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

im glad i held off on upgrading my gpu's. Might have to go with gtx680m's instead

 

I don t have problem with mine either.
I used to have artefacts with original drivers but after a clean uninstall and 12.5 beta, everything is fine now.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

could you list the driver you are using please..

 

If you are within your return period i would suggest returning it because after that return period is up your pretty much SOL and they will start throwing parts at your new machine.

You can also request a replacement or ask to be upgraded to GTX680s in the new replacement .

Many people are having this issue with 7970s and Dell has no ETA on solid drivers nor may it even fix your issue since yours is even more unique with the GSOD grey screen of death vs Black screen or Blue screen.

My friend is dealing with the same issue (Speedy Gonzalez here on the forums) and only 40 days into owning it past the return point they want to start rebuilding his machine one piece at a time till they hopefully fix it.

So yeah take advantage of it while you still hold the 21 day torch and return it, that is if your still within that time frame, or request a replacement/upgrade etc.

 

Send it back and reorder with 680M SLi. Lesson learned, don't buy AMD again.

 

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bwdqi25LDwZyczljcXEwT0ltQ3M

more info here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...dge-cpu-heatsink-7970m-crossfire-upgrade.html

 

Send it back before it is too late. and as joker said get the 680M in sli

 

If GTX 680M SLI works properly right out of the box, I am going to have to stop saying that I am not a fanboy for either brand because I will most like become an AMD hater, LOL. All the hardware and driver problems I had with 6970M CF, 6990M CF and now lack of decent driver support for 7970M CF pretty much makes AMD an undesirable alternative. Three strikes, you're out.

 

I would not expect all these problems to occur and the lack of service. You would like to take control of the gaming that is why you bought this laptop in the first place I reckon. I am glad that you share your problems and experience here as we all can learn from it.

 

I am very happy at least one person is having an excellent experience with their R2 with 7970M CF. From the posts I am seeing in our forums, I think my M18x R1 with 7970M CF is actually working better than the M18x R2 with 7970M CF for the most part. That could be my tinkering with drivers and registry, but the problem issues with 7970M are the same on the M18x R1 and R2.

Without a doubt, 12.5 beta is the only driver I have found that seems to work fairly well for 7970M. It still has some issues, but overall it is the best driver.

I would recommend that at this point. I am 99.9% sure all the 7970M problems are driver related, but great hardware is worthless without good drivers.

 

I'm thinking the samething brother fox!!!

 

Your sleep resume problem is one thing that is not 7970m related. Every system on windows7 i have ised required this fix. 5870m'6970m,6990 m,7970 m 580m, gt130m, hd2600m.... fix is simple, i mentioned it to John for his 580's. Go to power options advanced go to the sleep options section and enable "hybrid sleep" which us disabled by default. Restarrt and then try sleep when system tries to resume it wont be to a black screen anymore. Cheers. Though if on an older version of hwinfo certain sensors cause black screen issue when read so latest versiin disables those when 7970m is detected.

 

Just now I played for near an hour DiRT Showdown and no issues what so ever (maxed out)... I monitor the temp of the GPU's and never went above 67 degrees celsius.

I do not know how the 680m will perform, but I kept the computer on all night, watched movies, played music, games etc. to see if I get any kind of BSOD. I am really surprised to notice no issues so far.

Another thing I am pleased with is the idle temps of the GPU, compared to the previous version of ATi, are about 10 degrees less (somewhere between 35-50). I can hardly hear the fans turn on (except when I play some games).

Probably people should try a clean install. I left the GPU driver at the end of installation...

Maybe it's wrong that I am doing this, but I highly recommend TuneUp Utilities (it's a shareware software) and ccleaner (there is a free version which I use). I used to have other cleaners (temps and registrY) programs and they used to mess up the system. But those 2 are doing the job wonderful... This is what I believe

 

this is getting old and is so depressing by the time they release a partially working driver this GPU's are going to be totally outdated and AMD is going to release another unsupported GPU lol and DELL I don't even know what they think

MR fox will be nice if you can merge all this threads to the http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...our-official-amd-7970m-crossfire-drivers.html

 

Your exactly right MrFox. No hardware can be good without proper drivers. No one should by any system with 7970m. 680m is the clear choice. And those with 7970m already are left accepting the fact that AMD convinced many on its fancy hardware just to be left with useless junk because it cant run without a proper driver. Havent tested a lot of games. I had a wait on xfire cable so in single gpu i found no issues on 12.5 the only driver that seems to even function right in even single card. I get cable install and now Dirt 2 and Diabl3 runs fine on 12.5 xfire. Witcher2 which ran fine in single card does not run without crash in xfire. Basically i have found no way to play Witcher 2 at all when the second card is in. I cant get it to work. I set a CCC profile that says xfire mode is disabled and same crashig. I set radeon pro to disable xfire on witcher 2 and still crashes. Yet when i had only one card in the system at all it ran fine as well as all else. Why cant i disable xfire per game and have it run proper? When i just disable xfire in games like witcher 2 that crash in xfire why doesnt software disabling xfire work right? Has anyone gotten that to work. Id be happy that j could play the games with so.e in xfire and skme not but that seems to not work right. Anyone have that same issue?

 

You don't need to "blow the system away" to upgrade to Windows Ultimate.

There is a feature called Windows Anytime Upgrade, you can access it when you right-click computer and choose Properties. It's the link right under your current version.

Make sure System Restore is turned on, and click the link, enter your Ultimate key and in less than 10 minutes your upgraded to Ultimate with all your settings and programs intact.

Give it a try.

 

You are lucky in that sense. Bsod i havent ran into and is likely from particukar drivers. The thing is it seems Dirt: Showdown seems to run flawless in xfire. I hadnt played that lne but i play Dirt2 and 3 with no probs in xfire too. The games reported to work fine in xfire have bee accross the board. Im not sure if you have other games. But idf you were to try any of the one people have mentioned to be crashing youll likely run into the same issues. If someone did have trouble in Dirt Showdown xfire id say its the driver. 12.5 is the only one not having as many idsues as all the other drivers.

 

Thank you for all of the replies I am just a shade over two weeks into owning it if not right at two weeks. So this is probably straight up gpu related? As far as returning it and getting the 680 Sli goes, how does that work? Return it and pay a little extra for those? Again thank you for the responses.

 

I have never has a single BSOD with 12.5 beta. I do have random issues with black screen during gaming and system freezing in game. It seems to be much more problematic with DX11 games than it is with DX9 and DX10. I have Catalyst 12.5 beta saved in my Google Docs if anyone needs the tweaked version that works right, download it here. This is the driver juliant is have such good luck with. Using this driver things are *almost* as they should be. Any other driver I have tried has issues. The second best driver is the 12.7 beta from Guru3D. I have found with CrossFire you must edit the registry to change all instances of EnableULPS that have a DWORD value of 1 to a zero. This is not exclusive to 7970M CF, as I have always needed to do this to avoid problems with CrossFire. AMD PowerPlay has never worked properly and this tweak helps things work much better. AMD has had years to make CrossFire and PowerPlay work right and they have yet to do so. I feel like a total fool for thinking they were going to suddenly do better with 7970M CrossFire.

Brother RV, try disabling the second GPU in Device Manager for Witcher 2. Also, try renaming the game CFG file. Any time I change GPU configurations I have trouble with some games and deleting or renaming the CFG file helps the software reset to the new hardware configuration. Also, move any saved games to another folder or delete them. I had to do that with Crysis 2 when I switched from 580M SLI to 7970M CF. If none of those suggestions help, Witcher 2 may be one of those games that will never work properly with a particular GPU chipset unless or until the game developer changes something to support it.

 

you should call them and explain all your issues and if they offer to replace parts just tell them no because your machine is to new and they should offer a replacement or just return it

 

Man, I really wanted to hold back on this thread because I had some hope left for Dell/Alienware... But man, at this point I am starting to really hate them and their service/lack of responsibility for the products they put out... I am truely disappointed all around now at this point. I had to jump through hoops for every solution, EVERY SINGLE problem I have had..... I had to jump through hoops and escalate every issue before it is resolved... Why can't they just take pride in the product they put out and admit to their wrong doing by offering a reasonable solution?!

Should I just return my 7970m's!? I ordered them about 2 weeks ago now and havent really had a chance to test it thoroughly due to system crapping still being crapped out waiting on proper repair... Is it worth the $1000 I spent on them? How much are the 680 SLI's going for? Does anyone have a part # + price?

EDIT: Sorry guys, just pissed off that my laptop still isnt working. Nothing personal, just pissed when writing this.

 

Dell/Alienware is still awesome in my view. There is no gaming laptop available for purchase that is better, and there is no company that offers better service or support. The 7970M doesn't work right no matter where you buy it, and the situation is even worse with CrossFire. It doesn't matter whether the parts came in a new Alienware or as an aftermarket upgrade. The joke is on us for buying an AMD GPU. I'm sure Dell/Alienware is going to take care of this. It's going to take time for them to determine if it can be fixed with drivers or if the cause is truly hopeless. We are sometimes too quick at jumping to conclusions and forget that Dell/Alienware is also a victim here. There is a lot at stake for them, even more at stake for them than for us than us when you stop and think about it, and AMD let all of us down.

 

Wanted to let you know that the engineering team is working on the release of the driver.
Will likely be out late next week. **This could be subject to change**

Will post back if there is a delay.

 

Good news, finally. But who's engineering team is working on it, AMD's or Dell's?

 

Our engineering team is doing that. We have been testing and trying to get everything cleared up before the official launch is done.

 

Don't get me wrong, I have loved my dual 6990M performance, but I would not shed a tear if AMD collapsed entirely. Dell should shoot across their bow and stop offering any of their graphics products until they get their sh*t straight. AMD hosed their CPU line (I used AMD CPUs exclusively for a decade) and now let's hope they don't kill off their only crown jewel left. This so reminds me of the missteps Commodore made decades ago that drove them to bankruptcy in 1994.

 

Mr. Porras, I do hope that AMD and Dell driver engineers have heard about and fixed crossfire in Skyrim and The Witcher 2 (not sure of other titles not working in crossfire).

 

I've seen some comments from people using the latest beta drivers from GURU3D and they are saying that those drivers have corrected the issue with the flickering screen on Skyrim but there is still one more little glitch with the compass on the top of the screen. We all hope that this new release is as good as the rest of the machine is ^^

 

Hi Luis

If this driver doesnt fix the problem for customers here is dell prepared to offer any support in upgrading customer who have recently purchased their machine to 680M in sli either free of charge or with at least some sort of discount?

 

Let's not get the cart before the horse. Let's see how the drivers work. Luis probably is not in a position to respond with a blanket comment to that kind of question. Dell/Alienware has always done the right thing by me and many other customers and I don't expect that to change now. This is still a new product and there is still an opportunity to make it work before throwing the baby out with the bath water.

 

12.5's seem to be the most stable with the little time I had to test the system... I wonder if the engineer team will be working off of this driver release??? Mr. Fox has a good point with AMD.... They have always had problems with their drivers... Nvidia on the other hand has always been pretty good with addressing their driver issue's within a release... It breaks down to this;

AMD = Cheaper + No doubt require some driver tweaking, kind of hit and miss with their drivers/gpu's... Ex: I had problems with my desktop 6950/6970's but after a few settings adjustments it kicks butt... Still a good (cheap) solution for people who don't mind waiting/messing with drivers to find best settings.

Nvidia = Plug/install drivers/play - have had their share of bad GPU's but nowhere close to AMD's "fail" line....


BTW, Luis and his Costa Rica team are all awesome folks, they will cut out the BS and try to do everything they can to help you... Forget India (or where ever the other stations are???), ask to be transfered to Costa Rica...

 

Guys, now is the time to bring up issues on crossfire so Alienware Luis can address this to the engineers.

Speedy, did you not mention about Arkham City's performance on Crossfire? What in game fps are you expecting?

 

How would that work when the 680s are so much more expensive?

Sure, it's wrong that you have a product that doesn't work properly for you, but expecting a replacement that is Hundreds more $/£ more expensive as 'compensation' is stretching it a bit no?

Not that I'd turn it down!

 

Thanks for the good comments on our team to Mr. Fox and Deuceduzit. We are aware about the issues with games such as Skyrim and Arkham city and we will need to test them more than the others.
We are almost done with it, let's just wait until we have them done and out to see how everything works.
At the moment there are games that simply don't work properly with SLI nor xFire, so this is not an isolated issue and will always require special attention.

 

I had (and still have them) Nvidia cards in my office desktop (SLi 7900GT) and bought them with 3 years extended warranty. Those cards have been replaced by Nvidia atleast 3 times due to hardware failure.

I am not saying that Nvidia is worst than AMD (previous ATi), actually they are improving the quality and they are spending way too much for the software support, but let’s face it that AMD has improved the quality of the product alot and if they focus on the software support, the products will really be appreciated by all of us. I think the big problem with AMD is extending on too many things and not being able to finish a product the way is supposed to be (I hope I am not upsetting anybody with my comments).

 

I think you could be right on this. If they would focus on making a few outstanding products instead of a bunch of half-baked products it would be better for everyone. There is no reason for anyone to be upset about your comment. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

 

Judging that you didn't mention The Witcher 2 earlier in your response to my query, that must be on the list of "just won't work, ever."

 

Arestavo, that really depends, sometimes the issue is not with the driver but with the game. I did not mention it because I was referring to a previous comment but I'll make sure to ask why the Witcher's 2 is having issues as well with the xFire.

 

Thank you vey much, Mr. Porras!

 

No problem there, we really appreciate the feedback to make sure we do all that's needed.

 

You welcome Mr. Fox. Couldn't be a more wonderful feeling knowing that someone is appreciating your comments... Also, it's nice to see that Alienware support is with us here, I have a feeling something is cooking shorter then we can expect and we will be able to see positive response for all of us.

I know we all face issues with the GPU's driver support, but also we want things fast like a small child looking for a new toy... It's true that the graphic cards should not have been released without the OEM driver, but there also would have had other bad points. Ex. Why is Dell holding back on the release of the new AMD gpu's, those have been released for more than a month back and Clevo has them in their systems etc. etc. (I think this already happened last year with the 6990M and also if I am not mistaken 580M cards).

 

EXACTLY! In fact, that happened to Clevo this go 'round, LOL. A bunch of Clevo fans were switching to Alienware and/or bad-mouthing Clevo for not releasing the 7970M as quickly as Alienware did. It's impossible to please everyone. There will always be folks that complain bitterly and loudly no matter what path is taken.

 

What kind of problems did everyone see with 12.5's? Sorry, but I didnt have much time to test the system... Just wanted to see some feedback on it.

 

In my opinion on why everyone is complaining so much is basically the release of the Nvidia GPU's. By making enough noise, they will get the attention from Alienware / Dell and have their 7970CF exchanged to 680 SLi+ cost. I hope nobody will pounce on me now

 

Pounce? No - but official AMD supported drivers should have been released/installed on our computers from day 1.

 

no we wont pounce on you but the truth is that if these cards do not work then yes they should do some thing.. what that some thing is remains to be seen.. Id be happy with these cards if they work..

also i am a little disappointed with the drivers.. amd said there would be a ton of new features and well so far all i see is stuff being taken away from catalyst.. correct me if im wrong..

 

Not the case at all... I think we all just want official / decent drivers for a GPU we all paid a premium cost for... The 7970m's kick butt when they work but leaves a sour taste for most when we encounter bluescreens/flickering/artifacts with no backend support for something we just paid 1000+ (crossfire) for... We're just simply asking for decent working drivers along with this awesome card... I still think its a nice piece of hardware... But hardware aint nothing without drivers.... Most AMD/ATI cards release have/had big potentials... The limit and downfall is their lack of good drivers....

 

Well I hope all you 7970M owners finally get an official driver that works in most/all games soon. Got off early from my rotation today so gonna fire up the 580M SLi and enjoy some bsod/artifact free gaming... The Way It's Meant To Be Played

 

lol maybe amd and nvidia should get together and make the driver lol..

 

I can just disable one card and still get your performance runs pretty solid in bf3