AW ATI 8.761 BETA Driver - M17xR2/M17x/M15x (August 2010) - Discuss Here...

Of course Stevie, it's definetly going into the right direction.

As for comparing them to 10.6+ official drivers i would put them into the same area at default clocks on benchmarks. Tho they seem to have a slightly more stable fps in games. I hope aswell the whql 10.8 from dell fix all our issues, then these drivers would be the choice to update. Best thing would still be, if Ati could provide us directly with driver support, but aslong they work togetjer and we got some insight info, i'm satisfied with it.

 

Im with you on that Grim....I guess im just paranoid as my original system is only 4 weeks old and being replaced, actually have a replacement sat here boxed but it was incorrect spec they built, so waiting on a replacement of the replacement (if you get me) to arrive.

Just feel like i have been thru the mill with this and dont need any more headaches!

 

I'm noticing slightly better than before FPS with these drivers, but I haven't fully tested them. I'm testing them soon just to see. I didn't really see slower loading times for online play, they were in fact faster.. but like I said.. I haven't tested enough.

 

well I followed the directions and successfully installed Dell's beta. Like most here, I'm also having lockups when my unit goes into sleep or even blanks the screen...

 

Simple solution to that is this:
1.Don't shut the lid (or uncheck hibernate/sleep when you shut the lid)
2.Shut down the computer if you want it to sleep, I mean come on.. it loads up pretty fast
3. If you want to leave your computer on for a long time, to prevent the screen going blank turn off sleep mode (or screen lock or screensaver).
4. When leaving your computer, switch user, so it goes to the login screen. Somehow that prevents my computer from switching the screen off.
5. Monitor it. The 10.7.5 (I REFUSE to call it 10.8.. they didn't help so they're not an upgrade) drivers are a little wild at the moment.

 

Good advice jubbing, although screen does shut/off and wake up without any issue, if you have set you power saving options to not do anything when you close the lid. I try to verify this again, when i get home in a few hours. I still have a little confusion on what actually worked yesterday without tweaking the GPU's. If they are overclocked, everything (well atleast i tested many many different ways on it, where it normally locks up) is working fine!

 

Ok so back to 10.1....yeah.....

 

haha I do those things already.

 

hi,

i tested the new driver from tell and i've got a problem:

the fps and game performance just fine.

but my external monitor doesnt work anymore. connected via hdmi.
the ccc only shows the notebook panel.....

and the clocks in idle are strange. gpu 1 is clocked by 200 and 350 i guess......gpu 2 300 to 400 and the load of the second gpu is up to 99% oO

so im back to 10.7

m17x-R2
720qm
4870's crossfire

 

To all looking for gameplay testing:

BFBC2 game performance showed improvement on load times in between matches. Flickering seemed to be non existent. FPS was very incosistent, fluxing between 70-110 dropping down to 30s and 40s during close explosions and firing tank weapons.

I also noticed one time the screen went grey with the reticle, hud still visible and the sound still going. This was of course right as I was being stalked by some 5 star general and while I didn't see the knifing, I heard and felt it.

Game did crash to desktop once. Reopening the game was quick and I continued playing. Game also crashed laptop completely emitting a loud repeating noise for about 3 seconds before rebooting automatically. The latter crash has happened multiple times on my laptop (maybe once or twice a day) prior to install of these drivers so I think one of my cards is flaky.

All in game settings were at defaults with 1920 x 1200 res.

Is anyone experiencing consistent BSODs or lock ups with any of these drivers? I would like to know if I need to call support about a hardware issue, or if this is normal depending on which driver you use.

 

A couple other things I noticed since installing this driver:

HWInfo sometimes only displays temps for 1 5870 only (#1). Is this normal?

1 of the cards runs at 700/1000 MHZ and the other at 300/400 MHZ clock speeds.

I noticed after gameplay that both cards were at 300/400 MHZ clock speeds. That can't be right can it?

 

could you run hwinfo in debug mode and attach a dbg file in http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...uestions-reports-suggestions-discussions.html along with the problem description ?

 

I tested BC2 for about 1 to 2 hours today on these drivers.

Load times between maps are better, as are start of games. And yes, the FPS fluctuated waaaaay too heavily to be good. I'm surprised at how well it was running till some tank tried to blow me up.

Rather than yur grey screen, I get the black screen, where same scenario.. I can only hear that something's happening. And then die. There's no fix I've seen for that yet, but it seems to recover quicker in the Black Screen than with the previous drivers.

My settings were on max, AA x2, AF x8, BIOS at 5% OC.

I didn't get the BSOD, but my game froze.. emitted a high frequency noise.. and I had to manually restart the computer. That only happened once so far.

TS stats were 72w/52a

 

For those that like to have the BETA Drivers running and maybe download something in the background, please can someone verify my Method.

It is possible to close the lid completly without lockups while running on A/C.
Everything you need to do is set Power Saving Profile to High performance, where the Sleep Mode is disabled, if it's not reset to default. Then you have to adjust the option for "What happens if you close the lid", Select None for that specific option.

Now when i close my lid, the display will disable itself and as soon i open it up again, shouldn't matter how long you went away, it should enable just fine again. Just make sure you close the lid yourself when you walk away for a longer time.

Would be glad if someone could try this and tell, if it actually does what i just described.

 

Tried what you suggested. It worked fine. Display did turn off when I closed it, and didn't have an issue coming back on when I opened.

 

Oh glad that works for you aswell. That's how i currently run my system, and i can also do anything, except letting it sleep or go on battery.

This is the most comfortable thing for me to have the laptop working or if you download maybe something over night or whatever you prefer to do while you're gone. It's also pretty handy when you maybe stream content to your PS3. You can close the laptop and let it stream the content in the background or better said under the closed lid

 

how to reinstall my current driver to this new ati driver? =/

 

@BatBoy

Is there any way we can get a poll attached to this thread to determine what percentage of people are continuing to see problems vs. those that are not seeing problems with these new drivers? I know it's difficult to make a new effective poll considering all the differant issues, but it might give a general idea to those at a quick glance as well as numbers behind those with and withough continued problems.

 

Well I have been using these since they came out and only problem I was having was the screen staying black after waking it. Now when I say waking I use that lightly since I have never used sleep mode on any pc, but rather only have the screen turn off after so long. Didn't have this issue with the original Dell drivers but I had an issue with those where the screen would never fully turn off. It would go black but not shut the light off so it would still have a healthy gray glow. These drivers allow the screen to actually shut off fully which is really nice except I have to hard shutdown since it won't fully come back.

Did the "Do nothing" when lid closes thing and I just close my lid now when I want the screen off, no issues with it coming back on.

 

I did upload the log text file as well as an attached picture of the sensors running in debug mode in the thread you mentioned. It seems to work correctly in debug mode, so maybe the problem information is not going to be present in my log. I can try it again after gaming to see if the problem reappears. Thanks

 

Hey everybody... Soooo, what about these new beta drivers??? Ive tried some games and the performace is much worse. Dropped around 20fps in some places in bad company 2.. But one game that improved in fps was dirt 2. jumping fps to stable 60 in dx 10(maxed) and almost 60 all the time in dx 11(maxed). Vantage went from overall 11990p, and GPU 12490p. To overall 12999p and GPU 13985p with the dell beta driver(same settings and no OC). So the performance in vantage became better but sleep, worse gaming and so on probobly is better to wait whith these drivers untill dell releses a better one?

 

oh my.. that explain why I can't play Left 4 Dead 2 for more than 15 minutes
how could I fix this?

 

I had similar numbers and found that my CCC Powerplay was disabled. When I enabled it, I saw a huge increase. As I said in a previous post, my FPS fluxs between 70 and 110 with default settings in 1920x1200 res. But I don't know why Powerplay made that difference.

 

So after seeing all these post about sleep issues, fps loss and other random bugs that this driver has. how do the engineers at alienware release this and say it has been tested with certain games , but the people here who play those games see loss of performance issues? This makes me question their testing methods and standards. It almost seems like we are the testers not any"engineers" at dell/alienware.

 

Folks,

It's a beta, that means it goes out to testers, for further ... testing. Also, the number of laptop users FAR outnumber the number of software engineers; I'm sure u can agree there are at LEAST 100 Alienware owners, and there are NOT 100 Alienware driver software engineers, so only so much can be done within a timeframe.

IMHO, I'd be more helpful to post feedback/results that can be reproduced 100%, than to further speculate on testing methods, I'm sure it's not so trivial with larger companies, like Dell.

 

Ok, at this point.. in the last 30 mins, I've had to restart my computer twice, both within 10 minutes of getting in the game (BC2). These driver's aren't good. I'm reverting back to 10.7a's should this one freeze on me again.

At least with the other one's the game just shut down, didn't freeze my whole computer..

Want feedback Dell/AMD/ATI/whoever else? I don't mind trying beta driver's and giving you my thoughts, but if its going to be buggier than previous versions, then take the time to do more testing. I think I can speak for everyone safely when I say we would rather wait longer, for a better release, than be stuck with buggy drivers.

And while I appreciate the fact Dell is actually taking the time to try and fix the problem, at this stage.. 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards isn't a viable solution.

And no.. I don't want to hear anyone telling me that because its a beta it can be buggy. Beta means a pre-release of a newer product.. which technically should be better.

 

I get the same thing in BFBC2. I also have crash to desktop issues with these betas. I also have crash to desktop issues. These problems are no different than what I experiences with the 10.7. So from my point of view, nothing has changed.

 

I have play BFBC2 yesterday and in the game with the 8.761, i had a black screen. I had need to close the game and restart......

 

Do these drivers allow Anti-Aliasing in Starcraft 2 or do we still have to use the Catalyst 10.7a hotfix for that?

 

Meh, I think I'm going back to 10.5 After playing BC2, 10 minutes into the game each time I start bogging down real bad.

 

No one? I've been asking about this problem since 10.6 and no one will touch it. Am I the only one with 4870's that has this issue?

 

Rivatuner works better after the 10.6 work around (or even better---RBE), I would suggest just dumping AMDGPU tool

 

I wasn't specifically talking about the GPU tool, i was showing what my sensor window shows in regards to the overall problem that i'm having. It's just a symptom.

the real problem is that i don't get stable framerates, watch the video i linked.

 

I know people are having sleep mode issues with this driver but is anyone else having issues when you tell the computer to shut down?? Sometimes when I shut down my computer the lights will continue to stay on and the fans still running. Is anyone else having this issue?

 

Im beggining to think like this myself....£3000 laptop and i have to try and do all this stuff with drivers to get a gaming laptop to work correctly is just insane......someone need shooting with a big ole pepper gun multiple times over....

 

Listen guys, these are BETA drivers as in released to the community for testing purposes. We asked for it and they released it. If you want a stable driver, go back to the original WHQL release available on support.dell.com. Let's try to at least be constructive and continue like some have with feedback regarding the beta performance with different games, applications and system stability. Don't forget to add your system specs when reporting problems.


I can confirm that I also had lockups in bad company 2 like some have reported. Also as a reminder to those with poor fps in some games, don't forget to download the Crossfire profiles from AMD's website.

 

I have the profiles, and my game does not lock up, it merely has an inconsistent framerate. The problem can be repeated in any 3d app, not just BFBC2.

My issue is a real issue and it is one that can be replicated on 10.6 10.7 and the AW beta driver. Im NOT talking about overclocking, as everyone that is blowing off my post seems to be assuming, i was just showing a symptom of my problem in the Clock tool.

I know my post is long, but if you'll read it you'll see that i have an actual issue, and that not being able to overclock is merely a symptom.

 

As for the slamming going on here - I've posted this before and will post it again (last time) -

As we have seen, Brian is trying to get a solid driver out. Try to stick to non-inflammatory remarks. If all you want to do is slam AW, take it to the opinion thread. Pages of this dont help the situation and these posts are bordering on derailing the thread which is against the forum rules.

From a testing point -
For those of you OCing and such (AMD Clock Tool, RivaTuner, etc.), it might be worthwhile to disable/revert any changes you made and check. Sometimes things like this can corrupt results. Just a thought.

Thanks.

 

Well I just installed it and had many sleep related issues which caused my computer to not boot anymore except in safe mode. I had to restore from the backup windows ran yesterday.

 

Well sorry for my bad language. Still I want to make it clear, that this driver discussions and issues are what I always experienced with ATI mobile cards and their driver support for it. I don't think that Dell/Alienware is to blame and that they really can change anything here - the issue simply is that ATI/AMD can't handle its own products as it seems. So when Brian and Dell/AW is working together with ATI/AMD please forward my opinion to them and ask them when they finally will support their mobile cards with proper drivers (as this is done with nVidia).
Anyway I still need to know if with this Dell beta StarCraft 2 finally works as it should be - all I hear is issues with BFBC2. What about all the other (newer) games with this Dell beta driver release.
It seems that at least finally the wavy lines / stuttering / flickering due to CF is gone. Something positve at the end at least

 

OK, dont know if this would be of any help but my system is "stock" and has had no alterations/tweaks.
It is a few weeks old.
I have the latest dell website drivers installed with bios a06. (latest meaning prior to beta's)

Although my system is getting replaced in a few days, I am more than willing to "experiment" with it and install whatever it requires to "test" or "assist" with diagnosis or problem shooting for the new betas.

Because im a noob, I will throw myself to the lions but I think i would need some detailed instructions about what you guys want me to do and in what order etc etc....

Cant offer any more input than that.....my system is your system for you to test....just give me instructions to do so and i will do my best to give you guys some information on what happens....

Let me know or PM me if this is of any assistance.

(and if i sound shirty or angry, its cos ive spent alot of cash and i dont like things that dont work right - simples - not being rude or offensive, thats just me!)

Do your worst LOL, my systems waiting for abuse !

 

I'm pretty bummed to see all the problems with the new driver. I'm gathering everything and getting it back to engineering who will work with ATI to resolve quickly, I hope.

Thx.

 

FYI - looks like it has already been covered here, and a question was asked yesterday about profiles, and I didn't know the answer. Because this driver is not fully customized for Alienware, you can and should install the profiles and AMDs page. Drivers & Support | GAME.AMD.COM

It sounds like our next version of the driver will not allow you to install the generic profiles (it will have it's own), but this is still being verified.

If you guys have specific feedback on performance with versus without the profiles loaded, this would likely be helpful for our engineering resources.

 

These drivers are betas and they are tested in house, although not to the extent of A rev drivers. Our engineers didn't see these issues or they wouldn't have released the drivers, plain and simple. It is important to keep in mind here that many people having problems are using tools and utilities that are not neccessarily supported or tested with our version of the drivers or our hardware (e.g. AMD clock tool). I'm guessing that many of the problems seen here could be the result of this type of tweaking. I'm continuing to dig into this and attempting to duplicate in house.

 

I would like to point out that the problem that I am having is not with AMD clock tool, I was merely using AMD clock tool to show one of the symptoms I am having.

 

Looking into this - argg...

 

What I did:

1. Fresh OS install of Windows 7.
2. Install all dell drivers from support.dell.com
3. Install the Dell beta catalyst release.
4. Install bad company 2
5. Launch bad company 2 and play it for at least an hour to see if it crashes.

Bad company 2's performance is erratic and it will either lock up the system or crash to desktop at random. Others have reported issues with different titles, maybe someone can compile a list for Brian to take back to the engineers?

The above is exactly the steps I took when I installed the beta drivers, I had no 3rd party tools or tweaks active. Also, to put the system to sleep, all I did was go to Start>Sleep and the screen goes dark but the keyboard lights stay on and the fans rev up into a high rpm and at that point the system is frozen and needs to be shut down. The same thing happens with hibernate.

I think a good reporting format could be something like this:

Game/Application Tested With Reported Problem:
1. Bad Company 2: Crash to desktop + Erratic performance

System configuration and bios version:
1. M17x-R2 Crossfire 5870, 4GB Ram, Intel 940XM CPU, Intel Wifi 6300. Bios A06.
2. Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
3. Dell beta 8.761 video display driver

Prior driver installation if any:
1. None

Any 3rd party tools (e.g. AMD GPU Tool, RivaTuner etc.) installed and/or used:
1. None

Other reported problems:
1. System locks up when sleep/hibernate are initiated. Booting from battery does not work nor does disengaging the A/C adapter.


I've attached my dxdiag file. Brian, if you had someone at Dell put up a quick beta page that had drop down boxes for people to list their system configurations and then a box to type out their symptoms and submit the information for collection, it might make it much easier for you and Dell. Just a thought.

 

I have never had flickering in IR8 or games. I installed the beta driver and after 1 hr, uninstalled it. It is not a good driver as mentioned earlier. I'll stick to what works.

 

Can someone check if they can run games on an external monitor with this driver while BOTH the external monitor and the laptop display are active, in extended desktop mode?

I couldnt do this in 10.7, the whole screen would artifact and I couldnt see anything.

I havent had a chance to try the new drivers yet either, so it would be appreciated.

-Ash

 

It worked for me with no problems using a vga cord. Dose any one no how they work using a hdmi?