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

do we have to install aty catalyst 10.8 and aty catalyst profile 10.8 after install the new driver and flashing the vbios...??

or should we use the 10.9 and its profile...???

i heard some people using 10,7 and 10,8 and 10,9...
which one is the best,,,,???

 

It's optional, see if something improves, and you can have older ones installed.

I would recommend since you are on a 10.8 base driver you install, all app profile 10.8+ (which includes 10.8, 10.8a and 10.9). But thats just my point of view, you can do whatever works best for you. Me for this, can't be too sure about it. But they should not drop performance at all.

 

Its shoddy coding on EA/Dice's part regarding BFBC2 if its C++ related. I am leaving things the way they are until EA/Dice releases a patch to fix it. Last time I did something to my computer just to make a game work, it messed things up for me... not doing that again... I'll wait till MoH: Tier 1 comes out, hopefully its coded better...

 

ooh

been wanting to ask you this very same question grim, seeing as you also played (or are possibly still playing?) ff14. i just got my copy to start working today and have been happily playing on my r2 (WITH CF ENABLED ) but i was still wondering about the profiles; i haven't encountered any graphical issues while playing but i was just curious to know if you're using them? if so did you see improvements in the way ff14 looked?

also; this place and the people in it rock.

 

Same for me...
Thats what i mean...
There's no problem after install the Driver and flash the vbios
BUT do we need to install some profile and catalyst since they can improved few things (this what i heard then)...??
And what happened f we install them, cause ialso heard that after install the catalyst 10.8 you cant reverted back to older version....

GAMERS in this forum, what do catalyst and profile that most of you have install to improve the FPS, etc ???

and do we have to install catalyst software suite 10.9 (size 79 mb) if we want to install the catalyst profile 10.9 ??
and will it affect or damage the new dell driver or the graphic card...???

 

I already ansewered that and you quoted it, please read carefully. And no this does not damage your gpus o.o' And 10.9 will NOT be available for mobility gpus, wait for 10.10 CAT. And it CAN affect the dell drivers, but SHOULD not... Why not test something by yourself once and see for yourself. Learn the new system get to know alittle or you will always ask such things, it's optional. And yes, if you are on new VBIOS you cannot revert back to older drivers prior 10.8, but i don't know to what your question was releated to, you asked a bit too much there

 

Thanks for all the great info guys....installed A09...reboot...download 8.763 Driver and A01 R281544.
i installed the drivers first, screen went to 800x600 for some reason, ran the Vbios app and put the files on my usb.....rebooted,f12,B,...and restarted. Everything works fine. but im reading about people uninstalling reinstalling drivers, cleaning this and that, which i did not do. hope theres no complication later

 

Hi All,

I'm new to these forums and the world of Dellienware.

Received my m17x-R2 on Monday and have spent the week rebuilding the system (Why? Because I can).

I've installed A09 (Shipped with A08), 8.763 and the VBIOS (Final) and thought you might be interested to know my system still does not wake from sleep and at times I get a blank screen on cold boot as well (Need to remove AC adapter and battery to boot).

Other than this issue, I've been very happy with the laptop. Certainly a step up from my M1710 (R1 - Pre EMT64).

I'm now contemplating grabbing my Logitech MOMO Racing Wheel from the garage, dusting it off and playing F1 2010 on this rather than the PS3 or 360.

Wish me luck!

Oh! BTW. My system froze one night this past week and the freeze/hard reset caused a corruption in one of the ATI dlls which resulted in a SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION BSOD. A reboot into VGA mode and clean up / re-installation of the drivers resolved the issue. This little mishap did remind me of the importance of back ups though.

Life on the 'The Bleeding Edge' I guess ...



M17x-R2 Black | i7-840QM | 8GB-1333MHz DDR3 RAM | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 CrossFireX | 17" 1920x1200 RGB LED | 1TB Raid0 7.200rpm HDD | Bluetooth 370 | Intel WiFi 6300 | Windows 7 Ultimate

 

Can anyone help, i installed this update on my hd4870's and i am now unable to enable crossfire, everytime i tick the box and apply the settings it just unticks it.

has anyone else had this problem? and knows how to fix?

 

Did you restart the computer then try it again?

 

That's a good idea, if you can't reenable it. But actually when you install the drivers, crossfire should be enabled correctly and set to default. But wasn't there a notice in the release notes, that there are some known issues with disabling CrossFire.

@devoidx Ah that's not good if you had a driver corruption, BSOD while an ATI driver was in use, are you sure you installed the Drivers correctly. Also can you say for sure the vbios has been flashed? Check with GPU-Z and compare it to my picture on page 15. If its not exactly the same, i would directly believe you sleep still does not work. But other than that, i'm curious what went wrong, my system behaves like it should for the moment, with known issues. (Also latest Windows Updates installed, something was in there aswell once for more stability with ATI drivers)

I can advice everyone to just be patience and count on AMD and Dell, they are working together, to get this beast rolling as it should. Other than that, i'm a happy customer and my money is invested in to the right product. And yeah, i like all those beta testing, messing around with drivers, getting things to work, keeps me busy and at the same time, i learn alot from the process.

Cheers

 

Hi Grimfan.

Thanks for the update.

I have double checked GPU-Z and yes, my VBIOS versions are the same as your screen grab on page 15.

I can also confirm all outstanding Win7 updates have been applied.

I'm about to attempt a driver re-install of 8.763 Final and then report back.

If, following the driver re-install, the sleep issue is still present, perhaps this would be of interest to Brian ...


M17x-R2 Black | i7-840QM | 8GB-1333MHz DDR3 RAM | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 CrossFireX | 17" 1920x1200 RGB LED | 1TB Raid0 7.200rpm HDD | Bluetooth 370 | Intel WiFi 6300 | Windows 7 Ultimate

 

Id make sure that the old drivers are swept clean but then again, you know that dont ya?

 

Latest update:-

Procedure:

Booted into VGA mode, uninstalled drivers. Rebooted into VGA mode and swept away drivers. Rebooted into VGA mode and re-installed 8.763 Final. Rebooted and confirmed 8.763 installed.

Results:

System still does not wake from sleep. In addition, when I remove the AC: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD.

Interesting no-one else on A09, 8.763 Final and VBIOS A01 is exeriencing the same issue.


M17x-R2 Black | i7-840QM | 8GB-1333MHz DDR3 RAM | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 CrossFireX | 17" 1920x1200 RGB LED | 1TB Raid0 7.200rpm HDD | Bluetooth 370 | Intel WiFi 6300 | Windows 7 Ultimate

 

You can add me to the list of successfull driver and vbios installs. Did a lot of gaming and have seen no issues thus far.

 

devoidx, it's maybe a bit too much asked, but i would be glad if you could tell me your BIOS settings. Devices (Lan, Wlan,Bluetooth, etc.), Performance options (Vcore, DDR3 Voltage) and Power settings used in BIOS. Windows for some reason does not like some options changed in the BIOS, and you should go for a more or less DEFAULT Bios setting, as i found out my system did this BSOD aswell (waking up from sleep, it would immediatly HARD-RESET), when DDR3 Voltage was set to 1.7.

And yes would be cool if Brian could look into this, as the Bios seems to interfer with the ATI Drivers in my oppinion. Someone also said, already disabling LAN would lead to this.

From what i can tell, you have a clean install of the drivers, but check your Bios, maybe revert it to default, set HDD options, so windows boots up, check again.

 

Thats a good idea Grim.

I remember the same thing happening to me after I was playing around with OCing my CPU yesterday. I had set Vcore to 150mv and DDR3 voltage to 1.7.
The next time I went to restart or startup from a shutdown all I got was black blank screen each time with the left hand side GPU fan going full blast. Keyboard lights on and everything.
So I had to take out the battery hold down the alienhead for 30 secs or more then load back up and set back my BIOS settings to default normal.
All back to normal and starting up again after that.

Would be good if Brian can check that out as well.

Cheers.

 

Absolutely correct, that's the issue i'm talking.

Also i can confirm, Vcore only set to 150mv increase, works well for O/C CPU (150Mhz FSB, not really stable, but faster lol), DDR3 Voltage set to default 1.5 and i just rechecked the sleeping, while i was writing this sentence and it still went fine to sleep, proper wakeup.

So DDR3 Voltage 1.7 is definetly a NO-GO atleast for my system specs. Gonna try 1.6 DDR3 Voltage and will update in a few mins.

Edit: Vcore increase by 150mv and DDR3 Voltage 1.6, sleep works! Gonna see what i can tweak like that out of the system now.

Edit2: Allright, i just applied the 150Mhz FSB O/C to the CPU in SETFSB, went to Start -> Shutdown -> Save energy (Sleep) -> System went to sleep -> Hit the PowerButton -> System went back -> O/C has been reseted, applied it directly again in SETFSB, O/C back at 150Mhz, currently in use. This with 150mv vcore increase and DDR3 Voltage 1.6. Cheers

SETFSB Screenie with settings for 720QM:


Sorry off-topic, just sharing my experience regarding the sleep issue and when it was working correctly for me.

 

Hi Guys,

I can confirm 1.7V on my system is also a NO-GO.

All working well at 1.6V and 150mv.

Good pick-up BTW. I forgot on day-1, prior to the rebuild, I tinkered with the BIOS settings in addition to replacing the DW 1520 with a WiFi 6300.

Cheers

M17x-R2 Black | i7-840QM | 8GB-1333MHz DDR3 RAM | ATI Mobility Radeon HD5870 CrossFireX | 17" 1920x1200 RGB LED | 1TB Raid0 7.200rpm HDD | Bluetooth 370 | Intel WiFi 6300 | Windows 7 Ultimate

 

Welp, I've been playing BC2 for three days now and the only problem I've had is the screen goes dark for a few seconds everyone great once and a while. No lag at at, I wonder if turning on Throttlestop helps.

 

Hey guys i just wanted let you know that in FFXIV these driver are causing wavy lines. Can anybody else confirm this blurry wavy lines from time to time sometims consistent. Also FFXIV is crashing more than often now somwthing is wrong this wasnt there before

 

FFXIV lacks the option for V.sync and therefor you will see wavy lines, try to force V.Sync in CCC or RadeonPro.

 

Folks, for the BC2 item and any further discussion of game related items with this driver, please create a thread for it in the 17x subforum. Include Dell 8.763 driver in the thread title. Lets give these individual 'long' discussions their own threads.

Thanks.

 

What games?

 

I only have a single card of ATI 5870, does anyone notice that after update the drive and the VBios, the Window Experience score from the graphic will drop ? my Graphics and Gaming graphics drop from 7.2 to 6.7. May I ask is this the same score you get for the single card user, and guys, What about the CrossFire ? what do you get from the Window Experience score ?

Thank you

 

Oppps! I didn't switch on the power play, that is the problem, after switch it on, everything is back to 7.2 score.

 

Hey Clement, I am still having 7.2 for my 5870 Xfire after updating those two. Dun bother about the Windows experience score as I think it's inaccurate.

 

Did you enable the power play in catalyst control center before run the Windows experience ?

 

Yep. Btw by default it's always on.

 

Hey guys, just wanted to pop in to say (although it may seem obvious) that you can use a DVD-R instead of a CD-R for doing the VBIOS update. Alternatively, you must use a USB dongle with a capacity of <=2GB (which I didn't have).

Also, how come I didn't find out about this update sooner?! So far so good on the new AMD drivers, VBIOS A01 & BIOS A09!

 

I used a cd-r to do mine. My smallest flash drive is 16gb, lol.

 

WEI is a pile of crap.....I wouldnt trust it as far as I could throw it.....totally worthless peice of usually rubbish information.

Ive had systems that have had better cpu/ram and the WEI goes down....utter garbage if you ask me so I wouldnt worry what it says....

 

I cant even get this file to extract, I get a small extraction bar pop up that flashes at 22% really quick and then closes. I'm not sure what to do, I havent come across anybody else experiencing this issue. Anybody have an idea?

The file is located: C:\dell\drivers\R281544 I have the alienware logo "setup" icon but no matter how I run it, it just flashes for a second then closes.

Any help is appreciated.

 

Hehe!! Totally agree wif u Stevie. Windows nvr make a trustworthy benchmark.

Sorry for the off topic guys!

 

I haven't had many problems with crashing but I am experiencing wavy lines (only noticed on the main menu) and the FPS performance is simply not good enough. I daresay this is a combination between poor client optimisation and the drivers though.

Switching Crossfire off actually yielded an increase to performance for me.

 

Guys, I am getting this, I see a reference to it earlier but I tried the solution to no avail:
---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
This VBIOS update is intended only for the following video card:
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870
update cannot be performed on this system.

I switched to VGA (removed the ATI driver). Booted. Did a driver sweep for ATI (and cleaned). Booted. Installed the package as linked. It all went well. Booted.

I still get this error. Any ideas?

Looks like the driver updated OK:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us*

 

Quick question. I currently have a single 5870. If in the future I purchased another to crossfire with, I guess depending on the newness of the 2nd card I would HAVE to flash that card with the new vbios...correct?

So I would install the new card, boot up with the cd I created with the flash utility on it (my smallest USB key is 4 gigs) and shouldnt have any problems from there flashing only the 2nd card?

 

Yup that is correct chiefs. Ahuhs.

Cheers.

 

Hmmss weird stuff chiefs.

What does GPU-z call your GPU? 5800 Series or the correct specific name of 5870? You want it to be called the latter before the vbios creating software will work for you.

Perhaps try again to install the newest dell driver.
Uninstall CCC and any other Ati stuff. Reboot into Safemode and run driver sweeper and CC cleaner. Reboot and then install the new dell driver. Reboot and check GPu-z again. Try the vbios again.

See how you go chiefs. Good Luck.

Cheers.

 

Thanks Reborn, appreciate the help. "HD 5870". Mine goes to 11?

 

Trying to read through this thread now. Is this a recommended update for an R1 with 4870's? Seems like all the talk is for people with R2's with 5870's...

I'm coming from 10.3, as that seems to be the last "best" driver set...

 

There are drivers for the 4870's but the vbios update is for 5870 owners ONLY so dont flash your cards with it cos it is not for them.

Check dell support, there are some new drivers for 4870's under the video tab...two of those updates are for 5870 owners, the vbios and driver but there is one for 4870 owners....

 

yeah thanks I actually saw that on Batboy's first post .

 

I take it this latest video driver for the 4870 is worth installing?

 

Although i dont have 4870 cards, I would presume its better than the previous dell drivers, you should give them a go and if you dont like 'em, change back BUT i cant see the old drivers so dont know how you would revert to them.....not sure if just rolling back the driver works as well as uninstalling/reinstalling.

 

Well, this driver is bad for me. I installed it by the proper method (which is not mentioned at all by dell, go figure). I am now getting BSOD's on boot, and the system will not shut down or sleep. So, suffice it to say I am going back to 10.3.

Is the new Bios a requirement for this driver? As per an earlier post here, the bios won't install for me, it says I don’t have a 5870, though I have 2!

 

thing is, everything is working fine for me, no problems whatsoever with my laptop with stock everything, games i play run max'd out, thats why im reluctant to update both the video drivers and the bios.. but you always feel your missing out on no updating lol

 

Hey theres chiefs,

The new dell driver needs to be installed 1st and then you need to install the updated vbios as well. They both need to be used otherwise you will get those BSOD issues. The new vbios fixes those sleep power bsod hang issues.

Cheers.

 

Spot on....drivers on their own WILL result in end NOT being able to resume from sleep etc....ony the Vbios WITH the new drivers will work...

Done it on this system and no lock-ups at all....plain sailing (after initial driver uninstallation confusion i had lol )

Yet to test fully, but has cured the ole "wavy line" issue, hoping that everything else works great too...

 

Thanks Stevie and Reborn. I had started my own thread but I'm back up and running on the new machine. *whew*. I am never updating this machine again!