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

There is every chance. Run it a stock clocks and see if that fixes things... We can go from there...

 

Hi everyone,

I uninstalled everything and even followed StevieJones133's instructions on how to uninstall everything... except that the Drive Sweeper program is now Drive Fusion, and didn't do anything without having to upgrade premium. Then 13.8b didn't install.. it failed.

Cripes... any suggestions>?

 

You can grab the older Driver Sweeper (as opposed to the new version) here: Driver Sweeper 3.2.0 Download - TechSpot

Hope that helps out!

 

Ok, will do, and try it again. I did an Windows Update while I had the VGA drivers thinking that would help, and boy... that was a mistake.. .BSOD. So doing an AlienRespawn #2 and will let you know. Thanks for the rapid reply! Faster than my Respawn.

 

No problemo - hope it works out, be sure and let us know how it goes!

 

Dang it.

No dice. The drive sweeper 3.2 worked like a charm tho... still getting errors on install.

I seem to recall a similar issue with my old m14x R1 where I had to uninstall the VGA cards in device manager, then install the nVidea drivers... however we're AMD here.

Also seems that when I go into device manager, 1 VGA device is installed, and the other has errors.

Finally when I do custom install... reads only 2 options.
AMD Catalyst install... where it gives a warning:
Current Version not Installed
AMD CIM installation package

and
HDMI Audio Driver
Current version not installed

Any other suggestions?

Update: 13.2b7 seemed to install. So was it that I need to install a prior version before installing 13.8 beta? Seems odd. Hopefully this gets rid of my stutter.

 

Sorry to hear you're having all this trouble. So you've uninstalled/installed via the "Stevie" method and its not working ehh?? Annoying huh!

Try this then. Install 13.8b (or even the latest 13.10b) over the top of a working set of drivers.
Drivers 13.8b and newer address stutter

 

Well I did a few tests and getting no stuttering with 13.2b7, so it's serving me well even with BF3. So happy for now.
Thanks for all the advice / support!

 

When I install 13.8 or 13.10 CCC starts crashing repeatedly, and Steam starts to give me a bootstrap error, haven't had this problem on 13.4 driver sets, only as soon as I updated to 13.8 or 13.10. Any idea what might be wrong? I have Windows 8 64 bit installed

 

As far as the drivers go..Have you been doing a clean install ?

Next, to fix the steam bootstrap error, just reinstall steam. Cut and paste your games folder to somewhere else on the same drive, then delete all files in the steam folder except steam.exe. Then launch steam.exe so it reinstalls. You many need to do this more than once.
I am not sure if AMD is responsible for this 'Bootstrapper' error but it was extremely annoying for me until I fixed it.

 

I've been doing a clean install each time, once I deleted my CCC and did a safe mode Drive Sweep and CCleaner, Steam worked fine. Re-installed 13.8 Beta 2 (have not tried these yet) have not re-started and everything is fine so far, afraid to re-start

 

Hello guys. I need some help. Some time ago my laptop just went black when I turned it on. I tried running safe mode and it worked fine but when I turn it back to normal I still get black screen after the windows logo. So what I did was disable the secondary graphics card (AMD 7970m) then restarted the computer and all went fine. Is this a problem on my secondary card or maybe just the crossfire cable? If ever my 2nd card is damaged, will dell replace it? I only have the next business day warranty. Any help will be appreciated.

 

Check the crossfire cable is seated correctly, if that doesn't fix it then contact dell to fit a new 7970 in the secondary slot.

 

This was good advice from Throbin. Have you checked the CrossFire cable yet? What's the status on your situation, fenrirvenus?

 

Need a bit of advice. I've been tasked with troubleshooting and repairing a friends M18xR1.

The problem is after playing a game for a short while (just a few minutes once the fans start picking up), the LCD screen will shift to the left such that the left edge of the screen is now way over to the right (about 2 inches from right edge of screen).
Continued playing will cause game play to look fuzzy and ultimately the screen will go black.

I tried hooking it up to a big screen TV via HDMI, and when the screen shifting happens, the TV is OK. The image is normal.

System has Crossfire 6990M video cards. I've tried disabling Crossfire, but no change. I've updated the video driver, no change.

So, probably one of the cards is going bad, but wanted to check if anyone had any other ideas.

If i have to replace 1 (or both) of the cards, can I do better than the 6990M's?

Thanks!

 

Hey Lancorp, :thumbsup:

Long time no see. Sorry to hear about your buddys lappy GPU woes.
It sounds like maybe a cable issue or monitor cable issue. Perhaps GPU or crossfire cable. I would start by re-seating the monitor cable and maybe the GPUs too. Also while your at it a repaste and cleaning out the dust would be good too.

You can certainly do better than the 6990Ms. I was running dual 7970Ms in my M18x R1 for over 1 and a half years and now I am running dual Nvidia GTX 780M's in the rig.

Cheers.

 

Pretty much what the Chief has said - if the display of the external is fine for everything such as gaming etc, and it has no distortions or artefacts, I'd be inclined to think that the display cable (LVDS) of the internal LCD has maybe worked loose and/or needs reseating. If x/fire works okay whilst on the external, that kinda rules out a x/fire cable issue....same goes for the possibility of a bad card - if it works fine on the external, both cards are fine.

Bottom line, if everything works the way it should when running an external display, there is no problem with anything other than the internal display and/or it's signal transportation.

 

I agree, too. All of the good testing lancorp has done suggests that the LVDS cable has a poor connection at one end or the other, the LVDS cable has gone bad and needs to be replaced, or something is wrong with the LCD panel. The most likely culprit is the cable.

 

Idea Storm

 

Guy I want this to happen as much as you but don't be a spambot

 

Well Well my system got same problem as yours, I feel sorry to say but your Secondary card is faulty. Just contact Dell they will replace it. Also turn on laptop on battery power it will work, as it wont freeze or black screen after windows logo but as soon as secondary card clock hit 850Mhz system will freeze.

 

Welp, back again! Now dealing with an "AMD Driver Stopped working & recovered" issue when loading up games like Eve Online, of course BF3 still works. I tried TBoneSan's suggestion of simply trying to install 13.8b over my 13.2b7, and no good. Neither did 13.10b2 work.

So now I'm at a loss. What do I do to find another method to make either 13.2b7 not cause the AMD stop error, or force anyone of these updates since 13.8b to actually install?

Thanks, as always, for suggestions.

 

Have you tried disabling Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR). I used to rely on that to make my 7970M CF behave better. It is as simple as adding a couple of DWORD values to the registry. If you don't like it or it doesn't work, you can simply delete those keys and be back where you started.

If you are dealing with an underlying hardware defect, this may not completely cure the problem, but it is easy enough to try it and see if it helps.



Download: Disable_TDR.reg

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers]
"UseXPModel"=dword:00000000
"DxgKrnlVersion"=dword:00002005
[COLOR=#0000ff]"TdrDelay"=dword:00000060[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#0000ff]"TdrLevel"=dword:00000000[/COLOR]

 

Great, thanks for this. When I get back from work in about 10 hours, will give it a shot.

Just to expand on a few points you made:
You said you changed the settings to make it behave better. A specific behavior coming to mind or just a general comment on these cards temperment?
Never concerned with changing the reg, however the script and values you show here, does it disable it or make the timeout longer? The value looked to be 60, is that hex or 60 seconds?
Also what would happen if I tried to use the machine while the cards are waiting. Will it create a BSOD or freeze, that's why it "recovers" or is it simply too short of a time for these cards in CF?
Finally, What indicators should I be wary if if the card(s) are indeed defective? So far no issues with BF3, and 3DMark11 were decent scores.

Cheers sir!

 

That tweak should disable TDR. I have no problems with it being disabled. In fact, I have the same tweak in place with my 680M SLI just for good measure. The 7970M cards I had gave me frequent problems and this tweak helped them. If you want it enabled, but functional with a longer time limit, I believe you can change TdrLevel from 0 to 1. It does not need to be enabled as far as I am concerned. TDR is designed to circumvent issues and when it does not work correctly it actually creates them.

If it does not change anything for you and you experience the sames problems on all many games and all driver versions, then you could have at least one GPU that needs to be replaced. Uncorrectable instability can be one of the indicators of a defective GPU. Since BF3 and 3DMark11 seem OK, your cards might be fine and this tweak might help. If it does not help and only a few random games like Eve Online do work correctly, you can probably chalk that up to the games being garbage that needed their developers to pay closer attention to what they were doing.

 

Hmm. I ran the reg script today, a day later, but just tried it. Again logged out of Eve Online (only happens when I logout) and sure enough seems the driver stopped responding. This time however with the TDR turned off - it actually froze!

I had to hard reboot my machine. So I deleted the blue lines like you recommended Mr. Fox. So now wondering what alternatives I can check into. Perhaps EO is simply corrupt, but I ran the repair and it found a couple errors, but after trying it again a couple times.. keeps happening So thinking perhaps to do a complete reinstall. However that takes like forever and a day.

Any other suggestions? I mean I can try the complete reinstall, but find it a bit odd that it's also related to drivers after 13.2b7 that I can no longer install either... aka 13.10b2 /08 can't install. Coincidence? BF3 / 3DMark11 - ok.. EO, futher upgrades of 13.08 and higher.. no good? Perhaps it is something more at play?

Thanks for all the help thus far.

UPDATE EDIT:
So I searched around and found where flashing the vBIOS can help in some instances. So I noticed that I had a 015.021.000.000.000000 BIOS and could update to a 015.022.000.001.000000. After created a FAT32 USB disk with HP USB Disk Storage Utilility, and a few ATIFLASH commands later... voila. updated.

However problem still persists...

I think my driver failure would be fixed if I simply was able to install one of the later beta drivers. So I tried to install 13.10b2 again, got an error.

Based on another thread on Steam, I went into Windows Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> Application and saw this:

So now updating my .net files, C++ Distributed files.. hoping that helps.

 

Ok, well I was able to do everything I said above:
- Updated vBios
- Cleaned registry using stevejones133's post
- Did additional cleaning of the registry in the CURRENT_USER & LOCAL_MACHINE:SOFTWARE refences to AMD / ATI keys

Also I was able to get around my 13.10b2 installation issue. I had to first install the 13.9 WHQL drivers, then on top of these was able to install the 13.10b2.

So only issue that rests is the "AMD Drivers Stopped Responding" issues, and through disabling TDR actually does freeze the machine.

Given this, perhaps I just live with this for the time being, given it only happens with one game, and my 3DMark11 is now 9% higher score than it had with the 13.2b7, with still no issues elsewhere (yet) that I see. Overall frustrating experience... but sure I'll tinker here and there eventually or some driver update will clarify the issue. I know some users on steam have similar issues (not with EveO), so will keep my eyes glued to those forums.

Of course any other advice, willing to try. Thanks to everyone here for their support. Great community here.:thumbsup:

 

I think you may have to just live with it. If EO is the only time you see this issue, I think it is safe to blame the problem on the game.

 

Hey guys,

I purchased a used Refurb m18x-R2 with a single 7970m, then bought a 2nd 7970m and heatsink and installed it last night. I followed the driver installation guide that Steviejones had posted. I downloaded the latest drivers from AMDs site last night

I can't seem to get my 2nd cards temperatures to show up in afterburner or HWInfo64.

My 3dmark Vantage Score is P34050 and 3dmark11 is P11472. So it seems in line for a stock config with 2 7970s (3720qm is configured to overclock level 3)

Is there something I am missing that needs to be done?

Thanks!

 

From your 3D Mark 11 score your second card is working beyond a shadow of a doubt... that's a great score (if we are talking stock).
HWinfo64 doesn't show a second GPU for me either. However, I do see it in afterburner. If you have just switched from CF disabled to Enabled or Vica versa via CCC you'll need to relaunch Afterburner for it to display the second GPU readouts properly. I hope that helps.. ?

 

I never switched in and out of Crossfire, I will have to try toggling it off and back again.

Thanks for the info!

 

Not sure if this is the right thread to post in but here goes.
I have been playing modern warfare 2 every 2 wks or so when my mates get together for a LAN but I am having problems with what initially felt like network lag. It is still playable but I have lost the edge I normally have with buttery smooth graphics
I ran fraps to check the fps and frame times, frames were good (90fps) but the frames times are had large spikes hence the intermittent feeling of lag.
I made a graph to illustrate, (vertical axis is frame-times in ms and the horizontal axis is the frame number)


so far I have tried updating and re installing drivers (current version is 13.8), disabling crossfire, vsync on and off, high and low graghic settings, reducing polling rate for mouse to 125, but to no effect.

So does any one have any ideas?

Also,cod4, world at war, blackops and mw3 all run smoothly

 

Does it perform the same in single player or only during LAN sessions?

 

Will check it out tonight

Edit:
Its the same or worse in single player

 

Kenny27,

Desinstall the AMD 13.8 drivers and install the new Catalyst 13.10 beta 2. I'm achieving great results with this beta version with better support for Crossfire, just let the framepacing option On.
I see you have a 3720QM cpu, you can overclock it to 4GHz to get even better results.

 

Tried the 13.10 beta 2 still no difference (did the full clean install with driver sweeper etc), it figures though seeing as mw2 is a dx9 game and the face pacing is only for dx10 and 11 games.

Is there a guide for non extreme cpu overclocking? I have never really looked into it since I got rid of my m17x r2 which had 920xm

 

Here you go, Brother Kenny...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...u-cpu-throttling-overclocking-non-xm-cpu.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...locking-thread-learn-how-share-tips-here.html

 

Thanks Mr. Fox

I have had a little play with throttle stop, disabled EIST and C1E and set the TRL to 40 38 36 36
Im still a little unsure of what settings are be appropriate, the settings I have tried made no difference though.

I did read in the stubborn gpu and cpu throttling thread about using RBE to edit the 2D power state so that when the gpu throttles it is irrelevant
Is it possible that this is happening to me?.... because of the low load of mw2 (30% gpu load) the card is throttling to 2d clocks and then jumping back to 3d clocks within a split second causing the latency.
Does this seem plausible enough to investigate?

 

Unless something has changed since I had it, RBE does not work for 7970M vBIOS editing... I'm out of touch with AMD, so it may have been updated.

In theory, if you made all of the GPU p-states clocks and voltage set to performance mode then I don't see any way it could bounce around in-game. If it doesn't work well, you can always put it back the way it used to be.

Be careful about flashing in Windows with AMD. I have needed to fix bricked AMD GPUs too many times, so only flash them in DOS.

 

Yes I think your right RBE is a no go for the 7970m.... but svl7 has cooked up a special editor, which I will probably check out later this week when I get some spare time.

I have only ever flashed in my cards in DOS

 

Yes, that VBIOS Editor from svl7 works very nice. That is what I was using for 7970M CF.

Now that I think back on this, I am almost certain that I already did this on 7970M CF, and yes, it helped my GPUs perform better. I did it on 7970M because it worked with for 6970M and 6990M.

Look in my old thread for the 7970M Upgrade and teardown video and it is probably posted somewhere in there. I may have even uploaded a link to the modded vBIOS already. I don't remember if I saved the ROM files. I might have them stuffed away in my Google Docs folder online.

 

AMD Catalyst 13.11 BETA6 (13.250.18.0 October 24) Download


New Drivers

 

Hey guys, I hope you can help me with some problems I've been having the past few months.

I started playing FFXIV at the end of August and had no problems on my Crossfire 7970m setup. They patched the game in September and I saw a big loss in framerate to I installed the latest drivers at that time and also installed a program called RadeonPro that was recommended by someone on Reddit to help and fix the frame problems.

Shortly afterwards I began experiencing blue screen crashes when I started up my system, sometimes 1, sometimes up to 5 times but it would always end up making it in and once in my game ran like a dream and I had no blue screen problems or crashes. the crashes always occured after I had put in my windows password and it was booting up my startup applications. The error always pointed to a file atikmpag.sys, sometimes saying a new piece of hardware or software had failed and other times saying a driver had been caught in an infinite loop.

I am lazy and since the game worked fine once I got in I just dealt with it. I recently decided to try and fix it. I downloaded newer drivers (I think from Oct 8th?) and driver fusion and driver sweeper and removed all of the old drivers before installing the new ones. Since then things have gotten worse. I still get the blue screens on booting and they seem more frequent, My game client freezes with regularity when logging in, zoning or alt tabbing.

I did find that I can fix all my crash issues by disabling crossfire and played for a week or so with crossfire diabled and had no bluescreen on boot or game crashes but I'd really like to be able to enjoy the crossfire graphics I paid for.

My system is no longer under warranty (I only had the basic 1 year and like a dummy I did not bother to extend it).

I have not uninstalled the RadeonPro software, it appears to just be forcing certain settings while ffxiv.exe is running and so it doesn't seem like it would affect a blue screen on boot.

What do you think the problem is? Drivers? Faulty Card? Some kind of problem with my crossfire connection?

Is there anything I can do to try and better identify the problem?

Is there anything I can do to that might fix the problem?

Is there any other info I can provide to you all to help you help me?

I have no overclocking or anything like that going on.

Should I uninstall that RadeonPro application? Wipe the Drivers again and install the newest ones? Wipe them and install the ones I was using before I had any problems (if I can figure out what they were)?

When I'm not in Crossfire mode does my primary GPU do all the work and my secondary one sit idle? Is there a way to disable my primary gpu and see if my secondary card works without any problems solo? At least then I'd know the card itself was good and the problem was with either the drivers or the Crossfire connection.

This post got real long, real quick. I'm just really worried I'm gonna be SOL and one of my cards will be junk.

Thanks in advance for anyone that can help me with this. My system stats should show in my sig but I can get any other info you need to help.

 

Radeon Pro buddy. I had it do the same for me. I don't know a solution besides uninstalling it though.

 

Just an update on the problems that I was having with MW2, after trying a bunch stuff including different drivers, vbios, overclocking, turbo disabling etc I finally ran mw2 on Integrated graphics and got the same results.
Which got me thinking it was a software issue, so I started turning software off that I have running all the time starting with monitoring tools, sure enough my max regular latency went from 100-200ms down to 20ms spikes when I closed HWinfo
Which makes sense, although I'm not sure why it doesn't affect other games.
Either way I'm happy to get back to buttery smooth graphics with a simple solution, Thanks for help!

 

Won't install for me

 

Really? Ok I have no issues uninstalling, I probably should have done so a long time ago but it just didn't make sense that it would affect me on bootup without even running it or any of the games it had profiles for.

I'll try that tonight.

Thanks for the tip!

 

One option is to do a complete backup of all your files and do a fresh install of Windows and see if issue still happens. I like to do one every 12mths.

On another note if you have the money. Call up Dell out of warranty and purchase an extended. They will do it. They may need to log in and run some diagnostics. I did it with mine.

 

Make sure you download the Mobility Version of the driver. There are two options. Here is the lastest Beta 8. Also do a search for the AMD Uninstall Utility and run before installing any drivers.


AMD Catalyst 13.11 BETA 8 download

 

This utility works really well for both NVIDIA and AMD driver cleaning... Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU)