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

He wouldn´t have a Problem, if he installs Windows on a normal hdd. With a ssd he have to to install a new Intel rst Driver and the Problem should be gone into history. If he wants to install Windows on a msata ssd it´s strongly recommended that he uses bios a10, because all other Versions loose the msata ssd sometimes e.g. it´s very bad if you are installing a program and Windows looses the ssd, because in most situations you have to reinstall Windows...

The new beta Drivers are very stable and fast, but in beta 5 you´ll have some Problems with bops2 (some rendering Problems), which should be fixed with beta 6. It´s not recommended to install a cap, because the application profiles are already included in the Driver.

And - very important: If he had installed a overclocking-tool such as afterburner, it´s strongly recommended to disable ULPS. If he doesn´t do that, he´ll get a bsod during the post!

 

I have already removed everything, run driver sweeper, rebooted to safe mode, run it again, and then reinstalled. The installation always completes with warnings no matter what driver I install. I have never used afterburner either. However, I have never deleted CAP. I think it is still the newest version of 12.X CAP. I will try removing those during the process. The BSOD are always atikmpag.sys

 

install this one: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...apid+Storage+Technology+(Intel®+RST)&lang=eng

 

Thank you! I'll give it a shot.

 

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/con...=Intel®+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel®+RST)

 

Hey PWn3r,
When you do your clean install, make sure you update your both video display drivers to VGA in your System device properties first. This is VERY important.
I am using 13.2 beta 6 - I can say for the first time since 12.8 drivers I don't get any BSOD no matter what. I also have Windows on my msata.

 

I have a tech coming to replace my 2nd 6990m which has been deemed an issue.

Besides all the normal indications I keep having Hwinfo64 picking up the 2nd gpu as this:

View attachment 92864

I have tried to search the internet, and just wondering if Hwinfo64 is reliable or if it is the issue or if it could be the card.

Here are temps etc after 15min in WOW on High [cant run ultra - plays like a slide show then lol]



I had a tech take control of the M18x 2days ago and agreed based on other tests including Hwinfo64 and GPUz logs that there was something not right about the 2nd gpu.

But I am curious as to what the issue is with Hwinfo64 and if it is picking up the fault with the gpu or if its just a glitch in the software, because that would be much easier to show tech support if this ever happens again.

Update:

A couple of restarts and 2nd GPU finally was detected. But now shows no core etc and under sensor it has 1800mhz for max clock speed???



Ok so Tech just left, ran Heaven Benchmark and HWINFO64 still picking up 2nd card incorrectly...

 

@TurboTalon

Here is a nice trick, to upper the vcore without flashing a vBIOS. But don´t Forget, you have 2 GPUs installed, so you have to Change 2 Parameters.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...0m-benchmark-results-only-68.html#post9059190

 

Thanks, Gerd. I shall check it out for sure. He says he's able to reliably run 1080 on the core. I'd be happy with any improvement.

 

How do you execute the /XCL for BOTH cards?

That command only worked on the primary, and now now anything that tries to touch the secondary card causes a BSOD.

Or better yet, how do you undo that command? I don't have a problem with clock modulation. I only really needed to go in and edit the profile for voltage.

 

I must just have a picky set of cards. After enough tinkering, I finally got both cards flashed and running at 1.2V, and there's absolutely still no room to overclock much at all.

Either that, or GPU-Z, HWInfo, and GPU Shark are ALL reporting the wrong voltage.

These cards kick butt at stock, so I'm going to put this to rest for the time being.

 

Take notice about follow things, that the vcore trick will be possible on a cfx-setup:

- msi afterburner may not be loaded when you try to upper the vcore by the trick. With ab you have to make a Profile with your target frequencies save it and leave ab - and never load again.

- open ccc and look if the frequencies on BOTH Cards are right.

- do the trick in ATI/profiles.xml with a Editor like described.

- reboot

- check out if the vcore-settings are still exists in the profiles.XML

- IMPORTANT: You cannot change the frequencies, when you set your new vcore-settings, because if you´ll change them, the settings will return to its default-settings and you must edit the Profile.xml again.

Happy overclocking.....

 

I understand what you're saying Gerd. I did get the cards running at 1.2V as reflected in several different monitoring programs. I input 1200 (1.2V) in the XML file for both cards, and then I flashed the VBIOS with 1.2V and the clocks I wanted (or thought I would be able) to run. No dice. All monitoring programs are showing correct voltage and clocks, but all of my benchmarks still freeze up like they did before I could manipulate the voltage.

I don't know if it is the system, the VBIOS, Catalyst drivers, or the cards themselves, but it just isn't working.

 

Disable CFX and try to overclock one Card, then we´ll see more.... - what clocks-frequencies did you set? And 1.2V is too much, because you´ll get a heat-issue.

I´ve one more question: Did you installed the Cards by yourself, or was it Dell who installed them?

For comparsion: The vCore of my Cards are 1.05V for the first and 1.00V for the second. The max. possible overclock was with SSAA 935 GPU x 1250 Vram. I´d uppered the Vcores to 1.075V for the first and 1.05V for the second and got 100% stable 1050 GPU x 1400 Vram

 

I installed them both myself. I realize 1.2 is pretty high, but I just wanted to see where I stood. I'll try some more stuff later on.

 

Check the seat of the cards - like your description i would to lay on bets that the first gpu is not seated correctly. I would swap the cards - Card 1 in Slot 2 and Card 2 in Slot 1 to be for sure...

 

How did you do to get same voltage on both cards if i might ask? Would be great to know, then i eill try to see if i can go higher, or if i cant go above my limit i have now 930/1350

 

How could this be when they work in all other ways? Like I said, I'm not worried about it anymore.

Gerd Weller posted a link on the last page or two pages back. Open the XML document with wordpad or notepad, and remember that you have to edit BOTH instances. I must have BSOD'd 25 times before I called it quits, so make sure you don't have anything important going on. That OC you've already got is not too shabby.

 

Overdrive enabled in ccc? Which driver installed? Perhaps a clean driver-installation could solve some problems...

 

If I go over 1.1V i get a BSOD. I think the best way to find out the highest possible frequencies is:

- disable cfx
- start with [email protected]
- testing.....

then (after u`ve find out the max. freq. of the first card):

- enable cfx
- start with [email protected] on the second Card
- testing....

i´ll got the highest freq. on the first Card [email protected] and [email protected]. additional vcore-raising takes no effect, furthermore i`ll get bsods. I leave the Cards with [email protected] and flashed them with these frequencies.

The Performance of the setup is outstanding. It might be, that somebody have more 3dmarks, but i am able to Play every game in best possible quality (except FSAA)!

 

Gerd, what clock are you running your core at? What temps are you seeing in heavy benching or demanding parts of games ie. Crysis 3..

I just did a svl7 flash of 900/1250. Temps seems great. Similar maxes as before 72-73 max (that's at 99% usage)
Thinking of flashing to 950/1300 but don't want to deal with temps beyond 73 at max.

 

with [email protected] on both cards, i get also 73°C. For comparsion: On my Clevo P170EM I often had 90°C and the card runs fine (except the enduro issue) and don´t throtteled the frequencies. I think up to 85°C should be no problem for a 7970m. I think you have to watch out the Vram frequency: The ICs running very hot, so here is a lesser frequency sometimes more...

 

Can someone help? I just buy a M18X-R2 with 7970M Crossfire, but I getting weird artifacts(like vertical stripes) in all games when I enabled the Crossfire mode. In single GPU mode all works fine. I tested all possible drivers likes the one in the DELL page, the last stable Catalist in AMD site and the last beta release too, even formatted HD to change WIn 7 to Windows 8 Pro but with no avail.
How to know if the GPU is damaged like memory corruption? Shall I open the case and clean the GPUs? Thanks.
3DMark11 related pics(crossfire enabled):

 

That looks like it might be a defective or improperly seated CrossFire bridge cable. Did you "just buy" it used or new? If it is new, it should not need any cleaning.

 

Try reseating or flipping the CrossFire cable. If this doesn't fix anything, switch the secondary GPU to the primary GPU slot, and see if you have any issues. If both GPUs work fine by themselves, you can rule them out. Next, I would switch the cards completely (i.e., primary into the secondary). If the problem persists, you've got a bad MXM slot or a bad CrossFire cable.

 

Thanks, I will just try that then. When I accomplish the task I`ll report here with the results. The owner`s manual is enough to learn how to open the laptop?

 

Hi,
Only had my M18 laptop for 4 days and its hardly been used. I'm getting an error display driver not responding and also got display driver stopped responding and it has recovered ( it did not recover) and got a thrid that said display driver amd driver stopped responding and has successfully recovered. ( it lies) This has happen when I was on reading a forum and then when I was trying to read my email. I called dell last night we were on the phone a long time the tech said nothing was wrong with the hardware and the graphics cards were working correctly and were not heating up. It has not happen today but it doesn't happen tons just once in a while. (which is still to much for me) I have the 7970 crossfires. I was just wondering if anyone has had this happen and know whats going on. Oh and the first time I entered a game it said my graphics card was out of date but that only happen once.

Thanks,
Trish

 

Trish, welcome to the forums.

I have only ever seen that error when I overclock my cards too high. Did you get the laptop used or refurbished?

Right-click on your desktop, and go into Catalyst Control Center. If you get some sort of welcome screen, tell it you want to run in 'Advanced' mode. On the left there should be several tabs, go into the one called 'Information'. A drop down will appear, choose 'Software'. We're interested in your Catalyst version:

 

Hi,
While just signing in here trying to answer you my laptop crashed again same error message Its a brand new laptop. I forgot to tell you that dell had me update my bios last night also but guess it didnt help. My catalyst version is 2012.0402.2221.38086

 

Trish, the number you've provided is the version of Catalyst Control Center you're currently using, which still looks quite old. Please click on the picture I provided in post #1528 and let me know what yours says. Also could you download GPU-Z and post a printscreen using the tiny camera icon at the top right of GPU-Z?

 

Hi I just opened my laptop and when I removed the MxM Crossfire cable I found this:


It seems the first three conections are a little bent over or are just my imagination?

 

Hi,
My Catalyst Control Center does not have that Catalyst version it skips over that and it does not have the AMD audio driver version listed either like yours. I have Driver packaging version, Provider, 2D driver version, 2D driver file patch, Direct 3D version, Open GL version and Catalyst Control Center Version. Dell downloaded GPU-Z on my computer so can do that. Hope this works

 

Yeah, that's pretty ugly. You could try to straighten them out carefully with a pair of tweezers. For the right-side GPU, I find it 'safer' to remove the two screws that hold the GPU to the motherboard, bring the card up and an angle, and then install the CrossFire cable.

That's slightly odd. That definitely is not the newest driver though. Download and install AMD Catalyst 13.2 beta 7. Install it over the old driver. If the problem persists, there's a few other things I'll recommend that you try. Keep us updated.

 

Ok all installed and now I have a catalyst version. I had no crashes yesterday but my computer probably was not on an hour. So I'll try this and let you know. Thanks for all your help I really appreciate it.

Trish

 

I and most of the other early adopters used to have that problem frequently with 7970M CF. It could happen randomly, without doing anything with the computer at all. Sometimes it would do it more than once in a row and cause a freeze or BSOD. It was caused by horrendously bad drivers, not hardware. If you are using the drivers that shipped with the system, that could explain it. But 8.934.2.1000 is ancient. Those are like when 7970M was first released or maybe even before it was. It's no wonder you're having problems. The drivers that were early 7970M and super-buggy (based on an old screen shot that I dug up) were in the range of 8.970.0.0 and yours are clearly older.

 

This is what works for me. I think step 2 and 3 are the most important.

You will need Driver Sweeper and CCleaner, both are free programs

1) RIght click My Computer, go Properties, then Device Manager.
2) Select Display Adapters, then right click your GPU and go Properties, then click the Driver tab and Update Driver, then "Browse from my Computer", then "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer".
3) Then Select a Standard VGA Driver, click next and install it.
4) Now, boot into Windows safe mode (pressing F8 as the computer is booting)
5) Once you're into Safe mode, run Driver Sweeper and clean the AMD Drivers, then reboot into Windows.
6) Once in Windows use CCleaner and Scan Registry, then press fix. You may need to do this a few times in a row.

View attachment 93033

7) Finally you are ready to install your AMD Drivers. Go ahead and do it.

 

I just installed the drivers over the old ones it seemed to go ok drivers are updated. Should I redo them or just try it like this? I have no idea why my drivers and catalyst control center were so out of date. I guess I never thought they would be this old where I just got my computer.

Thanks again

 

If you're not getting BSOD's then leave it. If you are getting BSOD's, definitely redo it

 

Good advice, use you're warranty while you can :thumbsup:

 

AMD Cat. 13.3 is availible

 

AMD Cat. 13.3 is availible

Highlights:

mproves performance in Far Cry 3 up to 5 percent
•Improve performance in Sim City 5 up to 16 percent
•Improves latency performance issues seen in Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution
•Resolves slight corruption seen in Tomb Raider with TressFX enabled for CrossFire and single GPU configurations

 

Getting much worse performance in Mechwarrior Online with 13.3 Beta 2. Rolling back to 13.2 Beta 7.

 

Hi guys, i have the 6990m Crossfire setup, and was wondering is it normal that one of my cards says: Driver Version: 12.100.17.0 and the other says Driver Version: Catalyst 13.3 ???

 

If you're using GPU-Z, both of my cards list each of the numbers you're mentioning. I don't think it matters though. If it is really bothering you, install the same driver again, right over the other one. If that doesn't work, you might need to uninstall the driver, clean with Driver Sweeper in Safe Mode, and then install the driver again. Not worth your time in my opinion, unless you're having performance issues.

 

12.100.17.0=cat.13.3beta2

 

Hi,
I just wanted to say thanks for the help with my graphics card issues last week. My laptop has not had anymore errors since updating my drivers!!!

Trish

 

That's great news, Trish. Your driver was very old, so the update likely fixed many issues. Have fun with your machine!

 

All, back with the same issues I posted about around a week ago. Quick rundown - ATIKMPAG.SYS BSOD on boot (now down to around 1/8 boots, used to be more than 50% of the time). I have attached a copy of the debug check analysis from Windbg. I tried installing the RAID update that was supplied by someone as well as the process that was suggested for a complete removal and re-install of the drivers. I have also pulled the SSDs and tried a rebuild on a regular HDD. That showed the same results. From what I can tell all the hardware in the machine is OK, and the BSOD only happens on boot and doesn't occur with the (crappy, hacked up) dell drivers that are on their site. However, several games have massive performance increases with the newer versions that I am unwilling to give up. Not sure where to go from here, but am about to do a complete removal of the 13.2 beta drivers I have and go to the latest beta drivers. Anyone have any other ideas I should try? For reference, I am running the latest chipset drivers, latest BIOS and have tried everything else I can think of.

*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (116)
Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed.
Arguments:
Arg1: fffffa801b32c010, Optional pointer to internal TDR recovery context (TDR_RECOVERY_CONTEXT).
Arg2: fffff8800403f8a4, The pointer into responsible device driver module (e.g. owner tag).
Arg3: 0000000000000000, Optional error code (NTSTATUS) of the last failed operation.
Arg4: 0000000000000002, Optional internal context dependent data.

Debugging Details:
------------------


FAULTING_IP:
atikmpag+98a4
fffff880`0403f8a4 4055 push rbp

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: GRAPHICS_DRIVER_TDR_FAULT

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1

BUGCHECK_STR: 0x116

PROCESS_NAME: System

CURRENT_IRQL: 0

STACK_TEXT:
fffff880`09759758 fffff880`04125000 : 00000000`00000116 fffffa80`1b32c010 fffff880`0403f8a4 00000000`00000000 : nt!KeBugCheckEx
fffff880`09759760 fffff880`04124d0a : fffff880`0403f8a4 fffffa80`1b32c010 fffffa80`1ae6dd50 fffffa80`1a1bb410 : dxgkrnl!TdrBugcheckOnTimeout+0xec
fffff880`097597a0 fffff880`0420ff07 : fffffa80`1b32c010 00000000`00000000 fffffa80`1ae6dd50 fffffa80`1a1bb410 : dxgkrnl!TdrIsRecoveryRequired+0x1a2
fffff880`097597d0 fffff880`0423dd5a : 00000000`ffffffff 00000000`00000656 fffff880`09759930 fffffa80`1a1bb410 : dxgmms1!VidSchiReportHwHang+0x40b
fffff880`097598b0 fffff880`042396af : fffffa80`1a1bb410 ffffffff`feced300 00000000`00000002 fffffa80`1a38e238 : dxgmms1!VidSchWaitForCompletionEvent+0x196
fffff880`097598f0 fffff880`04238023 : fffffa80`1a1bb410 00000000`00000002 fffff880`04237dc0 00000000`00000000 : dxgmms1!VidSchiWaitForEmptyHwQueue+0x8f
fffff880`097599e0 fffff880`042382fe : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000002 00000000`00000002 00000000`00000000 : dxgmms1!VidSchiHandleControlEvent+0x3b
fffff880`09759a10 fffff880`0420b2c6 : ffffffff`ff676980 fffffa80`1a1bb410 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : dxgmms1!VidSchiWaitForSchedulerEvents+0x23e
fffff880`09759ab0 fffff880`04237e7a : 00000000`00000000 fffffa80`197a3010 00000000`00000080 fffffa80`1a1bb410 : dxgmms1!VidSchiScheduleCommandToRun+0x1da
fffff880`09759bc0 fffff800`0233434a : 00000000`01986b74 fffffa80`1a22db50 fffffa80`0d359890 fffffa80`1a22db50 : dxgmms1!VidSchiWorkerThread+0xba
fffff880`09759c00 fffff800`02084946 : fffff880`027bb180 fffffa80`1a22db50 fffff880`027c60c0 00000000`000a2b8b : nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x5a
fffff880`09759c40 00000000`00000000 : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : nt!KiStartSystemThread+0x16


STACK_COMMAND: .bugcheck ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
atikmpag+98a4
fffff880`0403f8a4 4055 push rbp

SYMBOL_NAME: atikmpag+98a4

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: atikmpag

IMAGE_NAME: atikmpag.sys

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 512cf7ad

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x116_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys

BUCKET_ID: X64_0x116_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys

Followup: MachineOwner
---------