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

Hi theres,

Welcome to ATI and Alienware. I too have been on Nvidia for the past few years 6200m, 8800m GTX SLi, 9800 GTX OC and then the GTX 260m SLi. Now my first ATi card in ages. Back in the game ehehehe.

When you get back you can hit F2 when you boot up your notebook and check in the BIOS to confirm that A07 is indeed installed. It should be fine though. The 2 different name things I'm not exactly sure what thats all about but it shouldn't cause any trouble. Cheers.

 

RadeonPro :: Radeon Profiles Tool



Save Settings. See the Logo whenever CrossFire is supported and enabled. (Only Global settings have to be saved, profile settings can be done on the fly while the game is NOT running)

You can indivually set your preferences for any game, custom profiles if you want, also integrated FPS counter. Enjoy

 

I just scored 1992 in the FFXIV benchmark. On the R1 i scored like over 3000 close to 4k last times. Fully Nvidia Optimized atm eheehehe. Still should run pretty well on the ATi's when it releases in Sept I'd say.

Turned AA down in BC2 and FPS went up to 60 - 100fps oles.
Blur runs over 30fps constantly. Not bad could be better.
FIFA10 is a capped FPS game. So it just runs constantly at 60fps.
Runs at constant 59 on the Nvidia and at 60 on the ATi although I can see it is trying to surpass that figure most of the time. LOL!

 

Oh, Thanks for that.

 

I scored 2004 i guess the last time with 10.8 drivers, no CF. But when i let the fps counter run along, it was running between 25-40 fps, which makes me confident the game will run well on release. (Well still on these framerates, the picture ran very smooth, and almost no fps hickups, only short during scene jumps.

And with 30 fps on Blur i wonder aswell if it's indeed only running on one card. Does it display the Crossfire logo when you use radeonpro?

 

Confirmed Blur is running only on 1 card. Both Nvidia and ATi. When I try to force it to run with 2 cards it flickers or really has no improvement in FPS at all. It still runs smooth and fast though at 30fps. It does go higher like above 40 fps sometimes.

 

Oh cool, i already had doubt, it would display the crossfire logo anyhow upon having a game in fullscreen.

Anyway, here are some impressions from the FFXIV Benchmark, along my score of 1959 on Dell Beta 8.763 (10.8) with the new VBIOS. The frame drops are because of the scenery change, and is barely noticeable, its more like a fading. Picture Quality and everything else is very smooth, and as you can see the fps is normaly very stable. (Note the FPS counter in the upper left, i watched carefully this time and it was around 23fps and 50fps overall)




Edit: Maybe i'm just a FFF (Final Fantasy Fanboy), but to me this one of the prettiest Benchmarks i have seen up to date.

 

I tested the Mafia 2 Benchmark with and without CrossFire Profiles installed, same result on both runs with everything set to max, within the game 41.6 fps with AA enabled, and 47.0 fps without AA enabled.
Didn't have any influence at all on the Beta Drivers 8.763...

For comparison, a few posts back, with reference drivers 8.762 (10.8) and 10.8a profiles installed i got 46.5 fps without AA and 41.9 fps with AA enabled in the benchmark.

So it looks like profiles are already applicated to the settings in the Dell Beta Drivers.

 

AH nice nice very nice indeed. Yeh I agreed this benchmark did look very good to me as well. I've never played any FFs before but this one looks quite good indeed.
I agree as well that the FPS is very smooth and should run fine when the full game comes out later next month.

There was also another new benchmark someone linked me too in the benchmark tread earlier last week. I think it was quadzilla. It was the Lost planet 2 benchmark. That one looks great too. It runs quite well too. I have so far only been able to run the DX9 but there is a DX11 test run option too. I tried it but it crashed on me saying some DX error I guess. I think i need some DX11 drivers or dlls or something. Cheers.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Lost-Planet-2-Benchmark-download-2607.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/search.php?searchid=5132500

 

Hello, my first post

I received my m17x (I think it's R2. Don't know how to find it out.) a week ago.
I tried installing the video driver from dell.com, version 8.763 that was released on 8/25/2010, because the driver that came with the laptop did not play final fantasy 14.
Then the system stopped shutting down properly (get stuck at black screen).
It would get stuck when it tries to go sleep or monitor turns off after I don't touch anything for a while.
Every time that happened, I had to hold on the power button to force to turn it off.

So, I went back to driver version 8.692.2.
Then the shutting down problem is gone, but the games kind of skips about every 3 seconds.
It's like it gets stuck for 0.1 second and goes fast forward for 0.1 second, and it happens about every 3 seconds.

I want to either fix the skipping problem with 8.692.2 or fix the shutting down problem with 8.763.
It will be nice to know how to fix both though.
I read that the shutting down problem with 8.763 can be fixed by flashing the vbios.
But I don't know how to flash the vbios.
I was googling it, but I still can't find what I need to do.

I would appreciate if anyone could help me fixing the problem.
It sucks to receive a brand new laptop and can't even play game without problem

*** EDIT ***
My spec:
Alienware m17x.
1920 x 1200 screen.
128 GB SSD
Windows 7
BIOS: Ver A07 1.00.
RAM 4 GB
DirectX 11
ATI Radeon HD 5870

 

Flashing the vbios:
See Page 33 of this thread. The posts from 5150joker and grimfan.
Please read the warnings however before flashing the vbios, if you are not confident of doing it maybe hold off for a while.

 

Downloading it right now (@7MByte/s, done in 1min30sec, 955Mbyte *g*), gonna post results about it if it will work.
BTW. If you get max. @60 fps, it's possibly Vertical Synchronization is enabled in Command Center or in the Game, but when i disable that i get tearing in most games, and i really don't like tearing.

Edit1: Lol the first thing i get shot at my head upon starting the lost planet 2 installer, is a nice NVIDIA How do you do?-Message
Edit2: Yep, the DX11 one crashes in fullscreen mode, when starting into / going back to the main menu.

 

OH ehahahahahah LOL LOL!!!! AHH Nvidia Strikes again ehahahaah. Its so true though so many gaming titles have that Nvidia logo stamped on them now ehehehe. Ah I can't remember the last time I saw the ATi one eheheheh.

I have some pics posted up http://forum.notebookreview.com/search.php?searchid=5132500 but will do some fresh benches soon too and put them up later. Cheers.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...ficial-m17x-benchmark-thread-part-3-testa.jpg

http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...ficial-m17x-benchmark-thread-part-3-testb.jpg

http://forum.notebookreview.com/att...official-m17x-benchmark-thread-part-3-re5.jpg

Will need to do more testing on the R2 soons.

 

A faster DL site for Lostplanet 2 Benchmark:

http://www.fileplanet.com/215390/download/Lost-Planet-2-Benchmark

 

I wonder if we can use files from say a game like Metro 2033. I remember last time that it had DX11 files we could install from it or something like that. Perhaps that should then fix it and allow us to run the benchmark in DX11 mode. I'm thinking we are just missing DX11 dlls or files. Cheers.

 

Hi theres,

Are you able to run the lost planet 2 benchmark in DX11 mode?
If so how do we do it?

Cheers.

 

Well i just aborted the test right after loading the third scene loading, didn't know it will test 3 times, so i was a bit annoyed by how long that benchmark takes hehe

But anyhow, i got around 60-70fps all the time, on 1920x1200 with MSAA8x and everything else set to max, V.Sync OFF. DirectX9.

 

Well 7MByte/sec is pretty fast for max. 10MegaByte/sec (100MBit over the thumb)

 

Has any one tried the new drivers/vbios with metro 2033?

 

Ahh yup cool cool.

yeh it runs it 3 times the TEST A. Quite long indeed.
TEST B is great though super short and its supposed to be more intensive or something.

 

Not yet Stevie but might give it a go tomorrow or later today. I would like to test it out seeing as it does have a DX11 mode. That should be interesting to see. Will let you know how it goes. Cheers.

 

Oh ok i'll test that then, and attach my result to this post. For some reason PrintScreen isn't working at the moment, or maybe it's just in the Benchmark like this, i just copy a 1920x1200 black wallpaper lol

Edit: Gotta love the CrossFire logo along the Nvidia 3D Vison and It's meant to be played logo on startup. Scored a whooping 44.6 fps average on the Test B, very epic monster and battle, and the test is more intense it seems.

 

Yeh i get that all the time now. Not sure whats going on. Someone told me to do a Ctrl printscreen. Sometimes it works other times it doesn't so I'm not to sure. So i just use Fraps screenshot method now. Although be warned the SS it takes are huge. Like 5 - 6mb in file size LOL. So we have to edit them to shrink the file size to be able to post pics here. Cheers.

 

Nice one...i thought a dx11 game would be a good test....

 

I just ran it as well and scored 46.2 a B ranking. Everything maxed out settings as well. I'm sure if we lowered the AA or turned it off we should be able to hit 60fps or above. Cheers.

ehehe ATI logo side by side the Nvidia one. I think I might do some ATI vs Nvidia benching later on. ehehhehe.

 

Yup, gonna do that now, Test B with no AA. Nice to see, we're almost the same

Edit: LOL that didn't had any influence at all: 46.4fps without AA enabled

 

ahahah yeh I was just gonna say huh. I scored 46.6 that time. No idea what happend there lol.
Also which driver set were you using now? I forgot. The Dell ones or the AMD 10.8?

 

Thank you for the response.
That's not something I feel comfortable doing, so I'll hold off for a while.

Does anyone experienced or know how to fix the problem with version 8.692.2 skipping after trying version 8.763 once and going back to version 8.692.2?

 

I just left AA off in the benchmark, went into CCC and set AA to 2x, run the benchmark again and scored 43.6 this time, which lets me assume the ingame option does not applicate AA and we ran the bench without AA at all. so 46.6 without AA. I'm on Dell's Beta at the moment.

I recommend upon installing Beta Drivers 8.763 10.8 and VBIOS Flash Update to install a fresh windows. So you can be sure the system won't be reverting back to those 8.692 drivers at anytime (the BETA VBIOS does not support prior driver releases to 10.8), atleast that's what i did, and i can freely uninstall Dell's Beta driver, and install reference ATI drivers WHQL 10.8 cats.

From what i read, dell is trying to fix the backward compatibility. But i wouldn't care at the moment, as it seems pretty stable for a beta so far. (stable beta )

 

Oh okays yeh that makes sense. Cheers.

 

I personally found 8.692.2 had many performance issues in most games i played. Either slow fps/bugs like missing units in sc2/or graphics issues like flickering etc.
Using other drivers like ati 10.7 or the 8.763 tended to fix most performance issues.

As for going back or changing drivers. Usually the method i use to clean the drivers from my system to prevent any potential conflicts is:

1. Device manager, uninstall the two ati vid cards under display (ticking delete driver software)
2. Before rebooting, Express uninstall of ati catalyst manager and application profiles.
3. Reboot
4. Run driver sweeper to clean ATI files.
5. Run CCleaner to clean left over ATI reg entries.
6. Reboot
7. Install whichever video drivers you wish.

 

Got DX11 mode working in fullscreen for the Lost Planet 2 Benchmark. Disable Catalyst AI in CCC. Looks like AA is applicable that way inbench.

Edit: ROFLMAO i think that's the smoothest Benchmark ever at 15fps in DX11 mode, with AA off

Edit2: Upon Disabling Catalyst AI, the benchmark is NOT run in CrossFireX, and therefor the low fps i guess, anyway, love the stability of it, was running between 12-18 fps without any major framedrops below that (not at all actually). Also you can sometime see the tesselation grid, looks great still.

Edit3: Just tested Starcraft2 again, and the only way i got AA and AF to work was by forcing it via RadeonPro (CCC didn't work, even with Profiles installed). Eitherway as my eyes are very very bad i can't tell the difference when i don't watch carefully enough, so the drivers seem to be atleast performing fast without it.

Edit4: Upon forcing the AA + AF with RadeonPro to both x16, Starcraft 2 was not showing the CrossFire Logo anymore and the performance was around 20-30fps. When i set it back to application controlled again, it would work again in CrossFire mode and the framerate was mostly at 45-60fps cap@60 (Vertical Sync is a must for me in this game, lots of tearing without it).

Edit5: I issolated the nonworking Crossfire to when i force AA16x. Forcing AAx8 and AFx16 will boot the game into with crossfire enabled, but the performance was staggering 10fps below

Well i guess i be happy without high AA or AF then lol

 

I installed Dell ATI 8.763 just for something to do LOL..
I got flashing of black screen while playing BFBC2 !!,.
Gone back to ati mobility 10.7 ,no more flashing of black screen in bfbc2
I guess this driver is meant for 5870 xfire cards only??.
maybe Dell and ATI dropping support for 4870 card ?am i right?.
just a noobie thought.

 

Try installing this along the Beta drivers once:
ATI CrossFireX Application Profile 10.8a Performance

Just a thought, about what i experience so far, is that the app profiles seem to not apply to the dell beta drivers for some reason.

 

Somewhere on this thread Brian was saying that application profiles from ATI is destructive to Dell ati 8.763 ??.
Could you verified that please so i could playing with these driver updates again.
Thanks for fast replied ,Grim

 

From my experience, it does not get influenced at all. Somehow Dells beta driver does not support these as it might look like. It was mentioned they are working to get the profiles integrated anyhow. So there's a good chance dell adds their own fixes and settings for games to their drivers, and without 3rd party tools you are not able to enable those options, even if you set them in CCC, like i did with AA + AF in Starcraft 2. You might give the 10.8 reference drivers along the 10.8a app profiles a try, i used those yesterday the whole day, and they were great aswell.

Edit: Dell, the way it's not meant to be played

 

no worries ,Grim .I read the last line from your replied.thanks

 

So far ATI 10.7 does not give me any problems yet!.
But got to try 10.8 + app profile from ATI..
I am nut or not?
i can not leave my laptop alone LOL.

 

Yeah do that It can't hurt anyway... I'll read up your experience with them later, going to sleep for now. Good luck.

 

Wait,Grim .1 more question .Would this VBIOS apply to my 4870 cards??

 

Nonono, sorry about that, but i have seen your sig too late completly, only saw M17xR2 first. It's only for HD5870 the Beta VBIOS.

There is either no VBIOS update needed for 4870 or there is currently none in the works.

 

Thanks ,Grim and have a Good dream.

 

I just ran dxdiag with the new drivers and its saying my total memory is 716MB approx...my xfire is enabled and even if it wasnt it should still show around 1024mb correct? Could the fact that i DO NOT have the new vbios flashed yet be causing this?

 

Thank you for your recommendation, but I'm a newbie and scared of doing vbios flash update now in case I screw up anything. I want to learn more before I do that type of things.

Thank you for your tip. I did those steps and everything works fine now with the older driver. I'll do the same when the corrected new driver comes out. Until then, I can just be playing games other than final fantasy 14. Whew

 

I just took the plunge.
Upgraded to the new vbios via the dos method as per jokers link to the wiki on page 33 of this thread.

Flash upgrade on both cards went flawless no issues encountered.

Initial testing results as follows:

General issues

Windows power options for turning off the display after a time/Shutdown blank screen issue.

New vbios/dell 8.763 drivers:
- Display turns off and comes back on when i move the mouse perfectly now.
- So far every shutdown of the laptop or restart has actually powered it off or restarted it fine.

Old vbios/Any drivers:
All other drivers except for the stock 10.2 dell driver caused the screen to remain black forcing me to hard power off the laptop for the turning off the display.
Shutting down the laptop or restarted on occasion (more frequently with 10.8 and old vbvios) would freeze the laptop at a black screen and the power remaining on forcing me to hard power off the laptop.


Running Laptop with AC unplugged

New vbios/dell 8.763 drivers:

- Works on battery with no crashes or issues noticed so far. Restarting windows after running on battery works fine.

Old vbios/Any drivers:
All other drivers except for the stock 10.2 dell driver caused my laptop to either bsod/crash when windows was loaded and i unplugged the AC, OR work fine on battery until i restarted windows. This would result in endless BSOD never starting windows properly regardless on battery or AC. Only way to fix it would be safe mode uninstall vid drivers and reinstall.

Games Testing

3Dmark Vantage
- Performance Benchmark
- No overclocking of any hardware

New vbios, dell 8.763 drivers:
- Ran flawless

3D Mark Score = 14719
GPU score = 14675
CPU score = 14853

Old vbios, stock dell 10.2 drivers:

- graphics corruption in benchmark
- occasional crash

3D Mark Score = 12319
GPU score = 11997
CPU score = 14793

Starcraft 2, wow, disciples 3, appear to be running as good as they were before the vbios upgrade. Performance is good.
No flickering so far.
ONLY problem is my red pixels still appear when catalyst AI is enabled


Overall only one issue at this stage remains for me which i have had since day one of receiving the laptop.

When catalyst AI is enabled, i get random red pixels around the screen in any 3D game or application.

- Usually it gets worse after a crash and more pixels appear, clean install of vid drivers reduces visibility of them but doesn't get rid of them completely.
- Tried old vbios, new vbios no difference.
- Application profiles or none on most driver releases no difference.
- Tried most driver releases, stock dell 10.2, ATI 10.7, dell beta 10.7, ATI 10.8, dell 10.8 no difference the issue is present in all of them.

Disabling catalyst AI fixes the problem but causes performance drop as i believe it is effectively disabling crossfire.
Standard or Advanced has little difference. Advanced tends to show more of the issue however.

Only thing left i haven't done is clean format and reinstall of windows which i will be doing shortly.
Don't suppose anyone has any other suggestions of fixing my issue?

I will continue testing further and post results regarding the new dell drivers and vbios if anything changes.

-----------------------------------
Spec:

M17xR2, i7 920xm, 8gig 1333 DDR3, 2xATI 5870CF (NEW vbios, 10.8 dell driver 10.8a App profile), 2x500gig HDD, RGB LED, Win7 Home (default dell install), System Bios A07

 

Alright, after updating to the latest 8.763 Dell drivers and the new vBios Brian provided, ( thanks Brian! ) it seemed to solve most of the sleep/wake issue. But one still remains.
Try this, put your notebook into sleep with external display, keyboard, mouse and notebook lid closed, it will turned into hibernating mode after a couple of hours. ( overnight ) Power will never runs out as it was plugged in all the time.

By the way, I am running Bios A07.

 

Yes, the VBIOS is only for 5870 owners (which I am not, so didn't even attempt to flash my card with that - the flash tool probably wouldn't let me try it, but I wouldn't want to anyways as there is no way a 4870 card is going to work correctly with a 5870 BIOS).

The 10.8 drivers however, are for all ATI card owners. Whether your card is a 48xx or 58xx mobile, these drivers were intended for you.

The problem I noted was with the drivers, not the VBIOS. And it probably only matters for people who play WoW. Which, coincidentally might be *a lot of people*. The only way to make that game playable is to revert back to 10.7 or earlier. Not possible for 5870 owners experiencing the problem who have flashed their VBIOS. And apparently not possible for 4870 owners either unless they are willing to live without CCC and the ability to configure anything about their display other than raw pixel resolution.

I suppose it's possible this is a 4870 issue only. I haven't seen anyone here with 5870s saying they have the cursor problem in WoW on 10.8.

 

Are you running 3dmark 06? I'm running the old Vbios and I get near 20k for my 3dmark 06 benchmarks and we have the same specs. Just curious.

 

I just installed these drivers.

Followed the appropriate steps using CC Cleaner and Driver Sweeper.

Everything is running smooth. I am not having any issues with WoW gameplay, AoC, or any other games at the moment. I also tested the sleep/hibernate issue and it seems that these drivers resolved the problem.

I did NOT flash my VBIOS. This is just from these new dell drivers, so cheers!

 

I actually went ahead and flashed my Vbios. Performance is the same, no issues, and sleep / unplugging works fine. Incidentally I never once tried sleep mode / unplugging prior to now, so I have no clue whether or not the Vbios fixed it. Either way, it works.

~Cheers