What went wrong with the 7970m's

Right, sorry.

Graphics score is 5656.

... And interestingly, that would seem to be higher than both of the scores that GTRagnarok posted. Hmm! Well, I guess score one for Clevo there? I've been pretty darn happy with the graphics performance in games so far, but I haven't had much time to play at all lately, having gotten mine on Monday and unfortunately going through an uncharacteristically busy week at work otherwise.

 

Have you tried overclocking? how far can you push the Clevo 7970m. If you need instructions on how to overclock the 7970m, you can look at my 7970m install guide, section 10

The upper limit on the dell cards at stock voltage is about 1ghz core / 1.5ghz vram. There are members on the alienware m17x forums that have overvolted their cards and gotten the core to about 1.1ghz. The vram will go to about 1.55ghz

 

Posted earlier today...

 

So, I guess it is now safe to assume the HMs to be incompatible with the 7970M for the forseeable future. Pending a BIOS tweak that may or may not come, of course. That does suck for HM owners who've harbored hopes of potential upgrades for a long while.

 

Does anyone know what kind of testing that eurocom does on their cards? I wonder what they mean by passing the first run and bombing the 2nd and 3rd runs.

And I wonder why the dell cards aren't suffering the same fate? knock on wood, i've pushed my 7970m (dell version) hard for 5 weeks and it hasn't missed a beat.

 

Has anyone gotten a chance to try some game benchmarks with the 7970m in the Clevo model? I would be interested to see if you are getting the same fps as with the Alienware and enduro on. Hopefully it is just an Alienware problem. I would like to get a sagar With the 7970m but not if I'm going to get -10% fps with enduro. I hate the fact that you can't even turn it off on the Clevo.

 

EXACTLY what happend to the 6970M with Clevo notebooks. High failure rate and resellers that refused to sell it after trouble.

If its third party hardware atleast make shure that they use top notch components to support this awesome GPU. So sad to see because it ruin AMDs reputation. Worst case scenario is that more notebook OEMs will ditch AMD and use Nvidia instead.

 

From what it looks like, the fps hit from enduro hardly even matters because fps still ends up being 60 fps+.

it only hurts the future-proofing of the 7970M >.> hopefully Clevo releases a proper BIOS update in order to enable the disabling of enduro.

 

Thats wrong. Quite a few games are under 60FPS with ultra settings already without Enduro. AMD need to fix this ASAP and hopefully a driver update can remedy it. But who knows.
I do wonder if this is explicit only for Alienware or if Clevos will suffer too? If it is only alienware, then it must be a driver issue

http://i.imgur.com/uO6Eh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NQcvJ.jpg

 

They'll ditch their third party component sources as the same issue would apply to Nvidia cards.

 

Thats strange. There wasn`t any Nvidia GPUs that had the same problems as 6970M had. Are you shure they use the same components on both AMD and Nvidia boards?

 

Just about 11 days until 680M is supposed to be announced

 

No, but why would the 6990M not have the same issues as the 6970M? They use the same chip AFAIK. In this case it looks like they changed it and that's where the issue is.

 

Guess i might upgrade to a 680m instead of a 7970m unless they figure out how to make it play nice in the P170HMx.
Probably something to do with Enduro?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Hey peeps. Talking from Portugal here. I have a P150EM delivered yesterday with the new 7970M and so far it's working well. I've installed and played BF3 at max settings. The temps got up to 80ºc but I guess thats normal? I'm not sure, I didn't usually play anything "heavy"

 

I don't think voltage regulators are part of the chip, are they? The chip itself might be fine but if the VRs are malfunctioning, there's a ticking time bomb in every laptop with a 7970 in it.

 

For the clevo cards possibly. Dell cards have their own source.

 

That doesn't make sense. All AMD cards, rather all AMD products that contain silicon, so basically all AMD products are manufactured by GlobalFoundaries. If there is a problem with one, there is a problem with the entire batch. Dell gets their cards from the same source as anyone else, or don't they?

 

Not for the Clevo cards that have already gone out. This has been confirmed by xoticpc - those GPUs have gone through extensive quality control and testing by both Clevo and Sager, and are absolutely functional and stable and do not suffer the same problems as the chips that are causing the delay, or (I presume) the chips being described in the post quoted earlier. The only functional, non-Alienware AMD 7970M chips that have gone out thus far went directly to Sager, as I understand it.

I mean, I'm not entirely sure what's going on. What I do know is that over in the Clevo thread, Justin from xoticpc directly refuted what the poster 'upgradeyourlaptop' said. I also e-mailed my own sales rep from xoticpc and specifically asked if there was *any* word or rumor about a total recall of the 7970Ms in the Clevo laptops, and was also told that he had heard absolutely nothing about it.

Maybe I'm just being optimistic because I *have* a Clevo laptop with a 7970M in it - that's entirely possible. But I'm much more inclined to believe Justin, who has several thousand posts and been reliably answering questions honestly for quite some time on NBR, over this other fellow who just showed up making a vast and sweeping claim that has massive ramifications for every Clevo reseller in the world (not to mention thousands of customers) with no official sourcing whatsoever. Again, maybe I'm just being optimistic, I certainly have reason to be *shrug*

 

Any graphics card is made up of dozens of components of which the core is only one. The core (which goes inton7870 desktop chips) is not being called into question. Rather the surrounding components that the companies use. Dell and sager/clevo use the same pcb design but have them produced in different places using different components.

 

Did not know that. So the chip is manufactured in one location and sent to the location of choice of the OEMs and resellers for soldering onto the PCB then?

Also, I'm not making any claim. All my statements have an "if" in them because I don't know what the problem exactly is. No one does. May be the problem is with the whole batch. May be it was 28 cards that had been scratched because they all came from one box that a bird sat on while unloading and somehow its talons scratched the top layer of PCBs I don't know. If someone is going to be hollow enough to be swayed by speculation, then he might as well wait forever - there are plenty of rumors of GPUs three gens down the line going around on the net. What I (and everyone else following the problems) DO know is that this was discovered more than 48 hours ago and if it was a problem with a small batch, it would have been fixed by now.....again, may be.

 

My post was simply a catch up for you, it in no way said anything about any statement you made, rather what others had said.

Yes, AMD don't have reference MXM cards made (except for prototypes) they just give out a reference PCB layout which people can use.

Basic problems such as PCB scratching would be picked up by X-rays but since the two are made in different places the Dell cards would be unaffected by issues with the clevo cards.

 

Sorry I apologize, may be I should have quoted who I was referring to. It was the other guy who said someone had more credibility because of his posts and what not. True as it may be, well, I explained in my post above

 

I agree with this. And this is probably why the dell cards are shipping in volume but the clevo cards are on hold right now

 

That never ended up being true. Kobalt was spreading that excuse to cover themselves for their shipping delays, and eventual shutdown.

 

So I've been waiting to order my sager with a 7970m until the 680m situation develops, but from what I can tell the 7970m's are having problems with enduro? These problems, however, don't seem to have much effect on current gen games but solely the "future proofing" of the card. Would it be crazy to assume that the issues with enduro will be hammered out before the next gen games come along and you would need that extra 5-20%? I'm thinking opting for the 7970m instead of waiting for the 680m's because I'm assuming the 680m will have similar supply issues and bugs when it is relaesed

 

Nobody knows when the 680m will actually be available for purchase in the open market. Nobody knows how it will perform to the 7970m. Nobody knows how much it will be costing compared to the 7970m. So there is a lot of uncertainty concerning the 680m right now. So it is completely up to you to decide what you want to do.

If you need a laptop right now, then go with the 7970m from Alienware. But they seem to be suffering from issues while using Enduro which seems to be limiting performance when turned on in certain games. But that can be disabled in the Alienware systems.

While the same cannot be disabled in the Clevo/Sager laptops as for now, people who have bought the laptop have tried gaming and have not found any considerable difference in the FPS while gaming with the Enduro ON when compared to the FPS put up in certain sites such as Notebookcheck with Enduro OFF. May be the issues with Enduro in the Alienware are not reflected in the Sager/Clevo. Hence if the issues in the Alienware bother you and the price certainly takes you back, then order with one of the Sager/Clevo resellers and wait till mid June and most probably the issues concerning the card will be cleared and you will be able to get your laptop without any issues.

If you think the current issues regarding the 7970m are making you nervous then go for a 660m/670m/675m which should take care of high/very high gaming and you can probably upgrade your GPU later once the 7970m has stabilised and the 680m is also out depending on which favours your needs better.

It would be best though to make a decision after the 680m has been announced which I suppose would be in another 10-11 days according to Cloudfire.

 

^ Who are you referring to?

 

lol tat was for the person who posted just above my post... Tcm24 to be specific

 

Don't fret about enduro. Optimus was dreadful when it first came out too. With a few driver revisions, it will be much better

In Alienware, you just go with the dedicated graphics and shut off integrated. No enduro, problem solved.

 

OK Slick, AW seems like can solve the problem with shutting off integrated. But what about in Clevo/Sager case with 7970m?
Im planning for a long time to get a gaming laptop, and thinking about Clevo, my brother got HM version with 580m and seems happy about it. Just still waiting for 680m to be announced, so i can make an informative decision which GPU to get seems like 5 th of june release of 680m? will see!
And btw, any official driver updates for 7970m been released yet from AMD? 7970m shipping in volumes, and i havent noticed any drivers :-o

 

The Enduro cannot be switched off in the Sager/Clevo laptops.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-disable-enduro-7970m-clevo-p150em-170em.html

But that has not stopped users from using the laptop to its fullest potential. At least according to a few users here their laptop is performing well and is not experiencing the FPS issues that the Alienware seems to suffer from. But we can only confirm the same when we have solid FPS from users that are pasted some where in this forum and can be compared with the results from the Alienware systems.

The below thread was started by a member who has received his P170EM. He has had no issues overclocking the card in spite of the Enduro function being active.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/665543-clevo-p170em-i7-3610-7970m-arrived.html

Also if you looked up in this thread, the member named kaworu876 mentioned that his fps scores in certain of the games are more inclined towards the fps scores from the Alienware with the Enduro OFF.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/661430-update-radeon-7970m-sager-resellers-105.html

But yes. Still we do not have proper fps scores from any user so as to compare the performance of the Sager/Clevo to that of the Alienware. So as for now we will just have to wait for further information from one of the customers who bought it.

 

I wasn't saying he is upgading the m1730 but upgrading to the machine he said with the 7970m and common sense shows even if a 7970m worked in a m1730 the cpu would be so slow and bottleneck it anyway.

 

thanks guys. unfortunately I cant go for AW because I'm a college student and a 17" laptop just isn't practical for me. I'm going to have to go with the sager/clevo unless the 680m is released and blows my mind before i order which will probably be mid June. So i guess i'll just wait to see who gets the ball rolling quicker

 

I don`t think 680M will be available for purchase in mid June. Atleast not official, but maybe you can get some through Ebay or other channels etc.

So 7970M will be the first one available for shure.

 

If you cannot purchase a 9150 with a 7970m then get the 675m. Wait until next year, then upgrade. The 675m isn't a bad GPU. Far from it.

Also, just because Enduro cannot be switched off on Clevos without hardware changes does not mean that AMD won't release drivers that improve performance with Enduro.

 

that's news to me. What fps issues?

 

The Enduro performance issue on AW.

 

oh that...well, Enduro is an amd thing. So i would say its a Enduro issue not an AW issue. The sagers will be affected too

 

most likely clevos will be affected but there seems to be benchmarks in this forum from people who has the first batch of clevo 7970 that posted better results than alienware while enduro is off. and future drivers may increase performances from enduro.

 

most likely clevos will be affected but there seems to be benchmarks in this forum from people who has the first batch of clevo 7970 that posted better results than alienware while enduro is off. and future drivers may increase performances with enduro.

 

Maverick, why do you like the 675m? The 675m is a 580m rebranded and the most power hungry laptop single card out. The 7970m I believe took 17w less then the 675m on a game and performed virtusallu 80% faster overall.

Put it in simple terms if the io wants a modern laptop get a gt 650m or gtx 660m and have it very portable. Its funny as 50w cards perform the same. Nvidia screwed up big time as the gt 640m to 650m to 660m kepler gpu's have virtually 10% improvement each time. in terms of direct x 11 performance kepler is 2x performance per watt.

 

There was a Sager owner, who said he's seeing performance on par with what AW owners were reporting with Enduro OFF, which has had some people questioning whether the Clevo also has reduced performance with the feature enabled.

We need to arrange some head to head, mirrored testing to know for sure.

 

thats what i said brosef.

 

I think the biggest thing that went wrong with the 7970s is the lack of crossfire driver support. Seems the Clevo guys got stuck with some botched/low grade components but I don't fault AMD's chip for that.

 

I think he was just pointing out that the 675m is still a capable video card. While it doesn't have the performance of the 7970m, it's still a viable option if the 7970m isn't available or won't come in time. Just 4 months ago many referred to the 580m as a monster of a card, but as we all know, perceptions change and perception is reality.

 

What is Enduro?

A google search turns up all kinds of results that are not related to gaming or AMD products.

 

AMD's version of Nvidia's optimus.

 

Essentially, it's AMD's version of Optimus and it was just recently implemented so there may not be a lot of info on google.

Here are two videos from AMD:
video 1
video 2

They are just advertisements and don't really get into technical details. There are a few threads floating around the Sager/Clevo and AW forums that explain it a bit.

 

Shouldn't people have the first shipment of Clevo with Radeon 7970m by now? Its good to hear from those who has received their laptop saying that the laptop isn't too much affected by Enduro. I'm just confused on how it can affect one machine while not affecting the other. Its the same card with same cpu and everything.