7970M Still having issues?

Maybe in a mid-range obscure card people wouldn't notice much, but this is their mobile flagship card. Even if it's Sager's fault somehow, AMD should want more market share and should work closely to get any issues resolved.

Not only did they take 3 months to acknowledge an issue even existed, they just deleted both "official" threads for feedback and beta driver testing.

 

Yeah I know I saw that. So so dodgy.

 

Just started a thread about the issue at the AMD official forums. Feel free to sign up and weigh in to give them a sense of the gravity of the issue.

AMD Game Forums - The Clevo 7970M Enduro/under-utilization debacle.

 

This is really troubling to me, I don't want an nVidia card. I'm not going to pay a bunch of money to have a gaming laptop that doesn't game.

So the 'fix' that was out a week or two ago doesn't work at all?

 

No, it doesn't.

 

Seems my choices are now the 680M or going with the M17X...

Why couldn't AMD just release a video bios with enduro disabled?

I don't care about that power saving crap.

 

I forgot where I read it, this can't be applied because of the way Clevo mobos are designed. That's why the Alienware fix can't work here.

 

I Suspect the same QA that led to the Nvidia optimus issue.....Which is exactly what we are seeing with Enduro.

Due to this, I am beginning to wonder if it is maybe as much of a Mobo manufacturer issue as AMD/Nvidia. remember they may make the chips, but they do not make everything else around it.

Take 7970 reference, some of the "cheaper" names have severe coil whine, how ever my 7970 Lighting has none...well it has no coils But the issue is cheap coils, they do the job, but barely. As long as they meet the AMD reference min specs, its ok.

Nvidia has suffered many an issue similar to AMD as well, but AMD is newer to the OEM chip market, Nvidia has never made their own boards like ATI did. So possibly we are seeing some poor implementation issue as well as poor QA/Driver issues.

In the end we the consumer are the issue, we allowed this to happen, accepting a purchase with poor drivers, and accepting that 12-16 months down the road seeing the final potential of a card was fine. It has been along time coming, it happened over a long time, but its where we are now. Release it now, fix it later. All companies are guilty, games, hardware and software alike.

 

Oh I know, but a way to force it in the video card bios, not the motherboard bios.

 

Here guys, I made a simple drawing of the difference between Alienware and Clevo systems. It should explain why they are able to disable Enduro, while you guys are stuck with Enduro. Hope you understand a little more after seeing it

 

Hmm. So what exactly is responsible for the switching? It would be nice to know.

 

While I don't own one, from other ppl's posts it appears the AW multiplexer is controlled by the BIOS, and they have some hotkeys within the system that can toggle that as well.

 

So that other thread about the 7970m has been locked... I feel like this is a lost cause and we probably won't see a fix for a very, very long time. The fact that it has taken this long for either company to acknowledge the problem, there has already been one failed attempt at a fix and the way AMD requested that feedback thread to be removed and their lack of communication makes things feel a bit hopeless. Sager, if you are reading this thread can we please, please have more communication on the matter because as you can see people here are becoming more and more agitated at the apparent lack of concern regarding the problem.

 

Instead of just moaning, continue to be proactive. Put the pressure on AMD...

Sager is not the problem. Sager tried their best. The problem is AMD...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...uro-public-get-backing-prominent-blogger.html

 

So you're effectively saying they tried their best and that they've given up? There is no evidence to support that claim. I agree that being more proactive is obviously the smarter option but I still don't believe that Sager aren't listening/doing anything about it.

 

tell AMD problems dont go away just because threads are closed

 

My question is why AMD and Sager don't want to give us more info on this problem. It is as if they really don't know what is causing it, which scares me. Sager said in their most recent post that they are waiting for more info from AMD and/or Clevo. Doesn't Sager know exactly how the whole system works, or is Sager really just a reseller of Clevos and Clevo is who we should be talking to right now?

 

That is correct. The hybrid graphics on the models that have it can be completely disabled in the BIOS and the system can be forced into using discreet graphics exclusively. FN+F7 will toggle between the IGP and PEG. The M18x is 100% manual graphics switching, where the user switches between integrated and discreet graphics (also using FN+F7) and the hardware not in use becomes completely disabled at the system level. This not only enhances battery life and performance, but it also makes for greater flexibility in using reference drivers that require fewer or no brand-specific tweaks by the OEM.

This is absolutely correct. Furthermore, I would go as far as to say every OEM selling laptops equipped with an AMD GPU is a victim along with the end user. The experience of customers that buy the product unaware of its shortcoming causes financial and reputational harm to the companies selling the product to end users. By all appearances, AMD does not care about the end user. For example, I recently contacted AMD Support directly regarding the lack of good drivers. Their response was, essentially, none of the current drivers available provide direct support for the 7970M GPU chipset and there was no ETA on when they would be releasing one. They went on to state that it was the computer manufacturer's responsibility to take the necessary steps to ensure that AMD products have a usable driver before distributing AMD hardware. As amazing as it may seem, AMD also acknowledged that a reference driver with proper support for the 7970M GPU chipset was not available to the computer manufacturers to use as a starting point.

I don't think you are too far off base in either line of thought. I suspect most of what they know has been shared. As a respected brand name, I am sure Sager have some degree of influence, but the joint efforts of all Clevo resellers and larger companies like Dell/Alienware, which also peddle the product, might be useful in capturing AMD's undivided attention in a very forceful manner. If all of AMD's distribution channels were to halt the distribution of their products, it might jolt them into realization that there is a very low tolerance for malfunction in what was supposedly a flagship product.

 

I'm to the point where I really wish I could return this laptop, but I've passed the 30-day return table by a good margin unfortunately. I don't believe I will be buying another Sager product unfortunately..............probably going to stick with desktops or maybe an Alienware if I have the extra money someday.

It's an unfortunate and expensive learning exercise, I feel bad for the resellers though and LPC-Digital was very easy to work with..............if only the final product was as nice.

 

Imagine how I feel. I ordered one just last week and it'll arrive in another week. I'm kinda lucky that the games I like are fairly old (like WoW or EvE ) so I just hope that I get acceptable fps. I live in the Persian gulf area so shipping it back to the US and back again with a 680M upgrade is simply prohibitively expensive and will be at least ~1k dollars. I should've just stuck with well-known brands with proper driver support and agents in this area for warranty. I might be an owner of a Sager system, but I've personally jumped ship on Clevo stuff, I should've known the cheaper prices had to come off somewhere.

And I thought I was paying premium money for premium high-end components. An AW would have been ~180 dollars more expensive (with some leftover stock RAM to sell) at the same specs and with a warranty that is covered in my area since Dell has a huge customer base. I'm alone in the dark now with hundreds of others waiting to see whether Sager/AMD will do something.

 

I wonder what will happen to Sager's reputation if this problem never gets fixed. In early 2012 I began my search for laptops and all over notebookreview people always said that Sager was up there with MSI and Alienware for a cheaper price, and it was true. It apparently has been true for a long time. Now with this new Enduro technology, Sager may lose their reputation and business as well if they can't figure it out, and for a problem that mostly isn't a result of their effort. Sager definitely cares seeing how much they have responded to us, but it seems like they are indeed also in a position of confusion.

If Sager, Clevo, or AMD is reading this: we are nearly at a point of begging for a clear response and hope that this can be solved. We know none of you are obligated to do any thing about it, but as you have seen, a large amount of people are having these under-utilization issues. We know some one is working to solve the problem, and thank you, but any response to keep us from destroying each other out of anxiety would be very helpful.

 

I doubt they will lose any significant reputation or even sales. Remember that the peeps who browse the forums are a small percent of the market share. And by the time 7990m and 8XXXm cards come out, this Enduro saga will be old news.

Remember that 6990m had issues too. So did 6970m and the 5000m cards. I'm not saying that this isn't a big deal, but with the next hardware refresh this will be yesterday's news.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

I think right now, it's too early to make a judgement to say AMD is ignoring this issue. I'm pretty sure they are. It's not a matter of are they will to fix this problem. The question is, are they able to fix the problem? I posted earlier about the GeForce 5XXX series plague from Nvidia. Nvidia was releasing multiple drivers trying so hard to fix the problem. They were releasing so many drivers that I totally lost track how many drivers were released. They even went as far as putting up an article on how they were going to fix it and how great the fix was going to be. I believe that article was probably on Tomshardware. They drew nice graph, pointing here and there with arrows, how command of the GPU was going to flow. In the end..... the cards were dud.

What I'm trying to say is that AMD remaining silent does not mean they are not aware or not acknowledging the issue. It only meant they are not acknowledging this issue publicly. Acknowledging publicly does not mean the issue can be fixed. Obviously, without acknowledging this issue publicly, most people are still going to continue to purchase this product. We all know it's all about the sales. All we can do is just cross our fingers and hope this can be fixed.