M17x R1/R2 - Dell 8.763 Driver (4870/5870 GPUs) + 5870 VBIOS Discussion (non-beta)

Thanks, fox. btw, if you're interested, OrbLog Blog Archive Intel Core Series – Sidebar Gadget - very nice gadget for monitoring CPU, looks awesome... (just saw ur gpu gadget, thought u'd like it)
say, is it worth to OC processor or something... frankly, there is some improvement, but i think there could be more to it

 

Thanks, Leo. I will check that gadget out!

[Edit: just tried it out and like it. Cool... thanks.]

I don't really do much overclocking. I've done some very conservative tweaking, but I cannot afford to replace what I have if I break something not covered by warranty, so I just don't go there.

The AMD GPU Clock Tool works really nice for me. I use it to force my 5870 CrossFireX system to run at maximum defaults all the time while gaming. Defeating the ability of the GPUs to throttle during games has been good for me. You may want to give that at shot. Set the Core Clock at 700 and Memory Clock at 1000 (factory maximum).

I'm not having any luck with MSI Afterburner. It works for monitoring stuff, but I cannot tweak the settings to stop throttling of the GPU. And, it would not work to overclock if I ever decided to because moving the sliders all the way to the right stops at 100% (700/1000).

 

you gave me good advice, i gave you a good gadget in return, cheers, mate
p.s. : throttleStop default "gaming" profile + x27 multiplier (stock 25) on EVGA E-LEET = 20313 marks. wow nice definitely will check out the amd gpu clock, tanks man, will reply asap.
p.s. : got win7 ultimate x64 sp1 here, thought of upgrading it over home basic, but read some posts about SP1 being distructive for aw systems?
edit: so i got here engine clock 99.99 memory clock 150.00 should i raise them to 700/1000? or like constantly increase em over time to those values?

 

Yes, set the clocks to 700/1000. If you want to go higher, take baby steps. The 700/1000 is factory maximum defaults, so it's not overclocking, just running at full throttle. If you go too far, you'll get a hard freeze, BSOD or black screen, depending on what mood your system is in.

The AMD Clock tool works well, but the downside is the settings are not permanent. The settings are lost if you restart. Hopefully, a new release will include TSR features with permanent profile settings.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with SP1. I have Win7 Ultimate SP1 on my system and it works perfectly.

 

Mr Fox, i noticed you have been getting good results with amd clock tool. have you checked whether that software overclocks your secondary crossfire gpu as well?

 

ya. as for me, so far so good, will try gpu OC tomorrow, one thing that i consider quite interesting: before I OCed cpu, I was experiencing low fps... doesn't sound like fun have I not known about nbr forums n helpful guys like mr.fox

 

Hey Leo... I tried the W+E+space thing on several games and it did not do anything special.

I am glad you found my advice helpful. There are a lot of helpful folks here on NBR forum. When you get help and are happy about it, click the little scale icon and add a +1 Rep for them. I just gave a +1 Rep to you for the appreciation and nice compliment. Thank you.

Hi Alex! Yes, it does synchronize the settings between both GPUs in xfire mode as long as you set it so that it does. If you don't set it to do so, only the primary GPU clocks are adjusted. I wish I had the 940XM CPU like you do. The Q720 CPU is a good workhorse, but not nearly as powerful.

 

Just figured out, buddy. +1 ! )
p.s. you can always get a 920xm off ebay for just 400 bucks, think its a good deal... plus, from what i've heared from folks, its even better to buy it separately, coz then you get a chance to put the paste on ur own, which is a big advantage. i got my fully loaded horse coz of time frame + availability over R3 and don't regret a single second... RGB display is just... wow... honestly, i never thought it can be so beautiful!what more could i need
except for the fact that unless i oc system it doesn't do "too well"

 

Thanks, Leo! Have a nice day. I probably will buy a CPU upgrade at some point. My wife is still not happy about the $4K I spent on the XPS M1730 that was replaced by this awesome Alienware. It's going to take a while for her to go along with me spending $400 for that.

 

Mr Fox, if you are using amd gpu clock tool 0.9.26 which i assume you are, i would urge u to verify that both gpus are overclocked using gpuz or whatever gpu clock detection tool. the reason im saying this is because i have not known amd gpu clock tool to work with crossfire ever since i started overclocking. if you really do get it to work, please share it. thanks

 

Hello Alex.

Take a look at the attached screen shot with GPU-Z. I have the AMD GPU Clock Tool (version 0.9.26) set to use the same settings for all devices. It appears that GPU-Z 0.5.1 confirms the same. Notice that GPU0 Core Clock is 1MHz higher than GPU1. As much as I would like to, I cannot honestly take any credit for doing something special to make it work. I simply downloaded it and used it, and it worked. No mods or tweaking were involved to get the settings applied in CrossFireX mode.

 

correct me if im wrong, isnt that the reference clock u r showing? assuming u overclocked 1MHz using amd gpu clock tool, that pic u attached shows that amd gpu clock tool cant overclock ur second gpu because it's still 700.

 

Yes, it is reference clock speeds. The system is not under load and does not run at reference clock speeds at idle under normal circumstances. So, the AMD GPU Clock Tool is forcing both cards to run at reference speed instead of power saving mode. I set the reference speeds manually to demonstrate the answer to your question, otherwise it would be showing 100/150 and VDDC would be 0.900 volts. I am attaching a screen shot of the tool with default clocks to help illustrate what I am stating.

I think what you are stating is that the AMD GPU tool will not allow you to exceed reference clock speeds on the slave or secondary GPU in CrossFireX mode and that would be true. I have not attempted to do that while CrossFireX is disabled as I don't know why there would be a good reason to do that. I do not need to push my GPUs beyond factory reference clock speeds to get satisfactory results in my games, so I just don't do it much. I've tested up to 800/1050 and the difference in benchmark performance and FPS was so small it was irrelevant. I am also not aware of a way to clock the GPU's seperately while in CrossFireX mode, but it probably would have little difference in performance.

 

so if u do 750, that means the other one will be 751 right? try it and see because i've tried before and it doesnt work. u can lock both cards at overclocked speeds. unless im doing something wrong.

 

Alex, I was not finished with my post. Please re-read and you'll see that I agree with you. The secondary or slave GPU does not go beyond reference clock speeds. I usually set mine at reference speeds and that is when there is a 1MHz difference. If I go beyond reference speeds the second GPU remains at 700. I would be surprised to find this is hurting performance. I think the throttling to save power hurts performance more than anything else. I don't care about electricity consumption and if I wanted to save electricity, I would not be using an M17x R2. I wish there was a way to switch between throttling ability and permanently turning off power saving features for the i7 CPU and AMD GPU and have both run at wide open clock speeds at all time.

I also added the screen shots to my previous post.

 

lol. definately a miscommunication. glad we are on the same page now. cheers

 

Hey, mr.fox!
Just looked at my GPU-z ... shows the same as your pic @post 613... meaning is set to def. clocks...

 

that's cool, Le0! Those settings work very nicely for me on very demanding games, like Crysis. I hope they are for you, too. For most games, the factory 700/1000 clock speed is more than adequate. (I think that the higher clock settings being required for games like Crysis is more of a negative reflection on the software developer than they are a reflection on the power of the computer system.)

 

well, lets put it this way: i seen joker's video on metro 2033 and his perfomance with same settings was least 2 times better so... dunno, depends on machine i guess

 

Hey guys i was wondering if you could help me.

I noticed the new vBIOS for my Hd5870's, I initially installed things in the wrong order.

I unistalled all drivers.. did the vBIOS update seem to work fine.. then installed the 11.2 ATI driver. the install worked, but it installed everything but the display drivers and my computer still thought i had stock VGA card.

So after reading your posts. i Installed the lastest Dell drivers (these worked computer went back to normal) then i reflashed the vBIOS (just incase it didnt work the first time) all went smooth. I then unistalled the dell drivers. CCleaner and Driver sweeped my system

Then tried installing 11.2 ATI drivers. same thing happened. it installed everything but the driver part of it. and my computer still thoughts i had no video card.

this is becoming quite frustrating. hopefully someone has the answer

 

Did you check that you were back to Standard VGA Drivers under device manager before installing AMD 11.2? - if not, you should manually uninstall the drivers until you are back at VGA and try from there....did you choose "express install" or "custom install"?

 

Yeah i was back to standard VGA drivers. couldnt change the resolution.

i tried 2 times one express other custom.

During the install during the detecting gpx card.. it doesnt seem to find it.. cause instead of installing drivers, then HDMI blah blah. it just goes straight to HDMI.

really dont know.

 

Thats odd....I really dont know what impact doing the process in reverse has, as you said you did initially....I know that from when i flashed, i knew i had to have 8.763 dell drivers in place first and then flash vbios.

Seems odd if everything works with Dell drivers but AMD wont install. Dont know what to suggest.

 

MaximPrime, there may be an issue with the 11.2 driver package downloaded from AMD. Did you try to download again? If you are still trying to use the same package, download a fresh one and be sure to grab the full sized "Catalyst Software Suite" package. It's a big download after you download the small (1.1MB) download manager file.

If the new Catalyst package does not install correctly, go into Device Manager and open the properties for the first display adapter. Manually install the new driver by telling Windows to let you choose what driver to install and then browse to the folder where the driver files were extracted. Repeat for the second display adapter.

There could be an issue with the vBIOS flash not working correctly and Windows may not be recognizing your video cards, which could explain why the drivers are not installing using the Catalyst Installation Manager. You may be able to work around that through the manual installation process.

Please let us know if this helps.

 

Forgot to recommend trying another/alternative download of the 11.2 set...could be a corrupted set you are trying to install....good call Foxy...+rep!

 

Thanks, steviejones! Appreciate the rep.

BTW - sleep is still working flawlessly, all day long.

 

The version i was using was the one of the ATI website. and the 1.1mb then download one like you said.

Is it worth it me trying to muck around again will it make a big difference? im playing a new game called rift that is just released. didnt seem to have as good performance as i should. so thought new ones might help

 

Great stuff! - mine is working perfectly too regarding sleep issues - absolutely no instances of resuming and brightness functionality going out the window and no BSOD's!

I would strongly recommend ANYONE who has the sleep problem to head on over to http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-issues-when-using-reference-amd-drivers.html and get Chris to email you the test Bios, it really does fix this particular problem!

Personally, I feel the AMD drivers & CAP profiles are newer and perform better than the ageing Dell 8.763 driver set. I would try again, there really shouldnt be any reason why you cant install them - from what I can tell, anyway.

 

I agree completely, steviejones.

MaximPrime, as mentioned before, the package you download may have been corrupted. Try downloading again and using the freshly downloaded Catalyst package. If that does not do the trick, try manually installing in Device Manager Properties as mentioned in my previous post.

 

Thanks for the help guys. i pretty much started the process all over again. re downloaded all the drivers etc. and it worked

no clue what the problem was, but gone now.

 

Excellent. Must have been a dodgy or duff download. Also, you may want to ensure that you have the latest CAP (Catalyst Application Profiles installed too - Alex has linked them in his first post - they will help certain games run better, just download and install, thats it!)

 

Cool! So glad to hear that worked out right this time.

Thanks for letting us know.

 

Is this the latest VBIOS? Because I have the system still running when shut down problem, and I searched that this is supposed to fix it.
http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/11/03/17/fsm.png

 

You have the latest BIOS, but your driver did not get updated with CCC 11.2. You're still using the old Dell drivers. In order to nix them, you'll need to uninstall, reboot into Safe Mode, then run Driver Sweeper and CCleaner's registry cleaning tool. See attached screen shot and you'll see the difference between our drivers.

Edit: D4n1EL, I am unsubscribing from this thread. If you need any more help, send me a PM and I'll come back.

 

Do I need to flash my cards ?


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I only have one installed at the moment going to install the second in a day or two, so I will flash then if I have to at all

EDIT: If I do have to flash do I need to install the dell drivers or can I do it on 11.3?

 

Well, thats the latest vbios on THAT card....who knows what the other one is gonna be on....if you install it without issue and it reads the same - no.

If you install it and its not the same and/or you have bsod's or other problems, maybe re-flash both of them at the same time.

Just have to see what vbios version the card you are installing has i reckon.

EDIT: Yeah, I would flash whilst on Dell 8.763 drivers just to be sure, as thats the recommended Dell procedure for vbios flashing......"IF" they are different vbios versions....you may be lucky and have them the same.....

 

No, you already have the latest vBIOS flashed

 

Yeah...on THAT card shown......but he has a SECOND card to ADD.....who knows what vbios version it will have!

 

Kk! Thanks Stevie and Katalin I will check the other one once I get around to installing it. So glad I purchased these

 

Alright, I got both installed and the Vbios versions are fine both are new, but I want to know if this is normal the second GPU in furmark never hits 700/1000 it throttles between 500/1000 and 100/150

Screenie:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

When i've run furmark on my system, it heats up both cards to max clocks. Doesnt sound quite right that the 2nd card isnt getting a good roasting from furmark.

 

Hmmm any ideas on this in games it goes up to 700/1000, but not in furmark I am running the multi gpu part of it. Never had this issue with meh 4870's

 

Pretty odd that it maxes out in games but not in furmark....crossfire cable obvioulsy seems ok afaik as the secondary gets to max clocks under varying conditions......maybe re-download furmark and try it again??? - shot in the dark at a bad download????

 

It's possible that the drivers are artificially limiting their performance in FurMark, so as not to put so much stress on the system.

I can't remember if it was ATI or nVidia, but I do recall reading a few months ago that at least 1 of the 2 was doing this. I wouldn't be at all surprised if both were.

 

Maybe I have 11.3 running so could possibly be that.

 

Ive successfully flashed both cards with the new vbios and I'm running a clean install at the moment.

What I'm concerned about is does this mean we loose the ability to restore the system with our respawn discs since it installs the older driver? If so, its pointless keeping the recovery partition and the discs since we can never go back really without booting to blue screens.

Does anybody know if the flash utility creates a backup of the old vbios before flashing the new one?

 

Flashing the vbios wont affect the ability to restore with respawn unless you change the physical hardware config of your system....bios is bios....its not hardware.

If your system shipped with Dell 8.763 drivers, the vbios wont cause a problem...unlike mine. Mine came with 8.692 so if i use my discs to respawn, i WILL get bsod due to incompatability.

The only way around this would be to reflash your vbios but its hardly worth doing....just use Acronis or other software to create discs instead of relying on respawn....and no, it doesnt create a backup of older vbios to restore to. You would have to get an older vbios file to flash back to afaik.

 

Thanks for the backup vbios info. Ive also got the 8.692 drivers with my system so I'm in the same situation.

Basically the new vbios has rendered the respawn discs and the Alienware Windows re-install oem disc useless then if it contains the 8.692 video drivers.

... From my understanding respawn creates the recovery discs from the recovery partition on your hdd. Ill have a look if I'm able to replace the 8.692 drivers with the 8.763 in the recovery partition to see if it can work when I have some time.

 

Have a look here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...datasafe-software-respawn-faq-discussion.html for some more info on this subject. Its a great read with lots of useful info. Personally, I just clean install from the OEM Windows disc that shipped with my system rather than use respawn.

I am pretty sure that you wont be able to edit the recovery partition - I tried to find out the same kinda thing - basically, its the factory image of your configuration, as it ships to you from the factory. With that said, you then make your own recovery media FROM that image to stash away should your hard drives go wrong. Its not something you can edit or alter....which is a shame as its the only "fault" or "minor issue" that I now have with my system.

This same question arose, for me, as I wondered about selling my system and how a new owner/user would cope with trying to use the recovery media I created....simple answer is that it wont work....unless the vbios is flashed back to the original to avoid endless bsod's with drivers prior to 8.763....(which we both had 8.692 when shipped, unfortunately).....so the media, for me, is as good as a beer mat lol.

 

haha looks like Ive got a couple of beer mats too then!

thanks for the link, exactly what I was looking for