my notebook has been good; it has run every game I've thrown at it at an acceptable performance level. Additionally, my unit is more than adequate for the productivity apps I run.

There's the rub. In many ways it is not much improved over my M17X-R1 280m-SLI. Certainly not the 45% improvement that was implied on Dell's little graph.

I also know drivers can make or break a card. And from what I am understanding the stock drivers haven't been written to optimize the tech of a crossfire 5870m. Therefore, I, too, am waiting for updated drivers to improve the performance in games.

 

This is exactly how I feel too.....stock drivers do not back up the suggested performance of these cards (5870's) and I kind of feel "cheated" to a degree.
If Dell plan on using this kind of performance advertising, they need to be in a position to "back it up" with driver support - if they CANT, then turn it over to Ati who can.

 

Do some game benchmarks and post up some solid numbers before you guys post up this stuff. I know for a fact that the 10.7's don't put out much better results in games than the stock dell drivers do. In synthetics the newest drivers are much better but in real world gaming they're not. The 5870s are capable of running circles around the 280M's if you know how to set them up. Even at stock speeds they're at least 25% faster than 280M SLi. When OC'd they blow them out of the water. Lastly, if you guys are unhappy with the M17x, I'd suggest returning it back to Dell and going with another brand. Vote with your wallet.

 

Its not that i am unhappy, just disappointed thats all. I was hoping for more by buying AW (as a noob, i kinda expected great things out the box which hasnt happened for me anyway)
Lost track of threads and posts "complaining" about these cards/drivers/vbios etc etc.....
I have relied on info gained here as i dont benchmark stuff YET and alot of it points towards "not as expected" performance.
Now, for alot of people including yourself who KNOW how to get the best from them, its different...for me, i was expecting plug n play great performance for gaming which is something i am yet to see fully.
Cant say that the machine is useless because that would be a stupid comment.....like i say, i just had higher expectations.

No more soap boxing for me!

 

I still fail to see how it's not performing out of the box. The moment you power it on, it should give you 100% of the advertised performance. My system certainly did without any tweaks. Now the wavy line issue I understand is a big distractor and unfortunately we both had that but that doesn't happen with every game and it isn't Dell's fault. They had to wait on AMD to correct that problem with Crossfire and they did. Any vendor that offered Crossfire would have suffered the same way.

 

maybe ive missed something here but what fixed the "wavy line" issue? 10.6 or 10.7 cos as far as i can see, no new dell drivers yet and its my understanding that 10.6 and 10.7 have problems of their own ......

 

These 10.7 Catalyst fix the wavy line problem. Brian has reiterated a few times now that Dell is releasing their own beta drivers very soon. So I'm guessing very soon means within the next week or two at the latest and you can bet they'll probably be based on 10.7a.

 

I cant wait to be able to use both my displays again.

Heres hoping they actually test them in games with multiple displays :/

-Ash

 

Thats good to hear. I did read that Brian was trying his very best to address the driver situation and its great to have him helping us.

Tell me, (btw i still have dell stock 10.5), doesnt 10.7 cause problems with sleep etc? - just from what i have read, installing them doesnt seem straight forward and causes other "knock on" issues.

I presume when Dell "tinker" with the 10.7a's, they will attempt to remedy these issues as they must be native to AW systems?

 

Where did I say I was unhappy with it? I am a little disappointed, yes. That's not the same as saying I am unhappy. Don't lump me with the rest of the whiners. If you read my posts, you would have known I actually said I was overall satisfied.

I am also more than willing to wait for AW/Dell to update drivers, if I did not have faith in them, particularly given Brian's participation in this thread.

I wish I did have my old M17x with me, but its on another continent at the moment. Otherwise, I would run side by side to verify with hard numbers. I can only put out numbers for one game, The Sims 3, and I know for a fact I had 60-70 range FPS on 280m, versus 45-55 for my 5780. I do notice on the 5870 during intense activity, the game still knocks out high teens, compared to 7, 8 or 9 FPS on the 280m.

 

I have to say, these are by far my favorite drivers. Zero problems what so ever. Very satisfied

 

The dell drivers aren't really that bad, they are not great either. With a single 5870 and the dell drivers I can play all my games at max settings above 30 fps. I get about 30-40 in BFBC2, 60 in Batman Arkham Asylum, 60 in WoW, and well over 100 in sims 3.

Edit: I just tested CoD 4 and I average 164 fps with max settings.

 

Over a hundred in sims 3? You're not on Ultra everything are you? I was barely getting 40 on Ultra...not that it bothers me, I just feel under performance

 

I think it is at ultra. It got about 120 but when I started moving around the view it dropped to the high 80s. All my other games shows what I averaged while playing. WoW occasionally drops to 55 and BFBC2 occasionally drops to 27.

 

lol yeah I'm getting high 40s low 50s on TS3, but on my older M17x with 280m, I was getting 60s...

 

Well I'm assuming since Dell is going through the trouble of customizing the release, it should alleviate any outstanding issues such as the sleep state/battery problems that the 10.7 reference drivers have.

If you look at the StarCraft thread, people with 260M SLi are seeing 60fps in Ultra mode using a weak C2D CPU. Do you really think that's possible? Seems like nVidia driver "magic" at play in certain instances--they used to do this back in the day when ATi had the lead with the 9700 pro, they fudged their driver detail to push out inflated numbers just to appear to compete with ATi.


BTW guys don't take this the wrong way. You have every right to be disappointed in what Dell has done. We should have received driver updates much more frequently or at the very least have had the ability to use reference drivers like the 4870 xfire does. However, we should see what the new beta's bring at this point. Also, the 10.7's are there as long as you're willing to put up with a few issues.

 

Isn't Dell using 10.6 now? Also, with the stock drivers - is there always flickering?

 

No, they're older, I think 10.2. The flickering isn't always there, just some games with the stock drivers.

 

Update from my end...despite what I said the video card was actually bad and now ALL my games are working fine. So I apologize to AW and Brian for that...i know my post was a little agressive. Now I just have to get it restart without freezing and me having to remove the battery and everything will be fine.

 

'sup everyone. So I feel like I need to go to ATI 101 class or something because I missed several obvious points about getting the new 10.7 drivers to work.

First off, I did not know about the install.cfg file. Clicked the wiki link (thx Joker) and that provided some help, but not all. I ended up finding my .cfg file in the AMD folder, not C:\ATI.


So I got things working by installing in this order:

1. Installed Dell Drivers (to bring my CCC back)
2. Clicked the wiki link and modified the setting in install cfg file to "true"
3. Installed the 10.7 drivers
4. Rebooted the computer and made sure Xfire is turned on
5. Downloaded/installed ATI profiles (thx again Joker)
6. Discovered the 3D setting in the CCC for the first time (I know...101...)
7. Upped my AA settings only. Didn't know what else to change really (this part is totally my fault for not making the time to look this up and learn it)
8. Activated the profile and ran StarCraft 2.

Game ran great. Looks beautiful with the AA on. Only issue was I had really cranked up more settings in CCC and put the slider over to "quality". Ended up getting on screen artifacts, etc. So I set it to Balanced and the game runs smooth without on screen artifacts.

Can't wait for the official Dell driver though.

 

You shouldnt be getting any artifacts at all just from higher quality settings.

This is probably more likely heat related. HOWEVER - I have noticed after 1-2 hours of playing starcraft 2 on my desktop AND my laptop I get very slight, occasional artifacts (both ati cards).

Seems to be an issue with ATI cards in general, and Im sure they will be eventually fixed.

A friend also noticed this on their single HD5850 desktop machine.

-Ash

 

Hi Guys this is my first post on this forum……. I got my M17x just last week and like everyone else am very excited about having it. I installed BFBC2, set everything to high and started the game. Everything looked good till I noticed that something was not right with the backdrops and was proved right when I disabled XF, like everyone else the first thing to come out of me was WTH !!

I then Installed COD Modern Warfare and that worked super with XF enabled. That’s when I started looking for answers and eventually stumbled out here. Firstly I must say that there are a lot of individuals on this forum that are doing a wonderful job of researching problems and finding solutions. Joker is one who is doing a brilliant job of informing people of his findings. Please keep up the good work.

I too am disappointed that XF is not working with the latest games but everything else in the machine is excellent. Last weekend I played BFBC2 with XF disabled and it worked fine for me. Yes I had to adjust some settings but overall it was a nice experience playing the game.

Now the issue we are having is that we have put our hard earned dollar in DELL’s most expensive machine. DELL professes that the dual cards will give an excellent performance, then the cards must work on all of the latest games period. Secondly they have created a gaming laptop then 3 months is a very long time since the last driver update for a graphics card. They need to do better than this or people are going to feel cheated.

If they fix the driver issue and release new drivers on a regular basis then everything would be fine. But to play the latest games in all their glory settings if I have to do what people are doing to install the 10.7 drivers is frankly unacceptable and hence the disappointment. When you have had a tough day at office you wanna just turn on the system frag some people and everything should look good when I am doing that. I should not have to tinker with my system to such an extent to just play a game.

Some pages back somebody said that stealth mode is not required and that DELL customized the ATI drivers and Yada Yada Yada in turn screwed us. I for one m not sure how many people would feel like that but I think a low power setting is required when you are just browsing the net or downloading some content in the night. Now take it easy guys and please don’t crucify me on my very first post. But I feel some people on this forum are being too critical of DELL.

If DELL would just release updated drivers regularly things would be fine. My HOPES are pined on you Brian

 

First of, welcome to the forum and to the world of never ending ATI driver disappointments. Hehehe. Have you noticed how dell phone tech support doesn't seem to have a clue to the issues we are experiencing. Just called them this morning and its funny how this forum provided more information than they did.

 

LOL of course Nvidia tweaks their drivers for the popular games. They practically as much as say so in their release notes. I haven't seen an NVidia release note that did not "boast" how much improvements specific titles are supposedly going to improve. I don't consider that cheating, I consider that brilliant marketing.

I am eagerly waiting for the new drivers. I do have faith in Dell, and no regrets on my new M17x. I also don't have all the same problems either; running on batteries does not cause a problem for me, and sometimes my laptop can come out of sleep mode.

I also never experienced any wavy lines, thankfully.

 

That's not the kind of optimization I'm referring to. Rather they drop the details down and then try to claim equal performance, it's laughable.

 

ahhhh...well that is trickery! Thanks for the tip!

 

For those of you who are unable to run Starcraft II or are experiencing flickering or other issues in the game, I need some help... Please be sure that you've already patched the game so that you aren't seeing issues related to video card overheating... http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/506444-warning-blizzard-confirms-starcraft-ii-overheating-bug.html

First of all, please ensure that you are running the Dell stock driver (yes, the older one from support.dell.com) and not the ATI 10.7 driver. Engineering has been playing the game without problem using the Dell stock driver.

• M17xR2 M98XT (4870): 8.68.2-091125a1-092358C-Dell.2
• M17xR2 Broadway XT (5870): 8.692.2-100203a1-095371C-Dell

If you are experiencing flickering or other video anomolies with the Dell driver, please send me a PM with all of the specifics and post a YouTube video of the problem so that engineering can take a look. Ideally, please provide driver versions, VBIOS, BIOS, hardware config, service tag.

Is anyone seeing this with NVIDIA configs? What about on ATI hardware on M15x or M17x R1? Only with the 5870s or also with the 4870s?

I realize that most here seem to believe that the latest driver will automatically be the greatest driver, but keep in mind that our gaming lab runs the Dell stock driver and has been playing all of the latest games without any problems.

Thx.

 

One problem I found with the Dell drivers that is driving me bonkers is I can't play Final Fantasy XIV beta on them.

I know you can't play the beta, but it also crashes with just the benchmark.

Download the FFXIV benchmark and you'll see what I mean. It doesn't crash with ATI's 10.6 or 10.7 drivers.

 

Folks, given Brian's post above, if responding to him on the Dell Driver topic, please post your responses here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-4870-5870-driver-discussion.html#post6563857

He posted in the linked thread as well and it might be helpful to keep responses to one thread so he doesn't have to check multiple threads.

 

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