7970m Drivers and Clevo, which ones are working for you?

Cheers, although I was also using throttlestop to boost the multiplier, so that added about 100 to the score....at least until throttlestop decided not to work anymore...

 

I cannot even get the "AMD Mobility Radeon™ Driver Verification Tool" to work. It cannot detect my 7970m and tells me to contact the vendor. I am on a Clevo and I installed the AMD and Intel drivers that came with it. That includes switchable graphics. Under my display adapters it lists both. Any suggestions?

 

AMD does not have official support for the 7970m in a switchable graphics setup, such as Clevo's.

 

I just can't believe that company spend a millions of dolars to invent new graphics and did not test them in games.Or they did and decide to sell gpu to us even with problem.The products have problems and they start to sell them.This is wrong.I just can't believe it.Do You 7970 owners contact resellers?What they say? Yes,reseller receive graphics so they start to sell them to make money.

 

I contacted mine and they said I should RMA -_-

When I do a clean windows install and install the chipset drivers, then restart, then install the AMD drivers I get this BSOD.

 

Laptops are running good except games.Resellers don't test laptops in games before sending to customer.RMA won't fix it.AMD and resellers make money and we are stuck with defective products.This is wrong.

Im complaining and I bought also clevo with 7970.I bought used 170EM,one month old laptop because original owner just can't stand this problems anymore.I just give it a try.Im gona sell it to if there will be to many problems.

 

I had this BSOD without playing any games, none are even installed. I have windows fully updated, .NET framework 4 and others, installed chipset, restarted, installed AMD drivers from disk and restart and boom bsod. no games, no nothing just won't work... says hardware error..

 

so what You will do now?
there must be the way to do this,reseller did.

 

I think I have to RMA, I've been trying this for a week now trying reinstalls of windows , loading different drivers , trying the beta ones, everything, nothing seems to work

 

I think people are dramatising this too much. It is a new card and it is bound to have such driver issues. Do remember that only people who have problems and are unable to resolve them by themselves come to these forums asking for help. So do not be taken a back by the number of people who are complaining in these forums.

Except for micahmatthew I havent seen any case where an actual RMA might be needed. All the other cases seem to be user mistakes with driver installations, Enduro and cases where the user is trying to overclock and beat the score of somebody else. My friend installed the stock drivers and was using my laptop for a day. He had no issues but yes his benchmarking scores were low. So I told him to update update to the 12.7 beta and thereafter everything is just fine.

I honestly dont understand why people are so impatient. The card certainly performs better than any of the other cards out there. So wait for the stable drivers which will boost its performance and make it more stable across all games. Instead they keep crying about how bad the card is and how awful the performance is compared to what they expected etc when just a few days before all of them were hailing this GPU as the "best bang for the buck". Patience and satisfaction are virtues hardly found these days.

 

I got my P151EM with 7970m (the reseller at my place offers this option), I installed the driver according to user manual. Clean windows install > Chipset > skip the Intel HD > AMD driver (Clevo stock) > restart > continue.

Works perfectly for me, no blue screen, i have played DW7 PC and PCSX2 emulation games smoothly with high performance power plan, 120W adapter (I have a spare 240W adapter though).

I'm not gonna update any drivers until offical AMD driver is released...

 

This is not a chat room my friend. And this is the 3rd thread I have seen you posting "HI".

 

Have you ever bought unfinished TV, Car or a stereo reciever??
I don't think you would sit patiently after needing to turn on & off your new tv set because it keeps freezing...
People are paying a lot of money for a working device!
This is too bad that big companies like Nvidia & AMD are reguraly using us as their lab bunnys...

 

I had this issue with two different laptops, both of them ended up with faulty memory sticks, so this might be the case here as well. RMA it is.

shmutus, even though I don't have a 7970M or a 6XXM card yet, I have to agree completely. Gaming laptops slowly but surely bridge the gap towards desktops, so ignoring the paying customers of laptop users with the same old excuse that it is the reseller's responsibility to take care of such issues is a shameful behavior by these two big budget companies.

 

so what drivers did You use? from factory cd?
how BF3 is running?

 

I have a P150EM running the stock CCC, and the 12.7 (June 26th) modded everything else. I'm about 20 points higher on the graphics score of 3DMark compared to when I was on all stock. Framerates are a lot more stable in most games I've played including Alan Wake, Tribes:Ascend, and Max Payne 3.

 

Thats the worst excuse ever. I see new threads about 7970M problems every single day and most of them point toward driver issues.

You don`t push out new hardware if you don`t have the software to atleast secure that all the 7970M run stable.

AMD rushed 7970M to the market to beat Nvidia, this is the result. 2 faulty batches to Clevo, driver problems all over the place and Enduro that is a big fail.

Nvidia didn`t have new official drivers for GTX 660M and below either but atleast the OEM drivers worked without any problems. All of this is exactly why I mainly buy Nvidia GPUs, since its basicly plug and play. This is not exactly the first time AMD is pushing the problems on notebook users either...

You would think they would learn by now. But I guess they gotta cut down cost somewhere to beat Nvidia each year with price. They should hire more competent people to work on their software and/or a bigger team

 

Cry more Cloudfire. Nvidia Optimus was trash, garbage at release also and frankly, it's still trash and garbage.

It's not AMD's fault that Clevo opted to have the display connected directly through the iGPU so you can't turn it off. AW did it in a way you can turn it off.

But why do you care anyway? I really doubt you will be getting either the 680M or the 7970M.

While you whine and cry on his forum Cloudfire, I have Shogun 2, Max Payne 3, and Deus Ex:HR all running at maximum with either AA off or FXAA on highest with awesome smooth play. This includes TESSELLATION ON! Also I have never seen Witcher 2 look so beautiful and run so smooth on my 7970M. Only thing I have off is Ubersampling. Running stable at 960/1400 at 70C.

 

Alienware have big Enduro problems. The cure? Disable a feature of a product you paid for because they sold you a partly faulty product....
In my country that would almost be enough to return the product back to the store and get a refund

Optimus trash? Well atleast it works without having to make a whitelist for all the games since the IGP is enabled instead while gaming (Enduro), and you don`t suffer 10-20% performance degrade (Enduro). But I`m out again since I am attacked as usual by 7970M owners running this sub-forum. You can`t even discuss without flaming people (Cry, whine etc)

You can deny it anyhow you want but if Optimus is trash then I don`t even have a word to describe Enduro

 

Yeah you should stop posting since the solution to Optimus is to disable it, turn it off.

And you still seem to conveniently forget the 7970M is matching the performance of your precious Nvidia of what few benchmarks that have been released so far.

You don't have the 7970M or a Clevo. So you came to this thread only to trash AMD while attempting to praise Nvidia even though Nvidia to this day, still suffers the same issues with their drivers with Optimus. And you wonder why a 7970M user with a Clevo notebook would be annoyed by you?

 

No I came to this thread to voice my opinion on how a big fail the whole driver team working @ AMD is and how bad Enduro is.
And I`m not asking for your permission to do it either,

And no, Nvidia does not suffer with the same driver problems as AMD have (which is the reason why so many prefer Nvidia over AMD). Nor do Optimus suffer with such big performance degradation either, so stop spreading lies

Try all you want to find excuses but there is a reason why some people prefer Nvidia because of their drivers and why some notebook OEMs refuse to include AMD GPUs in their catalogue

 

I'm an owner of a P150EM w/ 7970m with the same specs as hulawafu77 except I have 256GB M4 and only 8GB Ram,

I agree with Cloudfire on how ridiculously awful Enduro and the 7970m are. There are more people complaining about issues with it then I've EVER IN MY LIFE seen about any nVidia card.



This many complains should not be occuring its apparent that AMD rushed these cards out to beat the 680m to the gate. Bottom line.

You get what you paid for, I may have saved $250 going with 7970m over 680m, but I'm honestly thinking it wasn't worth the savings as i've put ina few dozen hours in the past week to try and set this up and it still isn't working . I may have a hardware issue though so this may be a different beast altogether.

Either way I wouldn't expect a 680m or nvidia to have a hardware or software issue like this. Next time I'm getting a 780m next year

nVidia and optimus are without a doubt much better than amd/enduro, hardware wise they are similarly powerful, but support/driver wise.... nvidia blows amd out of the water.

 

Yes its very sad to see all the complaints about 7970M in this forum the recent 2 weeks. I mean, come on, atleast make sure it is stable with working drivers before shipping it out to customers. And then you can start improving performance little by little with new improved drivers.

I am not shure about the exact numbers, but I remember reading about the funding AMD and Nvidia have and from what I can remember, is that Nvidia had an enormous amount of money they spend on drivers and product testing each year compared to AMD, so I guess that is some of the reason why Nvidia cards is more expensive than AMD.

I wonder if AMD GPU owners would be willing to pay a little extra for a bigger driver team?

 

i should get my 9150 with 7970m today or tomorrow

reading this thread makes me sick to my stomach

 

if i have problems with 7970m when it gets here i may just return the laptop altogether and save up for 680m

 

Well the problems seems to be every now and then. Some have problems, some have the 7970M working perfectly.

Enduro is obviously flawed though

 

Must be nice for Nvidia to have so many loyal fans with selective memory. NBR and other forums were hammered by users complaining of Optimus and the solution always being to disable Optimus.

But I can't argue in Nvidia fantasy land, Nvidia has perfect drivers at release every time.


Sent from my G73JH using KeyBoard

 

With any luck, a decent driver release should clear up these problems.

 

well cloudfire a few things

one is im not going to be playing like bf3 or anything yet
in the near future i will be playing like tribes ascend/planetside2 etc

as long i can get my machine functioning properly with no bsod s and the like i think i will be happy with the 7970m

we'll see though as im getting mine soon i will give some feedback then

can never have too much sample size when it comes to product feedback

 

The thing is AMD drivers have had complains EVERY RELEASE.

I thought the issues would be minor but mine are ridiculously major issues.
can't even use the 7970m at all.

If I was an nVidia "fanboy" why on earth would I buy an AMD card? You are such a troll its sad. Do you have nothing better to do then come on here and dog on people and their opinions?

 

You hint at part of the problem. There are so many possible issues with the 7970m that the forum vacillates between discussions of hardware faults and more easily fixed software ones. These cores, at least on Clevo cards, are fairly hot. I see 85 C average in new games and 90 C in Furmark. From what I have read, whether those temps are due to a design flaw in Clevo systems is still not certain. They are, however, certainly higher than the temps from AW. I purchased a 3-year warranty, so if Sager shipped me a ticking time bomb, that is their problem for that period. I will note that my old 8800 GTS was a smokin' hot son of a when I had it. Even my GTX 580 exceeds 80 C if I do not crank up the fan.

People who have a Clevo 7970m and have "no issues" might not be aware of their lower-than-expected performance. Enduro's hit depends on the application, with some games being perfectly fine. Heck, in Just Cause 2, my framerate is phenomenal (as in 80+ FPS with all settings at max except 4xAA instead of 8x) until I enter a city, where utilization dips. Is it enough for me to notice? Yes, but performance is still not terrible. I just hate the idea of not receiving the performance for which I paid.

 

The cooling system on Alienware and Sager are just about equally effective right? If they shipped you a GPUs that was part of one of the faulty batches or if Sager MXM cards have a potential hardware problem, I guess either way they won`t recall them until they are dead. Maybe, just maybe your GPU will be alive enough for 3 years so they don`t have to pay you anything

Yeah I would have complained if I didn`t get the performance I paid for due to Enduro, but as long as I couldn`t prove that it should perform this and that, and that it isn`t a hardware failure, it wouldn`t be easy to get a refund. The GPU still works, just not optimal
Who knows, they might fix it with new drivers although I have my doubts

Absolutely 100% true

 

I'm not harassing. I'm just appalled by your posts claiming that Nvidia has so much fewer driver issues. You apparently have not visited Nvidia drivers forum on Guru3D. EVERY SINGLE DRIVER released is hammered by Nvidia users running into problems.

Like I said, it must be very nice for Nvidia to have fans with VERY, almost to the point of being amnesiac, selective memory.

My guess, if you spent half the time whining about your 7970M you probably could have your games running smoothly with Enduro. I only have two complaints. One is Clevo fault, not AMD. I wish they didn't make the 7970M pipe through the iGPU, and wish they would unlock OverDrive. The first problem makes it impossible right now for me to flash the vBios to unlock OverDrive or to flash my overclock speeds. But really, I have never seen a game look as stunning and run as smooth as Witcher 2 is for me right now with Afterburner running properly.

As to be on topic, I'm running the default drivers from the Clevo website, only installed the 12.7 drivers on top and I have ULPS disabled through the registry with Afterburner installed. And it's running far as I'm concerned for Witcher 2 and Max Payne 3, phenomenal.
- I love seeing my HD7970M usage at 0% when I'm not gaming and idling around 35C. I just think that's incredible considering how much of a beast it is.
- And I love having the extra battery life, it may not be much like compared to a Lenovo with 18 hours, it's more than enough for me. And at work I can't hear the fans above my co-workers working.

 

Your post, my concerns, numbered for easy reading. I believe AMD can fix many of the issues with drivers, but a few years of working in limnology research crushed everything but my desire for data.

 

Instead of giving up and blaming AMD and spending endless time saying how awful enduro is and how awesome Nvidia is, and spending that time to get 7970M to run the way you want, my guess, there would be far less complaints on NBR.

I'm leaving this 7970M bashing thread and off to play me some Max Payne 3 that I bought for 50% off and just be dazzled by how smoothly it's playing with Enduro enabled and OC'd with Afternburner.

 

Not really sure why you feel the need to be hostile, but okay, here I go.

AMD messed up. Enduro is awful. Guess what? nVidia's Optimus was awful, too, once upon a time. nVidia has its flaws. The laptop 8600 "incident," for one. Anyone remember the performance of the FX series? I do. Some people thought that would have a software fix until they accepted the disgusting 32-bit truth.

I, as a consumer, probably can't "get the 7970m to run the way I want" without writing my own drivers. I may have had a few years of small-time experience programming 3D engines (good times, BTW), but I would not bet my life on my ability to code drivers for someone else's hardware. Enduro just does not like the games I play. By the way, I saw Max Payne 3. I didn't care for that movie .

And you know what else? I just ordered a laptop for my sister. It has a GTX 660m that is DOA. Everything works well until I start 3DMark11, Unigine, or any other program utilizing the nVidia GPU. Multi-colored artifacts and crashes greet me.

My saying AMD sucks does not mean that nVidia doesn't. I want to get what I paid for regardless of manufacturer because there is only one thing I care about when I deal with a corporation: being right. Am I right about Enduro's awful performance in some games? You bet. Will I think twice about getting another GTX 660m right away because of a potential problem with that batch (the laptop company's forum has a few similar complaints from four days ago)? Abso-tota-lutely.

 

Just wanna add to the chorus.

Got my Sager NP9170 in the mail the 29th with the 7970m. Wow, what a letdown. I'm so disappointed, and before any of you say "Be patient or RMA", I've already done the latter. My RMA was approved by Sager this morning, and it'll be in Fedex's hand tomorrow first thing. Good riddance.

Let's see:

1) Terrible, ATROCIOUS performance in pretty much any game made in the past 2 years. Nothin' like running diablo 3 in medium settings and dropping to 15-20 fps. Wow, amazing. Graphical artifacts missing in other games (Spec ops, the line). Ghost recon future soldier i"m getting 10-15 fps in medium settings. Moving around in Skyrim in medium settings, getting under 30 fps. Don't even get me started on Battlefield 3.

2) I've gotten SIX BSOD's in a single day. Some while just idling, others while restarting, and 1 while swapping a driver.

3) Enduro can't be disabled. Seriously? Sager what the heck were you thinking running the 7970m THROUGH the integrated. Wow...whoever engineered that needs to be slapped and fired. One of the few times in my life I think Alienware actually did something incredibly better than a competitor.

4) No near estimation of driver update that will fix these problems. 12.7 is a joke right now, and offers little to no improvements.

5) Enduro. Just feel this deserves its own point. I don't need to say anything else about it.

Gonna keep my money and wait for the 680m to drop in price in a few months. Ugh..so disappointed. Nothing like having this new $1600 laptop run with worse gaming performance than my 2+ year old macbook pro with bootcamp.

Also, people here saying their games running "fine" or "good" on the 7970m drives me up the wall. Fine, good, awesome...these are all subjective terms. If you want to come here to defend a clearly faulty release product, bring hard numbers. What's fine to 1 person isn't to another. The guy saying he's going to go play max payne because it's running smoothly, and he's dazzled. Give me a break, and I don't even like Kit Kat bars. Someone who had a 10 year old pc and swapped to a new laptop with a 7970m is going to be dazzled by anything. We have FPS measurement tools for a reason. Give me the game you run, the settings, and your FPS. Last, but not least, benchmark tools are absolutely USELESS to measure up how a card is performing with its current drivers.

Oh and one last thing, yes I've tried the stock, the 12.5, the 12.7 beta and even the modded 12.7 beta drivers. And yes, I've tried each with a FRESH operating system installation.

 

awww how cute! now try playing bf3 multiplayer and see if you the same performance and be "dazzled" by it.


and how can we make the 7970m run the way we want when we are stuck with enduro and stock drivers that will actually make the laptop crash when being installed.

 

the 7970m certainly isnt where it should be with enduro but youre problems sound much more severe than the normal under utilization people have had to deal with

holding my breath as i get mine tomorrow......

 

I honestly and earnestly hope you don't have problems. I would much rather know that I had a lemon, and happily reorder another once I get my full refund than know that the 7970m is FUBAR until a few months from now when several other drivers are released.

I was just like you, reading these horror stories waiting for mine to arrive thinking "Naw, this baby's brand new. It's gonna spank games till they call it daddy" and it arrived.

I've NEVER had a faulty/DOA desktop part or built laptop. Maybe I'm lucky, I've been buying/building PC's since 1992.

This was the first time I went back to a "gaming" laptop since Dell's XPS series in the early 2000's. I decided to sell my macbook pro and snag a powerhouse laptop so I can do some games at my girlfriend's store.

So disappointed

On the bright side, you ordered from Xoticpc like I did, and those guys really are awesome. I don't blame them at all for these issues. They picked up the phone when I called their service department, and had an RMA filled out in a few hours. So at least you know if yours DOES have problems, and you don't wanna hang around on a promise of improved drivers, that they'll hook you up with an RMA for a return

 

there was this guy in the np9170 owner thread that said bf3 multiplayer runs "silky smooth" for him but idk how much i believe him i can find the post for you in a sec
might be that he is just unable to tell the drops in fps but idk

 

That's exactly my point that I made in my previous post in this thread.

People who are ok with the 7970m performance in games say: it runs good, it's smooth, its nice, etc. THESE ARE NOT INDICATORS of performance people. These are subjective terms.

People not ok with the 7970m performance: They give FPS numbers and setting indicators.

 

i really hope that i dont have to rma but good to know that if i need to it wont be such a pain with xotic

ive never had a gaming laptop before only desktop
only laptop i ever had was a fujitsu i got for beginning of high school 4 years ago

 

7970M CrossFire is also a complete mess right now. They are not allowed to get a refund or an upgrade to 680M since Dell says the problems should be fixed by new drivers sometime in the "future"...
Completely outrageous

Read both the article and the comments. Everyone is from this forum

A Consumer Nightmare - Alienware M18x-R2 + AMD 7970M Crossfire | Tech|Inferno

 

well not that im one to judge but why would you want crossfire in a laptop seems like an outrageous overspending

id just get a desktop + a less powerful laptop but to each their own

 

I'm sure Enduro will be improved over time. But the real question is when. I went through similar issues with asymmetrical Crossfire on the DV6z where it was supposed to improve performance 20-40%. In many cases it did but not without significant stutter. Not to mention locking out overclocking, then bringing it back in, then turning it off again with each subsequent release. There is still only a single driver that works decently with the machine and likely no future support for improved performance and asym Xfire support.

I want AMD to succeed. I want them to be a solid competitor to Intel and nVidia but with driver issues like this it's hard to keep the faith.

 

Such an ignorant statement.... Some people say why would you want a graphics card in a laptop just get a desktop its cheaper.....

Personally I am not into SLI Laptops only because they are to large, if they could make 2 7970ms into my P150EM i would do it in a second..... So their feelings in this matter are VERY justified in my opinion.

 

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Arguing over which GPU manufacturer is better is stupid. All the more stupid considering they both have issues. It's tiring, unproductive, and disruptive. So grow up and knock it off already. Seriously.

Going forward, the mod team is simply going to start throwing out infractions irregardless of who started what. We really don't care at this point. And we're tired of having to police every thread and delete useless, bickering posts.

Get a hold of yourselves.

Thanks to those of you who exercised mature judgement and refrained from engaging in these incessant flame wars. And thanks to those of you who maintained objectivity and detached yourselves from those who apparently pledged their undying love and fealty to one GPU manufacturer or another.

Right then. Carry on and have a good day.

 

Please listen to the most interesting man in the world. He speaks wisdom.

 

It depends on what your standards are. If 99% of people are happy with > 30 fps in a game then those same may not care about 45fps or 100 fps.
I guess some people are more easily pleased. For those who frequent these kind of sites, we are more likely to quantify everything. My girlfriend, for example, loves her tiny 4cyl car, which is 'gutless' in my opinion, as I prefer V8's. So for some people (or possibly most people , or
Maybe just my gf), it's not all about performance and 'grunt'...