POLL: Do units disappear in your Starcraft 2 games w/the current Dell ATI driver?

After hearing how dell isn't having any problem playing Starcraft 2 on the m17x R2. I'm dumbfounded...

It happens pretty much every game with me nowadays...

THIS IS FOR STOCK DELL DRIVERS ONLY

10.7 IS NOT FROM DELL...

 

The 10.7's were released on the same day SC2 was releasing because of the widespread problem of both mobile and desktop ATI cards and dissapearing units in SC2. ATI themselves hinted as much in the teamliquid forums.

If DELL engineers are running 10.7 cat then they may not be lying, but if they are running their own older DELL drivers then I seriously doubt that's the truth.

 

+1 joker.

Brian needs to go over their heads. They have no idea whats going on.

-Ash

 

Ok guys - look, its obvious there is an issue here but please try to remain constructive. I will let this thread continue simply due to the poll - if it turns into nothing more than a flame thread, its going to be closed. Its that simple.

Give AW a chance - Brian has not posted they are not going to fix or work on this - he has indicated many times that they are.

If you want to comment on SC2 and if units vanish thats fine, just leave the labeling and flaming at the door. If you want to post your negative or positive thoughts on Dell/AW, you have a thread for it -
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/506324-opinions-alienware.html

Remember - Forum rules apply at all times.

If you want to discuss my post, send me a PM.

 

Couple things:

1: Need to change the name of this thread to "POLL: Do units disappear in your Starcraft 2 games with the dell radeon drivers?" otherwise its misleading.

2: @BatBoy, it seems like the engineering team is trying to find a way out of releasing the new drivers by examining the old drivers and saying "there are no problems".
Its standard corporate fare for an engineering or programming team. Higher ups say "there is X problem, fix it with Y", and engineering team says "ok, lets see if X problem actually exists. If it doesnt, we dont have to do Y".
Obviously, its beneficial for the engineering team to find there are no problems, because then they dont have to do "Y".
Its just significantly less work, and I would probably do the same.

The thing is, the engineering team needs to be made painfully aware that X problem actually does exist, so they need to stop wasting their time trying to prove it doesnt, and get on with doing "Y".

I see it every day in my line of work. Engineers, programmers, developers, graphic artists... we are all lazy. When higher ups that we think dont know as much as us tell us how to do our job, we get indignant.

Sometimes we just gotta swallow our pride and do what we are asked though.

In this case, thats what the engineers should be doing.

I think thats why everyone is getting angry, because it looks like while brian said "yes they are fixing it" he is now saying (as of last post) "they cant find the problem" which translates to "they cant find the problem so they probably wont try to fix it".

One of the most frustrating things is how obvious the problems are, and how numerous they are.
These engineers are supposed to be elite, they are supposed to know things mortal men/women do not. And here they are plainly stating they dont see what everyone else does.

It sounds fishy/lazy, and thats making us frustrated. Hence why there is a little flaming going on.

If brian would just pop in and say "they cant find problems with the dell 10.5 drivers, but they are going to release the 10.7 drivers anyway" then everyone would be a lot happier.

As it stands now, we have heard nothing since the last update of "they cant find any problems".

And thats a worry.

-Ash

 

Started my session tonight. Oh wait, my CF isn't working. Better boot. I boot. Start playing. Oh look, my units disappear. I die. Off to bed or to get a beer, this is no fun.

 

Can you change the title to
Do units dissapear in your Starcraft 2 game with Dell 10.5 drivers?

Thanks

Your fighting an uphill battle trying to moderate the forum. Let us voice out anger!

 

thread title changed...

Let me clarify my earlier post -

Guys, we have AW reps who are on this forum daily. They have helped and continue to help many of us with issues. The last thing I want to see is these reps vanish from this forum. I've seen it happen before and I don't want to see it happen here.

As for what you mention ash, yes - I totally understand and agree however, I like to give the benefit of the doubt. erawneila did not say they were not going to do anything - he asked for more information. Now if he said, "No - we are not going to fix something which we cannot verify" - well, hell yes thats a cause for sounding off.

I also need to consider the # of threads we have on this topic. Guys, seriously, if you want to be sure your posts are seen by the reps, be sure to post in the thread where they are posting. Since ksufiji created a poll for this, and I happen to think that is a great idea for data collection, the thread will remain open.

As for post deletes, if they violate the forum rules then they will be removed and dealt with. Any q's on mod action can be addressed with the moderator or the lead moderator via private message.

Thanks everyone.

 

It disappears only on Crossfire, if it's run on a single card, it's perfectly fine.

 

So if you disable crossfire and run it on one card that should be fine ?
I can find no problem with that as I run it currently on a 8600MGT and I am fine with the resolution. (Will be getting an m17x shortly)

 

Yup that was the case for mine with stock Dell driver. Although it might give you some performance loss. If you're planning to play SC2 heavily then I advice you to follow the M17x Wiki on how to install 10.7 correctly. I'm running 10.7 and it pretty much doubles the performance in SC2.

 

Well mate , I have just purchased mine now , its my birthday tommorow , so I thought screw it I will buy it. I had been hesitating over a case and a laptop for ages now , bit I have wanted an alienware laptop since first looking at them in 2007 (almost brought an area51). Always had laptops since buying my first one an HP with 15.4inch 4:3 screen and 64 MB ATI Card end of 2003 , man that played COD1 bloody well.

 

Haha I know how you feel man. I always had my eyes on Alienware ever since I joined the gaming community. It was hard for me to save up the money as I'm full time student and part time worker. I finally had enough money to pour it into my dream laptop and it's so worth it! I just hope you don't get a faulty one and hopefully everything will work out for you. If you are having any problems, ask away in this forum and we probably can help you. I got helped by many people here!

 

I have just tested Dell's latest driver form the driver page. With the Dell driver, I have the following problems with Starcraft II:
1. Units disappear.
2. The graphics look ugly as there is no Anti-Aliasing in Starcraft 2 with the Dell driver.

With the Catalyst 10.7a hotfix from the ATi website, everything appears to be fine, units are visible and Anti-Aliasing is working when forced through Catalyst Control Center. Of course, this is to be expected, as the Catalyst 10.7a hotfix was released specifically to fix Starcraft II compatibility issues with ATi cards. I suggest that Dell releases a driver based on the Catalyst 10.7a Starcraft II hotfix immediately.

 

Switching Shaders to high fixes all problems, as stated in ashes thread on sc2 performance.

 

Switching Shaders to high did not fix any of my problems while running the Dell Drivers(or Ultra, or low, or anything!) This is the only reason I purchased this labtop so I can play this game maxxed out without needing a desktop! The labtop seems to run this game very well, but I am getting the mineral glitch 4 out of 5 games!

Do I take a chance and run the 10.7 that other guys are doing? If I had an estimated release time for the dell drivers I would probably hold on

 

I agree RWDragoon, just had it happen to me 3X tonight. I was enjoying myself when all of a sudden my units all disappeared. I saved the game and went out, turned off crossfire and reloaded. They did not immediately appear. Very frustrating!!!

 

Do you find it ever happens when you have CF Dissabled? I may try this.

 

There's a possible 'fix' for the disappearing units problem without changing drivers.

If you're not comfortable installing the 10.7 drivers directly from AMD (the Dell beta drivers have been removed) or dealing with the known issues for these drivers, then you can try the following to rectify the issue on the 10.5 stock drivers:

Go to Catalyst Control Center:

• Choose Graphics
• Click AA
• Uncheck 'Use Application Settings'
• Drag the slider to '16X'

This alleviated the problem for me while using the Dell stock drivers without disabling Crossfire. Without this, yes - I had the disappearing units issue.

Does that help for anyone else?

(I did however note that it caused problems in another game so you may need to change it back to 'Use Application Settings')

 

Never happened to me. Yes, I'm still on the Dell drivers. Almost zero problems with everything in general.

 

Ennea, what version of drivers are you using?

I've had some difficultly looking for a stable 8800M GTX driver.

 

I thought I was the only one!

 

Well I tried your settings and have loaded 8 replays and so far no glitching! I'm gonna roll with this for a few real games and we will see how it goes! So far much better!

Thanks

 

I should have searched for and linked to this post as this is where I read about it initially.

As I mentioned, in another game (Champions Online) forcing this setting caused severe distortion so I turn it off anything other than SC2.

Regardless though, glad it works for you.

 

Is there something nw about dell driver for fixing this?