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

the new 12.8 beta driver was reported to have improvements over Skyrim and a few other games. Have you tried that one yet brother Fox?

Just in case you need a link:
AMD Catalyst 12.x (8.982.0.0 RC1 July 19) Unofficial BETA - Guru3D.com Forums

 

No, let me give it a go. Don't have much to lose as things are now, LOL. Thanks for the link.

How is it working for you, Brother long?

 

this driver is horrible.. its a knock off of 12.6

 

I installed it and don't see any difference compared to the 12.7b hotfix. It's not worse (so far) but not any better. The 7970M GPUs are still a huge joke, LOL.

Edit: I take that back... they don't perform as well, or so it seems. GPU performance is lowered compared to 12.7b hotfix.

Here's the suggested 12.8 driver (today)

Here's 12.7b hotfix driver (run last night)


I'll leave it installed a bit longer to see if the driver makes my 7970M video cards any less garbage-like, but I'm not optimistic.

 

Mr. Fox, it is certainly within your rights to call the 7970M a joke - but why do so without having them replaced first? I know you are traveling right now, but get them replaced, and if the problems continue THEN call them a joke.

I write this as they are not a joke for me, as I am having only 2 driver (crossfire) related problems. Rage being an unplayable screen tearing feces fest, and The Witcher 2 having dips in 40 FPS on ultra sans Ubersampling which is still playable but annoying.

 

If I were the only person having issues, I wouldn't call them a joke. I've had 10 defective AMD GPUs in the past couple of years, so it's an AMD issue as much as a 7970M issue. If I weren't having issues with them, I would be happy like those that are not having issues. It's a very powerful GPU that seems to not work correctly for a little more than a third of the members of this forum that own 7970M in an M18x.

 

The thread that asked if folks are satisfied with their 7970M shows 61% are?

EDIT: Just noticed that you said the 37% that aren't satisfied are actual hardware failures - which might not be the case. Just trying to insert a little objectivity here, as not everyone who voted posted in that thread.

 

No, "So far, 37% failure rate in customer satisfaction with 7970M CrossFire." There is a difference... lackluster AMD driver support alone is enough to drive that result.

 

Well, in that case - I am not fully satisfied. However, for what I paid I cannot complain too much.

 

You know, in regards to calling the 7970 a joke, I'm almost with Fox on this. Why not return as mentioned in another post and end up one of the cases where either you get a refurb or only partially what you sent in, no thanks. I'll stick with the semi finished product hoping they resolve it several months later.. I've dealt with the fact when the system goes black, just hard shut it down and reboot. It might work for another hour or so. Until recently when I updated to the most recent vbios, it's finally not blacked out on me since the update. It's unfortunate that we pay for a 4k piece of hardware that is unfinished but eventually it will be... So no thanks in regards to the return and possibility of poor technical support from over seas.

 

Well said, tanderson. +1 rep

The trouble with hoping is that it may never be fixed. Hoping for drivers that miraculously cure AMD's engineering errors and hardware defects may not ever pan out the way we hope it will. I believe hardware replacement will end up proving to be the only solution at this point.

 

You know what, I spoke too soon. Was relaxing, playing diablo 3 and it just went black. You can hear sound, keyboard is lit up, fans are running but you can't see anything, the screen is off. On second thought, although it's a hassle, I'm done with it also. I'd love to get the 680's and be done with ati/amd.

 

That's where I'm at as well. When alienware techs are frustrated by the ATI drivers that says it all. They told me they're aware of the situation and want to collect my system. Just waiting for the box to arrive on monday. I don't see how it will resolve anything when the issues are across several generations of AMD cards and drivers. The only solution they offered me was to downgrade from dual 6970's to dual 560's but I'm not going for that.

These AMD drivers are crazy, I got the same thing you did, external monitor goes black, then when I open my laptop the internal monitor is dead as well but everything is still running.

 

Thought I'd chime in here again;

Whilst I don't have BSOD, or any other errors (really they work just fine), I noticed someone asking about the performance of TWO cards, as opposed to using just one, and that triggered my curiosity. (Given that we've paid for up to twice the performance)...

Well here you go;

3DMark06:

Dual 7970M: 31136 3D Marks. (+11.36%)

Single 7970M: 27959 3D Marks.

So really I'm not getting anywhere NEAR the performance I've paid for.

AMD, please sort this out soon. The natives are getting restless..

BUT, these cards are flying through BF3. My last system was i7 920XM with HD5850, with about 10000 on 3DMark06, and it was unplayable, and even on lowest settings I eventually gave up.

EDIT:

3D Mark Vantage does appear to show more of an improvement using both cards;

Dual 7970M: 33635 3D Marks. (+44.6%)

Single 7970M: 23262 3D Marks.

 

The 7970M GPU doesn't seem to do nearly as well with DX11 as it does with DX9 and DX10, so that may explain the comparatively small difference in single GPU versus CrossFire when running 3DMark11 versus Vantage. That will most likely get better if AMD will release good drivers for the 7970M. SLI and CrossFire perform much better in terms of raw performance than a single GPU, but it's not normally able to translate into doubling the benchmark score.

 

Yeah CF runs like a steaming pile in most things I'm wanting to play at the moment. That being AMRA2, Skyrim and L4D2. It's so sad resorting to running on 1 card (and getting better performance) when you've shelled out for CF.

Have I missed some posts recently or have the Alienware reps been pretty quite around here lately?

 

I am using VSYNC and all settings maxes in LFD2 with crossfire enabled and buttery smooth performance (don't have Arma 2 to test) - you cannot TBoneSan?

I am still using the desktop 12.7 betas and 12.7 cap 1.

EDIT: also Skyrim runs great too (VYSNC ON - stuff gets too wild with it off), but I was getting some pretty bad micro-stuttering before I ran a registry cleaner several times.

 

Definitely, Skyrim is working very well for me with v-synch enabled. Disable v-synch and it is simply terrible.

 

So another month is over, our pretty machines still doesn't run as we would expect from 3k ones... Let's have a cup of coffee and wait for 12.8 drivers and hope for better tomorrows Now I understand why so many people complained about buying Alienware with AMD graphics. One just simply finds out when he gets one...

 

L4D2 runs smoother on 1 card as does Arma 2/Day Z.
Appologies, Skyrim is running great now

 

Everything I play runs great with v-synch on. Seemed to fix most if not all my CF issues so far. (knocking on some wood now)

 

Are you using 12.7 beta 26 june? Try to play StarCraft 2 Nexus wars map and see if textures flashing when you get alot of units.

 

I'm actually using the one from dell 8.934.2.1. Haven't had any problems yet, figured why mess with it right now when its working fine. I will upgrade the driver when it starts giving me problems or when they finally release a proper one. I will have to get SC2 loaded up and give it a try.

 

Ok for all you homies with dual 7970m's only. i think my computer is only detecting one graphics cards. go to System Information, Components and then display and tell me how many not availables you see listed under both of your graphics cards. under the first 7970m i have it's got one not available but on the second one it has four not availables. is this normal? thanks

 

Under device manager, display adapters I see both AMD Radeon HD 7970M installed. Have you tried doing a clean install of either the dell reference drivers, or the desktop 12.7 betas direct from AMDs download page? Link

 

12.7 CAP 2 is up
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

Now I just need to wait for the pre-launch of Guild Wars 2 !! Crossfire performance was "ok" in the last beta but there was room for improvement.
Big step up compare to Star Wars The Old Republic that only had a crossfire profile AFTER I stopped playing it (like 2.5-3 month after release)

Also I wonder if they fixed the text flickering in Dota 2.

 

Weeee new drivers! No mention of SC2 texture flickering. :-(

It's really annoying! I hope it goes away.

Edit: Alright so I need to learn2read, so it's just profiles in amd_catalyst_12.7_cap2. lol I learned that one the hard-way, but not so unpleasant.

I totally uninstalled 12.7 beta 16 june. Ran CC & DriverSweeper in safe mode. Then just installed the 12.6 whql driver.

So far no texture flickering in SC2. I've played a FFA, 2v2, 1v1, and ran replays for over an hour and a half now. Crossing my fingers, hopefully this problem is resolved for me. The weird thing is that I was getting the flickering the most on the 12.6 drivers, that's why I switched to 12.7 beta. :-\

 

I've been playing Deus Ex with the CAP2 -
It ran OK before but runs perfectly now - absolutely eliminates any trace of Micro stutter.
Its a shame they couldn't include a few more titles.

 

Anyone having ongoing performance issues with 7970M CrossFire may want to have a look at post #2 in my upgrade thread, under the heading " UPDATE 08/05/2012" for some suggestions.

 

Mr. Fox - some excellent info there!
+1 Rep (long overdue)

I'll try it out soon. Did you notice less Micro Stuttering with your Update ?
Does anyone use Radeon Pro anymore ?

 

Hi everyone, I desperately need some help.
I flashed my 7970m's bios with a slightly overclocked bios, but I forgot to save my original bios settings.

CAN SOMEONE PLEEEEEEASE send me a copy of the original 7970m 2048GB version's bios file? I am using an alienware m18x r2.

Thanks

 

Here you go...

 

I need help. I clean installed my previous driver and after running driver sweeper and CCC clean upon safe boot, it still detects AMD card on the display adapter on device manager after Rebooting to normal mode. Did I clean install properly? Shouldnt it say VGA adapter after uninstalling the driver and using driver sweeper and CCC cleaner on safe mode?

 

GTO - this is a common issue with AMD drivers. I do this all the time. Follow these steps before using DriverSweeper and CCleaner's registry tool. It's OK that you did the other steps first this time. It will not hurt anything. You can skip steps 9 and 10 since you already did them.

1. Uninstall all AMD software current installed (Catalyst packages, Catalyst Install Manager and AMD CAP files)
2. Open Device Manager. Open the display properties for one of the GPUs.
3. Click the button to update driver
4. Click the "Browse" option
5. Choose the option to "Pick" your own driver from a list
6. Manually select Standard VGA Graphics adapter from the list
7. Click "Next" and let it do its thing.
8. When the Standard VGA driver installation completes you may be prompted to reboot... don't reboot.
9. Repeat the steps with the other GPU before rebooting Windows.
10. Reboot into Safe Mode, run DriverSweeper
11. Reboot into normal Windows mode and run CCleaner's registry tool
12. Install the new Catalyst package and AMD CAP files.

 

Cool, so instead of uninstalling the AMD in programs and features and reboot to safe mode, I just do what you mentioned above?

 

No, you still need to do that first. I edited step one to make it clear. Now there are 12 steps, LOL.

 

Mr Fox, I was following your Hotfix update. You've changed the Bios settings to eek out the performance I gather. I've never flashed a GPU bios, do you have or know any recommended guides that I could use ?

 

​

Love ya Tbon. xoxoxo

 

Lol I think all that love was meant for Mr Fox

 

No, not performance, bro. Stability. I am running 3D mode stock core, memory and voltage settings, but doing so on both 2D and 3D modes. I am only trying to get them to function well enough to continue using them for normal gaming and overall stability. And, that tweak I posted is doing a marvelous job of it. It is not helping with the defective vRAM (or whatever else it might be if not vRAM - look at this screen shot) but it is a massive improvement over what I was going through.

Get the latest version of ATIFlash (DOS version) and load it to a bootable USB thumb drive. Add the ROM file to the thumb drive, too.

The commands are:

• atiflash -i - to enumerate the cards... will simply list both of your GPUs in a CrossFire setup... GPUs 0 and 1 should be identified
• atiflash -s 0 filename.rom - will save your existing vBIOS from GPU0 using the file name you specify
• atiflash -s 1 filename.rom - will save your exisitng vBIOS from GPU1 using the file name you specify
• atiflash -p 0 filename.rom - will program the ROM with the name you specify to GPU0
• atiflash -p 1 filename.rom - will program the ROM with the name you specify to GPU1

Example: If you wanted to write a file named 7970M.ROM to GPU0 the command would be atiflash -p 0 7970M.ROM

(The screen shot I posted above was a random glitch. It happened this evening... was experiencing some odd behavior and discovered that. Then, as suddenly as the weirdness started, it simply went away, LOL. Very odd stuff.)

 

Sure, got ya. I might leave the 12.7b with CAP 2 installed then. I have tried the hotfix without any bios flash - not much difference for my setup.
I'm just a little tempted to flash the bios to get Batman working.

Thanks a million for your help. Champion information and it's much appreciated

 

Well, that is just precious. Lord knows the world needs more of it.

You're very welcome, kind sir. Thanks for the compliment.

 

Hi all. I recently got an m18x r2 (couple of days ago), and its been pretty great except for a few crashes while gaming, guessing that was because of the issues with the cfx 7970s but it still performs like a beast! But today I noticed that for some reason its stuck on 2d clocks. I'm really not sure whats wrong with it, hoping one of you all can help?

 

Take a look at Mr. Fox's fix for clocks stuck in 2d mode within his post here.

 

I did try flashing the vbios but only one gpu would be fixed at 3d clocks, and even then the performance would still be abysmal. Also tried reinstalling the catalyst 12.7b hotfix drivers and that didn't help as well. Then I tried a fresh install of windows but that didn't work either

 

Perhaps a silly question here, how can you tell if its stuck on 2d clocks? any visual effects

 

Seems random crashes is typical for 7970M CrossFire. AMD still hasn't release a driver that properly supports this GPU. As far as stuck clock speeds, that's not unusual for AMD video cards, especially in CrossFire. I had the exact same issue with 6970M and 6990M CrossFire.

If you used my modded 017a vBIOS and one of your GPUs is still sticking at 2D speeds, you either need to have that video card replaced or you forgot to flash the second GPU. (You have to flash them individually.) Unless the GPU is having a serious problem it cannot be stuck at 2D speeds with that vBIOS because I effectively eliminated a 2D mode. Both of my GPUs run 850/1200 @ 1.05v all of the time, even when running Furmark and MSI Kombustor, both of which normally causes the GPUs to throttle down under load. (I am not suggesting that you run Furmark, and doing so should be avoided. I used it only briefly to confirm my tweak works 100% of the time. If you run it indiscriminately there is a risk of damage your video cards.)

If your video cards are working correctly, you *should not* need to use this tweak. Poor quality drivers may be contributing to that issue. I am doing it only so I can continue using my system for gaming while waiting for replacement video cards. Doing so does not hurt anything. The temps are still fine, but the power consumption is much higher. It probably does not comply with Dell's skin temp specs while running idle in this manner, as the idle temps are just a little bit higher. The load temps are identical to the standard vBIOS because the GPUs are not overclocked. If you don't switch to the IGFX when you are not gaming it will cut your battery run time down to 30-45 minutes. That's OK with me, since I don't really care about battery run time 90% of the time, and when I need it for travel I simply switch to using the IGFX.

Well, it will be immediately apparent if both cards are doing it. The system will run like you are gaming on battery and you'll instantly recognize something is terribly wrong. If only the secondary GPU is running in 2D clocks when it should be on 3D you will notice poor performance (like a system with only one 7970M) as compared to when CrossFire is working as it should. Your FPS will be half what you would expect to see in CrossFire.

If you use this technique http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html you will also see it happening because it will be displayed on your screen while gaming.

 

Yes I noticed that there are quite alot of problems with AMD's drivers, I had been following this forum for some months before I got the laptop so I was aware of the problems I would face going with the AMD setup, but it was the best value performance for the money so I'm hoping that they come right on the drivers eventually, hopefully with 12.8 lol

I did flash both GPUs with the vbios so that's why it seemed so strange to me, but I did try reinstalling the catalyst drivers once more (i got a bsod during installation! :-/) and the problem seemed to have been fixed so that's quite a relief! I even reflashed the stock vbios without any problem! I did read about your post where you mentioned that you may have some bad vram and I was worried that maybe one of my GPUs had a defect as well.

 

Good... glad to hear it is working correctly now.

 

I think I may get this every once in a while and usually a restart fixes it.
The effects I get are 3d effects; game (gameplay) and windows 7 aero fx (ie minimizing windows) move at 50% of the normal speed.

I did try that guide of yours to display CPU and GPU info simultaneously. It was an excellent guide but I had to improvise due to a different HW64 only being available. I can get it displaying in tandom with MSI and showing everything I need but its eating up alot of CPU as I get FPS drops having it activated. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.