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    Problem I noticed with the latest driver releases since 8.763

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by 5150Joker, Dec 19, 2010.

  1. 5150Joker

    5150Joker Tech|Inferno

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    I'm not 100% certain this isn't a problem confined to my system but I've tested it on two M17x's I have at home and both had the exact issue. When I updated my system to the latest AMD Catalyst releases (10.10, 10.11, 10.12) I noticed that Windows Live Movie Maker 2011 (uses GPU acceleration) would always crash when trying to publish or save a movie. When the program crashed, AMD's driver would post a display recovery error.

    At first I was frustrated because I couldn't figure out what was wrong and thought perhaps it was a codec messing with things. Then I thought about it a bit more and realized that since the display driver was crashing and recovering, it reminded me of the old problem the M17x-R2 used to have before the new vbios was released when attempting to run non-Dell drivers. Namely, the system had to have it's clocks ramped up into 3D mode using Rivatuner otherwise it would crash when the GPU's were utilized.

    So I went ahead and fired up Rivatuner and slightly overclocked the GPU's and ran Movie Maker 2011 again and lo and behold, the program stopped crashing and it successfully published my movie.

    I'd like to request that those with 5870m Crossfire setups using Catalyst 10.10 and onward update to Movie Maker 2011 and see if you experience similar crashes.
     
    5150Joker, Dec 19, 2010
    #1
  2. unclewebb

    unclewebb ThrottleStop Author

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    I noticed a change on my desktop ATI card when switching from 10.9 to any of the newer drivers. With the old drivers, when you overclocked using Catalyst Control Center, the memory speed was left overclocked at idle. With the newer drivers at idle, the memory speed and core voltages are reduced to save power and I couldn't find a solution without running a separate app so I went back to the old driver. With the newer drivers, some apps won't kick the GPU from the 2D clocks to the 3D clocks which can cause problems like you found.
     
    unclewebb, Dec 19, 2010
    #2