7970m... Will it ever work as advertised?

Folks, although there is a huge amount of 7970m threads currently. I wanted to start this thread for user such as myself who have come to terms that our cards do not work as they should "largely due to Driver issues etc", and to discuss how likely it is that these issues will ever be resolved.

I personally have exhausted every option, and currently using drivers provided to me directly from Malibal which seam to work the best out of all drivers I have tried to date but still result in random crashes playing DX 11 Games.

Now I just want to discuss how likely it is given AMD's history if we will EVER see updated drivers, and if we are likely to face compatability issues in future releases.

We can also discuss what other options we may have.... exchanging our cards etc...

Please read the rules before posting:

1) It is already quite obvious that the 7970m has issues, if you come to debate against that point please refrain from posting in my thread. We will not be debating whether these issues are present or not.

2) No name calling or flaming of other members. Seriously there are enough threads out there where people resort to calling other members stupid, etc. None of that in this thread please and thank you.

 

take a look at this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ems-i-sent-ticket-clevo-hq-get-yours-too.html

 

Thanks for the link I have seen your thread however my issue isn't even with Enduro. At this point I could care less if my card is being used to the full extent as I was happy with my 675ms performance previously. My issue is I can't not max out some of my favorite games like Max Payne 3 due to constant crashes in DX11 mode...

My understanding is a driver fix for these issues would have to come directly from AMD... Also that the ALienware users are experiencing the same problems.

 

I would say yes. the last few years they seem to straighten out drivers reasonably. secondly most of the issues seem to stem from the enduro driver portion/setup in which even Nvidia took 18 mos to straighten out 85% of Optimus, although I do hope they do it much faster or before we see the 8000 series cards.

for me I have no option as I need the better OpenCL support/speed in the AMD 7970m over the 680m since mine is less for gaming, more for pro apps

as for the 7970 having Issues I tend to disagree in general, without enduro it is one of my most stable and fastest mobile GPU, the issue is either the enduro drivers or the implementation, but do figure some games may need more support

 

Play Max Payne in DX11 is really terrible. But I think it's rather a problem with the Enduro.
According to Notebookcheck, the difference between playing with Enduro and without enduro reaches over 20fps in max payne 3.

Anyway, you may have experienced playing in DX9, and the performance is much better. It does not solve the problem, but it´s an alternative while AMD/Clevo not solve the problem

 

Really sucks for me because its my favorite game by far.... Oh well hopefully one day these issues will be fixed.

 

This is too sad man. Especially when I am about to get my new laptop tomorrow.

How do we go to the warpath against them?

 

Maybe a noob question, but will these drivers you speak of work on the NP9170?

 

A possible solution has been "worked" out: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...679461-my-visit-sager-amd-7970m-solution.html

 

not at the moment

 

To answer your question, yes the 7970 will work as intended eventually. Do you realize that this is the 1st generation of a high-end card on a brand new tech design? Do you honestly expect it to be working flawlessly out of the box........?

AMD will do what it has ALWAYS done, it will fix the issues on their schedule which is unfortunately historically slow. This is the price you pay for a substantially cheaper graphics option.

 

Yeah give it a few (more) months and AMD will eventually get enduro sorted. The GPU itself is not the issue as it runs flawlessly in AW with enduro turned off and in Celvo P150HM which doesn't support Enduro. The GPU is actually a fantastic bit of hardware and once AMD do sort enduro, all the current fuss and complaints will be forgotten.

I have owned both nVidia and AMD GPU's (both desktop and laptop) and really like the AMD products. The price vs performance is amazing and usually don't have any issues with games out of the box (in single GPU layouts at least but that's a different story all together).

I also like the concept of enduro and makes AMD more competitive with nVidia which is always a good thing. We just need to wait until the enduro drivers mature.

 

Keep in mind that AMD releases drivers every month, which means if they knew the issue they may address it in the upcoming months or so.

I sincerely hope the issue will get fixed soon.

 

That is no longer technically true. AMD has announced that they will stop the "arbitrary" monthly updates and only release drivers when it makes sense (whenever they make any major advances). True, that could mean we will see more drivers, but the tone of the announcement suggests that they will be updating them less frequently and will instead use CAPs as stopgaps.

I hope so too, BTW.

 

I'm not surprised at ATI/AMD's lackadaisical driver support. I knew their love it and leave it attitude would rear its ugly head again.

I swore I'd never get another red mobility GPU after dealing with the horrendous support of the 4870 X2 mobility (there was a single driver released for that card... 1 lousy release driver). And here I have with a 7970m. Burn me once...

They know they have a contract with AW now and people will buy their cards since they're cheaper, so likely don't give a toss on continued support.

 

Yes the 7970m will work great. The question is when.

 

............That whole post is filled with inaccurate perceptions, but I digress. AMD will eventually get this sorted out just like they have always done in the past for major issues, yes their driver support is slower than Nvidia, but you knew that going in..........or at least I hope you did.

Bottom line is you get what you pay for, if you want a top of the line high performance card at a low price there has to be sacrifices made somewhere.

 

what you pay is what you get....so are the staffs (at least those writing driver for display chip) in amd got lower pay than those in nvidia so the results are what we consumers have got?

 

I'm not privy to what AMD pays their employee's, but regardless that has little bearing on the quality products that they produce as they have shown time an again that they have the ability to put out quite impressive graphics products (cpu's on the other hand........ ).

The matter of staffing numbers is however relevant to this and I believe AMD's staffing is far lower than that of Nvidia's. This would account for the slower software updates as they would have comparatively less people working on the updates.

I honestly don't understand people's logic regarding the 7970, or any other AMD card for that matter. You're getting a product that is for the most part on-par with it's competitor at a substantially lower price, of course there is going to be another area that is lacking or they would never be able it price it as such

 

At first I though there would be an official 7970m driver on AMD website at July 12th (version 12.7?) But now I have searched many places and there doesn't seems to be any official 7970m driver.

Later I found 7XXXM driver on AMD website, I downloaded it and planed to install, but the installer said my 7970m is not supported by this driver...

Hope someone can prove I am wrong...

 

then why amd staff number is less than nvidia?

 

Obviously because they are a smaller company, I'm not arguing semantics with you though.

 

so if amd asking for higher price and the consumers willing to pay more will they be able to get what they pay?

 

Inaccurate how? AMD released a single driver for the 4870 X2 mobility (their top-end mobile GPU at the time) -- there is no disputing that. There was NEVER any resolution on this and vendors were left on their own to hack out updates. The Asus w90vp, an otherwise great machine, was effectively gimped as soon as it left the factory due to this -- the reason, from what I've been told internally in fact, that Asus will likely never do the ultra high-end again and why they stick with Green in their gaming line.

I guess I am still bitter from that fiasco... And while AMD has gotten better since this time on updating drivers, from several recent reports, both from users and publications, they look to be getting severely lax again. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the card is $1 or $100,000 when it is advertised as working.

 

I swore off ATi countless times after being burned by crummy driver support. The only really great ATi product I've ever owned was the Radeon 8500 128 mb way back in the day. I'm currently very satisfied with my 7970M, however, and the fact that its performance can only improve in the future is wonderful.

 

Are you talking about ATI or AMD?

 

Well either way, it seems they didn't get any better with their drivers support.

 

The sad thing about AMD is their business is in trouble. The easiest thing they could do to really increase their reputation and do well is to hire more people to write better drivers.

Its not easy to outcompete intel on CPU fabs, they are pretty much the king of that game. But they have shown many times they are capable of trading blows with nVidia on raw performance and even features, they nailed multi display. But they constantly drop the ball on drivers. Currently I have a 7950 in my HTPC and for months they have had an endemic problem with HDMI audio drivers. And even when I got it working it still did not flip displays on and off well like nVidia.

It's all bad management because this is really their best way to make their GPU business more profitable which would help their CPU business.

 

They did tap out in the CPU fight against intel right? So they are focusing in portable devices.

I hope they can get their stuff together, intel and nvidia having no competition only hurts the customers.