AMD 7970 Driver and M18x R1 and M18x R2 compatibility thread

Thank you for the feedback you have provided on the new driver release. I understand that there are many users having issues with the driver and we are tracking that.

Here are the main points so far:
M18xR1- Not loading the driver
M18xR2- Degraded performance.

Some of you have provided feedback on the driver so far, but we are looking for more. Can you please post exactly what errors (BSOD’s) and downgraded performance that you are experiencing and what you are doing when it happens. Be sure to include your model revision when posting.

For now, my advice is to run the 12.7 beta driver while we sort out the issues with AMD. If you running the new driver without any issues, please provide any feedback you can as well including benchmarks.

I thank you for your patience and will continue to have our guys in here answering questions and gathering feedback. Creating this thread as a consolidated thread from many others. Please point people to this thread, as it will be the one we will be using for feedback.

 

i will be receiving my R2 tomorrow with 7970m's so i will be watching this like a hawk !

its nice to see you guys are doing something to address the problem +rep !!

 

I have a problem watching DVD and bluray where the right 1/3 if the screen is purple. This happens with both powerdvd and total media theatre. It does not happen when I switch to iGPU. And it happens regardless of crossfire on or off. Anyone else have this issue? This happened with the previous Dell driver also. I have never installed any other drivers other than the new Dell video drivers and my system install was using the factory restore, not a clean install.

Edit: just just realized I probably should have started a new thread for this. Here is some feedback:

3D mark 11 scores did not change for me. Around 10250. crossfire disabled its 5900.

 

Subscribed! - even though I dont have 7970m, I am keen to see how this unfolds....thanks for your continued support Mark.

 

Well Dell latest driver is almost same as AMD 12.6 Whql driver, Im usin Dell driver from last few days, performance is almost same. There are some flickerin issue ive encounter with Crysis 2 (which even occurs with 12.6). BF3 works fine without any issue.

 

I'm interesting on this too, because I was thinking of upgrade my graphics card. but with all this problem... i also hope that the NVidia 680M be vetter than the 580M and 7970M.

 

Thanks for the feedback so far. Want to keep this as a technical thread where we can capture good feedback to escalate. Good stuff so far! Keep it coming.

 

BF3 runs fine with these drivers but Skyrim has flickering issues when you pause the game and seems like there is a lag issue especially when outdoors.

 

These drivers given to us have inconsistent performance. This need to be rectified ASAP.

These are the games that need crossfire support from that driver(trust me on this please):

A) Crysis 1 and Warhead: 40 to fps on crossfire. This is a joke. Fix this ASAP.

B) Skyrim. How come a single 7970m performs more stable than crossfire? It flickers too. Please make the crossfire work on this. Surely two powerful cards can run Skyrim more stable than one card,right?

C) The Witcher 2 - make the fps consistent and remove random freezing please.

D) Diablo 3- 90 fps on crossfire. Shouldn't at least run at 170fps( because that is the fps on 12.7 beta)

Can we have your word that the AMD engineering are working on the games I mentioned above for improve performance? Please do not think I'm being harsh but I spent $3000 on two cards which I thought it would run faster without any issues. You can contact me directly if you need me to tell you the experience I have on these games.

 

Re-posted from another thread:

Problems documented are UNDERLINED and ITALICIZED.



Had a great time trying to install these after a clean driver removal (uninstall all AMD, reboot to safe mode, driver cleaner, reboot, used CCleaner on the registry).

After I had these installed and I rebooted, had a BSOD when getting ready to install CAP 12.7. Thought, OK - and waited for the dump to finish and rebooted. BAM! Another BSOD.

Booted into safe mode and used driver sweeper to get rid of them. Rebooted, used the installer to remove the rest of the AMD installs. Then ran CCleaner to remove anything extra in the registry.

Tried installing a second time after all this and a fresh reboot. ONLY installed that new PX thing, Driver, and Control Center. Yellow warning symbol (not the green check mark) after install. Right clicked on desktop, no Catalyst Control Center like there should be as the installer SAID install was successful. Reinstalled AGAIN over top WITHOUT a reboot. Catalyst Control Center actually installed.

Rebooted, installed CAP 12.7.

Rebooted, set triple buffering and set profiles to use CAP by default.



Ran Uniengine 3.0 with ALL settings at max, 60.9 FPS average, 19.1 min, 143.5 max, score 1534, GPU utilization at 98 to 99%. Seems to be right where it should at stock clocks.

EDIT: 3DMark11 9910, 19 points lower than 12.6 WHQL (both stock clocks) - so well within margin of error.

EDIT 2: Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark is about 3.2 FPS slower than 12.6 WHQLs at stock clocks, 90.2 FPS vs 93.4 FPS. Min FPS is UP by 0.1 FPS, well within margin for error.

EDIT 3: Alan Wake, every setting maxed with Vysnc, 60 FPS solid. GPU utilization from 58 to 73%, which seems about right. I did noticed some flashing textures here or there in the beginning, the boat scene - mountains in the background (left side) has lengthwise pieces of textures go black and come back every 2 or 3 seconds while looking at them.

EDIT 4: The Witcher 2 STILL has FPS drops, down to 40 - 45 at ultra settings with no Uber sampling and Vsync off (or on). GPU utilization goes from 68/69% for both when still, down to 58% for both when looking around and FPS drops. Beginning of the game, standing looking out at all the tents set up for the siege.

EDIT 5: Rage has HORRIBLE screen tearing, low GPU utilization (55% MAX for both) and 32 to 45 FPS at max settings with vsync off, on, or smart Vsync. Looks and runs like crap.

EDIT 6: Sniper V2 plays just as good, if not a little better than using 12.6 WHQLs, same for Metro 2033.

EDIT 7: Skyrim still buttery smooth at 60 FPS with ~55% GPU utilization on both (tons of texture enhancers installed too). I CAN CONFIRM black flickering in the menu, which IS NOT present with 12.7 desktop betas.

EDIT 8: Max Payne 3 runs perfect and over 110 FPS with max settings (FXAA, but no MLAA). With everything maxed out including MLAA, 88% GPU utilization on both and 45 to 55 FPS.

EDIT 9: Battlefield 3 runs perfect. Even on a 64 player map on Ultra settings, FPS dips down to 45 only occasionally and usually is >75.

EDIT 10: When I opened up my laptop to resume it this morning, apparently instead of sleeping it had a BSOD and shut down.

I'm done with the "Dell official drivers." Going back to AMD's which actually work better, and more stably - but still not perfectly.

Finally got fed up with the random texture flickering/disappearing problem. It's very easy to see in Heaven 3.0 with roofs popping in and out occasionally, and happens with Dell reference drivers and all AMD's BETAs and WHQLs. Replacement cards should be here Tuesday - I'll see then if it is a manufacturing defect or not. Oddly, this problem wasn't apparent to me at first, and has slowly grown WORSE.

 

I'm sorry but Skyrim plays way worst in this beta than 12.7. And it is not buttery smooth 60 fps. Go to Solitude or Whiterun and fps drops like crazy even going out from Solitude.

Max Payne 3, I ran 175 fps maxed out on 12.7 beta.

 

Mark, thank you for starting this thread. As much as I am able while traveling, I will monitor the thread and delete any posts that are rants. I agree that this thread should be for objective feedback to explain what works correctly or what does not. Rants can go in one of the other threads for 7970M drivers.

In my view, the driver not installing on the M18x R1 is not really a problem. We know what the cause of that is and the AMD reference drivers (12.5 beta, 12.6 WHQL and 12.7 beta) install fine. I can also mod the Dell driver to make it install. So, to me this is not a huge issue in and of itself. I do not necessarily need Alienware to spend any time trying to make that work because I see it as a distraction to the issues specific and inherent to the GPU chipset.

This is where the focus should be, as it will benefit R1 and R2 owners mutually and simultaneously. The performance issues are essentially identical between both platforms and I am having the same issues reported in the posts above. When the issues get fixed for the R2, I believe it will resolve the issues for both platforms.

To add to what is posted above, (since I experience all of those things, there is no need to repeat them,) here a few more issues I encounter randomly:

• Occasional black screen lock-up (seems most prevalent w/ DX11 games and benchmarks using DX11)
• Occasional BSOD pointing to the atikmdag.sys or amdkmdap drivers
• Occasional slightly dim screen (reboot most often restores full brightness)
• Occasional GPU0 or GPU1 stuck in 2D clock speeds (often corrected by rebooting and restarting game)
• Occasional artifacts in all games
• Occasional pinstriped screen (pinkish gray and black)
• Occasional incorrect colors displayed on screen (for example, red is sometimes pink)
• Occasional TDR errors (Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered) which can be during gameplay, but now and then (not often) it happens on the Windows desktop. It can also occur with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Premiere, or Adobe Flash.
• Occasional system freeze streaming YouTube videos (Random BSOD streaming YouTube videos seems to have stopped)
• Occasional reduction in performance shown in lower FPS. For example, I can run a Crysis 2 benchmark and see no more than 45-55 FPS. I can launch it later the same day or the following day and see 80+ FPS without changing any settings. The game might be choppy and unplayable one day and work fine the next.
• Occasional CrossFire malfunction (may work in one game session, but not the next, playing the same game title - may be related to the bullet point above)

I mention occasional for each bullet point because the loss of performance and other problems seem to be random. I can sometimes go a couple of days or more with no apparent issues (for example, I am on my second day without serious problems) while other days all of the problems seem to resurface. I don't know what Alienware will be able to do to correct these issues because they are inherent with the underlying reference driver provided by AMD, and they are largely common to the 7970 chipset (mobile and desktop). Many of the issues outlined above have been reported by owners of the same GPU installed on platforms other than an M18x R1/R2.

 

I'll try Skyrim on my 670s tomorrow (have to transfer steam directory over) - but I had that EXACT issue with 3 GTX 580's. Sorry to say it is poorly written code in game. As for Max Payne 3 all settings truly set to max, I'm doubting you are getting 175FPS - unless you are using an old version of MSI Afterburner, which they released a fix JUST for that issue. Yet, you may be and just have a truly golden pair of 7970Ms!

 

well maybe i was but hehehehehehe we both play Max Payne 3 like crazy.

Brother, you have 3 SLI 580 GTX? What is your fps on Skyrim? 60 or above?

 

World of tanks : with only one 7970m the gpu usage is always under 70%, with crossfire enabled the gpu usage is ~35% on each card (so the game runs about the same on one card or with 2). The game has drops in fps from 60 to 30fps (vsync on) frequently (crossfire on of off) and when I run on an external screen I have to set lower Super Sampling AA then on the m18x r2 screen. (2x vs 4x SSAA) Also with crossfire on there is some texture flickering from time to time and it happens more when in the game menu.

Dota 2 : chat text is flickering with crossfire enabled

League of legends : game interface flickering with crossfire enabled

 

At one point I had quad-SLI'd 580 classifieds with 3 dell 30" monitors. It was too much of a pain to get not only quad-SLI running right most of the time, but in surround as well. Since then I've downsized to 2 EVGA 670 SCs, and I have an Asus 27" 3D monitor with Nvidia 3D vision 2.0 coming tomorrow.

KISS - keep it simple stupid... I'm always learning the hard way.

Edit: I recall removing VSYNC from Skyrim futzed up physics, so I left it on with the 4 580's and STILL had slowdowns in Whiterun and a few other areas.

VSYNC on and fps dropping to 30 is a function of VSYNC. If fps drops below 60, it halves fps to 30 to prevent more screen tearing. Turning off VSYNC can help alleviate this, and if you have Nvidia (le sigh) you can turn/force on adaptive/smart VSYNC which doesn't do that nearly as much.

 

Just Cause 2 Menu interrupting

 

m18x r2

Black & White vertical pinstripe freeze (usually when browsing)
Black screen freeze

Bad Performance in:

Skyrim - low GPU usage, big frame drops at times.
Battlefield 3 - sometimes launches utilizing 1 GPU
Arma 2 - Massive micro stuttering
Witcher 2 - Big FSP drops to around 40 fps (without ubersampling)

 

So your getting constant 60 fps on Skyrim using 670 or tripple SLI 580 with some slowdowns?

 

For Witcher 2, what was your constant fps and what settings?

 

My 7970M crossfire! Whiterun for sure drops to 35 fps at times, and then goes right back up to 60, and almost immediately back to around 45. Almost everywhere else I get 60 fps solid.

I will check for the same thing today on 2 GTX 670s.

 

I totally agree with Mr. Fox's experiences pertaining to the issues seem to be completely random. I can go a few days without any issues or freezing and then exactly like he said have like 5 freezes or BSOD'S in quick succession. All this seems to occur as well when I am doing nothing sometimes the system is idle and I have come back to a grey or black screen.

I am not experiencing as many issues as listed by him however my main issues are random BSODS, random freezing, and the weird Orange screen where the screen will just go completely orange or grey.

I haven't really tried that many game titles yet. However BF3, FEAR 3, FIFA12 and MW3 seem to run without any hiccup. In fact during gaming there seems to be no issues at all. It is only when I am working on the desktop area or just plain surfing the net or watching movie it will out of the blue just freeze or BSOD.
+ benchmarking has no issues at all. I have not seen any issues or freezing during benching.

This leads me to believe that the drivers need to be better tweaked for when we come out of a game that the fans react better and somehow stop the freezing or BSODs. Also it needs to be tweaked to ramp up and down the GPU clocks on the fly better as others have mentioned that they don't see proper performance initiation.

I have seen the driver also recover a few times after it has stopped responding.

I have also noticed sometimes after gaming say in BF3 for a while once I stop and then go back to lighter duties per say. I may encounter a freeze or BSOD. Most of the time a Freeze.

EDIT: Okay I just went to open up GPU-z 6.3 and the system froze up again. RANDOMLY!
I was opening it up fine just 5 mins ago lol.
If it wasn't for the speeds of SSD's I would be way more pissed off.

Cheers.

 

NBR always gives the best feedback. Thank you all for the contributions. Please continue to pass the good feedback.

Thank you Mr. Fox for helping to keep the thread on topic. I understand the frustration and am fighting to get this moving as soon as possible. It is tough to fight without the proper feedback to run with. All of the feedback will be reviewed and escalated to AMD.

We are committed to getting this moving. Keep it coming. Remember to be very specific on errors and issues if possible.

We need some data surrounding the systems having issues with the new driver. We will just be collecting data in attempts to resolve the issues quickly. No response will be generated, FYI.

Please send an email to [email protected] With the following format:

Subject:7970 driver

Body: 7970 Driver
Service Tag: (insert your service tag)
Model: (18XR1, or R2)
Modifications: (please list if you have any additions to the build you purchased from us like ram or HDD)

Mark

 

In different parts of maps it was different speeds. It was usually between 55-90
It could go as low a 35 and as high as 100. Total rubbish on the new Dell drivers.

But if you want to play Witcher try the 12.7b drivers. They absolutely spank the Dells for performance. 100fps with out big dips or microstuttering, or and some 35-45 fps uber stampling (only just, not quite good enough though).

 

What settings bro? I got 12.7 for now.

So Arestavo bro, what fps you got for those 670 sli?

 

I am not sure where to post this, but is anything mentioned about 680m SLI compatibility in m18x R1 ?

 

KISS - keep it simple stupid...
HAHAHA Ive almost thought KISS was lost! Ive used this for years and years in the Army but it has been long forgotten.

 

Everyone,

Just got off a call with Engineering and received a request.

Here is what I need.

1. What System bios are you running
2. What vBIOS are you running when you installed initially
3. Specify which revision you are running

Will post some additional information from the meeting tomorrow. Please take the time to provide details on the above information. The feedback you are providing is making an impact.

Thank you,
Mark

 

Just checked with my 670 SLI'd using the latest BETAs- FPS drops to 54 in the same area I was seeing 35-40 FPS in whiterun on the 7970Ms. (exact same mods and resolution - installation was copied from my laptop to my desktop too)

 

thought id drop my 2 cents worth..

just tried the new vbios and im crashing on xfire launching moon breakers from steam.. bsod code 0x000001E wich from what i can tell means i need to increase the vcore?

 

But what's your main fps?

 

Okay I've just decided to disable crossfire mode and see if I can crash or freeze the system.

So far its running great. No BSODing or freezing. I'm trying to throw everything at it.

How's your system going Mr Fox?

Cheers.

 

About the same as before... not able to identify any major improvements with the new vBIOS, but at least GPU-Z seems to be reading more information and the new vBIOS works as well as the previous one. I haven't tried disabling CrossFire because I do not regard that as being an acceptable workaround for dual 7970M GPUs in the M18x. (Having to disable CrossFire for things to work better is unacceptable in my view.)

 

True that Fox,

Yep I share your same viewpoint. I've just decided to see and try to pin point exactly what is causing the random freezing and BSODs.
So I decided to see if disabling Crossfire would do anything.

I really can't wait till AMD release another new updated driver so we can try it out. Surely they have heard about all the garbage that has been flying around lately and want or are trying to resolve things. Here's hoping anyway.
On a side note the GTX680M is looking really tempting lol.

Cheers.

 

Hello.

Looking into the situation and need some help.

What I need is pictures of the video cards and crossfire cable in the R1 and R2. Also your service tag, so we can see when your system shipped.

Please do not post, but PM me. All conversations are confidential. Just looking to solve and escalate the issues as quickly as possible for you.

Thank you.

 

I installed my "refurbished" 7970M replacements last night. It was kind of them to not include new thermal pads or TIM, so I reused the themal pads (and mostly didn't damage the VRAM ones) and had some MX-2 left over to use. VBIOS and card revision were the same as my originals.

The texture flashing/dissapearing is almost totally gone. Heaven 3.0 is good now, and the only spot I could see it still was in Alan Wake. The ferry scene in the beginning, with the mountains on the left has a much thinner band of texture missing/flashing. It also seems to be happening slightly less often too.

I will keep monitoring this for degredation as I saw before, as I am pretty darn sure it is a function of VRAM running too hot/too high of a frequency even at stock.

 

Im wondering what is the point of this mark? Just asking.. why is it important to see when a system shipped? and the r1-and r2 are they not identical in placement of the video cards? Ill tear my system down and get you the picks you are asking for if need be but i would like a little more of an explanation before i do so..

 

Hi Brother Mark_O - asking for a bit of clarification like DumbDumb. What kind of photos do you need of the GPUs and CrossFire cable? With or without heat sinks? Do you want close-up legible photos of labels on the GPUs and cable? I don't mind providing what you need, but want to be sure that what I send to you will be something you can actually use before I dismantle the system.

Thanks to you and your team for the effort going into straightening things out. It is sincerely appreciated.

I sent you my service tag number.

 

Pure speculation, but could be different batch of cards/cables

 

Could be, Brother Long. It is speculation, but not an unreasonable question. It seems that some folks that were having serious issues now have only minor issues after replacing the GPU modules. At this point I believe Mark's team is looking for differences between systems so they can narrow it down and isolate why.

 

SInce there might be a slight chance that the x7200 will not support 680m, which i higly doubt by the way, my other solution would be the 7970m crossfire.

And i got to ask, why the hell is this driver issue so problematic ?

Surely there aren't driver issues on the desktop cards ?
Or are there issues also ?

In my mind is hard to accept that such a high end card like 7970m is having problems software wise ! Why the hell did they released then in the first place ?

I do not know how things work on sandy brdge?ivy bridge platform (things are more complicated with a dual gpu setup and a integrated gpu in cpu, perhaps thats why) but at the time they announced the 7970m, the demo platform was a x7200 laptop with 7970m running AVP2 or something.

I know this is not perhaps the place to ask, but does anyone have a x7200 with the 7970m CF. Are similar issues plaguing the x58 platform as well ?

I thought upgrading gpus was suppose to be a breeze, but clearly that seems not to be the case. Or am i mistaken ?

 

Yep, the desktop 7970 GPU is (or was) having very similar issues (black screen freeze and random BSOD, TDR errors, etc.). Not sure where they stand with that. It may have been an engineering defect affecting mobile and desktop GPUs.

Let's please keep discussion in this thread narrowed down to reporting issues to Dell/Alienware (per their request). As an alternative, please use the following thread for general discussion and questions about the 7970M CrossFire issues that are not specific to their request for information to assist with troubleshooting.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...eleased-amd-catalyst-12-6-whql-12-7-beta.html

Mark... here is a nice video example from another thread.

 

Nobody mentioned this because it isn't a insanely popular game anymore but water in crysis 2 flickers.

 

Depends on who you ask. Crysis 2 is insanely popular with people that love it. (I do... both Crysis and Crysis 2 are among my all time favorites.)

Water seems to have serious flickering issues in multiple games with the 7970M CF setup. It's just "gaming evolved" LOL. I had issues with flickering in Crysis with the previous generation of AMD GPUs as well, just not as ridiculously bad as I do with the current product. Never had that issue when I played "the way it's meant to be played" just for the record.

 

I haven't beaten crysis 1 yet, so I haven't played crysis 2, but I can say no flickering issues whatsoever.

I do have one game where I receive flickering issues: my own. I'm a graphics programmer and I have my own OpenGL 4.0 Scene Graph and a small game to test the features. My bump map texture often overrides and flickers with the main texture of multi-textured objects. This does not happen on a desktop GTX 660 SLI setup, on a 4870M, or a GT 420M.

 

I had noticed a good bit of flickering with lighting in the new Ghost Recon until I used the new ati game profile which seemed to fix most of it. As a side note I was finally able to install the new A03 Bios earlier this morning and notice that now when I close the laptop it will not go into sleep mode, it stays on even while closed. The only way to get it to sleep is to use windows to do so and then close it.

 

I have that exact same problem with sleep mode since installing the A03 BIOS last night.

 

How does Ghost recon future soldier play on 7970m crossfire?

 

It ran quite well with and without the new catalyst application profile. However I would get massive frequent flickering lights for most light sources in the game the only exception being when using night vision or the drone. With the cap profile used it was much better although I still noticed light flickering here and there. I dont really get into benchmarking or have any programs to monitor frame rates but like I said it ran very well with everything max, and this was all in single player havent had a chance to try multiplayer.

 

Sleep issue:

Try restoring to default settings in bios and a power drain (turn off the system, remove power cable and battery, hold the power button for atleast 1-2 minutes). Put the battery and cable back into their places, go to bios and make the changes you desire, load back into windows (after you safe the changes in bios).

If that does not fix your problem, your second option is to call Alienware.