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

Very weird indeed

Good luck with the veranda, dont work yourself too hard

 

Ran another 3D 11, good results, BF 3 runs great as well. so far so good.

 

So what is the best drivers for 6990 xfire today , I never touched my gpu drivers for 3months.

 

12.2 Preview or 12.1 imo

Well, I had them both working and Windows Update restarted the computer. Now the second GPU won't go above 100/150. Aiyaaaa

Disregard. FINALLY: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2975480;jsessionid=17ybdduisqce0ye560l8s6bxm With OC of 770/1080. Seems stable, so I'm gonna push it almost to where Mr. Fox had his when he had this setup.

Unfortunately the cards crash at 800/1150 after about 20 minutes

 

really that's weird!

 

Not really, all cards have their own individual breaking point. I'm sure once I repaste I'll be able to push them farther. Right now I'm at 790/1110 and temps don't spike above 90* so I'm happy

 

Hummm, is that normal??

Spoiler

 

Uncheck "Show Effective Memory Clocks" in Settings

 

There is a new beta driver (12.3) on AMD site.

AMD Catalyst? driver version 8.95.5

 

I recently upgraded to 12.2 off of AMD's site. I followed the instructions in the AMD install thread, however now every time i boot up i get a console window that just has some AMD info on it that stays up for a minute then closes. Does anyone else get this?

 

Please post a screen shot to help us understand what you're seeing. Also, please describe the problem that is occurring. Is there a particular problem, malfunction or error message in addition to a console window that temporarily appears, then closes? Did the driver installation complete successfully?

 

My drivers are 12.3 downloaded direct from AMD site

Alright so the issue im having is that my fans no longer spin up. I began to notice the left side of my keyboard becoming extremely hot while the fans stayed at normal speed. I took a screenshot of gpu-z after just 5 mins of playing GTA4 as you see my GPU's are BOTH reaching nearly 100C, at no point did my fans ever spin up. I figured it might have something to do with the overheating issues people were having so i installed A05 from dells support page, it appears to have done nothing as im still getting no fan spin-up and temps in excess of 95

So what should I do? is this an issue with 12.3 or did I install this wrong? This is coming from driver version 11.8 with no fan issues

EDIT: My mistake 12.3 is my driver version

 

Hello, I am curious as to what are the best drivers for the 6970m crossfire, I am currently using 12.2, downgraded for 12.3.

 

12.2 preview are the only drivers where I experience no issues, and great performance in games. 12.2 WHQL is nothing but problems for me, and I don't trust the 8.95 beta driver.

 

For some reason now, I am getting terrible frames, I am getting ready to do a re install of windows, is there a list of drivers that I need to download. I have a restore partition that came with the computer, but I am not sure how to use that.

 

Is your system BIOS A05? If not, install that because it is intended to correct issues with overheating and thermal shutdown. I believe it will adjust your fan tables.

As for the command window... AML Device Install ...it seems you are not the only person having issues with the new AMD drivers.

Was there a compelling reason to update from 11.8? If not and your system was functioning well, I would just go back to using the driver that worked properly. Remember, the latest driver is not always the greatest driver. There's nothing special about a new driver that performs poorly.

 

Using 12.2 Preview drivers right now, w/o cfx of course, and I get a decent fps at ultra with ENB, FXAA mods. The borderless window mod gave me a performance boost (4~5 fps). If you are interested, Simple Borderless Window at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community - here's the link.

 

Alright still having some issues

My comp has been working flawlessly for the past 5-6 months since i got it, the only changes ive made were updating the video drivers to the new dell drivers. About a month ago when i turned my comp on it failed to post and gave me either a 7 or 8 beep post code (forgot to write it down) removing the battery and pressing the power button then replacing it after 20 mins got it to boot up, the same thing happened again a few days later and it took the same process plus power cycling the comp several times to get it working. I thought it might have something to do with the video drivers or bios so up updated to 12.3 (amd official 3/7/12) and after that downloaded and flashed the new A05 bios using dells flashing utility that comes with it. After that i noticed my fans no longer spinning up (before this my fans would often rev up to a decent level when playing demanding games) however it seemed like the would just stay at idle (not even revving up at power up). To try and solve the fan issues I downgraded to 12.1preview and initially the fans started working again (I believe). However they are no longer working.

I've tried setting manual speed through speedfan, Hw64, and msi afterburner 2.1. At first speedfan worked but when i tested it by playing gta4 the fans weren't revving up and when i tabbed out speedfan had frozen and required reboot. Then I tried using HW64 to adjust fan speeds and it also worked initially but after a bit also stopped changing fan speed. MSI did not work at all and trying to set a manual speed through AMD's overdrive application did nothing with it reporting a fixed 30% speed at all times

I'm worried that the high temps im getting are going to damage my cards, Is this a hardware issue or a software issue? Should i try flashing back to A03 which seemed to work just fine?

 

Probably a good place to start.

 

I am not sure if this is the place to put this thread, but It's a driver question so I think its fine. I recently have been having a flickering issue so I searched, and found a thread here but it game me no answers. My question is I only get flickering when I am running of my 6970m crossfire, when I run of my intel HD, I don't have any problems. So, I know its not the screen do you think its a driver problem, I never had this problem when running 12.2 or 12.3 but I just did a fresh install and I am using the Dell drivers I think they are 11.8.

 

This is the right thread for your post.

Check your refresh rate for the LCD to be sure it is set at 60Hz and not 40Hz.

Right click on your desktop and select "Screen resolution" and in the window that opens click on the "Advanced settings" link. In the next window that opens, click the "Monitor" tab and see if the refresh rate is set to 60Hz. If not, change it to 60Hz. (See thumbnail attached.)

If it is already set to 60Hz, you could go back to using the newer driver with which you did not experience flickering.

 

Thanks for the tip, it was set correctly, I guess I will install new drivers if that fails then I will just use Intel HD for when browsing the internet, and then just switch over for gaming

 

Afternoon guys. I have a small problem that I've never experienced before. I'm not having much luck getting rid of it on my own.

I was bored on Saturday, and like a moron I installed the 'latest & greatest' driver from the AMD website. This was even though my driver at the time was working just fine.

I was running 12.1 with no issues at all. I upgraded to whatever the little AMD program downloaded and installed for me.

Here are the two issues I'm having:

A) Sapphire Trixx now lists a '0' in the core and memory speed windows, and nothing is adjustable. I can live with this, however. I will just flash the VBIOS to whatever I want the clocks to be.

B) According to HWInfo, my cards are both idling much higher than they were before I updated the driver.

After downgrading back to the 12.1, the above two problems are still occurring.

My 6990s are both Clevo cards from Eurocom, and obviously did not come in this laptop from Dell. My idle and load temperatures were just fine before the driver upgrade/downgrade.

My 3DMark scores are spot-on. There is no actual performance issue. I'm just wondering why my idle temps are so much higher, and also why Sapphire Trixx doesn't work anymore. Any help is much appreciated.

 

May need to get an Mr. Fox to move this to the Crossfire thread

 

That's a very peculiar thing you're experiencing, TurbodTalon. I am surprised the drivers affected idle temps, and what happened to Trixx is also mysterious. I'm thinking there must still be remnants of the crappy driver package with hooks dug into Windows.

How did you "go back" to 12.1? Did you do a clean driver installation? If not, I would recommend uninstalling in Control Panel, boot into Safe Mode, running DriverSweeper to remove all AMD/ATI software, reboot and run CCleaner registry cleaner and then manually delete any AMD/ATI files and folders you can find lurking on your drive. Make sure you have Standard VGA drivers installed for both GPU modules and that Windows cannot identify your video cards by name. (If Windows knows what they are, there are still undesirable drivers clinging to the system.) If necessary, manually install the Standard VGA driver in Device Manager and run DriverSweeper and CCleaner again.

At the point there are no traces of anything relating to AMD/ATI in installation or OS system folders or the registry, reinstall the Catalyst package.

 

Well, I guess that I just never noticed it before, I installed 12.2, and I get that same flickering, guess that there is nothing that can be done.

 

Just downloaded 12.4 drivers. Making an image backup before I install them.

 

Speaking of drivers, over the weekend I was running black ops with 12.1 and one of the last cap's. Every time I would go into multiplayer (black ops, missed that first time around), it would blue screen. Sometimes it would run for a short time but then blue screen. It did this three or four times till I looked for new drivers. I then updated to 12.2, which when it finished, screen went black like it did last time I updated. I rebooted, all was good, checked the version, said 12.3. (weird it said 12.3, not 12.2...) I looked for the most recent cap, there was one, so I installed the newer cap (don't think I removed the previous and will need to do so). Game ran fine afterwards. So far with new drivers, no issues. My two cents.

 

It says 'Crossfire' in the title. If I posted in the wrong spot, I apologize.

The only thing I wasn't doing was using CCleaner. I ran it until nothing showed up. Everything appears to be fixed running 12.2 from the AMD website. I also have my LCD brightness control back now, too.

Windows could still identify both of my cards as '6900 series', no matter what I did.

I appreciate the help, everyone.

 

I suspect you have run into the issue with the two DLLs which AMD has been leaving out of some of their most recent drivers. I think the 12.2 Preview was the last one to include them.

This post on another forum describes a solution. Hopefully it is ok to post such links. If not, I would ask a moderator to remove the link. A Google search on "Enable unofficial overclocking after Catalyst 12.2" should find the same info.

Link: [GUIDE] Enable unofficial overclocking after Catalyst 12.2 - Guru3D.com Forums

Update: I know the post I linked talks about Afterburner but using those DLLs resolved the issue for Trixx for me. I assume Trixx and AB both rely on the same DLLs. I also read through the entire thread and see that perhaps AMD did this on purpose for some reason. Not good news.

 

No problem with the link. Thanks for posting.

 

Just to report back, The powerplay problems (if that was what was causing my probs) never reappeared on the 11.9. Now back on the 12.2 preview since Arkham city was not running well direct x11 on 11.9. At the moment the machine is running well again. still chipping away at veranda diy is really not my thing.

 

Good to hear that you have the powerplay beast tamed, maybe it was just the download corrupted or something - how does DX11 Batman AC play on 12.2 for you?

BTW, I'm not a fan of DIY either lol, I'm sure you will get there eventually - just not the most fun thing in the world to do, eh?

 

Batman plays wonderful in DX11 on my present driver, downloaded the new patch yesterday and it seems to have done the trick, good framerates and really nice graphics.
Veranda is taking shape nicely thank you. It was a really big job too, moving support posts, putting a window in the roof overhead to make more light etc.BIG JOB. Few more weeks. Back in france now for work, so I can relax, shoot a few bad guys, play with the new iPad

 

I was considering Batman AC but due to all the feedback about crappy DX11 performance, I was hanging fire.....might just pick it up now if I can find it cheap!

Enjoy your down time Bro.....

 

Hi,

like the title says, I am unable to overclock my cards with 12.2 and 12.3 drivers. Only on 12.1 I can. It seems that Trixx can't identify the driver version.

Anyone is having this problem?

 

Yea, that's correct. The other way around is to flash the BIOS and increase the overdrive overclock limits. This way is better anyway.( I don't think ULPS is disabled)

 

But if you flash the BIOS, is your clock going to be permanent? I never flashed my BIOS so I don't know how it works.

 

I wouldn't recommend it. The stable clock I had on TriXX fried my old card. When I reflashed the VBios

There's about 3 threads going right now about this, I would say just roll back to 12.1 or 12.2 Preview.

I think there was a fix available, someone mentioned it in here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...s-performance-problems-discussion-thread.html

 

Well I went back to 12.1. With 12.3 in GPU-Z my 2nd card was permanently running at 680/900 clock speed at idle and the temps was 70 degree.

So I'm just gonna stay at 12.1 for the moment.

Thanks for your answers.

 

It only raises the max overclock, it's permanent until flashed back.

 

I think you have the issue in the post I posted here ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/629367-m18x-amd-crossfire-driver-questions-performance-problems-discussion-thread-33.html#post8406219) earlier in this thread.

Essentially two DLLs are no longer included with the newer drivers and Trixx and Afterburner rely on them. If you do an uninstall and install (without Driver Sweeper) they are left behind, but they are lost with a clean install. I have just stored them in a safe place for now and replace them after I installed the newer drivers. After that Trixx works just as normal for me. I am running 12.3 (8.951-120308a-135750C-ATI) and overclocked with no problem.

Hopefully AMD will re-include these DLLs soon.

 

So just a quick question, i'm sure one of you can answer this quickly or point me to a post for this answer. I just got dual 6990m for my 18x and when I tried to overclock them from 715/900 with ati cat or msi afterburner the highest i could go was 740/1000. Now I see some of you are clocking it much higher so I was wondering, how would i go about doing this? Many thanks in advance.

 

Hello,

Good question. You will need to either edit (using Radeon Bios editor I think) and re-flash the vbios on both GPUs to increase the maximum limit of the overclock in overdrive (your drivers) this will allow you to overclock directly from catalyst control center and msi afterburner,

OR

Download Sapphire Trixx which can overclock without the need for modifying the bios. Sapphire trixx won't work with the newest driver set though unless you do some tweaking (add a couple of dll files). People here will probably recommend the vbios flash approach.

Sorry I can't provide articles or the posts on "How to". I run a brief search but I couldn't locate the info. It's out there someplace on this forum, but can't find it at the moment.

EDIT: Thanks to the illustrious Mr. Fox you can now find a bunch of guides here

What you are looking for is probably here

 

Cachudo, I moved your post into this thread because it fits with the discussion here. You may have to do some mods for that much of an OC in some utilities. As mentioned, you don't need to change any limits using Trixx. This subject is covered in the http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/601148-6990m-crossfire-guide-2.html#post7939019 thread at post #15. There is a link to a guide I prepared quite some time ago.

 

Thks guys so much! You guys are awesome. I was able to set my max clocks to 900/1200 with no problem with your guides. Just one more quick question. Do I or should I increase the voltage also when overclocking? Wasn't sure. Thanks again for your help.

 

is with these AMD drivers. Are there any decent drivers for the M18X and 2 6990s? I have been using the ones from Dell website but have some issues. Tried the latest ones and had nothing but greif! Had I paid full retial for this laptop, I would have smashed it to pieces and returned it to Dell.

 

The preview 12.2 work well for me at the moment. if that doesn't do it for you , the 11.9 is good to. WITH dim!

 

I don't think you need to. If it is stable and you don't have problems with the driver crashing and recovering, I would not recommend changing the voltage.

 

I've been using 12.3 with the latest cap with no issues. Maybe it's back to using a drive cleaner with a new install of 12.3 and current cap.