Get your Catalyst 10.7 (non-WHQL) here

Desu, could you please plug in an external monitor, set it as PRIMARY, and try and run a game on it while the laptop display is still active?

Also, try leaving the laptop alone while the external display is plugged in, and then try wake it from sleep.

If neither of this causes a problem, please post a GPU-Z screenshot and attach a backup of your video card bios here. Its possibly some people have a different bios that has no issues and is compatible with the default ATI driver.

-Ash

EDIT:

And joker, I know for a fact that engadget would love to make an article along the lines of "oops, dell notebooks cant play SC2!" - can you imagine the hits on that? and the bad PR?

Yeah, dell better get their stuff together because I dont know how long it will be before someone tips them off.

-Ash

 

I cannot play SC2 on my M17x. I mean I can but FPS is horrible. Roughly 15-30 FPS on medium or high. I followed every step correctly in order to install 10.7 but I end up getting my screen alot dimmer than its suppose to be so I'm back on 10.5. Still waiting for Dell to release a newer driver. Ended up getting SC2 early for no reason. Sucks when you actually have the game but cannot play it.

 

Try what I did to get from 10.5 dell to 10.7 ati:

1: Download the BETA drivers first (more features, better) and start the install process - when you see the install wizard, cancel it.

2: Go to device manager and right click one of your 5870's, then select "remove". It will prompt to remove device drivers as well - do so.

2a: Do the same to the remaining device. Your screen will now be ugly, but push on.

3: Go to control panel and select the ATI install manager, click change, then select "express uninstall ALL ati software".

4: Reboot when prompted, or reboot even if not prompted and everything is done.

5: Run driver sweeper, select ati, select anaylse and clean, select clean, reboot.

6: Go to the C:\atiwhateverthenameis folder that got created when you cancelled the 10.7 driver, go to the config folder, and do the "workaroundinstall=true" thing.

7: Install as per normal and reboot.


That got it working for me with normal brightness, etc.

-Ash

 

Now only if they can get their drivers to stop crashing when using Magic Bullet Looks.

 

Hm okay I will give that a go thanks!

 

That actually worked! I was able to update the driver without a single problem and it did improve my FPS on SC2! Thank you so much! +Rep!
*Is around 40-60ish FPS on High normal on 1920 x 1200? Either way it improved by a huge margin so I'm happy! Thanks again!*

 

VER012.019.000.006.036284

 

Hmm, Ill check tonight when I get home but you are probably limited by CPU more than anything else.

Ill post here my results.

-Ash

 

What is this number referring to?

Do you know how to save a bios? First, download winflash, then run it and select "backup bios"

Then please attach it here for us to look at.

Thanks

-Ash

 

Hmm thought 820QM was plenty. Oh well. It might be the beta driver. I had 90+ FPS when Starcraft2 was in Beta so.. I'll just use these drivers until Dell releases something better.

 

I will tomorrow or friday when i have my external monitor

 

I hope that erawliena is right and dell will have the new drivers up this week. I hope hes not just telling us that to get us to stop complaining for a week.

 

Folks,

I can play SC2 on ULTRA all setting with 1920*1200 resolution perfectly with not a single problem.

 

Are you using the beta driver or the official driver?

 

What I did for now to solve the unplugged from AC adapter (battery) issue is simply create two profiles in RivaTuner:

1. Battery Profile set to 350/600 mhz.
2. Performance 3D set to 830/1100 mhz (for gaming).

Whenever I want to use the laptop on battery, I turn on furmark real quick, activate the profile I want in RivaTuner and click apply. With that, I can unplug/plug in the AC adapter all day long and the system will never freeze. This is OBVIOUSLY a powerplay problem because Rivatuner circumvents powerplay entirely. Dell/AMD can fix this easily if they want but I guarantee you they won't.

If you choose to do this then I'd recommend simply activating the battery profile anytime you reboot the system whether you're running off the AC adapter or not. That way if you want to game, just switch over to any overclock profile with Rivatuner or leave it on the battery profile and unplug the system if you need to.

 

I just hope Dell releases something, I don't want to have to do all that just to pull the cord ~_~

 

I am using the 10.7 drivers without WHQL, so I guess they are the beta. But they work perfectly and the game is so smooth as it doesn't need an extreme laptop to play it even when everything set on Ultra.

 

Not unless engadget and associated sites get wind of it and run with it.

SC2 is a once in a decade release - having more than half of your company's product lineup being UNABLE to use it... really bad.

-Ash

 

I too hope erawliena is right about the drivers. I don't think he invented the whole thing to make us shut up. Check he's posts over the months on the forums to see how helpful he's been.

erawliena all the best man!

 

so daft question.... could we not use the clevo bios , or is it completely different.

 

i think joker tried and bricked his card.

 

I see that pretty much 99% of you have the 5870's and are having these issues and I have only seen a couple of posts from ppl with 4870s. Are the crossfire 4870's having this issue or is it only for the new cards? I am just curious since I am still on the 10.3 preview ones as they have been fine for me but SC2 throws all kinds of warnings about the driver and was thinking about updating.. However, I wanted to make sure before I do, I can live with the warnings and all since they seem to be stable if I can expect to have these same issues on my system. Not being able to sleep ect is not an option for me, or to not be able to remove the power cord ect... I have to be able to do those actions.

 

people who ran SC2 with 10.5's reported very laggy/choppy performance, I would expect 10.3's to be worse. I'm on 10.7's with everything maxed and still manage to drop in FPS in a few instances.

The sleep problems is in a lot of laptops, however most of the problems are with 5870's only.

 

I somehow managed to install 10.7 but now my computer wont shut down completely. When I do, the FX lights are still on so I have to hold down the power button to shut it down. Anyone else having this problem?

 

i installed those on 4870s and didn't experience any issued described here.

 

I saw couple pages back someone had the same problem as me. I was wondering if there was solution to it since this driver plays SC2 much better than dell's stock drivers.

 

Thanks for the reply. That is what I thought. I Need to update but cant live with the issues described here. I will make an backup image before I install these and if I run into issues. I will restore back.

Thanks.

 

M17X R2 here... with 5870 CF installed.

with the workaround=true i managed to install the new drivers just fine...
but for some reason, Catalyst Control Center wont start anymore.

devicemanager says i have the 10.7 drivers and games play just fine... but i cant check if Crossfire is enabled due to the ccc not starting (and thus not being able to select the crossfirelogo top right).

anybody else had / has this issue?

 

looks like you didn't install them just fine, as you're reporting a unique issue that others don't report.
I suggest you look a few pages back - there's a step by step of how to install them.

 

BatBoy hit that when i reported about the freeze on sleep issue

So thats the cause for the freeze on battery too.

 

i tried sc2 with 10.6 first and it worked really great. once i switched to 10.7 i could see massive frame drops(though it doesnt make the game unplayable) and increased load times.

 

if you're talking about this

i just tried it, and no change... still no CCC

 

This did the trick especially using the beta drivers, thanks and repped ya

 

I had the same problem when I first installed 10.7. I noticed my OSD was corrupted after the ATI drivers successfully installed. Running the OSD setup again gives the prompt to "repair" it. It worked for me and now my CCC starts up. Maybe yours might be the same?

 

This really is frustrating/ridiculous. Had this laptop since they released the 5870's and still can't fully enjoy it.

 

yea i have restart/sleep/shutdown problems with 10.7 drivers. the dell drivers don't work with starcraft 2 so i'll have to put up with it.

 

So I am having some issues with this driver also. Basically last night it was working fine. I boot up this morning and after windows booted up and I was about to log in, my computer blue screened and gave me the message "a clock interrupt was not received on a secondary processor within...". After searching around, and found it may deal with the GPU.

So I started it up in safe mode and deleted the 10.7 drivers and I was able to boot.

I'm not sure why it didn't do anything till this morning, but it was quite annoying to deal with.

 

This really is a sorry state of affairs.....alot of people including myself have paid top dollar for the best gpu configuration thhat Dell said was available and have yet to see any rewards for our money.
I for one am sick of it, sick of Dell, sick of Alienware......how many other firms get away with selling something that doesnt work?? - GPU's arent the only problem i have had.....

I too am not enjoying my purchase which was made after lots of contemplation....instead of gaming on it, I find most of the time i am searching NBR etc for possible fixes/cures....shouldnt have to do this after lashing out thousands........

Get it right Dell or I personally (and im sure lots more will agree) will never buy AW again.....

I shall dismount the soap box...nuff said.

 

I agree and I'll go as far as saying that I now think you would be better off seeking a refund from Dell. If you don't mind the ugly looks and plastic build of a Clevo, the X7200 will be a better alternative. Dual 480M setup, hexacore desktop CPU, 120 hz display, better cooling and a vbios that won't have all these problems. The biggest failings of Clevo are their ugly designs, lack of keyboard backlighting and liberal use of plastic. However, for pure performance, cooling and ease of use aka peace of mind, they easily trump Dell.


Info: http://www.eurocom.com/products/future/specselectfuture.cfm?model_id=214
Pics: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6447083-post63.html

 

The only thing that bothers me most with the Clevo is the 1080p. I don't mind that much about the rest as I do about the screen resolution...

 

That and they don't have the RGB LED screen which is a marvel but I agree with Joker it's not acceptable what is going on and Dell/AW is really taking us for fools. I am also really mad at the situation which is why I returned my R2 and will wait until it's all fixed until getting one again.

 

Yeah I'm not a fan of 16:9 either.

 

It seems that except from the display drivers Dell has to deal with the storage drivers as well...(check my post on the other thread) If they can't provide us with newer display drivers that we all know are monthly updated I can't imagine for the rest of them...

 

That's my biggest issue as well. Some people will accept an updated release from them and then forget about it. Well months down the line when the newest Dell M17x is upon us, they'll easily forget about this system and there won't be anymore driver updates. What they should do now is to update their vbios so that we can use reference drivers from here on. I don't care about the reduced battery life and I doubt many others do either. We know it's a DTR and don't expect much.

 

Dell has never been good at driver updates it's not a big news. I just wish they would be better with their high end PC.

I am sure a lot of people have been fleeing AW in the past recent months due to all the problems but then again most people buying the PC probably find it stable just use Dell's drivers and play older title video games therefore they never complain.

 

cool, It's not really a bother and I don't think I've 'seen' anything less than 20FPS or so.

 

I completely agree with you. If the only reason for not updating the vbios is battery life than seriously you've got to be kidding. Who cares about that on such a PC. The only time I use battery is when I go to on the toilet while raiding therefore I have no choice but to take the PC with me.

I don't think I've ever needed over 45 minutes of battery for such a case....

 

There's probably a couple reasons they went with their own powerplay configuration:

1. Battery life
2. Reduced temps on idle so lower fan noise

I'd easily give up both if it meant not depending on Dell for driver updates.

 

Yep but I thought they said they were working on it? I remember one AW guy on the forum a month or so ago mentioning that. What happened? Did they give up on us?

 

I second that

For those who want lower fan noise, Dell could create profiles that could run on lower clocks (like stealth mode) and will have lower performance (more silent thought)... but they should give us the maximum of what we paid as well