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

I could be wrong but if this happen in any graphic program such as games then it could be your gpus are dying if its only happen in diablo then its 100% driver issue.

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Hello all, wanted to report back in - after resolving my issue with BSOD on boot, I am now seeing a problem when I try to start any 3D game about half of the time -- ATIKMPAG.SYS BSOD caused by the direct x driver. I have run through the troubleshooting steps, and talked to a tech at Alienware. I was informed that they supposedly received a bad batch of 7970's around the time when my laptop was built. They claim they have had to replace both cards in a large percentage of laptops that were built in a few week span around August of last year. I don't know if anyone else has had this level of trouble, and I am just leaving this here in case it affects anyone else.

 

Thanks for the update fella, yeah plenty of people have had such problems and It's very difficult for users to know if its hardware failure or cruddy drivers. It's one of the better reasons 7970m's get a good bashing around here.

 

Thanks for your help all.

I do not have Windows auto-update on.
It has happened a few times in Diablo in that spot, and a few other spots.
But like I mentioned, it has happened in other games as well, most recently Payday.

I have disabled the factory overclock in the bios, and will see if it happens again. The problem is that it could go a week or two without having the issue.

I will report back if I have problems again!
Thanks again!

 

If that's the case i'm certain it comes down to a driver/installation problem. Sometimes they can bug out and BSOD with an aggressive OC and low flex too. I'm still using 13.3 drivers which work 100% for me. Maybe try 13.2, they were solid too.

 

Thanks I was just about to ask a question concerning a problem which sounds identical to what you have described.
I'm a bit disappointed though, my M18x R2 has already had the mother board and graphic cards swapped and it was a warranty replacement for my m17x r2.

 

If you ever get that atikmpag.sys error just reintall the graphics driver for a quick fix, and I have found flash player crashing on the desktop to be a major reason for the initiation of these crashes in the first place.

The majority of these problems are software related ao hardware replacments shouldnt be necessary when in some cases they will leave you worse off than when you started.

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It's hard to know for sure, but this seems to be accurate. The earlier 7970M video cards had what seems like a bunch more problems and quite a few were replaced at least once under warranty. It appears there have been significantly fewer problems with the 7970M cards that were released in the last part of Q3 and Q4 of last year.

 

Thanks. Nice info.

 

Hi guys, I have an R1 with the original 6990Ms in crossfire. Prior to upgrading to Win 8 (64 pro) used to be able to use Saphire trixx to overclock the cards mildly to 800 MHz core and 4000MHz memory. Now when I try to enable the overclock using the latest version of trixx, it instantly freezes and BSODs. I am using 13.3 beta drivers but it does this with 13.2 as well.

I tried uninstalling trixx but I discovered this isn't actually that simple and the software leaves bits behind. Using MSI afterburner, for some reason the max overclock on the core is up to 740 MHz which is identical to the CCC overdrive function (locks you to 740 max). Neither of these allow any voltage control although MSI AB has reasonably good fan control profile software.

What can I do to get a stable overclock again? I am not looking for massive numbers. Just up to 800 core clock in both cards. Is it likely a win 8 issue? Any other overclocking software I can use to do this?

 

Had the exact same issue this morning on 13.4 drivers and running win7 rather than win 8...nearly gave me heart attack when the system kept bsod'ing on startup before I could even set the hwinfo fan profile. Not sure what the issue with trixx is (or my system, if that's the case) , but it seems that software is off-limits for the time being. The fact that the program seemed to "linger" after being uninstalled was the really odd part.

 

trruly hating my M18xR2 7970M CF that looks slightly more pleasing to my eyes than a brick as a paper weight

I've been using 13.3 beta for a while and it worked wonderful and without glitches when playing the latest Tomb Raider.

(I've played for hours at a time without hiccups. I even left the laptop on with the game paused for more than 24 hours.

Simply rock-solid. So it doesn't seem to be hardware-related)

But of course, with AMD, installing a new game and making it work is an adventure and somewhere

in the process of installing Bioshock Infinite, I completely messed up my Windows.

Time to re-install the Windows, I reckoned.

So I tried 13.4 WHQL and 13.5 beta 2, both of which does not recognize my 7970M CF setup no matter

what I try (and I tried every trick known to this forum. I must've installed Windows more than 10 times and

feeling exhausted...)

Finally giving up, I went back to 13.3 beta which seems to recognize my 7970M CF ok for some reason...

here's my message to AMD - **** U

 

That's weird. I'm currently using 13.4 drivers and they have been rock solid for me. Enjoyed Bioshock Infinite at 100+ FPS on Ultra Dx11 with rare hiccups here and there. I guess it's the luck of the draw with these cards lol.

 

i'm using the 13.5 beta 2 drivers and have a few problems on my 7970m crossfire cards, however, i think it more of the drivers as i'm having problems with the 13.4 application profiles as well.

my setup is m18x r2 7970m crossfire, 3840qm, 32gb ram, 512ssd. Windows 7 ultimate 64bit

the first issue light flickering in resident evil 5 is when i install 13.5 beta 2, can be reproduced in this specific settings conditions:
playing Resident Evil 5 steam in DX10 crossfire, limit the options to 30fps,
the lights flicker when using crossfire mode, 30 fps locked in
this also happens using 13.3 drivers

but if i use 13.5 beta 2 drivers and install the 13.4 application profiles cap1, the light flicker goes away playing RE5 Dx10 in crossfire mode 30fps locked,
so i thought the case has been solved.

(also if downgrade back to 13.1 drivers the light flicker goes away)

however, i just brought hitman absolution from the $5 slickdeals sale for steam,

and when i benchmark hitman absolution with 13.5 beta 2 w/ 13.4 application profile cap 1, the frame rate goes down to 22 fps in crossfire mode making it unplayable.

if i uninstall the 13.4 application profile cap 1, while using 13.5 beta 2 my benchmark average fps is 65!

so i have to install or uninstall the profiles depending if i'm playing RE 5 in crossfire with 30fps locked in.
and hitman absolution.

if anyone has 7970m crossfire and have either or both of these two games in steam, please try the above in game settings and please post your results. As i would like to know if it's the drivers or my crossfire cards acting funny.

thanks,
david


update: i installed the 13.4 whql drivers
and the lights doesn't flicker under identical conditions for RE5 as above so i'm sticking with them

but still if i install the 13.4 application profiles while using 13.4 whql drivers, using benching in hitman yields an unplayable 22 fps that and goes no higher than 31 fps.

so no matter what i have to uninstall the application profiles in order to play hitman absolution.

if any have hitman and 7970m crossfire, post your results if possible

 

Hi Guys

First timer here so go easy on me.

I got my first Alienware laptop a week ago and Im having some major issues getting the 7970m to run in crossfire.
I have done a fresh install of my OS and Im running 13.4 CC but every time I try to run a game I get the below problem with my screen.




Im finding really hard to enjoy my new laptop as from day one trying to get this to work but coming up short.


I really hope you guy can help me.

Regards

Gary

 

Try 13.3, I never had a problem with them

 

Thanks for getting back to me so fast...


do you recommend the 3.3 beta??

 

I tried the 13.3 beta but has same result.....

I am running windows 8 if that helps at all??

 

Are you getting this with real games or just vantage as your screenshots show?

Also, when installing new drivers, did you disable Windows 8 DSE (driver signature enforcement) ?? - if not, try uninstalling your video drivers, then follow the video and re-install your video drivers after doing so:

 

hi stevie

getting this on all games with crossfire enabled, once disabled works fine...

will give your suggestion a shot and let you know.


thanks again

for your help guys

 

Still no Joy....going to call it for tonight and try again tomorrow after work,

Day 8 with no crossfire and counting..........lol

 

just an update. i finally got it working with 13.4.

i didn't do anything different other than letting it sit on the table for one full day.

anyways, just done playing Bioshock Infinite for few hours (finally go to meet Elizabeth) and i'm absolutely

loving my M18x. it handles at the highest graphic setting with absolutely no problem and it's been rock

solid - no hiccups, shut down or nothing of that sort.

it's making me fall in love with my M18x again - and giving me a bipolar disorder at the same time.


normally what i do with my laptop at this stage is setting up my dropbox, install office suite, and what-nots

but i'm not gonna bother with any of those. with AMD, there's no point meticuously setting up and tweaking

the laptop because it's inherently unstable.

basically it's a one-trick pony that can do one game at a time (and do it exceptionally well once you get it to

working)... and i fully expect to re-install the windows from scratch once the new version of Catalyst comes out

or if i venture into another game title...




sorry about the rant but i thought i'd report - that all is well for now.

BTW, everyone should play Bioshock Infinite - truly exceptional game - the only other game on par with it is perhaps half-life 2...

 

13.4 or 13.5 beta 2 would not install for me either, but mobility 13.4 installed fine and gave me some good improvement over my last driver set which was 12.11 (I think). I have not played anything new/demanding on my m18x for a while so I didnt felt like upgrading.

I'm sure I've read a post from an AW rep saying that we could install desktop driver just fine with the m18x, I guess thats not true anymore ... amd forcing us to go with mobility.
I'm sure we could modify the inf to get the desktop driver to work if it was needed but I didnt felt like trying.

 

Why you want a desktop driver on your m18x. Any difference from the mobile one?

 

I've never heard of installing the desktop driver for mobility parts..

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D6frag that could be a loose crossfire cable

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Wow, 168 pages of issues. My head is spinning.

I could get a M18xR2 7970M CF for about $125 more than Sager 9370 with a 680m (NOT SLI), but it still seems like there are so many issues.

So I put it out there to all of you with the 7970 CF, would you do it again? Is it worth it?

 

Definitely, I love mine

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It is worth it. I have 0 issues with mine. Most of the problems were pre April last year. After that it seems Ati did something to the chips because the issues with the new cards are close to none.

Cf 7970 is a beast. Go for it.

 

We need to be careful to not go overboard in assuming the worst. While this thread is approaching 1700 posts, nowhere close to that many posts are individual problem reports. I am going to guess that 75% of the posts are responses to problem reports, or status updates in follow up to an existing report.

If you want something that does a better job of playing games and scores higher in benchmarks than a single-GPU configuration is capable of doing without having to spend more than necessary, 7970M CrossFire is the more affordable solution. If your interest extends to competitive benchmarking, it's not going to get the job done. You'll need to pay extra and go with 680M SLI if you have that interest. It's rare to find a 7970M CrossFire system that can keep up with an overclocked 680M SLI setup when it comes to synthetic benchmarks. There are other advantages to 680M SLI besides better overclocking, but you should not be inordinately concerned about the number of posts in this thread. There are quite a few happy 7970M CrossFire owners that have not experienced the problems that others have.

Having owned both, I absolutely favor 680M SLI as the superior product. But, two 7970M in CrossFire will significantly exceed the performance of a single 680M and under those conditions I would most likely opt for the 7970M CrossFire setup. If the possibility of a future upgrade from one 680M to 2 in SLI were not going to be an option due to budgetary constraints, then it would be a no-brainer at that point and I would choose 7970m CrossFire over a single 680M. By the same token, if I were presented with systems like the Clevo (Sager 9370) you mentioned, or an M17x R4, which are incapable of having a second GPU added, I would also choose the 7970M CrossFire machine without any hesitation over any machine lacking the capacity for adding a second GPU.

 

if you asked the same question 6 months ago, my answer would've been unequivocal NO NO NO.

but as much as i hate AMD and will probably never spend another dime on their products, you have to give it to

them that their drivers have improved significantly. and when it's working, it's working quite brilliantly. there's

no better feeling that being able to play the latest game at its max setting, and just playing it without having to worry about

any frame issues - it's been one full year since the release and it's still the very top state of the art gaming rig setup.


do you mainly plan to use it for gaming and do you have another PC that handles all your needs? then i would say go for it.

but if 7970M CF is going to be your only PC and you need to use it for all purposes - including work-related, i would probably

go with the single 680M solution. but then laptops are incredibly cheap these days and you probably own a laptop or two already

so maybe you can go ahead with 7970M CF and see for yourself what the 168 pages of fuss is all about




just my $0.02

 

Hi all,
I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this over the last 3 days my laptop screen has just gone black when I'm using it. I was only doing email or browsing both times no games. My keyboard stays lite up the screen never gets a pictures back I have to shut it down with the power button and reboot. I was just wondering if anyone else ever had this problem and any thoughts on what it could be?

Trish

 

Thanks guys --- always love the responses from this forum. Still mulling it through, on the one hand love an 18 incher (that didn't sound right) and the better gaming performance of a 7970 CF alienware, on the other hand I prefer the matte screen on the sager 9370 and the 680m still sounds more reliable. Plus, I know how nvidia operates with regard to driver updates even when a card/series starts to age a little.

Does anybody have any thoughts on how AMD will move forward with the 7970 updates? Do you think based on past experiences with AMD that they will be continually tweaking? Or, will they "effectively" end up kind of abandoning series 7000 updates as they roll out 8-9000's?

 

It could very well be a video driver issue. Have you made any system changes recently? - what are your system spec's?

 

The 7xxxm-series ist the first series of AMD-GCN and all following driver-improvements should be rated as the current series. By the way, the 8970m is the same card as a 7970m just only boosted up to 900mhz on the core. Probably 7970m users should be able to flash a 8970m-Bios on a 7970m.

 

680M is more reliable, excluding GPUGPU computation it is more powerful, and it overclocks much better. Overall, it is a superior product with better driver support. If purchasing 680M SLI is out of reach financially, it would be better to buy an M18x with 7970M CrossFire than it would be to settle for a Clevo with only one 680M. If you were inclined to settle for one GPU, the M17x R4 with GTX 680M would be your best bet, but no single GPU laptop will hold a candle to the M18x. (As far as that goes, the dual-GPU competition also falls short when compared to the M18x.)

Drivers are not typically GPU specific. AMD and NVIDIA are both using a unified driver model, and both are still supporting legacy hardware with driver updates to the point it is reasonable to do so. I would not expect either manufacturer to provide driver updates for antiquated video cards that are too old to be of any value in today's world, such at the ATI Rage, and first generation Radeon 7000-9000 series AGP and PCI video cards. The current Intel HD 2nd and 3rd generation i-series IGFX is as much or more powerful than some of those dinosaur display adapters.

 

I have not made any system changes no. I had some driver issues when I first got my laptop (March 2013) the driver was very old and I got help and updated it and that seem to fix that problem now this has started with the black screen. I have an Alienware M18 R2 i7 3840QM, HD 7970M cf driver is 12.104

 

Thank you Mr. Fox! Just wondering though, why would you recommend a M17x R4 with GTX 680M over the Clevo 9370 with GTX 680M ... you sound pretty convinced.

+1 rep

 

Hi Pantheon. Thanks for the rep. I say that because Clevo laptops are crippled by a locked down BIOS and your CPU adjustments are limited compared to an Alienware. The Dell 680M GPU also outperforms the Clevo 680M even though it has 2GB of vRAM compared to 4GB of vRAM. Alienware laptops consistently outperform the Clevo with equivalent specs in benchmarks. Additionally, Dell's advanced warranty is much better than Clevo's. Apart from that, I just like Alienware products better.

 

I've used only desktop drivers until now. No real advantage but most of the time the desktop one will come out sooner then the mobile drivers and they might contain fix/performance improvement.
The sooner you can get them the better since AMD has the habit of being slow with new game release fixes via driver and also some beta release will not have a mobility version released.

 

All this talk about upgrading is starting to make me want to spring for new cards...spent countless hours trying every possible approach to get these 6990m's to play nice, but they just won't cooperate-terrible stuttering in every game I've tried and other graphical glitches/abnormalities. I love my desktop 7970's, but it may be time to go green for a mobile solution and grab some 680m's on the (relative) cheap when the 780 properly drops.

 

So after careful consideration, I took the plunge and bought an Alienware M18x (3740QM) with the 7970 CF ... the price was too good to pass up.

So far, I love it (aside from the glossy screen, but oh well). It's playing some games beautifully and fps does not seem to be an issue with any of them, however I am getting a lot of jittery screens --- and Skyrim for example is impossible to play (not an fps issue). Seems it has the original amd driver installed from April 2012 - 8.934.2.1000 ... so my questions, because I would like to get it right the first time and not spend hours and hours tinkering, are:

1) what's the latest best driver to download? Preferably not beta just yet;
2) what is the best method for installing that driver? (I know I saw somewhere the suggestion to do a clean install and remove everything AMD prior to installing, but I'm not finding it ... and
3) is there anything else I should be installing, software wise, to aid me ...

Thanks.

 

Hey buddy, glad your happy with your CF setup. The performance is great value, my only advice is to extend your warranty.
As far as driver go any from 13.1 are pretty good. I have stayed on 13.3 since all games run great on them for me.
As far as installing the drivers goes. Check out the early pages as its been covered in detail countless times. I'd get you a link if I wasn't typing from my iPhone now.

 

Awesome, ty Tbone ... I had forgotten where I had seen the procedure, will go back to the beginning then.

 

Just incase you didn't find it. Here's a copy of the 'Steviejones133' method. :thumbsup:

Spoiler

The first thing you may want to do is to create a system restore point so you can simply roll back your system to a time before you started making driver changes. You can do this quite easily(if you have system protection turned on for your drive) by typing "create a restore point" into the start menu and enter, then click on "create" and give your restore point a name and click "create" again - job done. Now you can revert any changes you make.

On to the actual process itself....

1. Make sure you have the driver you wish to install already saved to a convenient location - I always leave it on the desktop as I will be using it shortly.

2. Uninstall the current driver:

i) Go to control panel > programs > programs/features > uninstall a program > double click the program to be uninstalled from the list (this would be AMD Catalyst Install Manager).
The Uninstall process will now start.

ii) The Install manager will appear, click "next" to continue.

iii) Select "express Uninstall all AMD Software" and click continue.

The driver package will now uninstall and it will ask you to reboot.

3. Reboot into safe mode by hitting F8 as soon as you see the alien face at post and then select "safe mode". This is where I now do an initial Driver Sweep and CClean for registry entries.

i) Run Driver Sweeper as an Administrator by right clicking its desktop icon and then put a check in the box for AMD Display only (ensuring all the other boxes are left empty).

ii) You can analyze if you want to before sweeping, this just brings up a list of items to be "swept clean" - I analyze to see whats there and then hit "clean"

iii) It will then sweep away those entries and you will see a message "desktop gadgets not available in safe mode" (close it) and say "No" to the prompt to reboot.

iv) Run CCleaner, again as an Administrator and select the "registry" tab on the left of CCleaner's console. Hit "Scan for Issues" and you will then have a list of obsolete registry entries.

At this point, if you hit "Fix selected Issues", it will ask you if you want to back up the registry - this is entirely up to the individual but you may wish to do this. Entries that will be removed are saved as a file for you to restore from should you need to.

v) Repeat the Registry cleaning process in (iv) until CCleaner comes back with "No Issues Found"

You can now reboot your system into "normal mode".

At this point, if you open Device Manager, you can check and where your display adapters are shown, it should now show as "Standard VGA" - now we are looking good to go....almost!!

I like to re-reun the Driver Sweep program (as before) and also the CCleaner program (as before too).....just because I like to check everything is nice and "squeaky clean" before installing the new driver.

Navigate to where you previously downloaded the new driver and execute its install.

That's it!

Hopefully, you should now have a nice fresh video driver installation.

Post back if you run into any troubles

 

Trying 13.3 now for my 6970m's in CF, thanks for the install procedure!

 

hey guys,
anyone here play SWTOR and notice lower fps in crossfire mode?
im running 13.6 beta2 but i have notice poor fps in SWTOR for awhile now.
alot of people complain in the swtor forum.
i have msi afterburner and notice both cards being @ 20% and my fps varies from 10-40 which is almost unplayable
anyways i went to start manager, went to swtor.exe and selected affinity
i disabled core 4/5/6/7 (im assuming this is HyperThreading) and the frames went back to 70-110 again which what it was when the game was on version 1.4. afterburner shows over 50% utilisation for both cards
i cant tell if the game or drivers is causing this but atleast im getting better fps
hope this help others. dont know if it will work with other games as im not a hardcore gamer

 

Recently when I play any game the screen goes completely white. And if I press hard below the keyboard on either side of the touchpad then the game is visible on the screen again, what seems to be the issue here ?

I am running 6990m in crossfire

 

What happens if you disable crossfire does your screen still go white? If your up to it I would try reseating the crossfire cable as it runs under the palm rest, while you have it apart I'd reseat the graphics cards.
That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

I agree with kenny, also, whilst you have the machine open, you could make sure that the display cables are correctly seated, too.....