Ok boys and girls: How to get 8.761 beta drivers + 5870 Crossfire to work with sleep/hibernate/battery.

The solution is very simple, I stumbled across it over a week ago but I missed a few registry entries so I was adding extra steps to get the Dell 8.761 release to work with my Crossfire 5870 setup when I didn't need to.

Well I was discussing it with Ashterfere in the M17x Wiki forum and he went ahead and tried my registry entry change suggestions and noticed he no longer needed to run furmark to overclock BOTH GPU's. Not only that, he could now put his system to sleep/hibernate and run it off battery (AFTER you boot with AC of course).

So here's how:

1. Go to start and type regedit to enter your registry.

2. Do a search for the key "Enableulps" and change every entry from 1 to 0. There should be about 12 or so of them so you'll need to keep pressing F3 to locate them all.

3. Once the registry changes are done, you will need to follow my Rivatuner OC guide for the 5870 Crossfire and get it set up.

4. Once step 3 is done, pick a clock in rivatuner (e.g. 705/1000 or 750/1050 whatever) and set it. Then check the box that says, "Allow overclocking at Windows startup"

5. You're done! Reboot your system and once you're back in Windows, check your clocks with GPU-Z to see that Rivatuner did autostart and set your clocks. If it did, then you did everything correctly and now should be able to put your computer to sleep/hibernate and run it off battery.

Now that wasn't so hard was it?

 

are step 3 and 4 used to prevent 5870 throttle or just to overclock?

 

Wish I saw this before, my Dual 5870 Crossfire setup just went to sleep an hour ago, and has now shat itself .. won't load into windows, getting BSODs and black screens, can get into safe mode but it won't let me run the windows uninstaller to get rid of the ati drivers :S lol.

 

boot safe
click start orb
right click computer --> manage
device manager --> dispay adapters
uninstall both cards (and place the checkmark to delete the files)
reboot
reinstall drivers of choice

 

Just so a newbie on M17x could understand, what is the issue with booting on battery (without AC)?

For now i just removed the battery and run only on AC to avoid any issue :/

 

Thanks man, back and running

 

@ DarthRyo
The issue is only with the newest ATI reference drivers and the Dell Beta's that aren't on the Dell site anymore.
If you use the regular Dell drivers there's no issue.
the issue is that with those drivers the laptop would freeze up when running on battery.
running without battery solves absolutely nothing, as your system will go down as well when removing the powercable

@Joker
Tried it. the enableulps seems similar to something i've posted before, but the rest didnt
While setting this i got a very nice BSOD on applying. timeout of the second graphics card while setting clock, was what i could make of it before reboot.
After the reboot GPU-Z shows the new clocks on both cards. and i am able to pull the plug without issues.
So it seems quite alright in the end.
cant test on games or anything yet.

Next to that i am getting a replacement tomorrow for my poweradapter, since the powercable would fall out by itself, thus hardlocking the laptop with these drivers

 

Remember you need to reboot to get it to work.

-Ash

 

hehe the BSOD didnt forget to reboot

 

BTW Brian, if you are reading this:

We still need to overclock with rivatuner to sleep/wake, but disabling ULPS fixes a couple of issues.

ULPS on notebook cards obviously have an incompatibility with powerplay on notebook cards.

I wonder if ULPS was enabled on the dell 10.2's?

Also, it still doesnt fix my dual display bug unfortunately. That one looks like a deep and nasty problem.

So yeah, I guess I am asking you Brian to make sure the engineers dont just slap on the ULPS fix and say "fixed!"

BUT... it may point them in the right direction.

Any progress updates on the new driver BTW Brian?

-Ash

 

Will the Rivatuner trick keep the cards from ever dropping out of 3D clocks? I noticed it did that when I was using it to OC, and my idle temps were consistently higher.

 

Yeah, rivatuner locks the card in 3d clocks.

In the past, rivatuner used to be able to switch between 3d/2d by itself, manually, whenever it detected a game (and you were overclocking).

Doesnt do it any more though. Maybe it is still there but disabled?

-Ash

 

At a minimum I'll edit the registry to get rid of the sleep issue. I don't really want to do the Rivatuner trick, BUT with your mod Ash, my idle temps might not be too bad anymore. Will report back.

EDIT: I'm not that great with the registry editor. When I search for 'enableulps', I simply get a window that says it searched, but I don't get any results or anything like that.

 

Does this help with the fps lag in games that people were experiancing?

 

Make sure to click on the very first tree in the reg editor before searching.

-Ash

 

You can use the Launcher in RivaTuner to set hotkeys for various clock profiles. For example, I have F1 set to 2D clocks of 350/570 mhz and F2 set to 720/1030 mhz. I can set as many profiles and hotkeys as I want. I think this works out very well because if I don't want the fans revving up, I press F1 and it clocks down and I can run it on battery longer. If I want to play games, I press F2 and it clocks up. Pretty sweet function and I'd much rather have the clock rates under my control than to let powerplay handle it.

 

[Tips] Make RivaTuner 2.24 work with automatic 2D/3D clock switch mode Brigs Lab's

Maybe that could help?

-Ash

 

Tried it, didn't work out too good. Give it a shot.

 

Yeah, its generally a decent train of thought though. The theory is sound.

Ill try it out when I get home tonight.

Wait a sec...

Hmm...

Alright. What if we use the data source as GPU LOAD?!?

Would we then be able to use rivatuner to make our OWN powerplay?

Have steps from 10%-40%-100%, etc.

-Ash

 

Great idea and that does work. I'm using hardware monitoring threshold and I set 2D clocks at 15.9% and below while 3D clocks are 16% and above. I set HW polling at 250ms (I want it to be aggressive). So I guess we have our own powerplay. We've pulled off what Dell engineers couldn't...

 

YES!

Go team awesome!!!!

Gonna do this when I get home.

-Ash

 

Sometimes the monitor get "stuck" and fails to read the clock changes. What you have to do is assign keys for the 2D/3D clocks so you can change them on teh fly. Just change them once and then our custom powerplay starts working as it should. BTW, if you want to write a guide for everyone else on how to do what we're talking about, feel free to add it to the Wiki section and we can link the article.

The only thing left for me is to get this system to boot on battery. If that could be pulled off then everything would be perfect.

 

Joker, did the lag in gaming get fixed? That was the main problem I had when using the beta's

 

Can't say I've experienced any lag. The drivers work pretty good for me.


Edit: Video of rivatuner + 8.761 drivers with automatic 2D/3D clock changes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAqZbEYszCk

 

Confirmed.

Its working.

Also joker... when does your monitor get stuck?

I havent noticed it yet, but we could just use the everest plugin for rivatuner if it does break.

-Ash

 

It only got stuck the initial time I ran it. After that it's been smooth sailing even after restarts.

 

Is this something that Dell will be able to do? - i mean release a version like this that actually works based on all of your research into getting them to work?....
If they could then that would be great - especially for novices who havent started playing around with stuff...would be good to just be able to go to the support website and download a version which actually does work 100% without ANY issues - without applying your "tweaks" to get them to work....

Its a shame you and Ashtefere dont work for AW - you guys are doing a great job of deciphering problems and finding solutions and even tho i dont fully understand what your talking about half the time, i can see that what you are doing is getting things working so keep up the good work and pass it on to Alienware....you guys run circles around their engineers by the look of things LOL

PS any one heard or seen anything from Brian AW?

 

Michael Dell sent a sniper team after Brian because he was taking up too much of the engineering team's time.



-Ash

 

All three of them???? LOL

 

Does this mean Powerplay should be disabled on ccc or not?
keep getting opposing info on that

 

Once I have tried a few various different settings I will collaborate with joker to write a proper guide of what we did.

This should get you working at 90% functionality of the dell drivers, but using any ATI driver you want.

The only missing features will be:

1: External display use while gaming with the displayport or hdmi port
2: Booting off battery

Otherwise, everything should work, including automatic clockspeed adjustment based on GPU load.

-Ash

 

Just wondering if Brian has been abducted by "Aliens" as he works for 'em? LOL - not having a go Brian if you read this btw! - just eager for your engineers to provide the same level of research into getting a Dell driver or equivalent rolled out for us newbie's so we can go play without issue!

 

Yes I am waiting for the new drivers as well, I can't stand playing SC 2 with my guys disappearing half the time.

 

EDIT: Problem solved by a system restore through Safe Mode. I was getting BSOD's after changing the "Enableulps" values to "0" as Joker suggested.

 

question.... cant seem to select the Crossfire logo anymore on the tray icon.
also, now i have 6 ATI radeon 5870 in my CCC tray icon list...

 

Nice Job Joker and those that already tested it.

I also setup my system like that now with automatic throttling, and it works with official ati drivers 10.7a aswell (Idle 350/550, Normal 750/1050). I actually found that EnableULPS option aswell in the corresponding inf file, so it may be possible to edit that beforehand, set it to 0 (default on official is 1), and you could skip one step without messing with the registry.

 

Hmm... sounds like I hear a modified driver installer being cooked up by the community?

-Ash

 

Wouldn't be the first time ... LV2Go, specifically Dox and of course other sites, XtremeG, etc., have been modding drivers and packaging them up for some time now (installers included). Although my ATI knowledge is limited, I'm sure there are some floating around out there who do the same.