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

yeah, I won't be flashing my vBios any time soon, things are just peachy as they are.

 

well received machine yesterday and the bios is A03 and GPUZ gives the below , must be shipping with new vbio's now

took Mr.fox's advice done clean install and used 12.7 runs brilliant , motherboard bios yes is A03

 

So I went to the dell drivers site to look for the new A03 bios, downloaded it and when unzipping/installing I get a message telling me the version of the file I am trying to use is not compatible with my version of windows. I am using 7 Ultimate 64bit so I am not really sure what is the issue here, Im pretty sure the file is compatible, I looked before I unzipped it. Also getting a weird issue while gaming where the image on screen will flicker and slide up the screen vertically (not really sure how to explain it). I will try and post a video on youtube of that occuring and post a link here when I get time so you guys can see what I am talking about. Aghhhhh!!!!! Just want this thing to run smoothly

m18x acting weird

 

Glad that suggestion was helpful. GPU-Z is showing more info now because GPU-Z was just updated to provide support for 7970M. It appears your video cards have the older vBIOS. This is the new vBIOS (compare version numbers).

Other than the vBIOS version number, the 7970M GPUs are displaying identical information in the M18x R1 and M18x R2. I take that as a positive thing.

[ Download New 7970M vBIOS]

 

^^^ Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator

 

I had a similar issue with my M17xR2 with dual 4870M's. When Crossfire was enabled, most screens would flicker and roll. Like the old days of CRT screens when the vertical hold adjustment was off...it just rolls up the screen.

That's not good. But, fortunately, I haven't heard anyone else complain about this symptom with 7970's.

Does it do it in most games?

 

It should be fixed now. After posting the link I added my original vBIOS file to the zip archive along with the new vBIOS, and gave the attachment a new name. Thank you for letting me know the link was broken.

 

I have linked a video of it happening in my previous post if you want to see if what you mentioned is similar. Ive had it happen in Diablo 3 and Lego Batman 2, havent had a chance to see it happen in any other games so far. Really annoying though, is it possible my cards are somewhat defective?

 

My system sometimes does the same thing, Duke. Thanks for posting the video.

Where I see it in games (when I see it) it is most often between cut scenes or where a video clip changes to gameplay. I also see it between tests in 3DMark11. I see it more often with games that use DX11 than I do with games that run on DX9 or DX10.

Please feel free to provide an explanation of your issues in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-7970-driver-18xr1-18xr2-compatibility-5.html for Dell/Alienware to investigate. They are monitoring that thread closely for feedback.

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You are welcome and thank you for embedding it in your post, I didnt think to do that. I believe you have mentioned flashing your vbios. Is this something you would recommend me doing? I do not know how to do this however, I have downloaded your vbios file.

 

It is easy to do. It certainly might help your situation if the problem is not being caused by a hardware defect. I would recommend you get assistance from Alienware Support if you do not know how to do it. The new vBIOS came from a brand new M18x R2 with the newest vBIOS and it has not been modded. Alienware Support should not object to assisting with that since it is their own vBIOS. If they assist you with the vBIOS update, it will be helpful to document your case so they can take things to the next step in the resolution process if it does not correct the problem.

Use ATIflash from a bootable DOS thumb drive. DO NOT attempt to use ATIWinFlash as you may end up not being able to boot your machine if the firmware is not successfully written to the GPU after the old firmware has been erased. (There is a way to recover from a bad vBIOS flash attempted within Windows, but rather complicated to explain in a forum post.)

If Alienware Support will not help you with that, please let me know and I will provide more assistance.

 

Thank you very much Mr Fox I will certainly give Dell a call when time permits and see if they can help me with that, if not I would be glad for your help, thank you again.

 

No problem. Be sure to call 1-800-ALIENWARE and talk with Alienware Support. Avoid contact with Dell Support if that is possible (depending on where you are located) as they are not the same group of people... and the quality of help you will receive from Alienware Support is much better.

 

Thanks Mr Fox for the heads up , do you think i should update my vbios ? or just leave it as it is ?

thanks

 

SchneebalL, if your system is trouble free, you should stay away from meddling with it. Enjoy it!

 

Ok dude thanks for the reply

 

Gents,

Firstly, sorry to meet you all here.

Knowing the supplied CDs would likely contain the oldest drivers possible, I updated to 12.6 via AMDs site, after receiving and installing my computer on receipt of it. (I always do this to strip out bloat-ware).

My M18x R2 had pin-sharp graphics in Windows, but in games, it was a little off-focus (noticeably, anyway), for want of a better description, despite any changes I made in the games.

In addition, I had the odd 'funny' lines through MW3 (but not all rounds, and not all the time), and well, when BF3 looked Terrible right the way through, I began 'penning' a question to this forum.

However, I thumbed through some of the responses, deleted the drivers from Device Manager, rebooted, pulled out CCC after the boot, ran my registry cleaner, booted again, and installed 12.7 beta.

So far so good.

The graphics in the games are now as sharp as the Windows screens, and the power, oh wow, amazing.

I hope this is the end of this issue for me.

Just thought I'd share with you all, since I can see some people are well-p1ssed off (and justly), out there.

Regards.

 

Hi crew,

I'm wondering if anyone has any proven solutions or tricks to reduce micro stuttering. Right now I have a 7970cf setup. The theme seems to be:

CF getting 60fps (v sync on) that stutter. With vsync on it feels better to just use the 1 gpu with lower FPS.

My solution for extreme lack of a better word is turning off vsync so the FPS goes beyond my monitor refresh rate. That gets the performance and I can't notice any MS, but have to deal with screen tearing...

Is the just the way it goes? Or has anyone found some ways of dealing with it ?

 

I reflashed both cards to a new vBios - seems ok yet. Mr.Fox do you get freezes when browsing with 12.7 beta?

 

Not any more. That was being caused by a Windows Update that did not play nice with 7970M.

 

Have you flashed your vBios to latest one also?

 

How did you get the windows update to cooperate? Did you remove that windows update and do you remember which one?

I've got freezing browser with both exploder and firefox.

 

Mr. Fox already mentioned in several places. You have to make a restore to an earlier version of windows and make sure the updates are not above 1 July 2012. And you have to change the settings from automatecally update to just notify. That way windows will not update...

 

Going from memory, Mr Fox found out it was the July 1st update.. im not 100% there though.

Try disabling "use hardware acceleration when available in the Firefox setting". That fix has worked for me so far. (day 3 no freezes - personal best)

 

Thanks all, i'll roll back and see what happens.

 

Normally what I do is to turn on vSync, if it seems good then I let it on and if it looks bad then I just turn it off.

 

I have not noticed micro-stuttering on my system (have been using it for a little over two months). I have noticed that I get considerable screen tearing and some stuttering with V-Sync off. I have always assumed it was due to having an SLI setup and just left it enabled. I don't notice any input lag, but I may have adjusted to it (since I always have V-Sync on). Maybe it's an AMD thing...sorry I couldn't help more.

 

I think it is more of an AMD CrossFire problem. I never really noticed any of that running 580M SLI. It was noticeable with 6970M CF, 6990M CF and it is noticeable with 7970M CF. I'm about 90% certain it is an AMD driver performance problem and not a hardware issue.

To clarify, I restored my system to the moment before Windows Updates where installed beginning on July 1 and I have not isolated which update is causing the problem. There were approximately 12 to 15 Windows updates that started on July 1 and were installed in the days that followed. I have not reinstalled any of the updates and have no web browser freezing issues and have not seen the freezing with a pinstriped screen since then. I do still have problems with Adobe applications causing Windows to freeze, but that is a known issue with AMD drivers at the moment based on what I have heard.

When I have more time and a little more patience than I do right now, I will begin installing the Windows Updates one day at a time to determine which one it is that causing issues with 7970M CF. As noted, I have Windows Update set to let me know, but let me decide if I want to download and install the updates. For now, I am simply ignoring the notification that updates are available.

 

Thanks for your feedback guys. Yeah its horrible stuff (MS). It makes 50-60 fps feel like 20 fps.

Yeah, that's what I think works best too. Is there anything you do to counter the screen tearing it causes though ?

Dam.. was it ever sorted out with the previous generations ?

 

Experiencing m18xR2 freezing when playing world of tank with 7970m crossfireX fullscreen mode.
I flash newest bios(board-a03 and new vbios) and using 12.7beta with cap1 driver but it happen still.

I've been tested almost all of catalyst 12.4~12.7ver and format/install window three times but the freezing is on going.

How can i figure it out?

 

At the time I abandoned 6900M series graphics cards for GTX 580M it was not resolved. Not sure what happened after that time. It used to be especially noticeable in 3DMark11... always sort of a rapid semi-jerky motion even when more than 30 FPS, sort of like video with a few dropping frames. I have that exact same issue even with CrossFire disabled with 7970M. In contrast, with 580M SLI it almost always seemed quite fluid and smooth even when the frame rate is under 30 FPS.

 

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,Alienware M18xR2 score: P30053 3DMarks

this is what i have with vantage? seems rather low tbh.

specs in the sig.

 

12.7 beta is freeezing while browsing with firefox and while working in adobe photoshop cs5 & cs6, these 2 program's i am using every day... what to do? roll back to 12.5 beta?

UPDATE. went back to 12.5 beta - they're 100% stable for me. Also i have noticed that new vBios slightly increased 3dmark11 scores.

 

Thats weird, I never froze with world of tank and I played it a lot with my m18x will all driver release that works with the 7970m.
One thing for sure is that the game cannot even fully use one card and will use one gpu at 60-70% max, with 2 card crossfire kinda works but again gpu usage will not go over ~35% per card so performance is quite similar to only using one card.
My advice for now is to run WoT with crossfire disabled (just make a profile with CCC)

 

Thank you your reply.
It just happens to me Orz.
Never I help from DELL Customcare why I live in Seoul from Republic of Korea.


Anyway, after crossfire disabled, all freezing issue is gone.
I sad that only single 7970m using why the freezing problem.

 

Running with CrossFire disable is a really sucky workaround. That's OK as a troubleshooting step, but what's the point in having it if you have to turn it off? Bottom line, AMD needs to make it work consistently. I don't accept disabling CrossFire as being a valid solution. I never had to disable SLI on any of the poplular games I play.

 

So, mr.Fox, have you tried 12.5 beta?

 

12.5beta is good?
.
.
I clean install 12.5beta(8.97) and World of Tank freezing issue is resolved. Great!
But it comes another freezing issue with Mass Effect 3
12.6 offical and 12.7offical beta working fine with Mass Effect 3.
It's just as well why not hardware problem.
Maybe it seems resolve driver improvement from AMD.

I'll look forward to new driver!


M18xR2 / Intel Core I7-3820QM / 7970Mx2(CrossfireX) / 16GB Memory / Samsung 830 SSD - 256GB, Segate Momentus XT 750GB Solid state hybrid hdd

 

Yes, and it did not produce similarly good results for me. Batman Arkham Asylum has severe flickering and screen tearing. Skyrim has worse flickering and all sorts of artifacts, and other games I played today with 12.5 beta had lower FPS and stuttering. I installed 12.7b hotfix over the top of 12.5 beta just for kicks and it seems things are back to working as good as they are able to work for now. I'm just going to have to put up with things as they are until another option is available.

 

This is a bit disappointing at the moment

 

Okay running with disabled Crossfire over the past few days has stopped the random BSODS and freezing. I am able to do everything I normally would like when I used to with the 6990Ms installed.
So for now until AMD release a proper/improved stable driver for our 7970M's I will just have to enable crossfire for gaming and then disable it whilst working and web browsing.

Please 12.8 drivers fix our issues!!!!

Cheers.

 

For those having serious issues with Skyrim like I have been experiencing, manually turn on v-snych and it will help the game quite a bit. I had manually turned off v-synch when I had GTX 580M SLI and Skyrim worked fine with that using the NVIDIA GPUs. I just remembered I had done that tweak a long time ago and decided to undo it to see if it helped my issue on the 7970M video cards. There is no way to do this in the game configuration settings. The only way to do this is to edit the [Display] section in the SkyrimPrefs.ini file that is located in your saved games folder. Open it with Windows Notepad. You want to edit (or add if you don't already have it) the line iPresentInterval=1. If it is there already and set to 0, change it to 1. Set to zero disables v-synch. You won't see more than 60 FPS, but at least it will function better.

Doing this stopped most of the water flickering and it stopped the violent jerking and shaking of people and animals, and it made my horse stop hopping up and down uncontrollably, LOL.

You may find more than one SkyrimPrefs.ini file on your system. I had one in the game installation folder. Changing that one has no effect. Be sure to edit the one in your saved games folder or it will make you think this tweak doesn't work.

Spoiler

 

Hey guys, whats the last known good 6990M drivers? i'm not keen on trying AMD's latest because they've kinda moved on and I dont need issues

 

As far as I can recall, it was like Catalyst 11.9.

 

Hoping someone can give me a helping hand.

Just got a replacement M18xR1 with crossfire 6900 (had 560m before). Been running 3DMark Vantage and getting very low fps on everytest. 11fps on Jane Nash (xfire) 5 fps on Jane Nash (xfire off) all tests are the same. Was getting 25 fps on a single 560m.

Have tried new drivers with the same results, have checked the xfire cable.

What sort of FPS should I be getting ? Hopefully someone we let me know

 

That is not proper performance for 6990M CF. Be sure your power profile is set on High performance (not Power saver) and you are plugged into an electrical outlet. You cannot do well on battery power or in a power saving mode. Also be sure you are using the discreet graphics and not running on the IGFX.

 

Its on high performance and plugged in. Been playing with the settings and have discovered if I leave the PowerPlay enabled Im getting FPS between 70-80 on average on Jane Nash. Not sure how that got switched off.

Thanks for pointing me in right direction

 

New AMD driver (not the one from sager):
AMD Catalyst 12.x (8.982.0.0 RC1 July 19) Unofficial BETA - Guru3D.com Forums

Firefox bug is back !!! need to disable hardware acceleration, otherwise everything seems fine with this release.
After driver install my crossfire was disabled, just needed to enable it again.

 

Hey Xmadror,

I've been running this for about a day now. I can confirm that the fire fox bug is back. With Hardware acceleration enabled firefox crashes for me like every few minutes lol. With this driver I can now run GPU-z anytime without a hard lockup freeze, however HWINFO will still hard lock up and freeze on me. So far signs of improvement though.

What I don't get is the date seems newer but the version of the driver is older than the 12.7 hotfix version.
No matter though. I've got crossfire back enabled and will see how things go.

I actually got the driver from here last time http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=366313

Cheers.

 

I'm starting to get a gut full of partial improvements with 7970M CF, LOL. I want to see huge improvement... we're way past due for that. This here a tweak, there a tweak, everywhere a tweak-tweak, E-I-E-O junk is for the birds.