AMD Enduro for the 7970M. Is it supported or not?

I haven't heard any of the resellers weigh in on this.

 

I don't think anybody, resellers included, knows for sure yet.

 

We are trying to beg up a ES, MP, or any sample for literally 24 hours to test a bunch of things. Trust me we are working as hard as we can to see what the answer to that little question is

thanks

 

also if u can test if the card works on HM models!!!!

 

Hello all. I'm still newbie. I'm really considering getting a Clevo with the 7970m. Even if the 7970m does not support Enduro, will the battery life be that bad, what with it being 28nm?

 

It will be similar to how it was in the older Sandy Bridge models- 2-2.5 hours or so for a 100w TDP GPU like the 7970m in the P150. Possibly a little less if you're looking at a 17" model. Even less yet if you're talking the bigger desktop replacement models.

 

Amazing... Mythlogic answered a question about upcoming hardware without a winky face...

 

According to Sager's website graphics switching is available for both Nvidia and AMD cards. Granted, in the specs the it's listed as AMD Power Express and not Enduro, but I don't know if that will be changed to reflect the new name.

 

Is Enduro supposed to be a relabeling of PowerXpress Bacon or is it a new version?

 

Enduro is AMD's version of Optimus

 

Nvidia Optimus = shuts off dedicated gpu when not needed
AMD Enduro = shuts off dedicated gpu when not needed
AMD ZeroCore = puts the gpu in a low power state at idle
AMD Power Gating= powers down parts of the gpu when work load is low. Brings power back up as workload increases..

 

Don't forget this article AMD announces Radeon HD 7000M series with Enduro graphics-switching technology -- Engadget

 

I don't think so. PowerXpress 4.0 came first and was supposed to be the muxless answer to Optimus.

 

Do P150em(use 7970m) support the Enduro?

 

not for sure yet, altho chances are good since mythlogic reported that they got gpu switching to work in the EM series with 6990M cards, so in theory the 7970M should work as well.

cheers

 

Really cuz its be posted all over the forums...
And also the nice little graphic 2posts above


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The big questions is if Enduro is just a renamed Power Express or something entirely different.

 

something entirely different, although using partially the same tech

 

I just hope it isn't incredibly glitchy and I that I can disable it

 

Why the heck is everyone saying it is the same and Optimus, Powerexpress was the same as Optimus, Enduro and Zerocore ARE NEW TECH FROM AMD, read the darn articles for crying out loud it takes 5 minutes. Lol.

 

The article hints that it's almost an updated form of Power Express by saying it's building on that technology:
Across the board, the series ushers in a new feature AMD is calling Enduro, a graphics-switching technology that takes direct aim at NVIDIA Optimus. Building on older AMD technologies like PowerXpress, it doesn't require you to close apps, reboot your system or manually specify which apps will trigger the GPU.

We simply don't know exactly how Enduro works and are speculating if it's going to work in the new Clevo lines. Also, there is confusion because Sager says the new computers support Power Express but say nothing about Enduro. Since the article states that Enduro was built upon the older Power Express technology, we are wondering how likely that these Sagers support Enduro.

 

If enduro doesn't work, but zerocore does ( just speculating), Surely you are going to save masses of power anyway. All you're doing is using the gpu on low power, rather than the igp. It would be interesting to see a comparison of this once the 7000 series are out the wild.

 

ZeroCore only "works" when your notebook is idling and you are not using it.

PowerGating is what come close to Enduro/Optimus. It disables cores on your GPU and only use the ones needed for the light work you are doing. But your GPU still draw more power than the IGP would use if you had Enduro.

Enduro completely shuts off the entire GPU and enables the IGP instead

 

just too bad that the 7970M doesnt support PowerGating. bad call by AMD, if u ask me guys...

 

Even if I can disable it in BIOS I'm happy; I'll be running it 3/4 of the time; I just need to turn it off when I go to class 4-6 hours each day Monday - Thursday so I can take notes in Finance/Securities Analysis/Stats all of my upper division coursework for a Securities Analysis/Financial Analysis degree.

I would be fine with restarting the machine to disable the 7970m in BIOS, as I will only need to do this one time each day and will be running an SSD anyways it will take under 30 seconds ha.

Also Eurocom said they are about to start testing if Enduro or BIOS switching work in 2 days when they get the 7970m's in. They said that its VERY LIKELY that the card will be able to be switched off in BIOS at least, but they have high hopes for Enduro also which would be even better of course [LESS work haha].

 

What's the difference between Power Gating and Power Play (also Power Tune) that is supported by the 7970m? I browsed a document on AMD's website and it seems they are similar. Granted, the article is a few years old, but the 7970m specs list both Power Play and Power Tune. Link to the pdf.

Here is the description they provided. The article goes into further detail.
AMD PowerPlay™ Technology
For many years, nearly all ATI Radeon™ and AMD Radeon™ desktop and notebook discrete graphics products have been equipped with AMD PowerPlay™ (formerly ATI PowerPlay™. AMD PowerPlay™ is a set of technologies which includes a highly advanced form of Dynamic Power Management (DPM) which assess relative workloads to aggressively conserve power (and battery life in the case of notebooks) when the demand on the graphics processor is low. With this technology the GPU can minimize power during light workloads such as idle mode by enabling reductions in voltages, engine and memory clock speeds. In such cases, the GPU is in the lowest power state of voltage and frequency. When demanding workloads are placed on the GPU, AMD PowerPlay™ technology increases voltages and clock speeds to a significantly higher state for maximum performance. High workloads tend to push the GPU into the highest power state. ATI PowerPlay™ technology also supports intermediate power state(s) for tasks of light-to-moderate demand – such as light 3D, video and compute tasks.

 

It doesn`t? Aww thats too bad. That would have rocked, lower power consumption and heat. Some sort of middle ground What about Enduro, is that included with the upcoming notebooks from Sager or does Alienware only have it?

 

@misterhobbs: I think I understand the difference.

PowerTune downclocks the cores and memory and all of them still draw power. Its less, but they are still all active.

PowerGating is different, it shuts down the cores instead of downclocking them, hence reducing heat and power consumption a lot more I would guess

 

mythlogic has reported the functionality of GPU switching in the EM series with a 6990M, thus it would stand to reason that the 7970M would also be supported. only thing needed would probably be proper drivers enabling that feature. hopes are high

 

Regarding AMD powertune VS Nvidia Powergating. Its just different technology, but the result is same.
One uses extremely low clocks and voltages when idle, another shuts down some cuda cores to reduce power consumtion.
Desktop HD7 and Nvidia GT6 cards have shown that idle power draw for either is pretty much the same. I dont see any reason why AMD should lose this fight to Nvidia on mobile market.

Regarding switching between igp and dedicated card from bios. Im 100% confident that this can be done sooner or later. Its been done for years now for both manufactures on different laptop brands.
Im also quite certain that Enduro should work.

 

What's the latest word on this front?

 

Nothing new so far, waiting for the resellers to report back waiting in excitement

 

Well on the sager website, they put that the AMD 7970 Is supported for Enduro technology:

Switchable GPU by AMD Enduro™ Technology - AMD Radeon™ HD Graphics / Intel® GMA HD GPU

So based on that it seems that it should be (BUT ofcourse theres a but) As of right now, there are no official drivers for the 7970, which basically means no enduro technology. To truely find out about Enduro we have to wait for real drivers. For people who upgraded their rigs right now, they won't have Enduro, but it seems as though the sager's will.

TL;DR; AMD+Sager say they have Enduro, Drivers don't work, Wait and see.

 

Enduro is listed as a feature under the specifications of the NP9150 on Sager's website, so I'd consider it confirmed at this point.

EDIT: dasgnurgen beat me by a minute, sorry.

 

While modding the some early drivers for the folks over AW M17x, found nothing with the name Enduro. Late to the discussion but I find this video somewhat useful in explaining Enduro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KCt9D3qlDU

 

Well that's my point, there are no real drivers. Modded one's won't include Enduro. We need the real drivers to come out to see what happens. Also i think that the people who got the M17x added the card themselves and i think it has to have a certain connector for Enduro to work (just like how Optimus requires a special type of connection). But i mean hopefully with the Late-May ETA on the card we can hope to see some real drivers soon enough, if things go well all our questions will be answered come June.

 

Whenever it comes, I'm ready to take the card !


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Posted in the owners lounge. Probably more appropriate here:

Eurocom has posted some type of AMD video driver for their Racer 2.0 (P150em). I was unable to load them on my macbook in bootcamp, but someone else may have more success.

Drivers

 

^ I did take a look at the driver , pretty much the same as the one I modded for M17x owners. I could only find some strings on PowerGate, nothing much

 

As far as I know, Optimus doesn't require any special type of connection - it's just an NVIDIA card on the other end of a PCI 2.0 x16 two way connection, in D3 device power state until woken up by the driver which is in turn engaged by the shim dll injected into every ring1 application.

 

It does required a special connection, if it was simply about drivers. We could have plenty of Optimus enabled laptops.


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It is not simply about drivers, but it does not require a special connection. Just a plain vanilla PCI bus x16 line.

 

Little update: i came across another post on another forum about Enduro and the Clevo laptops. I don't know exactly how accurate this post is so take it with a grain of salt. The person who posted this came with the Manufacturer tag in the forum ( http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1910579 ; last post if anyone is curious for source) And he said that Enduro will work in the Clevo laptops. He also said that this information comes from a sample / test card at a Clevo factory. But like i said i don't know of this forum nor of the quality of this post. Take it however you like.

Edit: thought i'd throw in that personally i have mixed feelings about Enduro. If it works that would be great but at the same time reading up on Optimus (and i know it's not the same but still) it seems like it's a headache to get working right, or working at all. It would be nice with an option to disable it entirely if it causes issues.

 

It needs to be wired in a special way so its not just a regular setup and drivers.

 

I don't know about special, but indeed the HM models couldn't use Optimus because they weren't wired with the necessary connections. The EM's can because they're wired differently. I would comment on what needs to be connected, but I don't know if I'm recalling it correctly so I'll wait for someone who remembers to clear it up..

EDIT:

At the time, Clevo decided that switchable graphics were both too glitchy, and unnecessary for their high end machines.. They've since realized the demand for it, and that's why we now have it

 

That is Jack from Logical Blue One, an Aussie Clevo retailer. I think he even has an NBR account.

If he says Enduro works, you can pretty much take it as fact.

 

I guess I'll have to repeat this ad nauseam: there is no ''special wiring''. There is the HD 3000 (or 4000 now); it owns the head - and then there is the Nvidia card on the other end of the Xeon E3-1200/2nd(3rd) Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) Processor Family PCI Express Root Port. No special wires between them, just the PCI bus. And I guess there needs to be ''special' BIOS support, but then, every configuration needs that anyway..

 

I also saw this in the whirlpool thread; super stoked that Enduro will work; hope this is true! Mine comes in 8-10 days! So excited...

 

What I want to know is if you still need to rely on OEM drivers or if you can finally use drivers supplied by ATI because that is one of the biggest advantage nvidia has over ATI with dynamic graphics, you can always get the latest drivers from nvidia rather than relying on the OEM to keep updating them,

 

Don't worry, either way, once I have the unit, I will mod drivers for y'all all day long haha.

Found some stuff in current driver for 7970m and interestingly only the 7970m has these strings

Spoiler

DisablePCIEGen3Support = 0
DisableGmcPowerGating = 1
DisableDrmdmaPowerGating = 0
DisableStaticGfxMGPowerGating = 1
DisableDynamicGfxMGPowerGating = 1