Calling out to Alienware Support Where are our Official AMD 7970m Crossfire drivers ??

We all wish he were wrong but.....

 

Wasn't the previous drivers supoorts 6990 or 6970m crossfire?

Anyway, I messaged Alienware rep Luis and he said that AMD is working on a driver for Crossfire on 7970m. I mentioned to him that AMD needs to find a fix on Crossfire for Skyrim and Arkham City because those are the only 2 games that need fixing on Crossfire.

We have to PM these guys and tell then our issues so they can relay it to AMD. I know it's a long shot but it is better than nothing. If all fails, I guess we need to be eligible for an upgrade on 680m GTX SLI for a discounted price (or free).

 

All the passing info im not sure helps honestly, like you passing it to Luis and him passing it back to engineering, who passes it back to AMD, who tells them yeah we already know Crossfire is broken in those games .. Has been forever like i mentioned before and probably will remain that way for sometime to come .

The last X amount of driver releases have not even mentioned Skyrim or Batman anymore like they gave up on them sadly.

You should spend sometime in the driver section in the forums of GURU3d. com to read about all the desktop issues because they are the same for the mobile users as well .

 

Darn, but at least I will try. I mean what can we do for now? But I am still hoping for the 680m gtx upgrade.

 

Im not trying to discourage you GTO so i hope you dont think that but if you do your research you will see all the same issues across all lines of AMD cards when it comes to Crossfire and people waiting on fixes for things release after release and no comment from AMD at all.

I hope they find an easy solution for the dissatisfied 7970m owners quickly because in this case all the owners are past 21 days with no recourse to return the machine and up the creek without a paddle.

Im sure if people knew well in advance what AMDs attitude was towards new drivers and how long it still might be before some official driver comes along i think many people would have returned the machine and waited for Nvidia.

 

Hypothetical, if you just received you m18x, is it worth the $600 difference to return it and get the 680m just for the drivers?

 

What about those of us who financed...is it possible to change the terms of the agreement or am i hooped for nothaving 3700 on hand for the laptop? If i can i will gladly pay more for cards from a companyy that will support them.

 

Since you just received it and depending on the kind of deal you got to begin with you might be able to call all up and ask for a return based on your disappointment with the GPUs, then when you reorder negotiate a new deal so you wont have to pay $600 for the GPU upgrade.

Lots of deals can be had on new systems so in the end if you only had to pay $300 or maybe less to upgrade that would certainly be worth it.

We still have to see more on the Nvidia GPUs though and since no one has them yet we dont know if they will have issues either but they wont be driver related more then likely thats for sure .

 

I am already past 21 days so I cannot return the M18x(not really planning too) but I just want AMD to fix this.

Either give us good support drivers for 7970m Crossfire or

Discount upgrade on 680m gtx SLI.

Either way works.

 

Problems with the 7970M go beyond CrossFire. Honestly, other than a couple of games I don't have that many problems with CrossFire. To me that is not a deal breaker. I can live with that as long as just one GPU works properly. That's status quo for AMD and I suspect that will never change.

By AMD's own admission, the 7970M GPU chipset is not currently supported by a properly functioning driver, even in a single-GPU configuration. Owners of laptops with a single GPU are having issues the same as we are with CrossFire... black screen in-game, random freezes, occasional screen corruption and a BSOD now and then. Am I the only one that has noticed that there seem to be more problems with functionality under DX11 than legacy DX9 and DX10?

 

oh MR Fox you are correct but that is the thing.. lets not give them ideas as to what to fix so it doesnt get done half .. Ive gotten aton of bsod codes from running cross fire and a ton when im not.. it just depends..

we just need drivers good ole proper drivers because with out them who to say what is wrong with the cards.. maybe they cant do proper drivers because the cards them selves wont take em? chipset problem?

 

I agree with Mr. Fox that Dell should pull AMD 7970M from their lineup. If I had to guess what went on behind closed doors, it probably went something like this a few months ago:

Dell: So hey AMD, we're ready to use your shiny new 7970Ms with our M18x refresh, how about it?

AMD: Sure why not! But it'll take us like a week to polish up the driver.

Dell: Sounds good, our guinea pigs...I mean customers are good at testing stuff out and reporting back what they find.

AMD: $weet!


On a serious note, Dell should push nVidia only for their M18x until AMD can demonstrate that they are capable of delivering a high performance solution that works. If they cannot, do not offer their hardware, even if that drives up costs.

I think part of the fault is with us AW fans. We've been constantly pushing AW to release hardware quicker to keep in step with Clevo and as a result, we have half working AMD cards. If Dell had waited to release the 7970M in Crossfire until/if AMD had proper drivers and stuck to 675M SLi, I guarantee a lot of people would be moaning on the forum about it.

 

Niche or not, AMD did put or mandate a CF connector on even the single cards so I assume they give somewhat of a damn about Crossfire support. And as much a good experience I have had with AMD cards recently, releasing cards that require hacking in order to get it to work properly or half properly is unforgivable. I agree that both AMD and Dell are guilty in this situation, AMD probably more so since it has been 3 months since its release, meaning they had and still have ample time to get things right.

I won't be surprised to see that happen. Clevo seems to be doing the same thing with their latest dual GPU machines and delegates AMD support to the vendors themselves.

It's a shame that AMD isn't on the ball when it comes to mobile crossfire support when they have done pretty well in general when it comes to general mobile graphics.

 

I pM Alienware rep Luis and he said they are working on it concerning drivers. I told him to inform AmD for crossfire support on Skyrim and Arkham City. Hopefully they rectify this ASAP.

 

Taken from another forum:

"AMD rep said they do NOT provide drivers for laptop graphics cards and that it is the reseller's (Dell's) responsibility to create a driver compatible with the system from the basic AMD reference driver. "

...

 

Nvidia dont have drivers for there mobile (new ones gtx600) either...

 

yeah totally agree brother joker

 

Well finally got reply from AMD, as my inquiry has been transferred to AMD driver expert team, they will assist me further over crossfire problem. lets see

 

Please update us with the problem, I've spent 3 days trying to just get a HOLD of someone at Dell to find out about swapping out for the 680m's but the guy i dealt with to buy the thing won't answer his phone, return his voicemails or e-mails for 3 days....really not happy with the service I've gotten so far.

 

Actually, no... not really. At least not reliably. Owning a system with CrossFire has involved more drama and end user effort than SLI for a while now. My AMD mobile CrossFire experience starts with the 4870M in the M17x R2. I had only a few minor issues with 4870M and 5870M CrossFire once Alienware released a new vBIOS that would allow the use of reference drivers. With 6970M and 6990M it was always necessary to mod the vBIOS, tweak drivers and do registry hacks to make them work better on my systems. They never worked correctly consistently. You have to do the same tweaks with 7970M (disable ULPS and enable CrossFireAutoLink in the registry) to get better than margin functionality from 7970M CrossFire. It improves the situation a great deal, but the results remain inconsistent and the product is unstable some of the time... more so with DX11 than DX9 and DX10.

That's exactly what AMD wants people to believe, and that is not acceptable. Unfortunately, it seems that too many folks are willing to accept that excuse on face value. It's called "passing the buck" (or lying, to put it bluntly) and AMD seems to be pretty good about that. An AMD reference driver that supports the new chipset on the 7970M GPU hasn't been released to Dell or anyone else, and therein lies the problem. Reference drivers usually work fine without any special "features" added by the OEM, so that is just a total cop-out for AMD to make such comments. I have been using reference drivers for years without any issues relating specifically to the fact they are "reference drivers" instead of an OEM "optimized" driver... whatever that is supposed to mean. If AMD expects Dell, Clevo, Asus, MSI, HP, Lenovo, Acer and other OEMs to finish the job and fix everything they left broken, AMD has another thing coming. Anyone should be able to get excellent basic functionality from a reference driver and choose whether or not the small brand-specific tweaks or features that may sometimes be missing from a reference driver are worthwhile enough to continue using an obsolete OEM "optimized" driver.

I do not expect Dell/Alienware (or any other computer OEM) to develop drivers for hardware they did not manufacture. I don't expect them to do this for AMD, NVIDIA or any other device manufacturer and I would go as far as stating that it would be unreasonable to expect that from Dell/Alienware. However, I do expect Dell/Alienware to take care of me if AMD continues to neglect to provide proper driver support for its hardware. Dell/Alienware has always done the right thing by me and I consider them a trustworthy company among a mass of untrustworthy competitors. This is one reason I am not as wound up, disturbed or angry over the circumstance only a month into owning 7970M CrossFire. I do not believe they will leave me holding the bag. I am skeptical of AMD's product, for sure. But, 7970M CrossFire is powerful enough that it will be pretty dog gone awesome IF AMD can get its act together on the drivers and keeps it's act together by continuing to support its hardware with driver updates.

 

it's been 40 days since I received my M18X I have contact DELL multiple times with no results sometimes they don't even take notes of my issue I don't know if they are cutting costs or what but looks like there is only 4 guys working on support Jose,Pancho,Lencho y Manuel

at this point I don't expect nothing from DELL if they are working on something now just going to be another old reference driver from months ago and we know the 7970 is new tech not really supported by old drivers and another point to note we bought a video card that is supposed to be 100% compatible with our R2 and is not imagine you guys with the R1 what kind of support you can get if you guys are lucky the cards are even working to begin with

we may get help from AMD first when they release a desktop driver and some one mood it to work on mobile clearly DELL has better things to do than providing support to their customers and this may be the last DELL-Alienware product I purchased

 

Ok, I just found out. For Arkham City, no matter what card you use, the fps will always be 60fps in DX11 and it can't be increased. Dx11 is bugged.

Only issues of Crossfire is Skyrim.

Can you post more issues in this thread so I can talk to Dell about this?

 

the black screen flickering on menus a lot of games and batman akham city bench is actually better when you disable CF the bench is not locked at 60fps

sometimes you can't enable cf until you reboot

don't waste your time calling DELL" if you didn't paid $200 extra for north American support is insulting!

 

What are the expected frame rates for Arkham City on crossfire in game(not benchmark)?

Tell me about other games that have issues as well. I am going to make way to notify them the issue. I know it sounds like a waste of time but I have some time on my hands anyway.

 

Can I ask why you would ever want more then 60fps unless you had a 3D or 120hz screen?

 

because it just looks smoother...

 

Oh. I was under the impression that was technically impossible with a screen refresh rate of 60hz. With or without v-sync.

I'd agree completely that 120hz v-synced looks much smoother than 60hz v-synced.

 

Just a little something that came up on Today's conference call with Dell....although it wasnt "on topic" for discussion, it did come to light that as far as providing a driver for these babies, Dell's hands are somewhat tied as they only get to work with what AMD offer up. That kinda puts the ball firmly back in AMD's court and until such a time as they come up with something credible, I don't think Dell can actually perform miracles with crap drivers.

Just thought I would mention it for you guys with 7970m's who are going through the mill.....

 

I thought id add a problem that has not been mentioned.. (maybe its just me)
but upon hibernation and sleep it does nit want to resume it will hang with a black screen..
also if you close your lid it will not pick back up when you open the screen..

brightness does not work.. up or down..

 

Those seem like "trademark" AMD problems to me. I dont think I ever had an AMD based machine that actually resumed successfully from sleep and brightness was always broken

 

I'm laughing at this although its more sad than funny. My 3870 also will not resume from sleep under any circumstances, but atleast brightness still works.

 

Odd, I am not having the resume from sleep issue that is being described here, on the machine in my signature. As a matter of fact, I just got home not too long ago, popped open the laptop - resumed into windows, and am now adjusting the brightness up and down.

??

EDIT: Running 12.5 Beta drivers.

 

how do yours games are running?

 

hahahahaha noow my brightness works.. im on and have been on 12.5 beta..

is going on..possessed drivers..

 

If this is a question about gaming stability, 12.5 are the most stable that I've found.

 

4870M, 5870M 6970M, 6990M, now 7970M... yep, sounds like a trademark AMD thing to me, too. This is probably something that should be expected. Based on history, it's clearly something AMD does not care about and have no intention of correcting.

 

Im wondering why there is little news about this in detail around the web..

 

Did anyone try the new 12.7 official beta drivers? I am not at home so I am unable to test it.

How is it for gaming performance?

 

Just finished Max Payne 3 on them, worked fine on maxed settings. BF3 campaign, works fine. Tried Skyrim at the beginning - crossfire doesn't work as with all drivers to date (33 to 37% each card) and 40 to 55 FPS - disabled crossfire and got 50-60 FPS on ultra.

EDIT: Spoke too soon - after disabling and re-enabling crossfire for Skyrim testing, BSOD happened at desktop. Reboot, and flashy line/refresh rate problem seems like. Happened with other betas (except 12.5) with any overclock. Uninstalling and going back to 12.5 betas.

 

I am surprised there is no DELL reps posting nothing here i guess they know how the AMD cards are flawed and no matter what drivers they release we still going to have issues it really sucks for all the unhappy M18XR2 owners who are stuck with AMD cards and one set of drivers

looks like this community have no effect on how a company handles their support but didn't looked like that with all the Dell company representatives helping here I guess we asking to much and buying a Dell product is like buying a used card with AS IS" sign lol

 

speedy the problem with your cards is Xfires?

 

yes Xfire single card works fine but with Xfire enabled I have problems with many games flickering on menus and yesterday my screen went black i am almost scare to enable Xfire lol

 

From the kindness of Dell, they are exchanging a M18xR1 that I got at the outlet < $1500 (not the one in my sig, a different one) for a brand new M18xR2 with dual 7970m, 3920XM, and Killer-N.

Should have it, hopefully, in a week or two. I thought about asking for 680M's, but I'm sure they wouldn't go for that. Even if I run on one 7970, thats better that the dual 6970 it's replacing, right?

Maybe I will ask for 680M...the worst they can say is No.

 

Wow! - great result. "Like for like or better" warranty at its best. I'd be tempted to push for the Nvidia's even if you maybe have to throw some extra $$$ at it....

 

Congrats Lancorp wow that is some upgrade lol.

As for Speedy he has had nothing but problems lately with the cards disappearing entirely from the machine,blackscreens,BSODs etc etc.

He bought his brand new for well over $3000+Tax+Advanced 3 year warranty and now they want to throw a couple hundred parts at it before they will even think about giving him an exchange which i think is totally unacceptable, no one wants to rip the machine apart over and over till they find the root cause of the problem especially when its barely over a month old.

Support really has taken a turn for the worst based on the many hours he has spent on the phone with them.

I talk to Speedy everyday on the phone so i have first hand knowledge of all his misery and wasted time.

 

if they would just fix the driver issue id be happy with these cards.. and this lappy.. I really think that they will improve with proper drivers.

 

Just got my m18x r2 yesterday. The mSata I'm gonna use for boot hasn't come in the mail yet, so I'm just playing around with the pre-installed windows home premium x64. I installed the 12.7 BETA drivers, and the flickering menu thing I was getting in StarCraft2 went away. Diablo seemed fine as well. This driver support business is pretty lame though. I hope when I blow the system away and install windows ultimate, it doesn't screw up...

 

I am so sorry to hear that you guys get all those problems. From the first day I have the system I installed the mSATA drive and Windows Ultimate from scratch (without even booting once from the original hdd), installed the 12.5 beta drive and everything runs smooth. Not even once I got BSOD and played lots of games (Battlefield 3, Call of Duty - Black Ops, Crysis 2, METRO 2033, DiRT3, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, NFS SHIFT 2, Need For Speed - The Run etc. etc.). I tried several of the games both ways with CrossfireX enabled and disabled and fraps installed. I can make out the difference in frame increase from the crossfirex enabled to the single GPU mode. There is no frames distortion at all... I hope I will not have any issues as well. I am still under the 21 days return policy (paid quite a lot for the system) and I hope I do not have to return it...

 

So a couple days ago I went to start downloading Diablo 3 and left the laptop on to download the game and went outside to do some yard work. I come back in to check on the download progress and look at the screen and my screen is blank with these grey and white vertical stripes. I could do nothing while the computer was like this so I had no choice but to shut it down. I chalked it up to just being something weird and ignored it after I booted it back up after leaving it off a few minutes. I was able to download the game fully play a little... And then wouldnt you know the grey/white screen. So power off, leave it a couple minutes, yada yada, boot back up and figure this probably isnt something normal. So I get to searching the web for some answers, I came upon a Youtube video that seemed to be similar to my problem and the guy's solution was to hit FN+F8 which is the HDMI In button apparently and it was a temporary fix for him. Immediately upon completion of the video, my luck such as it is, it did the same thing again I tried the solution but it did not work for me. It is not really something I can reproduce, it just seems to happen very randomly. I am using the ATI 12.5 Beta drivers I guess I should say. Anyone else have this problem or have you seen it? After paying as much as I did I am starting to get a little mad with this thing. I have included a couple of pics to hopefully let you see what I am talking about. One pic a little zoomed out and one zoomed in. Any help you guys can provide would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.

Edit: I flubbed up there, the title should say 7970's, not 790's sorry lol

Zoomed Out

Zoomed In

 

I can't believe its running so smooth for you, my laptop literally won't play games without crashing... unles its LoL or minesweeper haha. I haven't tried disabling crossfire... but what would be the point in that really when I paid for crossfire performance. I'm returning my laptop and building a mini-ITX rig now that I can haul around. In a year or so if Alienware comes out with a new laptop I will definitely give them another try... their support was so good on the phone and the laptop is a beautiful peace of hardware it's really too bad.