***M18x - AMD Crossfire (Driver Questions, Performance, Problems) Discussion Thread***

Yes, it is possible to set raid mode with just 1 hard drive plugged in.

Edit: you are too fast, Mr. Fox.

 

Guys, I know I'm pulling necks here, but would there be any link here that you could direct me to that can tell me step by step on how to RAID, most especially for the M18x?

I've never RAIDed before.

Yes, I will try to pull the CMOS battery out, with the laptop battery installed. Will update in a few minutes.

 

Hopefully, that is a typo and you meant to say " without" and not "with" the laptop battery installed. You want no power of any kind available to the motherboard.

Yes, here is the thread for that. http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...llation-questions-troubleshooting-thread.html Check out the opening post, as it has all the info anyone should need for a clean Windows installation, including a RAID setup.

By far, the easiest way is to set the BIOS to RAID and install Windows normally. Once you have Windows installed, install Intel Rapid Storage Technology and then create the RAID array within Windows using the Intel RST software. It works really great.

 

Oh shoot, yes, I meant to say WITHOUT.

I just did, and two cards detected. Changed the hard drive to AHCI, saved changes.

Went back to BIOS, one card detected. Bleeargh.

I'll try to RAID up. I'll let you guys know after an hour or so.

Thanks Mr. Fox! Seeing your name reminds me of The Ballad of Davy Crockett ^__^.

 

Ha! That's funny. King of the Wild Frontier!

 

So i now im reinstalling windows 7. I set the bios to Raid and now an error comes up saying that windows cant install because of "hardware" not compatible. Anything im missing out on? My hard drive is the seagate momentous 750 gb thatcame with the m18x.

Sorry for the grammar mistakes. Im typin on an ipad.

 

Sooo ive been thinking about this issue with over clocking the 7970ms and i started playing with afterburner and in the options menu i noticed there is an option for the second gpu in the drop down menu.. so i selected it and hit ok and guees what happens. nothing... no reading no nothing..

is it possible that when ocing these cards that clocks are not being applied to both cards? so when you oc 1 the other one is playing catch up? and causing the errors?

just a thought..

 

I have encounter same issue as well, even sometimes Afterburner losin monitor over 2nd Gpu even it wont read temp. as well core clock. I think its cosz driver error or Afterburner issue.

Yes when you OC first Gpu it will apply to both, but i think if you Un-check Sync. settings for similar graphics processors then it will apply to one card. So keep it selected, clocks will apply to both cards.

 

no.. im all most positive my cards are not syncing up properly.. my performance is so lack luster its not funny.. so im thinking about contacting dell..

 

This might have been brought up before, but how is the microstuttering on the 7970m CF?
Is it noticable or smooth?
I have had nvidia 280m Sli in My first m17x and i had some issues with microstuttering on them.

Regards!

Marcus

 

Marcus - 7970M CF is an inconsistent product. Spend some time looking around in the M18x sub-forum and you'll see what I mean. Microstuttering is not unusual on multi-GPU systems. I would recommend steering clear of 7970M CF. Either go with GTX 675M SLI or 680M SLI, depending on what your wallet will allow.

 

So I decided to install the 12.7 b and CAP. Thankyou Mr Fox for your guides.
So far so good, for gaming as far as I'm concerned.
Iv only had the machine half a week and have encountered no serious problems.
There are a few games like ARMA Arrowhead that run beautifully around 60 fps (Vsync off) with the lazy GPU's only doing around 50 %. Infact the CF 7970 is eating anything I throw at it, but not going beyond at 100% like they probably should. Hopefully they can improve on this.
I 'll be reasonably patient until something runs under 60fps.

 

You're welcome, TBoneSan. I am very pleased to hear your 7970M CF set up is working correctly. I'm jealous and wish that were the case for everyone.

 

Yeahh me too so jealous!!! lol with your knowledge

Well i have just fresh install windows on my new Crucial M4, first ive install 12.6 but ive started gettin some flickerin issue which ive never faced before with my old system (HDD). So ive uninstall it then reinstall 12.7 beta well so far its works fine, havnt played any game yet but lets see how it goes.

 

Lol perhaps I spoke too soon. I installed the Windows Live email app after my post. I was getting freezes with White and Black vertical pinstripes..?
I did a full format + windows install. What a pain in the a@# that was.
Sadly I couldnt isolate the real cause though.

Have you encountered this freeze ?

 

Yes, that black and white stripe thing would happen to me frequently (almost daily) with 12.5 beta drivers, but I do not even have Windows Live Mail installed. (I use Outlook as my email client.) It would happen whenever I used Internet Explorer for web browsing or attempted to use IE or Google Chrome to watch YouTube videos. I don't have that particular issue any more with the new drivers, but I do still have system freezes and a BSOD once in a while streaming YouTube videos. I still get a system freeze for no apparent reason now and then with nothing that looks wrong on the display, but with the previous drivers the screen would go black instead. So, things are a little bit better now than before.

 

Yay! I got RAIDED with one hard drive! Also, the two cards are detected, and all is working fine, good sir!

Is it possible to partition the hard drive, while in RAID? If so, how would I go about that?

 

Wow, that's really bad. What's your next move? 580M (revert to your old cards) or 680M SLI?

 

It just happened again after I installed Windows Live Email. I did a system recovery to just before.
Strangely when I had Windows Email 2011 installed the program had all blurry writing. I had to deselect Morphilogical Filtering from the CCC and restart to fix it.
I'm pretty certain the two don't play nice now. Ill stay away until we see some better drivers. Hopefully the Dell rep is on the money and they'll have something for us by the end of this week.

 

I just received my M18xR2 and unfortunately, my CFX is ed.

The same message: "The AMD CrossFireX internal bridge interconnects linking your graphics cards together are not properly attached. Both bridge interconnects must be attached. For more information, see the user's guide for your graphics card."

Dell, AMD.

You pay 3000+USD and have to deal with these problems.

And I´m screwed, since I´m not in US and I´ll not send the laptop (because I´d have to pay absurd taxes again).

So, I want Dell to send me these cables. Why didn´t I buy NVIDIA?

 

I know you shouldnt have to do this but open the machine up and check that the cable is firmly connected to both gpu's.....

 

I already did.

And the cable is really missing.

The wireless is broken too, intel 2230, code 10. I already bought killer 1103 on ebay.

This is disgusting.

But the wireless is very easy to change.. It´s ok. But the GPU...it´s not that easy

 

I suggest you pm one of the reps and take pictures to show them.. maybe one of them can help you..

 

It's too early to tell. I don't want to make a final decision when I am disgusted because that gets in the way of being rational. There's always the chance that a decent driver might fix 7970M CF. At least the 580M SLI was awesome and worked near flawlessly. In contrast, 7970M CF is more awesome, but only when it works; which is sometimes, LOL.

 

The new AMD official 12.6 drivers are out. It was under the 7xxxM tab so I downloaded it. Im not going to install it until some feedback has been posted. Hope to hear from you guys! Thanks!

I own an m18x R2 Xfire 7970M i73820QM.

 

12.6 is out for about 2 weeks..

 

You need to spend some time looking around the M18x forums, as there is tons of feedback. To summarize the feedback: "Meh... better than nothing." Don't expect any miracles. CrossFire is still broken, and we're still waiting for AMD to provide a good driver.

 

oh i didnt know that? funny, on the AMD site, every time i clicked on notebook graphics, the only tabs were up to the 6xxxM series. It was only today that the 7xxxM tab came out... probably a region thing. Thanks! is it any good or should i stay clear?

Thanks Mr. Fox. For now i think i'll stick to the Dell drivers, which i believe is based on the 12.5. (Thats what Tech Support told me). Ok, I guess i'll wait a bit.

 

No problem. Results are inconsistent to use kind words. Feedback is all over the board. I need to spend some time merging threads so we don't have multiple discussion on the same subject matter. This would be the right thread for AMD problems.

 

I am really hating these extremely random grey and white pinstripes, aghhhh ! Seems to happen two to three times a day every other day, and not even while gaming.

 

We feel your pain, Brother Duke. I think most of us with 7970M have been experiencing that from one extent to another. Sounds a bit more frequent with your system than mine, but it is very frustrating.

What system do you have? M18x R2 or another?

 

Mr. Fox - I was doing some benchmarking last night and found some graphical errors, flashing textures and flashing pinstripes. This happened when I was overclocking the GDDR5.

As a T/S technique, have you tried lower speeds on the RAM yet? Below stock, even.

 

Hi Arestavo... Sorry to hear your system is not able to function properly when overclocked. How slight was the overclock that caused the issues?

In an effort to maximize troubleshooting, and minimize my frustration, I have been avoiding overclocking anything on the GPUs. I have not tried lowering the memory clock speeds below stock speeds. I haven't because underclocking (or undervolting) is unacceptable as a means of resolution. But, I think the suggestion has a lot of merit to the extent that if doing so is successful it will be conclusive proof that the hardware is defective and needs to be replaced.

I am holding off on doing anything more until the thermal pads and paste that I ordered have arrived. If my theory that latent overheating conditions are occurring with components that have no sensors holds true, I will report the findings. If that has no effect, your suggestion to attempt memory underclocking will be at the top of my list. Thank you for the worthwhile suggestion. We need more ideas like that to be passed around.

 

Past 1350MHz I was seeing some texture flashing, not extremely obvious, but a mark here or there on the wall interspersed widely in Max Payne 3.

When loading Heaven 3.0, the text on the right was flashing/pinstriped.

I truly hope this suggestion can be of some use, as I have a feeling the ECC for this GDDR5 may be the culprit. Whether bad chips or overheating issues. Obviously this is just conjecture on my part.

 

I just disabled PCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) in the system BIOS and will see if that helps. Since battery life is irrelevant to me, it will not matter if that is reduced if it makes 7970M CF work good. Will report if it helps.

 

Hi Mr Fox, I have an M18x R2. So are most people certain that is a driver issue, or potentially a flaw with the card(s)?

 

I think there is a great possibility it is the driver, but the jury is still out on that. AMD has stated that there is not a driver available with proper support for the 7970M GPU chipset. It could be a flaw with the cards and it may be a combination of both issues. I'm terribly sorry to hear you are experiencing issues, but I'm glad it is yet another example of a 7970M problem on an M18x R2. That negates the ridiculous notion that that the only people with 7970M issues have Sandy Bridge motherboards. There is a belief that video cards that were part of a defective lot were put into distribution channels, but we may not be able to verify that. If there is a defective batch in circulation, unless those parts can be identified and those pull from distribution, GPU replacement will yield inconsistent results.

 

All of this talk about lines and pinstriping makes me think back to the 5870 in the G73. It took a vbios update (and a lot of arm twisting) from ASUS to fix it. I wonder if the same scenario applies here?

 

It might. There are multiple versions of vBIOS in circulation. Dell cards have at least two different vBIOS in circulation and no telling how many there are with other brands.

 

Attached is my version of the 7970M bios. It shows up at a revision A1 when I re-flash it.

Give it a shot, Mr. Fox?

 

Sure... I'll download it and flash it here in a few minutes. Thank you.

Edit #1: OK, it is flashed and it appears to be one that I have already tried using before. The vBIOS version ends in 117 and one of the zeros is a "1" so it is definitely a newer version than what shipped with my cards. I'll leave it because, although I was not able to discern any difference between the two, it did not cause any new problems. There's always a chance that something is different with the one I just flashed even though it does not show. Thanks for offering it. Almost anything is worth trying at this point.

This also suggests the possibility of a newer (better/non-defective) version of the GPU itself may exist. It would be interesting to know if owners of M18x R2 and M17x R4 that are not having major problems have the newer vBIOS (potentially newer GPU) and those that are having issues have the same version that I and DumbDumb, and Quadzilla, have.

Before | After
​

Edit #2: my pads and paste came in the mail yesterday from FrozenCPU. (I just picked up yesterday's mail.) So when I have this beast apart I will take photos of any labels on the GPUs so we can see if there are any differences in part numbers or hardware revision numbers.

 

I also notice that your GPU-Z doesn't show ULPS active, but mine does. Listed in the ATI CrossFire section right after (2 GPUs).

 

From what I recall, the pinstriping/lines issue in the G73 had something to do with the memory timings on the GPU.

 

Arestavo - I turned off ULPS because my GPUs were sometimes staying stuck in 2D clock speeds with ULPS enabled, which makes it virtually impossible to game. It might be coincidence, but it seems that also stopped the BSOD while streaming YouTube videos. I haven't experienced that since then. (I turned off ULPS on Friday during a Team Viewer session with Johnksss.) It's easy enough to turn back on. All that needs to be done is re-run the Catalyst installer and all the EnableULPS DWORD values are reset to their defaults.

Keith - I think you are correct on that. I remember reading that in another forum. All of these problems we are having could be a problem with the VRAM. That may also explain why the cards can work great for a while and suddenly go berserk. Isn't that also what Clevo and Eurocom found that delayed distribution? Does anyone recall?

Another thing I have been noticing with temps is that I am seeing a 20°C difference in cores at idle, and that started maybe a week to 10 days ago. This comes and goes, and when there is a really wide variance in temps there is no variance in core or memory idle speeds. GPU1 is warmer than GPU0, (which is the opposite of what one would expect,) but GPU0 is the one that usually remains stuck in 2D clock speeds with ULPS enabled. When both are running under load at equal 3D core and memory speeds, there is normally a reasonable (only 5°C to 10°C) variation. After closer examination, I noticed when this occurs that the fan on GPU1 is not audible, but GPU0 is audible. This is similar (although not as severe) to what we encountered with 6990M CF last year. Again, this could all be signs of malfunctioning sensors as I have mentioned before. Neither GPU "appears" to be overheating. Right now, GPU0 is idling at 30°C and GPU1 is 52°C. The left fan (GPU0) is faintly audible and airflow can be felt coming from the exhaust port. The right fan (GPU1) is not audible and no airflow can be felt coming from the exhaust port. No physical sensation of hot air or heat is apparent on either GPU. This behavior does not change between BIOS A04 and A05. I am running A04 now, and changed from A05 to see if it made any difference.

 

On Thursday I did a clean install and since then I have installed the desktop version of AMD driver 12.7beta + cap. I was so happy to notice no issues with the system, until about 30 minutes back...

The gray screen is back unfortunately and I have the R2 and not the sandy bridge CPU... I was only reading some stuff on this forum and nothing else. I do not know what to believe anymore... It could be the driver issue as everyone is stating here, because if it was a hardware failure it should have become worst by now and all of us complaining about it would have been already in RMA...

I think a future vbios and driver should fix this problem...

I forgot to mention, I have a habbit of keeping the system on standby for a long time and turning it on again. It has been on and off since last night (I mean on standby and on) with Internet Explorer on (I do not have any other stuff installed i.e. google crome, firefox etc.), I wonder if this could be a cause to it.

 

Ever system pop out with different issues. Actually i did fresh install few days back and did install 12.7 beta driver, honestly not encounter with any of issues till firin some game. ive got some graphics errors with it so ive revert back to 12.6, which is stable so far in many games ive played with X enabled.
Well i dont think, its relates how long system keeps on or off. Right now there is i think only one option left to wait for Dell to release stable driver for crossfire.

 

Not likely, juliant. In contrast, I never use standby (sleep) or hibernation. In fact, I disable those features and simply turn my system off when it's not in use. I would venture a guess that it was at least 6 months ago since I put my system to sleep and that was only to test something for another member of our community. But, let's keep those kinds of ideas and questions flowing, because you never know when we might hit the jackpot and find an obscure fix.

 

Nor me well all credit goes to SSD just take approx 10 sec to back on sky high . But yes Sleep feature is useful, when someone want to continue work after very long rest and lazy to to use save n open option

 

I do not know what to believe anymore... I have gone back to the integrated GPU and when I game or do anything that requires the power of the dedicated GPU's, I will switch back and forth until there will be hopefully a release out soon.

I have the latest vbios Mr. Fox compared earlier, however this system goes back to Dell. It has a small area where it is not painted (approx. nail size) and when I called them to replace the part, they refused to send it. They are building a new system for me (also refused to upgrade the GPU's or to make any changes at the replacement)...

As soon as I will get the new system (most probably will take another week), I will post / check the vbios of those cards on the forum.

 

maybe you could get some pics of the gpus to see if any thing is different? chip numbers and such.. and the heat sink.. maybe like Mr. Fox has stated it is the memory over heating..