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

I have used a program called trixx, if you want to overclock permanently I think there are bios some bios's that you can flash

No not yet I'm just waiting for a good set of drivers to come out first. It sounds promising though provided you play BF4

I don't think that many people are having much luck with Amd's current drivers. I am on 13.8 at the moment because any thing newer wont install. so unless any specific games are giving you problems I'd just wait till Amd show us some love.

 

Hey guys just installed amd 14.1 beta. Results were quite an increase in 3d mark 11 score. Went from 6400 to 6900. Never seen that before on my rig ( not into overclocking) dont know whether it is a fluke or not. Interested in seeing how other people fare with this driver.

 

Uploading a Video of Titanfall running on my rig




Give it some time to process the video, If no video can be seen just reselect a resolution.

 

Thank you sir.

 

whats currently the best and stable driver and also gives highest performance? 14.1?

 

@unityole

Im interested in this too, Im still using 13.11 beta 9.5 because of bugged 13.12

My rig: Dual HD6990M

Regards

 

I think the 13.11 beta 9.5 are one of the best for now,but I haven't tried the 14.1 driver. I also had a problem with a bugged 13.12 driver but only when I download it from the ati site. From 1 week I am using 13.12 and it's ok for now. My rig is m18x r2 7970m

 

Watching your video, the CPU is running at some intense temps(100+oC). The GPU's seem to be running a lot cooler though one more than the other. Is this came CPU heavy? May want to look at some repasting.

 

Guys so far 14.1 is working really good for me. BF 4 runs really smooth and consistantly a much better score on 3Dmark 11 for whatever that is worth.

 

You have Dual 6990M don't You?

Regards

 

if you're talking to me, yes i got 6990m crossfire, and 7970m crossfire lol

 

No, I was asking ItcmdrQ

 

Yep 6990's

 

I just installed windows 8.1 and have a problem....Some programs are a bit blurred,for example Steam and Chrome. Internet Explorer, Skype and the windows menus are all fine and very sharp. I tried numerous drivers for the last 14 hours. Did a clean install on all of them and still nothing. Other problem is that the Intel video is not detected in the CMOS. I don't use it but can this be my problem? Can anyone confirm if he has managed to run 7970m crossfire in windows 8.1? Even on 1 card the problem is there. Also in games the graphics are normal.

 

The problem was in the scaling. In the display menu there is an option ''Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays'' and only on 125% the content is OK.On 100% and 150% it's blurred.

 

That's weird, because with Windows 8.1, on my 1080p display, 100% scaling is perfect but anything bigger causes some app (like Chrome) to be a bit unsharp or blurry.

 

I have heard/seen posts about blurring with Windows 8/8.1 that did not exist with Windows 7. But, I don't remember reading a solution to it. I did not have Windows 8 with 7970M CF because it had not been released yet, but with 680M SLI and 780M SLI I do not have this problem with Windows 8. Whether I boot Windows 7 or 8 the display seems the same. What happens if you switch to the Intel IGFX? Does it look the same as running discrete graphics or better?

In general, I find 100% scaling much better than the default Alienware 125% setting as well. I don't understand why they ship with the scaling at 125%... that has never made any sense to me. It is sharper at 100% and stuff is just way too large and screen-hogging at 125% scaling. It makes a 1080p display feel like a 720p or 900p display to me.

I have never attempted to use 125% scaling under Windows 8 to find out if it looks blurred compared to 100%.

 

@Mr.Fox they're using DPI scaling because alienware FullHD screen has higher DPI than normal 96 but i prefer 100% too.

And about the drivers. They works nice on HD6990M x2. Install 14.2 beta guys

 

@Mr.Fox I just tried with the intel card and there is only problem when it's on 150%.It works ok on 100% and 125% (with the latest intel driver).
Btw sorry for the late reply

 

AMD 7980 x 2

Didn't see the sticky thread on my mobile so I'll post here too if the mods want to remove my thread..

Hey!

I bought this laptop 10 months ago.

I have some weird problems with it..
After a few months it started crashing..

It's only when I'm playing games..
Sometimes the screen just goes Grey and I can't do anything so I have to restart the computer, and other times the screen just becomes colorful with lines all over it. And sometimes it just goes black. And today it crashed while playing league of legends. The screen went black and I had to restart it. But now. When I'm trying to start the keyboard only lights up (and stays on) and the fans goes for about 3 seconds then nothing. I managed to get it working after trying to start it several Times but then it crashed again, and I'm on square one.
Now it's the same.. I'm trying to start it but the keyboard only lights up.. I've tried with only the battery and only the ac cable and I tried holding the power button for 30 seconds without any power in the laptop. I don't know what to do? I spent a lot of money on this thing and this is not what I expected..

It's the GPU of course, and it's ATI... And I also get random shutdowns from catalyst saying (catalyst has stopped working..)

Also (this was before this issue) when I started the laptop and when it booted up to Windows I had to wait 30-60 seconds before I can open or do anything on the laptop, if I would open something immediately then I would get bluescreen...

So can anyone here help me?
Should I send it to Dell or what..

Edit: I've tried restarting trillion times now.. Nothing... Keyboard only lights up and fans are running but no real booting... I'm kinda panicking over here... ..

 

TComet - I replied in your thread.

 

more like just reinstalling windows LOL. i'd picture bunch of registry keys and conflict in new/old drivers created issues. that or your GPUs are dying, got no problem on my 7970m x2 running just fine and oc like hell too.

 

I have not seen a good example of that with 7970M, but I would like to. (I always wished the ones I had would have.) Do you have any 3DMark11 and Vantage benchmarks to share with us?

 

i don't benchmark GPUs, storage is my thing lol. but both my card without modded bios can go 1050 core and 1450 memory this of course with higher flex and lower CPU clock, got no dual adapter mod so will probably run out of juice. where do i download 3dmark11?

 

Please do it... I'd love to see a pair of 7970M cards achieving some crazy good benchmark scores. I may have forgotten since so much time has passed, but as far as I remember, nobody at NBR has beaten my 7970M CF 3DMark11 and Vantage scores. I really would like for someone to do that. My stable limit was 1000 on core clock, so maybe you'll be the one. (Geez... sounds like Highlander... "There can be only one." LOL) I don't remember tripping the AC adapter circuit breaker with 580M SLI or 7970M CF, but it's been so long I might have forgotten. That did not really start to become a problem until 680M SLI.

Links to download any of the Futuremark products can be found here: 3DMark benchmarks - see the current range of this popular PC graphics card test

 

As far as tripping the circuit breaker.. Nothing to worry about

 

Hi, new to all this, but just got my hands on an M18x R2 with xfire 7970m's.

Problem being that most games i try in xfire just show tearing across the screen so have to disable xfire to play games. Drivers for gpu's are the standard Dell ones of the website.

What latest 7970m drivers are available for download that are known working. I've trawled through this thread and found some beta drivers but not sure if they are any good.

 

I currently have the 14.3 v1 beta drivers installed, which seem ok in most games I have (some of the older ones have some funny issues)
Otherwise the 13.8 beta has been my most stable set of drivers

 

Cheers, ill give the 13.8 beta a go. There a V2 version of 13,8 also.

 

Does any one know how to modify the inf files on for amd drivers? Can be done still?
All the guides I have looked at don't have the same file structure and the inf that I can find has totally different text in it.
Or is it all done in the msi file editing stage now?

 

Good question, Brother Kenny. I just recently wanted to use a modern driver for an old ATI GPU and the mod methodology that used to work for me in the past appears to be broken now. Like you, I could not find an INF file with the correct information needed to deceive the driver package. Consequently, I was not able to mod a current driver to make it work for that old video card that AMD have decided to stop supporting. If you can find a solution, please post and send me a PM. I also found it very difficult to locate drivers to download without that crappy AMD verification utility pile of trash. I wonder what's up with that? It used to be easy to find them, but maybe the old places I used to look are no longer the right places. Looks like I am out of touch with things on the red side of the planet.

 

I have had a look around, but yeh haven't found anything relevant to the current drivers.
Havn't looked into it this might help you
Mobility Modder - ATI Version, Install the Latest Drivers on your ATI laptop

Amd drivers make me sad

 

Thanks for the suggestion, Kenny. That doesn't work, but I'm thinking it's because of huge differences in the hardware. I found some DNA (Do Not Argue) drivers that worked fantastically and they even forced CCC to install and work fine now. That being the case, I went ahead and upgraded that old lappy to Windows 7 Pro x64 and it's chugging right along with the DNA Catalyst package. It's tough to find some things on the web for these really old machines... lots of time searching and reading and sifting through irrelevant search results.

 

It was a long shot but at least you got something going there.

I gave up trying to mod the drivers when I found out the 13.12 drivers (they only would install from the verification utility) gave me a 2.5K increase in my stock vantage graphics score, Looks like I might get a new BP this weekend

 

Hi I have M18 R1, bought two graphic cards 7970 and CrossFireX cable (before have 2x gtx 460), when the last time, I have installed the drivers from AMD web site, I can't to get turn on the catalist. The one thing what I found is the -

 

Congats with the upgrade, you will see a sweet performance boost once you get the 7970m working properly!
First thing I would try is a power drain and bios reset. If that does not help do a clean re-install of the drivers. If you still have no luck re-seat both graphic cards and the crossfire cable. Let us know if you need any pointers for these steps

 

3dMark 2013 show in Fire Strike 4294 ))
first it was a problem with a drivers, because my r1 doesn't suits with 7970. From Dell web site i found, that the driver fits 6870. 6990 and 7970, so I put 6990 and succesfully install it. but Cross Fire doesn`t work ((
try drivers 8.97-120418a-7900-MOD-W7-W8-Vista-x32-x64
Video_AMD_9.003_W74_4NYM5_setup_ZPE
PSU 330 w

 

3dMark 2013 show in Fire Strike 4294 ))
first it was a problem with a drivers, because my r1 doesn't suits with 7970. From Dell web site i found, that the driver fits 6870. 6990 and 7970, so I put 6990 and succesfully install it. but Cross Fire doesn`t work ((
try drivers 8.97-120418a-7900-MOD-W7-W8-Vista-x32-x64
Video_AMD_9.003_W74_4NYM5_setup_ZPE
PSU 330 w

 

Ok so crossfire isn't working with both Amd's drivers and Dell's drivers, I'd re-install Amd's drivers (13.12) as they are more up-to date at they do work well (for me at least)
That Firestrike score is about what you would expect for a single 7970m
For the power drain/bios reset you need to remove the battery and charging cable, then take the bottom cover off and unplug the small coin sized battery. Press the alien head power button for 30 seconds or so, put the computer back together and restart.
As for reseating the graphic cards and crossfire cable you should know how to do that seeing as you installed them originally

If both of these don't work you probably have a defective crossfire cable or graphics card, Unless some one else has any ideas

 

I can't to do all this again from the start.. THis graphic card just doesn't suits for my computer's model, and that to trick it up, first time I opened it and put inside 6990, just than instelled drivers ( these are same for 6870 6990 7970) and after this I dissassemlbed it and put inside the new card 7970. Isn't there any already unlocked or modded drivers???

 

Just to double check, have you uninstalled the nvidia drivers from your 460?
If you look at the last ten post's you will see myself and Mr Fox talking about how we cant find any modded drivers or a way to mod the current drivers, So no as far as I am aware there are no modded or unlocked drivers available.

 

Maybe these drivers will work OK for you... Online-Source

 

Hi all, is it worth to change a crossfire of two 7970M for a single 780M with a good overclock? My AMD gpus crashes even with a minimum overclock and maybe changing then with a new Nvidia card I can get better results in games(fps increase). I can't afford to buy two 780M at the moment.

 

Yes, that will be better in some ways. A single 780M doesn't quite match the power of 7970M CrossFire, but it will perform extremely well and be more reliable, with more stable drivers. If you add a second 780M later on it will totally annihilate the 7970M CrossFire setup.

 

Thank you very much Mr. Fox for your reply. I will do it then.
One more thing: One 780M card is 120W and two will consume 240W so only one 330W AC Adapter would be not enough to sustain any overclock isn't it? If is not the case why would you use a dual 330W adapter? Btw I use a 3920XM CPU.

 

Yeah, you can overclock the 780M SLI with one AC adapter, but to a limited extent. An overclock of somewhere about 1015/1500/1.037V is max for 780M SLI with a single AC adapater. Going beyond that is why I did the dual AC adapter mod, but that's only for number-chasing benchmarks. I seldom run the GPUs beyond stock clock speeds for gaming because there is no need to do that. When I do, around 954/1500/1.000V is plenty good for gaming. Here is an example of that running MetroLL @ 2560x1440.

 

You kidding you're running Metro-LL in 2560x1440 resolution and above 60fps 0.0 The game is not in maximum configuration right?
Btw I noticed in the pics that you overclock only the GPU0... I thought it was necessary to overclock both cards simultaneously in same clocks, but it seems its not the case.

 

That is dynamic behavior because the GPUs are not being full loaded. I had NVIDIA Control Panel set to "Adaptive" when I took those screen shots.

But, no... you can run them at different clock speeds. I used to do that with AMD all the time, too. I always had one Radeon card that overclocked much better than the other one, so I set them individually to their highest stable clock speeds instead of syncing them.

I seldom ever use maximum settings with any modern game. Doing so serves no purpose because it merely degrades performance without adding any improvements to visual quality that I can see. Using optimal settings is best. But, to answer your question, I just took these screen shots a few minutes ago... adaptive mode is disabled in these screen shots so GPU0 and GPU1 are running equal at static clock speeds.



I honestly don't really see much difference with higher settings here either. This is using GeForce Experience "Optimized" settings.

 

Hi Guys

So the Dell cough "Engineer" came to fix my ATI cards and left behind the following

1. I show two 7970s in device manager but in catalyst the setting for disabling SLi is now missing?

2. I have a bunch of unknown devices in device manager?

He replaced the mainboard and one card apprently. Any ideas please?





Cheers.

 

The BIOS probably is set to use cTDP, in which case you need to install the Intel DPTF drivers. Here is a link: Intel Dynamic Platform & Thermal Framework

That will most likely fix those unknown devices.

Open GPU-Z and see if it shows CrossFire is enabled or disabled. If disabled and CCC doesn't have the option to enable it, the tech probably did not correctly seat the CrossFire bridge cable on one or both ends. They are kind of tricky and it's easy to get a bad connection where the cables plug into the GPU socket on either end. Once properly seated, put a piece of Scotch tape across the metal connectors where they butt together and it will prevent them from wiggling loose over time.