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

hehehe, specialy the way we got the 580M Sli lol

 

Can somebody please tell me where I can download the best driver for the 7970m?
Thanks

 

i see what you guys did there lol

 

Have a look

finally official 7970m driver released

 

wow.. look at this.. i lold

CERT/CC Blog: AMD video drivers prevent the use of the most secure setting for Microsoft's Exploit Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET)

 

wow thats quite a bomb to drop OMG I am little shocked that now having an AMD based system can mean security vulnerabilities.

 

Wow. AMD is going to have to fix that now that it seems things are starting to show improvement on the driver side of things. I cannot imagine they will let this go without swift correction at AMD.

 

Mr Porras. Will these new drivers also work with my Dell 7970M inside the M15x? It would be nice to have an official driver that gives full functionality and allows me to see the clocks and voltages in real time in gpuz etc.

 

Guys, they already fixed this issue with the latest driver release...
Don't panic

From the AMD blog.

 

Well guys lemme know if Dell release a good driver or a resolution for us right now I am having a totally blast experience with the retina MBP and my M18X is on the closet

 

Yeah, have a blast with upgrading and tweaking your new MBP. (oh, wait...you can't, thanks to Apple) They might has well filled the inside with concrete so you couldn't add or upgrade anything.

The new MBP looks real nice, but I'm not into buying guaranteed obsolescence. Hopefully OWC can reverse engineer the new SSD module and offer (somewhat) affordable upgrades in the future.

 

You will need to try it. Take a look on this thread, it says that even the desktop driver might work well, so far we've tested them on m17x and m18x but it might also work on the m15 because it looks for the name of the card.

 

by my experience something that can't be opened or upgraded gives me the best experience like the iPad I guess apple was thinking the same

but yeah they will come out with an aftermarket SSD since there is an actual connector

Mr Luis you guys need to work based on that driver to make it compatible with the M18X R2 -R1 because people are having blue screens still

 

As we announced yesterday, we are working on the driver and it should be released by the end of next week. **Subject to change**

We need to verify the driver and make it fully compatible, in the meantime we appreciate your feedback with the current issues with that driver.

 

at least you give us hope this been a long wait

 

Given that (apparently) Dell is working on the driver, does that mean they are responsible for the mobile drivers and that AMD was, in fact, telling the truth? If Dell was handed some reference driver and it takes them this much time to tweak it, there must be significant changes needed to the reference driver to make it work on the 7970M in the M18x.

I'm just happy there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that Dell/AW is listening to the good folks here.

 

Dell cannot do anything without a proper driver release from AMD. And now that they have a driver to work on, they have to make sure whatever is the problem (especially with the crossfirex systems) it will be tweaked the way those cards are supposed to work.

I do not think that it matters so much whose fault it is (like we can do something about it), what it matters is that our 'voice' and others is heard by them (AMD & Dell) and they are doing something (hopefully) about it...

 

It seems AMD have finally released a good driver, I am still testing, but this seems to be working good... No BSOD, Speedy.

The desktop 12.7 beta actually has the correct device ID and identifies the 7970 M by name in the INF file. Go figure. I installed this last night without any mods and it is working pretty decent for me. AMD Catalyst Desktop GPU Display Driver for Windows Vista/Windows 7 64-bit Here is a screen shot of the Desktop 12.7 beta installed.

Spoiler

I will start testing Skyrim, as this driver is supposed to fix the flickering issue.

 

so that is a new 12.7 beta?? I thought you tested that before

Lol that's mean but yeah AMD is "The Way It's Meant To Be Tweaked"

 

No, Brother Speedy. This is the one from AMD now, not from another web site. Also installed the AMD Mobility 12.6 that Peter linked. Using the Mobility Install ID thing, it recognizes the GPUs and installs fine, too. Both the 12.6 Mobility and 12.7 DESKTOP beta are working good so far, but I am preferring the non-Mobility 12.7. If you install CAP 12.7 it seems to fix the flickering in Skyrim. Will try Crysis 2 and Batman Arkham City to see.

This is a different driver version released by AMD (8.981.2.0 on 06/26/2012).

 

hahahahahah LOL...at least you have a good sense of humor about it lol...

I'm glad to see that the new 12.7's are at least more stable. i will be installing these tonight

 

Cool can't wait to finally start skyrim

yeah well at this point all this is a big joke lol

 

Nah, it does not mean that AMD is telling the truth. They're still a bunch of liars. If that were true, AMD would not be posting new Mobility reference drivers like they just did. That is only a stall tactic to make us go away and bug Dell. Dell is only going above and beyond to try to take care of us because AMD released a half-baked piece of trash without drivers. But, if the initial testing continues going well, Dell might not have to continue to step into AMD's shoes to fix their stuff. I'd have to search for them to find them--and there's no point in doing so--but there are posts in our forums by Dell/Alienware employees confirming that they don't write drivers.

OEMs only mod reference drivers for added features that are proprietary. A "Dell Recommended" driver is generally an ordinary reference driver that they have tested and confirmed does not cause their computers to malfunction. That is the almost universally the same with all OEMs. If device manufacturers release broken drivers, that's all there is to work with is broken drivers. Now, Dell has found the need to fix broken AMD drivers before. Going back to our conference call with Louis Bruno on the AMD 6990M thermal shutdown issues, they've had to jump through hoops more than once to finish the job right. AMD frequently leave important lines of code out of their drivers that NVIDIA always includes because they are important. If AMD did things correctly, there would be no reason or need for a "Dell Recommended" driver or for Dell to need to resort to drastic measure fix their broken drivers, because their stuff would just work right... without any drama or gyrations.

 

Mr Fox, have you run 3dmark11 with the official AMD 12.7 betas?

 

Yes... no black screen or freezing after several consecutive runs. I could only get 3DMark11 to finish a run randomly without issues before. This is with no overclocking, of course, hence the low score. As an added bonus, there are no artifacts or screen tearing.



Skyrim is now working fine, without horrible screen flickering and flashing, but need to install CAP 12.7 for it to be fixed. (It's not fixed without the CAP 12.7.) Still need to test Crysis 2 and Batman Arkham Asylum to see if those are fixed.

 

Thanks! I'm definitely installing these later today. I was running the 12.7 modded betas and my 3dmark11's dropped more than 100 points. We'll see how these fair

I can attest though that even with the 12.7 modded beta's, my fps went up over 12.5 beta...including Crysis 2 and BF3. i'll be testing these thoroughly over the weekend

 

I'm sooo happy for you guys with 7970m's that you finally have a driver which seems to be doing the job!! - excellent news!

 

What do you mean by "low"? Low as in slow? Shouldn't CF 7970m"s be at the top of the charts? We need to overclock them to get out of "low"?

(I'm not much into the graphics benching, but with an R2 w/CF 7970M's on the way, I want to know what I'm in for!)

Nice to hear 12.7 are working out. So far, no issues are reported?

Thanks.

 

He just meant low based on his other scores he posted, which by comparison, yep they are low - er .

 

Sorry, I mean "low" by my standards as an overclocker, LOL. Since I've achieved much higher than that, it's "low" using that measuring stick. That's a really good score for nothing being overclocked... higher than my highest overclocked score with GTX 580M SLI even.

I'm going to lay off the overclocking for a few days and make sure these drivers are working with all of my games well before I dive back into the madness. So far, though, I'm happier than ever with 7970M at this point. It was very much a love/hate relationship until I discovered the new 12.7 Catalyst package last night. I'm so glad I decided to try that desktop package. Who would have thought they would put the device information for a mobile GPU in a desktop package, LOL. I manually downloaded it by selecting desktop drivers instead of notebook drivers at the AMD web site just to dissect it to see what it might have that I could borrow to try to fix things on my own, and to my surprise, it was ready to go with no tweaks.

Edit: yes - what Brother Quad said.

 

Hey Fox i keep forgetting to ask but my single card can never pull more then 20700 stock no matter the driver or if i have my CPU overclocked to well past 4ghz, so i am wondering if R1 owners running single cards are scoring similar ?.

Can you do a single card Vantage and 11 run for me with no overclocking please and maybe post it in the benchmark thread or here .

Gracias

 

Sure. I'll disable the second GPU in Device Manager and do that for you.

 

Got it. Thanks.

 

Here it is... AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,Alienware M18xR1 score: P21206 3DMarks

Good thing you asked before I had done all my registry hacks, because I am normally unable to turn off CrossFire with the tweaks I put in place. I could not disable one of the GPUs in Device Manager as Vantage would not launch because DX was already configured for dual-GPU, so this is just with CrossFire disabled. Stock GPU and stock CPU (Dell Level 3 with no other CPU tweaks).

 

Yep those are almost EXACTLY my scores to the T for most runs and my best runs were 20,700, so we know that the R1 is not getting the full potential of the card even if its very very small.

Speedy and i have run a bunch of single card benches against each other in various games and some are identical while others he bests me by a few frames no matter what i try.

Thanks Fox.

 

What do you mean by the R1 not getting the full potential of the card? (Not disputing at all, only curious what leads you to that conclusion.) There could be some minor differences between CPUs, plus Speedy has Ivy Bridge.

You're welcome, buddy.

 

bro, stop messing around, and crank up the clocks!!

 

because I get 21,900 stock vantage GPU and like 3% better perf on games

Maybe we can try to run this http://benchmark3d.com/how-to-test-your-pci-express-slot-speed

 

is it because you have Ivy? Have you OC'ed your BCLK which should affect your mxm slot too?

 

I don't think so maybe the PCIe speed How to Test your PCI Express Slot Speed – BenchmarK3D

I cant overclock the BCLK

 

No its the PCI express bandwith they have on the new ports not to mention our ports are locked at 8x hurting it a little more.

Combine those 2 things and we get less performance overall.

Im surprised no one has brought this all up before lol i hope i didnt open a can of worms >

Im not sure what the R3 gets on stock Vantage but i will bet the ranch it is higher because they have access to all 16x speed.

I wish on the M18x if using one card it would fall back to 16x (like Desktops do) but i asked John and he said the ports are locked at 8x.

 

they did here is the m17r2

[ 16 bytes] CPU->GPU= 76.796 KB/sec, GPU->CPU 150.587 KB/sec
[ 32 bytes] CPU->GPU= 333.673 KB/sec, GPU->CPU 349.331 KB/sec
[ 64 bytes] CPU->GPU= 730.752 KB/sec, GPU->CPU 589.290 KB/sec
[ 128 bytes] CPU->GPU= 1.426 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 1.277 MB/sec
[ 256 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.034 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 2.650 MB/sec
[ 512 bytes] CPU->GPU= 3.860 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.379 MB/sec
[ 1024 bytes] CPU->GPU= 9.284 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.953 MB/sec
[ 2048 bytes] CPU->GPU= 18.774 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 18.287 MB/sec
[ 4096 bytes] CPU->GPU= 32.208 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 22.299 MB/sec
[ 8192 bytes] CPU->GPU= 46.305 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 77.171 MB/sec
[ 16384 bytes] CPU->GPU= 142.269 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 142.213 MB/sec
[ 32768 bytes] CPU->GPU= 374.118 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 345.940 MB/sec
[ 65536 bytes] CPU->GPU= 606.586 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 716.032 MB/sec
[ 131072 bytes] CPU->GPU= 1.222 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 1.293 GB/sec
[ 262144 bytes] CPU->GPU= 1.926 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 2.680 GB/sec
[ 524288 bytes] CPU->GPU= 1.862 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 2.370 GB/sec
[ 1048576 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.325 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 2.944 GB/sec
[ 2097152 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.949 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.262 GB/sec
[ 4194304 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.809 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.299 GB/sec
[ 8388608 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.874 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.333 GB/sec
[ 16777216 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.943 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.341 GB/sec
[ 33554432 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.929 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.344 GB/sec
[ 67108864 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.827 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.347 GB/sec
[ 134217728 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.895 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.347 GB/sec
[ 268435456 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.995 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.347 GB/sec
[ 536870912 bytes] CPU->GPU= 3.044 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.347 GB/sec
[1073741824 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.859 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 3.350 GB/sec
calResAllocRemote2D() returned an error when trying to allocate 2146435072 bytes (uncached)!
Peak CPU->GPU Bandwidth = 3.044 GB/sec [data size = 536870912 bytes]
Peak GPU->CPU Bandwidth = 3.350 GB/sec [data size = 1073741824 bytes]

m18x r2

===> Testing device 0 <===
Device type: Unknown
Max resource 2D width/height: 16384/16384
Total GPU memory size: 2048 MB
Total CPU cached space size: 2047 MB
Total CPU uncached space size: 2047 MB
GPU engine clock: 900 MHz
GPU memory clock: 1300 MHz
Number of timing loops: 100
[ 16 bytes] CPU->GPU= 118.053 KB/sec, GPU->CPU 244.894 KB/sec
[ 32 bytes] CPU->GPU= 503.473 KB/sec, GPU->CPU 454.235 KB/sec
[ 64 bytes] CPU->GPU= 1.115 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 1.150 MB/sec
[ 128 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.377 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 2.334 MB/sec
[ 256 bytes] CPU->GPU= 3.939 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 4.663 MB/sec
[ 512 bytes] CPU->GPU= 9.273 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 9.487 MB/sec
[ 1024 bytes] CPU->GPU= 18.830 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 19.648 MB/sec
[ 2048 bytes] CPU->GPU= 38.292 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 37.556 MB/sec
[ 4096 bytes] CPU->GPU= 70.115 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 78.070 MB/sec
[ 8192 bytes] CPU->GPU= 150.718 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 148.728 MB/sec
[ 16384 bytes] CPU->GPU= 297.143 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 311.723 MB/sec
[ 32768 bytes] CPU->GPU= 604.758 MB/sec, GPU->CPU 640.298 MB/sec
[ 65536 bytes] CPU->GPU= 1.231 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 1.235 GB/sec
[ 131072 bytes] CPU->GPU= 2.498 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 2.408 GB/sec
[ 262144 bytes] CPU->GPU= 4.638 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 4.809 GB/sec
[ 524288 bytes] CPU->GPU= 5.337 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 6.518 GB/sec
[ 1048576 bytes] CPU->GPU= 5.837 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 6.824 GB/sec
[ 2097152 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.148 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 6.985 GB/sec
[ 4194304 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.191 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.066 GB/sec
[ 8388608 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.387 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.115 GB/sec
[ 16777216 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.287 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.139 GB/sec
[ 33554432 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.365 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.135 GB/sec
[ 67108864 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.225 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.142 GB/sec
[ 134217728 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.246 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.125 GB/sec
[ 268435456 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.175 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.090 GB/sec
[ 536870912 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.667 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.039 GB/sec
[1073741824 bytes] CPU->GPU= 6.303 GB/sec, GPU->CPU 7.028 GB/sec
calResAllocRemote2D() returned an error when trying to allocate 2146435072 bytes
(uncached)!
Peak CPU->GPU Bandwidth = 6.667 GB/sec [data size = 536870912 bytes]
Peak GPU->CPU Bandwidth = 7.142 GB/sec [data size = 67108864 bytes]

thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/670788-amd-7970-amds-pciespeedtest-results.html

 

It is effectively less then half on the M17x lol.

That is sad but oh well nothing can be done.

Im not sure anyone did this on the M18xR1 vs the R2 though ?.

Not sure if the PCI express is identical on the M18x vs the M17xR2 because we also got an entirely different chipset.

edit: I see it now someone with an R1 did test and got similar results to the M17x.

 

you should run the test on the M18X r1 to see if is the same as M17X r2

 

I guess i dont need to now since someone did already ..

Yeah nothing we can do about it so no reason to get all hot and bothered about it .

Anything short of getting an R2 motherboard we are stuck .

 

well yeah if the m17xr2 pci runs the same as m18xr1 then we don't need more proof

 

Sweet glad you guys got those 12.7 desktop/mobile/whatever drivers working out. Don't forget the CAP, they make all the difference in some games.

 

The 12.7 CAP is required for Skyrim to not flicker and flash. It works fine with the CAP applied.

 

Mr. Fox, please don't forget to update the driver in your 'mod' thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...dge-cpu-heatsink-7970m-crossfire-upgrade.html

Also, if you do not mind me asking Mr. Fox, why do you prefer the 12.7 beta over the mobility 12.6 (I have not tried the desktop beta yet)?! You made me curious

Thank you.

 

It just seems to work a little better. I noticed slightly higher FPS running a few game benchmarks and the screen image looked a bit sharper. It might be my imagination, but I am using 12.7 without issues, so don't see any reason to change to the old Mobility driver at this point.

Thanks for the reminder to update the other thread.

Quad - what is the AMD PCIe speed test? I did some Googling and not finding that anywhere. Never heard of it before.