AMD 7970 Driver and M18x R1 and M18x R2 compatibility thread

Early June if I recall correctly

 

I rarely ever use Firefox, the majority of the time I use Chrome, have noticed no probs regarding that. I believe I have been using CAP2 so I will check out 3 then.

 

So 12.8 wont work at all for our laptops?

 

Works for me. No worse than 12.7b for me. But the real reason it was released on 8/15 was to support the msdn release of Windows 8 RTM.

I did have to install 12.8 over freshly installed Dell drivers. Otherwise I was getting file not found on some kbsync.exe file.

 

I read those release notes wrong, doh! I somehow misread "The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:

Any notebook launched after this driver release." It's been a long day I think I will give 12.8 a go then and see where the chips fall.

 

I doubt you'll have any issues with 12.8... works about the same as 12.7b hotfix for me, but slightly lowered benchmark results. It didn't break anything, but it did not yield any improvement that I can detect. So, installing it was pretty much a waste of time.

 

So is this 12.8 the driver Alienware was supposed to give us or is there another driver we are waiting for from them?

Does anyone have Arkham City and want to try this driver? I am just tired of fresh install multiple drivers.

Jywang, when you maxed out Skyrim, where there any bugs?

 

I'm wondering if that relates to issues some of us have seen with 7970M malfunction. It's an anecdotal observation on my part, but it seems like the 7970M modules that were released in May/June had issues. I know of a couple of R2 owners that received their systems in that time frame that have needed their GPUs replaced.

I'm not expecting Alienware to release a modded reference driver until AMD produces a really solid reference driver for them to use as a foundation. There is no point in them tweaking a driver if the one they have to work with is not an excellent start. Technically, we would not really have any real need for a modded driver from Alienware if AMD will get their act together and release a good one. I've never found myself in a position of needing to rely on Dell or any other OEM to release device drivers.

I'm using Catalyst 12.8 (desktop version, not mobility) and CAP3. Arkham City works fine. So does Skyrim, but you need to do the tweak I posted and enable vsync or it will not work very well. I cannot tell any different between 12.7b hotfix and 12.8 except I get benchmark scores that are a few hundred points lower with 12.8. Otherwise, they both seem to function exactly the same and both are the best driver I have found for 7970M so far. You'll need to do a very thorough cleaning to get good results. I had real issues with 12.8 until I completely stripped everything AMD from my hard drive and registry. See below...

 

Step by step guide on overclockig my duel 7970?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

 

Here: Click Me

 

Options for AMD cards are very limited. Afterburner does not work properly with 7970M CrossFire and it is a pain to get working. Trixx does not support 7970M, so that leaves only MSI Afterburner and ASUS GPU Tweak. And, MSI Afterburner works pretty well overall. There is a great deal of variance and inconsistency in how one 7970M will overclock compared to another. Don't assume you'll have good results because someone else does. There seem to be a lot of 7970M cards out there that do not overclock worth a darn, while some are just downright wicked.

I haven't tried ASUS GPU Tweak to see if it works with 7970M.

 

mine is one of those "do not overclock worth a darn" card sadly. There's always the option to modify the vbios?

 

Doesn't help anything, unfortunately. I finally gave up on that and living with what I have until replacement parts are available. The problem is not the vBIOS. On mine, anyway, it's defective vRAM or VRM.

It's doesn't work for overclocking. It seems like Afterburner without overclocking enabled in the CFG file. Also reads the memory clock oddly. Nice feature to ASUS GPU Tweak is the ability to disable 2D mode. (Doing that in the vBIOS helped my GPUs immensely.)

 

Hey Mr. Fox, did yours come back on the 5th day after they received it? Or did it come back on the 5th day after sending it out? Thinking I need this laptop back by no later than Monday of next week... month end drawing close and its going to get busssyyyyy.... hopefully I won't have to buy a cheapo laptop to use... too broke...

Edit: Oops wrong thread.. just noticed that... sorry, you can delete or move this Mr. Fox.


Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

 

From the day I sent it until the day is was returned to me was 5 days. I got it back on day 6 depending on how you count the days. And, there was a weekend involved, so they basically fixed it and shipped in one day.

 

I seem to be having new issues Im thinking may be overheating? While playing Darksiders 2 recently I would notice that the screen would randomly go black and the sound would freeze up other times the the screen would go black and the audio wouldnt even be there at all. Upon touching the backside of the laptop I notice it is fairly hot so and I have no choice but to hard restart, first thing I did afterwards was check temps on the gpu. I should also say that I can only seem to be able to run that particular game without crossfire as I would get massive screen craziness (lots of tearing, warping, etc.) otherwise and the temp on the gpu that was running was 75c. Is this too high? Also all this is happening whilst sitting the laptop on the cooler I bought from Dell when I got the laptop.

 

So you got darksiders2 working without crossfire? I have the same black screens with crossfire on. What drivers are you using?

 

I am using the 12.7 hotfix driver. Yeah, the game was 'working' with xfire on but with the mentioned screen wackiness so I simply turned off xfire and that fixed that particular problem. I had tried as many different drivers as there are to try thinking it was a driver, 12.7hotfix just happened to be the driver I was running before I decided to just try turning off xfire for the game to hopefully work. The freezeups/lockups are something new to me, like I said not sure if the laptop is getting too hot or what. I should record a short video to go along with my Diablo 3 xfire screen tearing video. That game I could every so often get the screen to go weird but with Darksiders 2 with xfire on it will do it every single time after about 5 or less minutes of gameplay. It is some of the worst screen tearing, warping, whatever you want to call it I have seen yet.

 

Tried 12.8 WHQL? How did you disabled Xfire - created application profile for darksiders2.exe or simply turn off xfire in CCC?

 

I decided not to bother with 12.8 based on some comments on the forums and have decided to stick with 12.7hotfix. I have used the most recent CAP and chose the Darksiders.exe preset but with that and without there was 0 difference, same problems. I disabled xfire by turning it off in CCC.

 

Well, 75°C as a specific number is nothing to be worried about. The trouble is we don't know if that's an accurate temperature reading, and if it is, that does not mean it is the hottest part of the video card. Other components of the GPU that have no sensor might be overheating. If it is only the core, the voltage regulators or memory could be super hot.

 

I see, I suppose there isnt a sure fire way to tell? I am afraid I might have to take it apart a bit and clean/check but I am super afraid of opening this laptop up.

 

If you've never opened up a laptop before the apprehension is understandable. Unless you are accident prone it should not be a problem. Grab the service manual and follow the steps closely. Watch the teardown videos. I trust you will do fine. As long as you are gentle, it should turn out great.

 

So, where are the updates on the new driver? I though Alienware is working on this?

 

Just commented on almost the exact same question a little earlier in another thread... here were my thoughts...

 

I believe I am just going to call Alienware as I have been having weird problems anyway, I would rather someone much more capable than I handling it.

 

Sadly I believe you may be correct with that last sentence, although I sincerely hope it isnt true

 

Darn, so why does AW have to make this post, make promises they are working on it, then all of a sudden, no updates?

 

Because is not their fault that AMD has no proper driver support for those mobile cards. As Mr. Fox stated there is no point in tweaking something that is not made strong enough to provide certain stability and performance for them. The mistake is of allowing AMD cards in such systems. In my opinion, I do not think Dell / Alienware should allow AMD cards in their systems unless they are 100% sure that are supported from the very beginning with a proper driver. I had several systems with m18xr2 and 7970m cards and all of them had no issues with the hardware. The cards are very good but I was struggling every time to make them work the right way. And what tweaking... Once I got this 680M SLi I completely forgot about how difficult was to make something work the way is supposed to. I never had to reinstall or God knows what mod driver do, not to get any BSOD, system freeze and games not running at the right performance...

 

I bought my m18x R2 crossfire last July. Everything was working great until just a few minutes ago while playing Skyrim the screen started shaking and having waves in it like some electromagnetic effect. I stopped the game and still the issue continued. After restarting it seems to be fine but I just want to ask if anyone has experienced this issue and what could be the reason. Thanks

 

I have experienced that a number of times. It may be an indication one of your video cards is defective.

Try setting everything to default settings in CCC. (Just click the black "Defaults" button right after you open CCC.) Confirm CrossFire is enabled using CCC and/or GPU-Z. Check in Device Manager and confirm both display adapters are present without any trouble codes. If you are using MSI Afterburner, open the app and click the black "Reset" button at the bottom next to the "Settings" button.

If everything checks out, use GPU Shark to confirm your cards are running at proper stock core, memory and voltage settings. If everything still checks out and the problem continues, call 1-800-ALIENWARE for hardware warranty support.

 

Thank you Mr.Fox. I will try the methods you advised. So far I haven't noticed the screen issues after the restart and have been playing Skyrim for over an hour without any problems.

 

Hello,

I am new to this forum and I have one question to my windows 7 benchmark results:

windows aero: 7.1
3d gaming and business: 7.1

I have tried everything out to achieve 7.9 but I don't get it .

Are this values ok or not?

My System:

Windows 7 premium 64 bit
Catalyst driver original dell for M18x R2

Hardware:

M18x R2 - BIOS A03 Intel Core i7-3920XM
Crossfire HD 7970m
32 GB RAM
750 GB HDD

 

I wouldn't worry too much about your WEI score as long as your benchmarks are in the right ballpark.........that said I do get 7.9 for both on mine. I'd remove the driver you have installed, run CC Cleaner, and reinstall the driver. I'm using 12.7beta and CAP3 and it seems to work well thus far.

 

Thank you very much for your answer!

so it could be a driver issue? - well, I will try out your advice.
where can I download the beta driver an the cabs you mentioned?

Can you describe to me, in which order I have to install the beta driver and the cabs?

Thank you very much!

 

You can get the 12.7beta driver on the AMD website, same with the CAP3 I believe. After you delete the drivers you have now, run CC Cleaner and then install the 12.7beta and then the CAP3. If that doesn't help then I'd read every post you can on AMD 7970's and the issues they have as it's not uncommon for there to be hardware issues with the cards themselves from what I've read on here.

 

I really wish I knew whether it is related to drivers or malfunctioning hardware. If you want to see a really bad case of what you described if you have the PC version of Darksiders 2, try playing that with xfire on. It is truly something to behold as far as screen tearing/warping goes, then again it could just be my particular laptop. Theres quite a few games where I am forced to turn xfire off in ccc if I want to play and others where it works great with it on, Sleeping Dogs for example. Then again my gut tells me it may be a combination of hardware and driver problems because of the random pinstripes that appear even with laptop idle on desktop.

 

Duke... did you try the vBIOS already?

 

Yes I have tried your modded vbios as well as v118 bios. Ive done everything short of calling Alienware so I suppose now thats my only choice.

 

Just don't breathe a word about the modded vbios to Dell mind you..

 

Oh, no worries I'm using stock now anyway lol.

 

I'm getting a weird screen flicker issue while gaming, does not seem to be any degradation of performance, merely a flicker. The flickering does not seem to occur with 3dmark 11 or Vantage testing. Its best described as a few lines or maybe its slight tearing. I don't have any video capture software currently to record the issue. I'm currently running the base video drivers that came with the system. With crossfire disabled the flickering issue does not exist.

 

No need to say anything since they all read and speak the same language we do, and visit the forum daily.

 

Hey guys, i have been using 7970m cfx on my m18xr2 for a bit less than 3 months.
Overall, i am happy but from time to time i will have some glitches.
I don t really worry because perf is ok. But driver installation is very strange. 12.6 was fine, 12.7 beta gives a yellow warning at the end of installation. Same for 12.8 but in this one firefox has many tears when i scroll the screen. Also i lose amd control panel!
When i uninstall i: remove manually, then driver sweeper, then cc cleaner thrn reboot safe and install. Still i got yellow warning...
I currently play gw2. Perf is weird, i can get 60 fps on ultra and then 30 something then back to 60.
Same in WvW with over 20 people.
Why so much inconsistence?
Did soneone with these cards got the green light after install of 12.8?

 

Well, it was just gw2 apparently. After yesterday s update i could play with cfx on at over 70 fps. WwW was also perfect, no slowdown at all.
I love my 7970m, there is hope, people .

 

I am having a green light after install.

 

I tried reinstalling another 7970m in the 2nd slot after it died, but it seems crossfire is not working anymore even thought both cards are detected in the device manager:

http://imageshack.com/a/img560/1313/8xf5.jpg

tried swapping primary and secondary cards but same effect. Removing the crossfire cable also did change anything, any ideas?

 

Hey Brother ahmadmud, long time no see, buddy. Welcome back... sorry it's under these circumstances. That really sucks.

Strange... Joce21 is having exactly the same problem. I wonder what the deal is? See this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/746077-cant-reactivate-crossfire.html

Did you compare the vBIOS version on both cards to confirm they are the same? Even if they are, maybe try re-flashing the vBIOS and see if that helps. Be sure to do it in DOS as AMD cards sometime get hosed when flashed in Windows. (If you have an unlocked system BIOS you can fix the brick situation with an M18xR1/R2, but it's still a pain in the butt to have to deal with. I've never had an AMD card bricked when flashed in DOS.)

 

Thank you brother fox for the great help as always.
I will try reflashing the vbios as I noticed that the new cards are running 117 vs 119 on my older cards. I guess this is the price one has to pay for not paying extra to get a quality product

 

Update: it's been a long time since I've seen two 7970m's working in my system Thanks!

by the way, is there a certain vbios version for dell's 7970m that you recommend using on m18x r1? I am currently using 017 but i think it might be up to 022