In case I buy an M17x R3...

I am just wondering if I was to get an R3 with the 6970 or 6990 in it, does Dell/AW have it sorted out where it works with the AMD reference drivers yet? It would seem by the subject matter of various other threads that presently the cards only work (or at least work a lot better) if you are using the stock Dell drivers and you are stuck waiting for their updates.

As a guy that religiously visits the AMD download site for drivers every month, its not acceptable for me to deal with Dell's drivers for months and months waiting for them to sort out how to make their card work with the reference drivers (which is exactly what I did with my R2 for several months).

 

If you install the AMD drivers over top of the Dell ones you still get a great improvement.

 

but wont you f... something up by doing that? I mean is it "safe" to do that?

 

I did it because I was advised to by senior member here and I have had zero issues with it, well actually the only issue I had was that I got better performance from my 6970M.

 

This will probably annoy alot of people out there in forum world...but I ALWAYS just install the new driver over top of the old one. I used to go through the whole driver sweeper removal process and do everything to make sure there was no trace of the old driver...but then I got sick of it so I stopped doing it and it hasnt been an issue ever.

Now this mostly works for me because if I really @#$%^ something up all I have to do is reformat and reinstall windows because the only files I want to keep long term on my entire PC are my mass effect game saves. LOL.

 

Mate, installing over the top is how it should be. I know it's supposed 'good practice' to sweep etc. But man what a long, drawn out process. Plus if you do something wrong in the sweep process you could just open a whole new other can full of problems.

Why drivers from AMD cannot fit all models be it laptop, desktop if your using one of their cards I'll never know.

I love tech, and I love my laptop. But I don't love sweating and stressing over deploying driver updates, BIOS updates, windows updates/service packs in the fear that it will brick the system!

 

amd basicly have 2 sets of drivers afaik one set for desktop one set for laptops, tbh im quite fine with that as it saves me downloading a whole bunch i dont need ;p

11.8 drivers seem to work a tad better as the ones dell provided i believe their based on the 11.7

 

6970m does not exist anymore

 

Amen to that. Cant wait for April. I spent 30 hrs playing through ME 2 so i have the no one left behind game save.

 

I just used the stock supplied Dell AMD driver package. Seems fine for me since day 1.