The 7970m - Alienware users

I wanted to make a thread here after realizing I've been limited to the Sager/Clevo forum for a while. I must ask: has anyone with an Alienware+7970m been able to get a hold on recent news on fixing the 7970m utilization issues, or has the ability to bypass (WHY CLEVO, WHY!!!) Enduro on Alienwares quieted most of the complainers? Also, how does the 7970m perform vs the 680m when in both situations the iGPU is disabled?

 

I'm not up to date, enlighten me please and I might answer what you're trying to ask. So what's wrong with the Clevo with a 7970M in it?

 

Being an R4 owner with the 7970M i have benched while using the enduro feature enabled and without it enabled, with only a few games, those being crysis 2, metro 2033 and counter-strike: global offensive. I've only seen minor frame-rate differences (1-3 frame differences to be exact) as the hardware/software seems to be working as intended. The issues seems to be with select games such as BF3 and a few select others from all the post here on the forums and generally with Clevo/Sager systems.

I have not heard any news on "fixing it" as the Devs do not actually recognize it as being broken in the first place (atleast on the Dell side of it). Its almost treated more as a compatibility issue that Sager/Clevo needs to tweak within software. But then again like any GPU integrated or not some games just respond better to different drivers/hardware configurations... so only time will tell.

On o personnel not i only use the integrated card because to me the enduro feature is more of a hybrid solution and not truly refined as of yet.

When i say Devs do not recognize the issue as being an issue this is derived from the multiple verbatim post of on NBR with Manufacture reps which is easily searchable, FYI.

 

everything is running perfect for me on the R2, apart from the fact i am unable to OC this beast yet

 

Hmm can't oc you might want to visit techinferno and post your issue. AW systems have been nothin' but a solid design which shows passion, passion equals quality.

 

That can be said about a lot actually. Ferdinand Porsche put a lot of passion into his weaponized platforms but most of them failed because of design issues. (WWII reference for you history junkies.)

Great quality doesn't do much against a poor design.

 

I am pretty happy with my 7970m. The only problem that I have had was with trine 2 for some reason, the textures are off. Everything else that I play has been great.

I don't play battlefield however, and I only run the dedicated card. If I want to save on battery, then I will f7 restart and watch movies or whatever. If I am gaming, its not using enduro. I figure, the machine takes like 20 seconds to turn on, just restart it and be done with it. So far it has been more than acceptable.

 

I've been able to overclock now but I can't do it at all during benches as I get fragments

 

Well on the 680m the iGPU can't be disabled. Only owners with the 7970m has been graced with that ability. It is said that the Optimus technology that nVidia users have though is much better than the Enduro bit that AMD put on their cards. I have never used Optimus myself so can't compare properly. The laptop I'm expecting will have Enduro but it will get disabled pretty quickly.

The R2 didn't have Enduro. It was added starting with R3 and R4 got the ability to disable the iGPU for 7970m users only.

 

oh i know, my problem in OCing was a software issue however that has been fixed now

 

I guess Alienware realized Enduro sucked in testings, while Clevo either didn't realize it or didn't care to add the option to only use the dedicated card. You guys seem to be in some kind of Euphoria, like nothing is wrong. It is a way different story in the Sager forum. Every one was panicking when they realized Enduro HAD to be used on our laptops.

 

The all-powerful R2 prevails with the least problems

 

I don't think that's the case at all. We want Enduro to work properly and we know that there is an issue somewhere still. It's getting Alienware and AMD to acknowledge it. AMD has finally acknowledged it via a tweet done on @CatalystCreator however we will still need to wait. For the time being I feel we are lucky to have the ability to turn it off on the R4 version. Users with the R3 version are stuck with no way to turn it off without using an unlocked bios.