Dell ATI 8.763 (M15x/M17xR1/M17xR2) Driver/AMD 5870 VBIOS **READ POST 1 AND 2!!!!!**

Ah, FF14, the thing that brought me across the wilds of the internet to find this thread...

Still, at the risk of looking like a complete idiot, let me see if I've got this straight. I have an M17x, I presume R2 since it's fairly new (although I'm at work at the moment and can't check directly). So the procedure would be:

- Flash the main BIOS with A07, since A08 apparently introduces a performance hit (and I have no idea what I have at the moment)

- Create a system restore point

- Install the Beta graphics drivers linked on page one, 8.763

Then:

- FFXI will apparently start skipping every three seconds

- There will be new issues with sleep / hibernate, booting on the battery, and possibly the display powering down (but not machine shutdown itself?)

- FFXIV will now run instead of instantly crashing

- Other games should work correctly and not, say, crash after ten minutes

Is that correct?...

I apologise for posting this sort of stupid question, I'm just terrified of bricking my new and expensive laptop...

Thanks!

 

The performance hit only affects those with extreme processors. ie. 920XM or 940XM. If you don't have these processors you will be fine. The A08 bios also has improved the touchpad.

After you update the bios or not. Running on A07 is also fine.
You will then need to update your GPU drivers to 10.8 Dell 7.863 or in the above case the AMD one.
Then if you are experiencing problems with sleep, hibernation, running on battery and other problems as mentioned above using the vbios flash will cure these issues.
I recommend you have a good read of this thread though if you intend to update and flash you gpu/s Vbios.

Also I'm not sure about your system specs.
The vbios is only meant for the 5870 gpus and no other. They are also optional and not publicly available from dells support drivers website yet. You can however obtain them from this thread on page 33.

Cheers.

 

I have the twin 5870s definitely, the CPUs I'll have to check when I get home.

As I read through more of the thread it seems like updating the VBIOS is effectively required as well, though I'm a bit worried by that. Is there really any chance of bricking the cards if I do it through Windows?

...Also, if it's okay to ask, what's the best way of installing the updated drivers? Straight on top of the old ones, or uninstall the standard ones, run DriverSweeper, disconnect the ethernet cable so Windows can't just put them back, reboot into glorious VGA, run the new driver installation... That sort of thing?

Thanks again!

 

Hey Reborn.. Hmmm... Tested this game and i get realy, realy poor performance.. 5- 10 fps with high, dx 11, and with AA.. 10-15 with no AA?? So, im with Amd 10,8 drivers + app profile. Am i missing something here? Looked at gpu-z and cf is enabled booth card are at 700/ 1000.. High performance and stealth mode off.. Need help, please
Edit. dx 9 and 10 are realy bad to??

 

Oh thats odd if dx 9 and 10 are running really badly as well. Those settings run awesome for me. Only DX 11 is very hard to run and prob not recommended. It does run but dips quite low at intense gaming scenes. Still playable but it does lag. So best to lower some settings.

Only thing I could suggest is to try the 10.8a CAP profiles as well. Then to also set the CCC settings to default and disable crossfire and then re-enable it again. There seems to be some bugs still with the drivers when sometimes they work great for some and others encounter low performance in certain games.

I would also recommend you try the dells ATi 10.8 7.683 drivers with the 10.8 and 10.8a CAP profiles. It really should be able to run in DX 9 and 10 no problems.
Also try to uninstall the Ati drivers and then driver sweep them in safe mode then re install fresh back in normal windows mode. Re apply all your settings then restart and give the game a go again.

Also try setting catalyst AI to advance and use radeon pro tools. You will be able to set a ATi crossfire logo so you know when games are running in crossfire mode.

Cheers.

 

Yeh the new 10.8 dell 7.683 driver pretty much needs the vbios combo to work really well and as it should.

For installing new Ati drivers don't install over the top otherwise you may be left with residue bugs and other driver problems.

Always best to uninstall the drivers 1st
then go into safe mode and run driver sweeper a couple of times just to make sure
cc cleaner
and then back into normal windows mode and install the new drivers.

Also if you follow the instructions on page 33 or so you should be able to flash to the new vbios with no problems. Just make sure you don't restart your system until both cards say they are flashed and then you check in gpu-z to see that the v-bios version has changed.
Theres a really good guide here in this thread starting around page 33 - 35 showing you how to do it all.

I would strongly suggest you have a good read through of this thread though before you do anything. Also if your not feeling to comfortable with it still wait for dells official public release. Hopefully it isn't too far away now. Good luck.

Cheers.

 

Just took the game for a run with only one card. dx10, high, AA on and it seems to be something with the crossfire because i got almost the same fps (10-18) but more stable? I will try the game again when i enable cf and see how it goes. By the way 10.8 CAP driver. Is that Dells driver because im using Amd,s 10.8 + profiles.

 

Dells driver is the one on the support driver webpage.
Its the 10.8 otherwise known as 8.763 driver version. AMDs was 10.8 otherwise aka 8.762.
Dells driver doesn't come with any crossfire CAP profiles unfortunately so you will have to use the AMD ones. Although I just remembered that Brian one of the dell guys said that some users were experiencing bad and slow performance while using the AMD 10.8 CAP profiles. So you might want to uninstall them and give them a go without as well.

Also there was another CAP profile 10.8a released. Over here you can also try out.

CAP 10.8a - ATI CrossFireX Application Profile 10.8a Performance | [H]ard|OCP

No harm in giving it a go as well seeing as nothing is working so far ey.
I have both 10.8 and 10.8a CAP profiles installed on my system atm.

Good Luck.

Cheers.

 

Got the vbios flash done and the new drivers installed. Everything is working fine. 3dmark 06 was about 150 points lower after the flash though. Seemed the biggest hit was in the SM2.0 score which was 200 points lower then pre-flash.

 

Tried the game one more time, enabled cf again. And now i got 10- 26 in the first scenes in the game. Very high, dx 11, no AA. Its unplayeble for me in dx 11.. I just love games that runs at 60 fps he,he... Thanx for the tip and i think il try the driver that you linked.. The driver that im using aint the one from Amd. Remembered that the one from Amd didnt install the video for some strange reason. Only ccc. Some games i got suffers to much in lower fps with the new 10.8 driver than dells orginal driver.. Dont now yet if its worth flashing the vbios yet

 

Yeh see how you got with a clean Dell 10.8 7.863 driver install. Try using the 10.8a CAP profiles as well. You can also choose to use the AMD 10.8 CAP profiles too however if you have any problems or slow downs in performance you can also just uninstall them.

Yeh unfortunately running in DX 11 mode is not really fully playable as the FPS fluctuates up and down way too much to stay constant throughout. Running it on DX 10 or 9 should be fine though. I had no problems there. Cheers. I just ran the DX 11 mode as Stevie was interested in how it would run so I decided to test it out and report my experience.

Flashing the vbios kinda goes hand in hand with dells new drivers. So you will probably want to flash them later as you would most likely experience the battery, sleep, battery screen going off then you can't bring it back on without holding the alien head down and shutting down ur machine completely problems. The vbios fixes all those issues. See how you go though. If you can wait dell will be releasing the vbios and driver combo later on, not sure when yet but sometime in the near future hopefully.

Cheers.

 

Welcome back.

Glad to see your back up and running.

Actually my scores dropped about 1k after using the new drivers and vbios. No biggy but yeh. Looking forward to trying 10.9 LOL and newer updates. I'm over these old ones now ehahaahah LOL

 

So I installed the new 10.8a app profile and my 3dmark06 score dropped by 2500. Ran it twice just to verify? Normal?

 

Can I get a copy of the vbios flash as well? Thanks in advance. BTW: I PM'ed Erawneila but not sure if that was acceptable or not.

My email is (same as profile):dvsmanAThotmailDOTcom

 

Check Joker's sig. link is in the signature.

 

Hi Chris,
I'm so new to doing this type of things (no other laptops I had before required me to do anything like these), so I'm not familiar with flashing the main BIOS with A07 and creating a system restore point.
But everything you said after that is what happened to me.
8.763 was causing FF11 to skip, so I was going back to the older driver all times other than when I played FF14.
Then I found out yesterday that 8.762 (not 8.763) works fine for both FF11 and FF14.

I got 8.762 from ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver and selected Catalyst Software Suite.
From there, I uninstalled the current Catalyst, rebooted, and used CCleaner.
Installed the downloaded Catalyst 10.8 and it uninstalled the 5870 driver.
Rebooted.
Went to device manager and went under display.
Selected update driver.
Chose "5800 series" instead of "5870".
Then tested out FF11 and FF14 to make sure they have no problem.
Once I made sure that 8.762 works for both FF11 and FF14, I flashed the VBIOS with the one from page 33 to fix the shutdown/sleep/etc issues.
Everything is fine now

NOTE: I don't know if this is the best way. It's just that this works for things that I do.

 

Yeh Brian did mention quite a few posts back now I recall that dell didn't have the profiles with their drivers however he did note that some people after applying them saw a performance hit. So it just depends on the games or applications you are running. Some will benefit greatly others will take a hit.

Cheers.

 

Yup that should be fine. As long as your note using any older drivers before the 10.8 version then it will be fine to use and run with the new beta vbios. Running any older drivers will BSOD upon startup.

Now wheres 10.9 lol

Cheers.

 

Since installing the driver + vbios combo everything has been running fine but one thing I have noticed is that at certain times when playing BF2 the screen will go black for a second and then the whole game will shut itself down back to desktop in a flash. This happening to anyone else?

 

Thanks! So it was only necessary to uninstall Catalyst, and not to uninstall the display adapters themselves? That was done by the (surprisingly small!) 'Catalyst Software Suite'? And it did install, despite all the 'workaround = true' comments from various people?

I guess that new driver install packages should generally get this stuff right, but I've known driver installations on my desktop glitch out in strange ways, and when I went from A06 to A07 last night (because of all those 'Install latest system BIOS' labels on the beta Dell drivers) it rebooted with 'Missing operating system', having forgotten the RAID setup on the hdds, and completely freaked me out. I think I fixed it, given that I'm able to type this, but now I'm feeling... Cautious. Yes, cautious.

Even if that happens it can be recovered through Safe Mode, though... Can't it?

Thanks!

 

So you say that you took it from the Amd site. When i tried that driver it Said that it did not have th video driver, only ccc. I did the hole driver sweeper, ccleaner in safe mode and then the true thing.. But no video in this driver? The file was 69.9 mb. The driver i found was at 72 mb and i did not even need to do the true thing. But i have some performance issues with this one so i just wonder how you managed to install the one from Amd

 

Yes, Catalyst Software Suite is only 1.1MB to download initially. (Filename = catalyst_mobility_64-bit_util)
But when I ran that file, it downloaded an additional file called 10-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc, which is 74MB.
When I was switching between 8.692.2 and 8.763, i was uninstalling the driver and ATI software with CCleaner and Driver sweeper, but when I did this installation, I didn't do driver sweeper. Only CCleaner after uninstalling the Catalyst I had. While the installation of the downloaded Catalyst, it did uninstall the current driver (8.692.2 in this case). I also did not do anything with "workaround" thingy.

I hope this works well for you too.
I was playing FF11 last night with no problem and FF14 tonight with no problem..., until the server went down

 

I download the one under Option 1 - Full Software Suite.
Name on the site is Catalyst Software Suite.
File name when you download it is catalyst_mobility_64-bit_util.
File size is 1.1MB.
When you download it and run it, it will download additional file called 10-8_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc, which is 74MB.
So, it has both Catalyst 10.8 and driver 8.762 (not 8.763).
Driver is named "5800 series" instead of "5870" after the installation (as seen in my screenshot).

 

Yeh you can recover through safe mode. Uninstall drivers and reinstall new ones.

Cheers.

 

I have installed the latest vbios + 10.8 reference drivers and everything is working fine. I was able to install the reference drivers without having to use the workaround=true method. The installation detected the cards and installed all software. I have read through all the posts and saw that people had been using the workaround method. The only thing is the performance loss with the new 10.8, as for example in 3dmark 06 I am now getting 15,600 as opposed to 16,800 i was getting with the old vbios and 10.6 Dell driver. Has anyone else come across this loss as well?

System specs as follows :

M17x -R2 (I7-820qm, A08 Bios, 8GB DDR3, CFIRE 5870, 120GB OCZ Vertex 2, 500GB HDD, 1920x1200 RGBLED)

 

Yup its happened to me a few times. I've noticed that I reach a saved level point and then it just goes KAPUT lol and crashes to the desktop. Not sure whats going on there. I just load the game back up and then it doesn't seem to happen again. Seems to be quite random and odd. Not too damaging atm. Luckily.

Cheers.

 

Yup my 3d mark 06 score also saw a performance hit of 1 - 2k. Its no biggy though as everything else works great. Hopefully 10.9 is even better and we see a performance boost.

Cheers.

 

Yes, it can...

 

Is there a bottom line for us consumers vs. mad scientists here? Wait a little longer for Dell, or go and jump all over the place to find what workarounds to do? I'd appreciate some sort of official status, thanks.

 

@Lolinternets: I have the same issue with BFBC2 quitting to the desktop. Not sure why but it seems to happen after an hour or two..

 

This was posted some pages back from the Dell Rep that frequents these forums. He was asked about a time frame for this combo of Driver/vbios to move from Beta to available on the support site and coming out with new laptops from the factory. I hope this helps answer your question.

BFBC 2 did the same thing to me (CTD's) until I forced it to use DX10 in the settings.ini folder.

 

Mine does that once and a while with the new beta drivers but I get an insane lag that almost becomes unplayable

 

Yeah I know that lag you're talking about. I've never gotten it before since upgrading. It's more so during the initial joining and first spawn in that the lag kicks in but then seems to go fade as I play longer but does still happen at random moments on occasion.

 

And we're going... to.... Live!

It's not bricked, it doesn't BSOD, FFXIV starts at least the loader without bombing out, GPU-Z says Crossfire is enabled, and all looks pretty good at the moment. It did take me four tries to get the Winflash to work, but then I ran it twice more to be sure.

Thanks for the thread and all the advice, everyone!

 

Flashed my solo 5870 to the beta vbios in dos mode.

Works like a charm! and it is very good to have sleep back and be able to shut down the laptop normally! And use updated drivers!

 

I have noticed a substantial increase in fan activity/noise compared with pre-beta bios flash/new drivers playing the same games.

The fans kick up to maximum almost imediately whereas I can't recall them ever getting that high with the stock Dell VBIOS/Drivers. I've never compulsively monitored temperatures but the new fan speeds seem like overkill to me.

 

I've searched & searched but I cannot find where to download this mysterious VBIOS for my 5870's. It is not part of the 8.763 Beta drivers and is not on the dell drivers page for the m17x-r2. Everest shows that my VBIOS is...
"BIOS Version 012.019.000.006.036284"
"BIOS Date 01/26/10,10:09:5".
Before and after I updated to 8.763, my monitor off/sleep function leaves my screen blank(back light comes on, but that's all) that only a forced power off will fix. I have also tried several combination's of BIOS's A06, A07, A08 with drivers 8.692 & 8.763. None of it worked. If this VBIOS update can fix my problem, can someone please tell my where to actually download it. A working link would be nice.

 

Its on page 33 of the thread. You'll be able download it there. There are links and download mirrors for it there. Just scroll down a bit.

http://m17x.freeforums.org/post368.html#p368

Dell hasn't officially released publicly on their drivers and support page. They are still working on a dell driver and vbios combo. Sometime in the near future hopefully it will be released.
The vbios will solve your above issues. Make sure you read the thread carefully and instructions just to be safe. Enjoy.

Cheers.

 

Thank you for your incredibly fast response reborn2003,
After reading through the post and seeing that I could brick my cards, my only other question now is...
Will this VBIOS update be part of the 8.763 drivers when they come out of beta?
I would rather wait a little longer than take a chance of bricking bricking my cards.

 

Brian (erawneila - alienware) has said that this is the intended goal - to have an update at some point on dell support.com which would enable a "one click" download/flash for both, kind of an all in one band-aid.
He has said that there is no eta for this yet as doing so now would kill people who are using older video drives and went for the vbios update (bsod's using earlier 8.7xx drivers).

I too was kinda waiting for this but I did get Brian to mail me the vbios so its getting to the point where im getting very tempted to just do it lol

 

if you do it in dos mode, very few chances of brocking your card(s)...

 

That's good to know. I think that I will take a "Wait and see" stance for now. I did download all that I need to do the VBIOS update just in case. I'd rather have it and not use it than to not have it and need it.

 

I just did the vbios flash and it did fix my "kinda shutting down but not really" problem. Now when I shut down, it does shut down all the way to cold.

This is with Bios A08 and the BETA Dell drivers previously linked + the Vbios flash.

Very pleased overall with now not having to press the button to shut down - after I shutdown from within Windows.

EDIT: Also Balanced and Power Saver modes now work, since the computer can actually wake up from sleep mode now, vs. before where it simply went into a coma and would not wake back up.

 

I'm sure i'm not the only person who has noticed this problem but after frequently checking the readings on GPU-Z (running multiple windows of GPU) on certain games such as BF2 and SC2 etc. the secondary video card is only using half of the load while the primary one is clocking at 100%. Very rarely now do I see the second card using all of its memory and core speed. Is this happening to anyone else since the update or is this a preexisting problem? Just to clarify I'm not in stealth mode, powerplay is on, and the performance setting is on high.

 

How do I get the VBIOS I have the new driver it gives nifty BSOD when used without the VBIOS. Please help.

 

Check page 84 of this thread chiefs. I posted a similar response to this question.

Cheers.

 

Nvm ty reborn2003

 

I cannot install the vbios. Gives ROM programing failed? is that normal. I have A07 and the beta ATI-Dell driver

 

this is some *STUFF* I followed the article to a T and now my machine will not display any video. Please help! I get a num and cap lock light flashing

 

. I think it means your m17x does not acknowledge your vid card. this is bad...

are you sure you have:
- M17x-R2,
- the beta dell ati drivers
- the beta dell vbios
- 1 or 2 5870

???