AMD 7970M Survey | Opinion on Current State

So the only updated hardware from AMD is the mobile 8xxxM series, and as you can guess, it will be 7xxxM rebrands for the most part. Their driver team leader has stated that their focus will be on HD7000 for the foreseeable future.

That being said, I am among those who were hoping that meant AMD will put more focus on GCN mobile support. I'm just curious your thoughts. Disregard that I am often aggressive about this topic, just reply with your opinion and vote. Thanks.

Once there is plenty of data collected here, I'd like to forward this tread to Thracks and a few other interested parties.

 

Personally I'm still waiting for Enduro performance to only be 5% behind dedicated, I haven't seen that in any game so far. I still have issues with zero core not kicking in all the time. And I still have DX11 graphical corruption in FC3 and I have striped and blocky and aliased and flickering dynamic shadows in multiple games.

 

Don't know what to answer. I haven't really experienced any dire problems since 13.1, but the list of games I've been playing has been rather short. Haven't really searched what kind of fps I should be getting in the games I play, and therefore I have no reference point to which I could compare the performance of my 7970M. The biggest problem at the moment is that the power settings do not stick. I have to set games to high performance every time I boot the pc.

There was supposed to be other improvements to Enduro after 13.1 (I think it was mentioned in one of the Anandtech's articles) and I hope they just got pushed back until the latency issues affecting all gcn cards are fixed.

 

i dont realy got any enduro-problem in the games what i played, but im sure there some space to improvement)

 

I'm running 13.2 beta 6 and it is significantly more stable than previous drivers. However I'm still experiencing screen tearing and the like especially during cut scenes. Gpu utilization seems to be ok as does enduro but would love to be able to turn enduro off.

Also getting black boxes in Fc3.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Screen tearing occurs when your FPS is higher or lower than your screen refresh rate. To alleviate this, simply enable v-sync when your average FPS are higher than 60. If your average FPS are lower than 60, try using this software tool to help lower frame latency and automatic V-sync adjustments: RadeonPro: Radeon Games Profiles Automation Tool

 

Yep, I typically have v-sync on and achieve 60 fps mostly. But am still getting what I would describe as screen tearing (could have the wrong name ) but I get horizontal tears in darksiders 1 and 2. Am pretty confident it would happen in other games but these are the only 2 I have been playing recently. Is this not happening for anyone else?

Cheers for the link will check out it out.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

RadeonPro doesn't work with Enduro cards, I have yet to get it work, even with all the suggestions he had. Japamd really hasn't shown any interest at all to get it to work.

I've asked him about many times and so has another mobile user, japamd just shrugs. I don't foresee that changing any time soon.

 

I use the software regularly on my Desktop HD7970 and just assumed it would work on the mobile card. Thanks for the heads up.

 

with latest beta driver, simply comparing the new 3dmark results with alienware/hm series can tell enduro never fixed. the driver team can fix problems with crysis3 with several betas in a short time but none for enduro. you can tell we are ignored.

 

Really hope AMD takes the opportunity to fix it since they plan on introducing HD8000M.

 

if amd find out it is hardware flaw and fix in 8000m series, i can tell we have zero chance. if 8000m series got the same problem , we still have hope

 

definitely software-related, since aw/hm series are using the exact same gpus only switchable graphics disabled, thats all.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

I still get underutilization where it matters most: in the large areas of games. There are still times I see 50-60% in large areas of borderlands2 (areas of sanctuary, highlands hyperion outlook), and crysis2.

But the gameplay with borderlands 2 is noticeably smoother. 60fps feels like 60fps.

Hitman absolution seems to have been forgotten about, but the utilization is horrible as well (Chinatown as one example), the police office as another, and as someone mentioned, even if I turned down the settings, there is no increase in performance.

I can't do fullscreen gameplay with DX11 settings in crysis2. Otherwise, I get the ATIdxx error or something like that. I have to play windowed. Same error occurs with bioshock 2 with DX10 settings.

installing the beta drivers wasn't fun either (BSODs), until I switched to windows 8.

I've learned to live with this AMD card and drivers..... but I get really jealous everytime I see someone with the 680m in their sig. I'd take my chances with NVidia if given a second chance.

 

DX9 utilization, much better then previous drivers, but still not staying above 90%, and fps does dip to 20-60+ and averages 30 for an 2010 game~ Vindictus

 

I really would like to know what happened, I mean when AMD released that 12.11p driver for enduro I thought the problem would be solved in a few weeks later.
However AMD had changed the focus to optimize performance for upcoming games like FarCry3, Crysis 3 and Hitman and totally forgot their mobile products. Now it seems that they are not even trying to get this issue solved.
I'd like to have at least more updates.... maybe @catalystcreator writing ''hey 7970m users, we are working for making your gpu finally worth the money''

 

AMD is now focused on rewriting the memory management code for the GCN cards in order to reduce the latency problems. Hopefully more Enduro updates will follow once they got that sorted out.

 

It came, it saw and ultimately... it was never fixed.
That is how Enduro will be remembered..

 

When enduro was released, it was a total nightmare and almost all my fauvorite games were unplayeble, like battlefield, shift 2, f1 etc.. I'ts been a long time till new working drivers came out, which were better, but still had a lot of flaws. With 13.1 and 13.2 betas a lot of issues were solved, but still as an battlefield 3 enthusiasm I can tell the utilization is far from perfect, and till 12.11 beta I dind't see any progress. In large battles framerate still drops under 30 no matter what settigs, and I can achieve stable fps only in small maps with small amounth of people. On non enduro systems it works much better. There are many older games that still dont work properly, and I doubt they will, but at least new games which I'm surprised, are working without issues, like Crysis 3, Tomb raider and DMC (except for those damn black boxes in FC 3 ). They all can achieve more than 95 % utilizaition and flawless gameplay. Hope Amd will try to improve this enduro crap, and make it like they said , not more than 5% diffrence between non enduro system.

 

I can see that AMD have come on a long way with the 13.1 driver but I am worried Enduro has become a lesser priority now.

Hoping to see some more optimization drivers soon as games like Hitman are unplayable for me.

That said I'm enjoying many others at 60+ FPS such as dishonored. So far impressed with the 7970m but its not quite there.

 

so we need another petition?

 

Agreed. If the new line of cards drop Enduro in favor of some other solution, one should stop hoping for further fixes.

 

I don't know what could get AMD to listen, we've been asking AMD to prioritize mobile for years and they continue to refuse. The only solution I have for now is, I won't be buying AMD again for a the foreseeable future, Intel and Nvidia simply have better technology and performance. There is no question that Kepler is more power efficient, runs cooler and has better enthusiast support. Nvidia supports overclocking, AMD does not. AMD actively tries to dissuade you from overclocking and provides no recourse for mobile users, no OverDrive on Enduro machines. This is part of why I think so many on Windows 7 are having instability, Afterburner is using unofficial methods which are not compatible with PowerPlay/Enduro/Zero-Core/ULPS.

 

yeh i will nvr touch anything from amd from now on. just one issue can last so long

 

enduro? never heard of it... 7970M kicking butt on my HM machine

 

Haha, four votes for "what is Enduro?" Good to get some humor in sometimes.