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

I just did a clean reinstall from 12.3 to 12.2 preview , i think im seeing a downgrade in performance.

also , is the 12.3 cap 1 includes all the older caps as well ?

 

Yes, the latest CAP should include all of the optimizations found in previous CAP files. No need to install them in layers.

 

Mr Fox, thanks, Do I install CAP 11.1 after installing the drivers ? and honestly where are the amd 12.3 drivers for laptops anyway, I cant seem to find them. Also why install CAP 11.1 when AMD there are newer versions.

so are these 2 separate programs? Im confused.

 

The CAP version does not necessarily correspond with the naming convention of the Catalyst package, although it sometimes may. If there is a newer CAP available from AMD, then go with the newest CAP. CAP stands for Catalyst Application Profiles, and it includes performance enhancing optimizations for specific games and applications. It is totally separate from the video drivers and you install it afterward. Once CAP is installed, you're done. There is nothing to launch or configure.

 

Reinstalled my system and have 12.3 drivers loaded. Trying to play Rage via steam and I get a black screen with a green square in the bottom left corner.....sound comes on but no picture.

I remember having this before when I first got the game....cant remember what the fix was. Ive installed the performance drivers from the amd site with no joy.

Can anyone help?

 

Is this the driver you already tried? AMD Catalyst - Rage Performance Driver

Have you tried the verify files with Steam? How about totally logging out of your Steam account and logging back in again?

Try disabling triple-buffering in CCC also.

If those tricks don't work, try removing the ‘video’ folder (rage->base->video). Drag a copy of the folder somewhere else in case you need to put it back.

 

unfortunately yes.

Tried removing the video folder....black screen with music.

 

Maybe try deleting the game and reinstalling it. If you've already tried that, I'm out of suggestions. I Googled your issue and it appears you're not alone.

 

thanks, appreciate you checking it out.

 

Sure... always looking for ways to assist.

Have you browsed this thread for answers yet? http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/615924-rage-m18x-discussion-thread.html

This page has a lot of AMD help for Rage... Rage Crashes, Textures Fix, FOV, FPS, Freezes, Errors, and Graphics Fixes | SegmentNext

 

Im in that thread quite a bit from before......unfortunately.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but the same...

 

Thanks. I have noticed that tessalation is set to AMD optimized by default. Is that the best way to leave it for games like RIFT and LOTRO or should I change it to per application (this seems to be the norm in the other 3d settings)

 

Try it both ways and choose the option that works best on your system.

 

AMD Catalyst 12.x (8.97 April 18) Unofficial BETA

AMD Catalyst 12.x (8.97 April 18) Unofficial BETA - Guru3D.com Forums

DL: JumboFiles.com - Dedicated Hosting


Please report if it works on your machines or how it performs compared to your old driver.

 

Hi,

I am looking for the new 7970m and I am wondering if I need to buy a new CFX cable and new heatsinks or I can use those I have right now with my 6970m?

Does someone know where to buy these new cards in Canada?

Thanks

 

Not sure if the bridge connectors are the same. SlickDude used the same heat sink in his M17x R3, so it appears the heatsink will work fine. From the looks of things, one 7970M will perform on par with your 6970M SLI, or very close to it. More is always better, though.

 

Thanks Mr. Fox. I am looking for 2 7970m's for sure. But I don't know where to buy these cards. I never bought any laptop components, so can you suggest me good retailer? I don't think that NCIX or newegg sell those kind of hardware.

 

I think the M17x R3 upgraders are getting theirs from laptopmonkey/upgrademonkey on eBay and Clevo/Eurocom. If you can get your hands on Dell/Alienware version of the cards, they are supposed to perform better (overclock more stable) than the Clevo/Eurocom cards.

 

Well , I used to have an m18x with 6970m CF . when I unpluged it , the battery couldnt even supply one GPU and I couldnt even play world of warcraft ( not a very demanding game graphic wise). now with the new system I recieved a month ago with 6990m CD , when I plug it the game still runs smoothly with high FPS ?
can this be the result of bios A05 ? something i didnt have with my older unit ? or the cards driver simply makes them less power demmanding ?
or the battery is still good and new and ables to juice up the cards for awhile ?

 

Not sure... they did not change the design of anything as far as I know. BIOS A05 was to fix overheating and thermal shutdown with the 6990M CF setup. It did not allow me to game on battery.

 

weird... well I shouldnt complain about this either way hehe

 

that's one of the reason that i regreat swiched to the 580m. with the 6990m i sued to play fallout new vegas for decent time on battery. with 580m, that is imposible.

 

So the preview says this:

AnandTech - AMD Launches Radeon 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M Mobile GPUs

It seems to me that with the negligible gains of Ivybridge over Sandybridge CPUs, those of us with R1s may well go down the route of upgrading GPUs. Anyone know if these will work with our current motherboards? Are there any power requirement issues above what our R1 PSU/Mobo setup can handle.

I am not worried about PCI-E 3.0 as this isn't useful at stock resolutions in SLI/X-fire as far as I'm concerned. PCI-E 2.0 I would imagine is not even close to saturated.

 

They should be, Alex. Look in the M15x and M17x sub-forums and you will see it has already been done.
SlickDude even has a guide for the R3. http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ling-amd-7970m-m17x-r3-illustrated-guide.html

 

So when did AMD Mobility Drivers start working right out of the box on the M18x? I just downloaded the new official 12.4 (8.961) drivers that were released today on AMD's website and they worked flawlessly without a hack.

 

yes I believe since 12.1 they started supporting mobile drivers officially right of the bat. Now one package contains all the gpu drivers, mobile driver for all mobile GPUs and Desktop driver for all desktop GPUs.

 

Well, if I use the driver 12-4_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe from their download page ATI Radeon? Video Card Drivers it does not work for me.

but

If I use their AMD Driver Autdetect, then it downloads the proper driver file package for me which is 12-4_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc.exe

That one works right out of the gate for me.

 

Like I said, the Mobile driver only supports the mobile GPUs, that first one is only for desktops

 

Greetings,

l looking for a M18x or M17x r4 to buy .. the question is:
which GPU should i take? GTX 675M or AMD 7970 ? & why ? please guys help with maximum details. thanx
therefore, i NEVER used a AMD before, so i have no idea about them at all.

 

Ill tell you from personal experience, I had too much trouble and headache with AMD. I had never used AMD before and for me, this will be the first time and last time I ever get an AMD GPU. Although AMD is improving on their drivers but I personally not convinced with their driver support.

Final word: Im not a fanboy, but I can tell what works for me better, so if I were you, I would get nVidia in my system.

 

I agree with this also. Although I have had AMD based systems in the past, I never really owned one which didnt come with some form of headache or problem or lack of good driver support. The system I have now is Nvidia based and I really have nothing much to complain about - hardware or drivers.

 

Anybody tested the official 12.4 drivers yet? Any good? Is sapphire Trixx overclocking back?

 

Trixx doesn't work yet no and I don't see a major improvement thus far, will see how it works on Tera online this weekend since I had performance issues with that game.

 

I went ahead and installed 12.4. Trixx 4.3.0 works with 12.4 so far and it can overclock. I run some benchmarks and overclocking seems stable. Not sure about performance increases yet with 12.4 over 12.2 (That's what I upgraded from). I'll provide updates once I do some more testing.

EDIT: I wish AMD told us which cap files are included in each new driver release or at least whether the latest cap file is already included or not.

 

Hey guys, does anyone here play League of Legends?

Does it support Crossfire at all? I just find it weird that I only get 90~FPS with my dual 6990m. Not that I'm complaining, but all of my friends have Lenovo T510s from our school and they just at 60-70~ FPS like butter and sometimes I even drop in FPS more then them.

I'm on 12.3 btw

 

Ah I didn't realize there is a new Trixx out "4.3" it says that "Fix overclocking with Catalyst 12.2+"

 

Oh is 12.4 also compatible with the M18x?

 

Team - the opening post of this thread has been updated with the following information:

 

That's weird , I got like 300-400fps on max (benchmark mode)

Spoiler

 

PhobiAnas - I move our posts relating to NVIDIA issues to the other thread, as this thread is for AMD, not NVIDIA. You will find the posts here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...roblems-discussion-thread-54.html#post8472173

 

What?!
I dont even get that on my 4.0ghz and 6990 desktop rig

EDIT:
According to GPU-Z, it says the first 6990M is not going to the proper clocks. I tried both 12.3 and 12.4


---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?hh14c0

 

Are you using the latest version of GPU-Z? I had to update mine to show correct clocks with 12.4. Also, if you overclock while GPU-Z is open you might need to restart it in order to show correct clocks on both cards.

Also it might help to clarify what you mean by proper clocks? Non-overclocked both cards should read 715/900 under the "Graphics Card" tab and under the "Sensors" tab 100/150 if you are just on the desktop. Overclocked usually shows the overclocked speed under the "Graphics Card" tab i.e. 815/1050 and then 100/150 in the "Sensors" tab if you are just sitting on the desktop (both cards).

 

Thats what I mean, the primary card is underclocked at 100/150 as if powerplay is on. Only the second card is clocked correctly in League at 715/900.

I do not overclock, and it is the most up to date GPUZ

 

You can try disabling ULPS if you want. It sounds like one card is stuck on ultra low power state. Disabling ULPS won't keep the cards at max clocks so don't worry.

You can do it via the registry manually or you can download sapphire trixx and it will have an option to disable ULPS from the settings (you can just enable it afterwards if you need to as you wish from trixx)

EDIT: Also in windowed mode, in some games I tested (like Mass Effect 3, Heaven DX11) GPU-Z showed one card as being 100/150 always.

 

I believe I fixed it.
I uninstalled 12.4, computer manager and uninstalled the 2 cards, driver sweeper, and then reinstalled 12.4. Which is what I normally do when I install drivers but whatever.

I also overclocked my CPU a ~little~ bit than stock just to see if anything changed.

I now get 230~ FPS from 90~ FPS in League, and both cards show clocked correctly in GPUZ.

In CCC, I noticed that there is now an option to overclock the GPUs as well which for some reason was not there before I reinstalled 12.4 despite it being the same EXE I downloaded and installed originally. So something clearly was messed up.

 

Does anyone know what the part number for the 6990m bracket is? (didn't see it on the part number list thread) Also will the heatsink from a 560m fit on the 6990m as well? Thanks

 

No one has upgraded to a 6990m from a 580 or 560m?

 

@JAD85 - From a GTX 580M, that would be a downgrade, not an upgrade. But, from the GTX 560M it would be a performance bump. I don't recall seeing anyone post that they downgraded their M18x 580M SLI setup. However, look at the opening posts in these 3 threads for part numbers.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...s-performance-problems-discussion-thread.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...s-performance-problems-discussion-thread.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/579752-m18x-part-number-list-reference.html

The heat sinks are different between GPUs. You can buy complete GPU setups with the MXM cards and heat sinks pre-assembled from Dell. The bracket (back plate) is included with a heat sink kit. Heat sink kits are around $25.00 each. They include all the necessary pads and the excellent (long-lasting) factory TIM for the GPU die surface is already applied, providing for a simple bolt-on installation without the need for thermal paste.

Have you considered going with one or two 7970M modules? If you're looking to switch to AMD for personal reasons, one 7970M is roughly the equivalent performance as 6990M CrossFire from the looks of things being posted on other threads. Going that route may save you several hundred dollars (with one 7970M) and give you an upgrade path to add a second 7970M later on. If you do not have a lot of experience with AMD cards, the drivers are kind of a pain in the rear end to deal with. (I used mostly AMD graphics for many years and their driver quality has been increasingly poor since AMD took over the reigns from ATI.)

 

I have already purchased a 6990m from a member here for a very decent price (sub $400). I'd love a 7970m but it's a little above what I want to spend right now. I have used AMD cards in my desktops without any issues in the past, although I do usually prefer Nvidia cards, their prices are always a bit higher than what I am looking to spend. Thanks for the info

 

@JAD85 - you're welcome. Sounds like a great price on the 6990M.

@TheMatrixHacker - I moved our posts to the NVIDA thread.