M17xR2 Video Driver Update?

Back in September (I think) there were big issues with the working video drivers for the R2 5870 Xfire combo. There was an updated driver posted on these forums that allowed everything to work just fine, except you couldn't put the machine into sleep mode or unplug it while on. In order to install this working driver, there was some odd work around that had to be done, which I completely forgot how to do. The sleep mode / unplug inability was amended with a VBios update, which I have as well.

There are times when my machine will have some display errors when booting up. After I get the Alienware welcome screen, sometimes, it will take a good while to bring me to my desktop and when I do get there, my bottom bar (bar with start button, icons, clock, ect) will be white / opaque instead of the way I have it in my theme, black / transparent. If I go to play a game after starting like this, my frame rate is reduced significantly. I then readjust my theme to bring it back to my settings, start the machine in safe mode, turn it off, leave it off for 10 minutes or so, turn it back on and things work okay. This happened again today, except my alienware welcome screen went white and it disabled xfire (first time that's happened).

My question is, are there new drivers I should have? I think, because of my updated vbios, that I can just get the drivers directly from the ATI page, but I'm not sure if that's recommended, as well as how to do the work around. My current info is as follows:


Driver Packaging Version 8.763-100810a-103700E-Dell
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1059
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0775
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10151
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0810.2122.36491


My BIOS version is A07 (chip bious, not vbios) and I have no intention of updating it since, from what I understand, the updated versions throttle the chip speed down some. I'm not sure what my VBIOS is, or how to even find it.

My question is, given the above information: should I update my video drivers? Will newer drivers increase my performance? Should I get them from dell, or directly through ATI? If I need to get them through ATI, how do I do the work around?

Thanks a ton in advance and if there's any more info needed just let me know and I'll provide it.

 

You can update your motherboard bios to A09 or A10 without degrading i7 processor performance now.

Looks like you are having display driver issues. If you haven't yet, do a clean install of A01 video driver and then install A01 vbios both from Dell's website and see how it works.

 

If I already have the vbios then wouldn't i have to uninstall it first? I'm not really sure how to do that...

 

I'm running on an A10 bios with catalyst from ATI's site with no problems.

Driver Packaging Version 8.821-110126a-112965C-ATI
Catalyst Version 11.2
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1123
Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0812
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10524
Catalyst Control Center Version 2011.0126.1749.31909

 

Did you have to do a work around to install it?

 

I'm running A10 with AMD 11.2 as well. And I never upgraded any drivers from when I got the R2. It's increased my performance in WOW and other games by about 3x.

I got the ATI drivers directly from AMD site and A10 drivers from Dell site. Just straight installed, no uninstalling/cleaning done. Worked perfectly for me so far.

 

If you go into CCC, (right click on desktop and top option should be CCC) you can find out vbios version by going to information/hardware. If you have the latest vbios installed it should read the following number for both cards (as you scroll down) I imagine you have the latest vbios unless you just updated the drivers without doing so (which was an option back in september). You should know that if you have got the latest vbios, any Dell driver version PRIOR to what you have at the moment (8.763) will not work. It will only be Dell 8/763 onwards or AMD reference drivers. If you attempt to use any earlier Dell driver, it will result in endless BSOD's.

BIOS Version 012.020.000.027

If both cards read that, then your fine ...if not, you would need to update the vbios via dell downloads for your system. Quite straightforward.

If you have the latest vbios version, you can uninstall Dell 8.763 if you like and install AMD drivers and they shouldnt cause any conflict. You can find instructions on how to do that here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...st-11-2-mobility-released-get-yours-here.html You also dont need to do the workaround any more - that was something people were doing to get AMD drivers to work PRIOR to the release of the newer Vbios. The new Vbios effectively allows us to use AMD reference drivers without the need to do the "workaround=true" fix.

You wont be able to get AMD drivers from Dell - they will be from the AMD site. See the thread I have linked to just above. It will have download links for the latest drivers - probably on the first page if Alexnvidia has updated his first post. If you do install AMD drivers, on the firsst post of the above thread are the AMD CAP profiles which are recommended to install alongside. They are like "mini fixes" for various games. The list is constantly updated so to ensure best game performance, always make sure you have the latest version of CAP installed too. Its a small file and just needs to be downloaded and run the .exe and it will install quietly in the background - job done! (If a newer CAP becomes available, simpy uninstall the old one via control/programs/uninstall and then install the latest version.)

Regarding system Bios - basically what happened there was that Dell released a bios revision which effectively reduced the power of the extreme cpu's - it didnt affect performance of anyone with a non-xm cpu (basically, it took away the unlocked multipliers of the xtreme and crippled them performance wise) I think from recollection Bios release A09 cured the problem with the xm cpu's and came pretty quickly after bios A08 when this problem with extreme cpu's was recognised (after LOADS of people complained, which I can fully understand!!!!!)

Saying that, this issue was resolved in Bios A09 I believe, from recollection and any xm owner would probably tell you that A10 does not hinder their extreme cpu. So, you dont have to worry about updating your main system bios.

If you are experiencing sleep/resume problems, a few of us are runing a Dell test bios which you can try out if you like. If you are unsure of doing so (given your attitude towards updating to an official Dell bios, you may not want to).

You can find information on my thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-issues-when-using-reference-amd-drivers.html

Hope that answers some of your questions.

 

I don't have any of the sleep / resume issues. I really appreciate your post. I think I'm going to go ahead and try the new video drivers and hope to god it works out okay!! Thanks a ton bud - I really appreciate it.

So all I need to do is follow the guide in your post to uninstall my current drivers (the dell modded ones) and just go download and install the official ones with no work around? I do have the vbios applied to both cards. Also, is there any real reason for me to upgrade my chipset bios?

EDIT: Which is the link to the profiles? The link I clicked was the EXACT same size as the 11.2 catalyst driver package I downloaded from AMD. How do I get the xfire profiles?

 

Also, I just installed CC cleaner. How do I use it to clean out the extra driver files?

 

http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx is the latest official CAP direct from AMD. Just download it and run it. I twill install and run in the background - nothing else to do!. If a newer CAP becomes avaialble, just uninstall the old one prior to updating (via control panel/add or remove and it will be in the list - just double click and follow on screen prompts) and then same process again for the new one....download, install. Job done!

Ccleaner wont clean out the driver files - it WILL clean up your registry after uninstalling a driver. Sometimes, bits get left behind after uninstallation. To use CCleaner registry cleaner, just look at the left of the window, 4 square tabs...second one down is "registry" - just click it, then "scan for issues"....it will do its thing and then, if you have stuff that can be removed, it will populate the window with those entries. You can select each one manually if so desired but I normally just click on "fix all issues"

You will be asked if you want to backup changes to the registry which you can do (it just stores a backup for you) if you want. I havent.

Thats it. Registry cleaned.

Now, Driver Sweeper is the tool that removes the old driver files that are sometimes left behind after uninstall.

Can be downloaded here: Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper

Normaly run in safe mode with adminsitrator priveledges (just right click the icon an run as admin), this handy tool will remove these "leftovers" to make for a nice clean install of the next driver.

To use it once installed, just run as admin, click analyze - make sure you have a check in the box for ati display and once analyzed, again it should populate the window with files to sweep clean. Click "clean" and that should be that.

I recommend using both programs but others dont use them....personal choice I guess. If you are worried about using them, create a restore point before doing so - that way, you can roll back if you encounter problems.

 

Yea, I know how to use driver sweeper just fine. I used CCleaner on my registry and when I rebooted, I had a ton of issues (messages popping up) so I went ahead and restored my backup regedit and they went away.

My problem now is that the only game I really play (Starcraft 2) has dropped from 60 FPS (just sitting there @ the start of a match) to 39-40. I have v-sync on (i tried enabling tripple buffering through CCC) and settings on Ultra and on my old video drivers, scrolling around the map was smooth, now its rigid. Does anyone have a clue as to why updating to these video drivers and new CAP profiles would drop my SC2 performance SO substantially?

 

I went ahead and reinstalled drivers from the dell support site along with the 10.9 application profiles that I had saved in my downloads folder and everything seems to be working normally again. I have no clue why the newer driver would drop my framerate so low. I may try benchmarking with these drivers then reinstall the new ones and do another one to compare. I really wish I could have figured out how to use the 11.2 drivers, as it would be nice to have the most recent ones for newer games.