Using Dell AMD 7970m drivers for 6990m?

Hi, I am sort of a newbie hear at NBR, and am not sure if this is common knowledge or if some one already posted this, but on the dell website forums, I believe they were for alienware, I heard a rumor from one user (whose name I cant recall) and he said that the video driver for the amd 7970 on the m17xr4 page, also included an update driver for the stock 6990m drivers, from basically last summer.

So, I went ahead and tried this (uninstalling the old stock drivers for my 6990m and installing the new 7970m drivers). I found that now games run better and previous issues are now gone, certain games like skyrim I am now getting 8-10 fps better and this is the same for Max Payne 3, and so far I dont notice anything negative, like in performance or lag.

I just wanted to ask if anyone knows anymore information about this, like exactly what update is this (12.x?), and whether this was an improper update for a 6900m, which may lead to my card being damaged over time? Thanks

 

The information tab in the Catalyst Control Center (one at the very bottom, click on information, then click on software) will give you the Catalyst version. What you probably did was you downloaded the AMD Radeon 7970M 8.934.2 A00 Win7 64 package, yes? Usually, driver packages from AMD contain drivers for multiple GPU series in one driver package (5000M's, 6000M's, & 7000M's). I can't say for certain that's how the Dell driver package is put together, but it seems like that is what happened. The newer driver package for the R4 containted an updated driver for the 6990M. As long as your GPU still shows up as a 6000M series in you device manager, the I'd just roll with it and see how this new driver performs.

 

yeah I downloaded Gfx_AMD_A00_8.934.2_F9X96_setup_ZPE.exe (for 7970m on m17xr4 page) for windows 64, and gpu-z, hwinfo64, plus device manager shows it as the 6990m series. I guess I will continue playing games and monitoring temps+ looking for any glitches which may occur, and see if I can see any issues, thanks.

 

That driver appears to be a derivation of the Catalyst 12.1 reference set.

 

Hey everyone after around 20 minutes of playing skyrim temps on my card got to around 80-82 degrees Celsius (used gpu-z latest version), while I am not sure of exact temps before installing the new driver (dells 7970m as mentioned above), I dont think it was this high. I know 82 degrees Celsius is high, but is it anything to really be concerned about? (NOTE: about 30 seconds after stoping the game temps did return to around 60-65 degrees Celsius)