AMD scheduled to release major update to enduro platform - promises unified driver

AnandTech - AMD

Hmz, I guess we will see.

 

So there are some Enduro enhancements coming by the end of the year. Hopefully they aren't just facelifts for the UI. They do point out that some performance enhancements are coming too and I hope that those will actually fix the fps drops that people are having, instead of just increasing the max fps.

 

Delete....

 

Finally an update.

 

end of the year? and 8970 will be announced at the end of the year?

 

I am tired of promises.....I bought this expensive laptop with the 7970M because of promises....and look where it got me 4 months later. If AMD or a Clevo reseller happens to read this, I want you to understand one very simple fact. You have lost this customer for life.

 

If you read the article, it doesn't address the issue of performance. It's mostly just a UI update at this point. AMD said they know there is performance issue, but didn't say they fixed it. It's still broken.

 

Agreed... I think every year the laptop market for gaming enthusiasts such as ourselves is going to get bigger... and to be blunt honest I do not know if I would go Clevo/Sager again after this fiascle..."I KNOW I wont consider AMD".


I went with my Clevo laptop because I wanted a laptop that was respectable enough to bring to a meeting in the board room at work, but still have the gaming power i desire....

With advances in laptops such as the Macbook Pro and the new Razer laptop using the 660m, I think I will have lots of options when I get my new machine.

I will likely be selling this laptop and purchasing a newer model in spring of 2013...... and guess who wont be getting my business??

 

Yes but if you look at it, and they decouple the drivers (Intel + AMD) AND they produce reference drivers, then while yes they didn't directly address performance, at least it will be MUCH easier to get updates for everything Plus they're working on the performance part, don't worry =)

 

Actually they said that the performance of the 7000m series, especially the 7970M, hasn't been optimized yet, and that a performance fix is coming either with the "october driver" or the one coming in Dec. However, it doesn't directly speak about the performance issues we are facing.

But still, my hopes are up again

 

:thumbsup:

thats exactly what i understood of the article...

Many have said in past posts: "At least I want AMD to aknowledge my performance issues and that they are working on it.. "
Well you have your wishes come true, and probably this has been going on for a while now.
Dont think no one listens just because no one answers...

There is no golden eggs hen, but that doesnt mean we wont get to the finish line in the long run.

We got SAGER, Mythologic and ANANDTECH pressing AMD, even if some of them formally shut down, some post in the forums and other publish articles. I am sure MALIBAL, Gentech, XOTIC and many others are also silently pushing the cart.
The snowball is growing and AMD has certainly to step aside and roll with it or get crushed.

regards
Voz

Jarred offered to test some games in its "new driver" system, i posted some i have read here, but more precise instructions from some of you people who actually OWN a clevo with 7970 would be very helpfull (mine is still far away from me).
Post on the first pages, there is a comment titled:

"RE: My consumer confidence is low, and I don't think I'm alone"

some of Jarred's (ANANDTECH) comments here, i think they are highly reassuring and are a good example of what many other resellers are doing to and hearing from AMD.
Also take notice Jarred is answering comments on the spot and very fast, great concern i would say, thumbs up for AT!.
Take notice that the comment section does not grow linearly, you have to review from page one to see recent replies to early comments..

so we are not alone people, have hope!

Quotes from JARRED from now on:
//////
They're saying something via us, if that helps. They're saying, "We're finally going to start updating the drivers." There were no promises of Enduro drive updates prior to this point, so this is a big step. As for the drivers being poor on release, well, that's hardly a shock for a brand new hardware architecture -- all the more reason to not buy anything without the guarantee of driver updates.

I'm sorry people purchased Enduro laptops and got burned. I have specifically recommended against doing so in the past. Now I'm saying that AMD is working to correct the problem. Is it corrected now? No. Will it be corrected soon? Maybe. Would I purchase or recommend an HD 7970M laptop right now? Definitely not (unless it doesn't have Enduro).

I would wait until at least the official public driver release, and probably one more release after that. By then 7970M is ready to be replaced by 7990M or something faster, but I suspect 7970M will be near the top of AMD's mobile GPU stack for at least another nine months. If they want us to recommend it, they need to fix the drivers.
///////////////
///////////////////////
Or how about this scenario, since we're just making stuff up.

HD 7970 released, along with other GCN products. Management says, "Okay, desktop parts are out; get the mobile stuff shipping ASAP." Engineering gets the hardware ready and the driver guys say, "We're still working to address some concerns with drivers." They're told it's good enough for now and they start shipping. Then the forums light up with people saying, "OMG 7970M is terrible!" Management goes into a frenzy and tells the drivers people to fix the problem after marketing promises things will be fixed "soon". Unfortunately, marketing is writing checks that the drivers team can't cash.

Eventually, there's a meeting where the drivers team says they need to invest three or four solid months of work into fixing the underlying issues. Marketing knows that you can't come out with a statement like that, so they tell everyone to go silent and just wait for things to get better. Finally, the drivers are nearly ready and it just so happens that AnandTech has a 7970M review they're working on. It's a good opportunity to show that things are about to change, so they take it.

Heck, let me go one further. Here's an excerpt of what I sent to AMD (the whole email is about 4X as long):
-------------------
My conclusion for now, unless something can be done to address the situation in the next week or two, is that mobile gaming enthusiasts are far better off with NVIDIA GPUs, even if it means spending more (AVADirect charges $274 extra to upgrade from 7970M to GTX 680M). And actually, given the choice between a GTX 580M/675M Optimus and HD 7970M Switchable, it's $120 less at AVADirect to get the GTX 675M and you'd end up with a more consistent experience and regular driver updates.

To address the problems, AMD needs to get their switchable graphics solutions integrated into the regular driver updates, and users need to be able to update the AMD and Intel graphics drivers independently. Until that happens, I am extremely hesitant to recommend any AMD switchable graphics notebooks -- I'd rather have a discrete only HD 7970M or even 7730M/7750M/7770M with driver updates than to get switchable graphics without driver updates. This is pretty much the same thing I said a full year ago, and as far as I can tell virtually nothing has changed as far as the UI and driver updates.
-------------------

AMD's response was that they were working to fix the issue and they had pre-release drivers to show me, with the understanding that these drivers will be available sooner rather than later. And they showed me exactly that: updated drivers that they're saying will work for all Enduro (and PowerXpress 4.0 and later) laptops. They're not out now, but we have a deadline of October 31 with the potential to see them as early as this month. If AMD doesn't deliver, you can bet I'll have more to say on the subject.

/////////////////////////////

 

Check out the update to the article. They have duplicated the utilization issues. Trust me, you guys WILL get a fix now.

This post by Jarred in the comments speaks well:

 

Yeah, always good to have Anandtech onboard

 

The paragraph you quoted form Jarred is not the most significant or bright, to say 0,5 si significant compared to 16... but we can let him speculate if he wants to.
The essence is that YES, they are now aware of the more grave issue of ENDURO, and hopefully they will adress it..
Please all you that have problems, make comments on the article so that Jarred might try to reproduce them, specifically games and % GPU usage, specify all you can, like maps, rounds, etc.

The idea is that Jarred tests all the games and situations and can feed this info directly to AMD, this is the open door we all waited for!

regards
Voz

 

am i the only one here who has a 7970 and hasn't had 1 problem with it, its drivers, or enduro???

 

No, i havent had issues either, but then again i havent even received my P150 EM yet.
Maybe you have an AW with enduro off? then you are surely one happy fellow, but that doesnt mean you dont have issues, but only that you are not using enduro.
On the other hand if you own a clevo machine and have no issues is probably you havent pushed your system to the limits, try some of the games and settings many have posted here and you will probably get the same (faulty) results.
7970M works, but in many games it works like a much cheaper card, and THAT is the point that makes all the waves and has people outraged.

 

-lol wut?

-whats an AW?

-enduro is on, always. switches back and forth fine.

-well, the games i've been playing at higher settings are guild wars 2, witcher 2, skyrim, max payne 3, etc...

-I see, well here's to hoping that it will perform up to everyone's expectations after this major update, i'll be looking forward to seeing the difference as well.

 

Try to lower the graphics settings in your games and see if the fps gets any better, cause it will not.

 

Dude you are speculating and you dont even have the hardware yet!! Jarred said MANY TIMES there will be two driver updates in the next little bit. They still have yet to optimize the 7970m performance. This stuff WILL GET FIXED.

Jarrod already reproduced the problem. People don't need to post up more results, just WAIT. AMD is working on getting the new 'version' of Enduro out the door and once that is done they can focus on driver updates. The new version of enduro should separate the intel and amd driver so they can be installed separately just like on nVidia setups.

This is NOT a rumor. It is NOT speculation. It is FACT.


The second and third paragraphs are the most important in that quote. Especially this bit:

The question is: can the issues be addressed with driver updates? For most items, I would say definitely, and that's why this article was done. I could have titled it: "AMD Is Finally Committing to Regular Driver Updates for Enduro" and left the content blank and maybe people would have understood the point a bit better. It's not that Enduro IS fixed; it's that Enduro CAN be fixed -- provided AMD keeps updating the drivers.

 

I'm just glad my E425 (PX4.0) will be able to take full advantage of these up comming fixes from AMD/Enduro. Lenovo released an updated AMD video driver for my computer a few months back but has since pulled it from the drivers & support site. Now its not even available anymore!? What the heck? Why would they do that?

I downloaded it & kept it in my backups.

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk

 

No offence to anyone at anandtech or here, but if AMD really said all this, why not make it an official statement on their website, instead of going through anandtech?

You would think AMD would want to make this announcement as public as possible, not third hand through some review of enduro.

 

AW= alienware.
For the average user the issues are not really noticeable, so its good to hear you dont complain.
Most problems arise in multiplayer games, like BF3 for 64 players.

OH I couldnt agree with you more, second and third paragraphs are right on the money. My comment referred to the first paragraph, i might evidently be wrong since i am no expert, but the explanation of bandwidth doesnt seem reasonable (if that could affect FPS no card would perform right). I fully support Jarred and this first paragraph its not really important in the whole matter anyway.

Not having the hardware myself doesnt mean i cannot have my opinion and investigate these issues.

I do not agree Jarred doesnt need more feedback from card owners, he requested it himself:

Anyway, you sound very confident about the FIX getting done for sure, i support that notion, even being more of a noob than you clearly are. I dont have the hardware yet, but I do own it and hope its fixed before i get my laptop in a week or two.

best regards
Voz

 

Wrong. I've experienced low fps dips (and sometime just persisting low fps coupled with low dGPU utilization) in SC2, WoW, Dota2, HoN, and EvE online (and those are the only games I play). The last time I've seen 20-25 fps in a major city in WoW -a laughably old game- was in 2007 when the Burning Crusade expansion was released with upgraded gfx engine, on my 2004 Nvidia 6600GT and even that was gone when the settings were partially lowered. I'm often seeing the same fps nowadays on a 2012 flagship card.

many other users report the same results. As a matter of fact the more users try games (specially older ones that trigger the Enduro switching glitch it seems) the more deficiencies they discover, so I don't know where you get off pontificating, no offence.

 

I'll believe it when I see it. As of right now, I have very little expectations of the Enduro being fixed on this supposed driver, I believe it will be just a UI facelift. I don't think it will even register 3D games properly. As of right now, I have to create a profile for each game since Enduro fails to trigger dGPU with most of my games.

 

As they didnt specifically say it would be fixed in the upcoming driver, I don't think it will be, as that is something they would probably tout in the release notes at least. However the next driver or the one after that...

They really said it all. It wasn't a general announcement, it was in back and forth conversations with Jarred@AT. They typically do not come out and make announcements unless some sort of hardware site prods them, and then that site makes the announcement. This has happened in the past with both nVidia and ATI/AMD at HardOCP, for example. I don't get why it is so hard to understand. It's like you guys don't WANT this to be fixed, you just want the drama to go on forever. Sheesh.

 

Agreed. This is about as much as we will get, until they the release the first actual driver. We have a concrete timetable now and they said performance fixes are coming with the final drivers, or the ones after those. I now believe that this whole Enduro issue is because of the messed up drivers. There has been only 1 driver release for switchable graphics configurations (the stock drivers), and they are a mess. We need the unified drivers, and so does AMD.

Now you will either make the switch or stick with your card and wait for a fix. If your reseller doesn't want to switch and you do, take it up with them. And yes, we should still keep the matter public and on the foreground, but cut down on bit..ing since it gets us nowhere.

 

I only answered to one valid question, and 25 FPS IS NORMAL for many non expert/non demanding users (so clearly they dont complain), i am not saying its acceptable because AMD offered and charged for a much higher performance. Also you must consider that not ALL GAMES have issues and if a user plays a game that runs smooth he is entitled to say he does not have any problems with the card.

You SHOULD post those issues on the anandtech's article comment section, Jarred asked for feedback and what you are commenting will be highly useful if he can reproduce it and test it.
The whole point right now is to report the issues to anandtech wich SAID is communicating directly with AMD, they HEAR him.
So dont waste your time trying to make a point HERE (that has been achieved many posts ago), go and comment with proper details and figures so Jarred may help you and all of us, lowering the tone so people may think you know what you are talking about and not just a child kicking chairs in a rage...

you should check my posts before saying i am pontificating, i really am on the GET THIS CARD DRIVERS FIXED wagon, in case there was any doubt..

regards
Voz

 

I couldnt have said it better........

I DO understand the users wich got this cards 4 months ago and still cant use it properly, they truly have a right to be pissed BEYOND remedy, and probably only want to destroy AMD and NOT fix the driver issue (so they CAN destroy AMD)... dont be so hard on those who are RED HOT ANGRY.

As i a am NOT that pissed i try to contribute as I can to rally people in the good direction, wich is getting AMD to release proper drivers and keep being the ONLY company that rivals Nvidia.

keep in mind that if AMD were NOT around we would probably be discussing about a similar driver issue about Nvidia 460M or something like that (wich would probably be the latest card released this year...), and drivers would come out every other year or so.... IF.....

sometimes one pays the cost, but many more times one wins in the long run for the competition.

HOPE

Voz

 

I agree. I'm not quite saying there's an ulterior motive behind this article since I don't have facts to back that up with, but I asked this very same question. I even titled my first comment "AMD has their hand all over this!" I felt like Jarred regurgitated whatever AMD dictated. I want AMD to say it themselves so that it's on record that they said it. Not through a computer hardware blog, albeit more or less reputable, where AMD can deny anything and everything.

 

Glad to see someone here sees it the same as I do. I've said it over and over, and I really don't want to get anyone's hopes down, but at this point AMD has to just come out with it. There's no sense to get excited over something that could be nothing... again. We'll wait and see because that's all we can do. The difference is for me, I've already accepted that AMD might not (90% certain --even willing to bet on it) that they will not fix this or that by the time they do, I would have already upgraded to the next generation of GPUs.

 

1- Stop ending every post with "Regards, Voz" This is a forum not a Christmas card.

2- I was the first from the forum to comment on AT's article, second overall. I posted here encouraging an avalanche of posts (not that it wouldn't have happened otherwise).

3- 20-25 fps on WoW is not normal for any type of user. You have no idea what you're talking about and clearly haven't played the game. WoW famously runs on most computers and achieving a high fps (40+) isn't difficult at all. Perhaps to you the game BSODing is what constitutes "abnormal" but we're well into semantics now, a field you seem to like.

4- Don't instruct anyone what to do or how, no one appointed you leader of the effort and you clearly lack the skills or even the practical knowledge to do so. You don't even have the laptop yet, some people here have been struggling with it since early June.

5- Some will be angrier and b***ier than others, and some have more patience and clarity of mind. They all are effectively losing money right now, so you using multiple capitalized words to reflect this tranquil sage-like authority arguing a minor tangential point in the issue comes off as condescending and annoying.

Just saying.

 

Chill out, i am not your enemy.

It all comes down to this:
Either you wanna contribute to a solution or you dont.

All your other remarks are just what i have been saying in many posts and sites. That you dont agree with some things I also said its YOUR privilege, same as i am entitled to have an opinion.

PLEASE post those WOW numbers in the article, it might help a lot in Jarreds effort (is that nicer to you?). I really dont get why there arent more figures, numbers, games, and GPU %s posted in ANANDTECH's article, he even updated it with some of the info received by comments. I would post some but cant report things i havent done myself.

Now if you think NBR is a better place to post and spend time, think again, because HERE is where a long and very informative post was unilaterally closed without any regard to us forum members. I meant no offense to NBR, actually is the best forum for this topic i found so far, but we get no direct communication to AMD here, besides the deletion of an active thread (something Anandtech actively said wont be done with comments on their article)

Needless to say i am pushing the cart towards a solution, asking and suggesting, not TELLING, people what they SHOULD (this is a relative and not absolute term by the way), not MUST or WILL, do.

maybe you gave up because you already suffered enough, understandable, REALLY understandable.

Dont think i got it free, maybe my laptop is not here yet, but i already paid for it (around US2000 like many) and wont even have a chance to change my card because its been bought oversees by a relative, and by the time i get it the 30 days will be long past....
And i can feel even MORE stupid than many of you (something known to make people angrier), because i made my homework researching before buying and still went for the 7970M. Even if at the time the debate was still 50/50 and many knowledgable people still recommended going for the AMD card in a price/value decission.

There are two ways of getting something done, YELLING and kicking the floor at the person you want to get help (support) from; or ASKING and cooperating with that person to get results, something i call "Help me help you" approach.
Believe me i have tried both approaches many times in life in different situations, and almost always i get better results on the second aproach, not to mention you might get a "get the heck out of here" response with the first.....

AND that doesnt mean you are not entitled or have the right to be angry, wich you absolutely have if you ask ME, BUT no one listens to angry people.

Its not a thing of faith at this point, even I may think that the fix wont ever come, or it will be too late when it does, but at least i can say i tried and helped.

Needless to say "I TOLD YOU SO" is always the most annoying and useless phrase of them all.....

regards (and i will end my posts as i please, didnt you tell me NOT to tell people what to do or think...)

Voz

PS: without semantics we would have no clear communication, i am sorry if my way of expressing isnt the best or the one you are most familiar with, i am new to this forum and also my native language is spanish and not english.

 

Dear Vozier,

Well had you bothered to check most of the threads that sprang out on a daily basis here, and on other forums, you'll see that we tried our best to log/explore the issue at lengths. Only about a month ago people were still arguing that it's just BF3 that suffered from the Enduro issue ..etc. After 4-5 months people are at wits' end.

I -a newcomer myself- in addition to many old-timers started threads on AMD/Rage3D and got in touch with people in the industry.

I don't see what you've contributed to the effort except coming late, not knowing what we've tried to do so far, and then try to assert your intellectual alpha-malism by telling us how we should or shouldn't approach an issue. A tip or a suggestion is one thing, but lurking in every thread to tell people to stop "whining" is another. You have no argument and the redundant wall of text you typed could have been shortened to: "Take your anger to AnandTech" which we all did reporting various aspects of the problem.

AMD and Sager know about the issue quite well and Jared edited his own article and added almost a full page detailing the Enduro issue with various games, all we can do now is continue the discussion, the pressure, and wait which is what we've been doing all along, so you chill out.

Again, there is no point behind the useless banter you're spewing right and left. We know, and we have acted as we thought fit to address this issue with Sager and AMD. Stop arguing. If some feel like stalking AMD's CEO at home, and some feel like writing a poem about it, it's all them. Sit tight and wait for your computer so you can test for the issue yourself and perhaps then you'll have something more useful to say.


Yours faithfully,

NeoCzar M.D
Doha, Qatar
7/9/2012

 

Whining about the problem is ok, but whining and saying there is some conspiracy or AMD isnt really going to fix it or any of that BS is not OK.

 

To get this topic back to were it should be.

In few words, Anadtech's article is the only help we are getting about the 7000M line performance issues, in that they have and are testing a beta version of a new and promising driver release, precisely on a clevo laptop.
I politely suggest that all people that have taken the time to test and meassure the issues post comments on the article (providing specific GPU % usage data in different games and settings), since we have Jarred trying to reproduce the problems and most likely feeding AMD with the data.

regards
Voz











PS: NeoCzar you are actually getting way out of topic here, i do not want to spam this thread, so i will PM you if i have anything else to say to you. I would appreciate you do the same, it would be a shame this thread gets closed for us stupidly arguing. Just know that i am a frecuent and old NBR reader (for years), and have been following and reading almost all the threads (here and in other forums) about the 7970M problem (for weeks), i only now registered to contribute and try to help.

 

Well in light of AMD's actions I think many have been logically led to believe that unless we apply some pressure as best we could, namely bad publicity, AMD will take its sweet time perfecting Enduro for the entire range even if it meant that current gen customers won't get the full benefit.

Thinking with good intention towards AMD might have been natural in the first two months, and I was one of the people who bought my laptop knowing about the issue, and thinking AMD would in no way jeopardize its name by not fixing it, well it's 4-5 months now. In another 4-5 the new gen gets announced and in another 3 after that it's released. What did I pay 2000$+ for again?

There is no reason to have any faith in AMD at this point, we just want our money's worth and we'll always assume that AMD -like most other companies- only cares about damage control and the bottom line.

 

Sooo... extide, henceforth referred to as god, hereby ordered a decree that no one is entitled to lose hope or to give up and post it? NBR peons, god hath spoken.

 

As a practical person who refuses to invest further energy and emotion into this like some are, although I would gladly help put pressure if my presence adds a number to our "mob", I agree with this point.

In every post where I mention of skepticism in regards to AMD fixing Enduro issues, I have always said that it's just based on my gut feeling. If extide and others feel like I'm jinxing things, just say so and I'll stop saying it. I only say it in threads where topics are similar to "wait for 7970M fix or get 680M" threads. It's not like NeoCzar, or even hulawafu77 (who shares similar sentiments), or I go around raining on people's hopeful parade. In fact, I've asked people not to lose hope just because I have.

 

I actually do believe that AMD will fix it at some point. However, whether that point comes with the 8xxxM series or this month is directly related to how much damage we cause, and that was AMD's decision when they closed down threads and refused to acknowledge the issue officially. We still don't have anything official apart from some AMD guy telling an AT's writer that Enduro is on the path to greater things, and a tweet. They made their bed, let them sleep in it.

And yes, part of getting the crowd riled up is to remind them of the worst scenarios so they'd get off their cyber butts (as in, open a new tab and type) and maybe get their money's worth.

 

But that's also exactly what I've said. Lol.

Everything else you've said is what I've said, just not word for word, but definitely how I feel about this.

 

I ooze pearls of wisdom, it's a one way interaction. Bask in the glory of my supreme logic.

 

Pics or it didn't happen.

 

also post all the whinings, tho i think thats already done, lets see if more data is published and the article is not buried in pesimism.

The whining MIGHT achieve a compensation anyway, even tho that might be for later. What do you think if we propose AMD to fully shut up and praise them if they upgrade all 7970M owners to 8970M or whatever comes out, only paying the difference and our "old" 7970M pieces...
doesnt harm to dream..... and that would probably be AMDs right way to adress this whole consumer rights issue after all.

For now lets keep it real and try posting more data in AT so Jarred might come up with a miracle with AMD.

regards
Voz

 

I reckon a storm to break loose when the drivers get released..

 

I don't think ''decoupling'' Intel and AMD drivers is possible while this

remains so.

Btw, if this is the graph for Enduro that really represents how it works (this I'm doubtful of)

it will also be hard (impossible?)to decouple, because the Nvidia driver doesn't send anything to the iGPU, it pastes the work it has done directly into iGPU's framebuffer in main memory. iGPu than displays the composited desktop, a combination of the windows assigned to it and those assigned to Nvidia, or, if it is a full screen application assigned to Nvidia, than Nvidia does the whole thing, iGPU just displays it.

 

Why wouldn't the AMD card do the same thing?

 

Who knows why, but the AMD guys said they do it one way (LDA) and nVidia does it the other.

 

Pretty sure we won't get a fix with the next driver release. They first need to get the unified drivers to work and do the facelift for Enduro. According to the Anandtech article, some performance optimizations are comign either with the Nov/Dec drivers, or the one after those.

 

Enduro and Optimus both do basically the same thing, instead of DMA copying to the iGPU, they use the PCIe bus to do the copying directly to the outputting framebuffer. The protocol that they use is different and that was to support things like hybrid crossfire as nV doesn't have a chipset business anymore so hybrid SLI isn't done any more. But at the end of the day they are really doing the same thing, their "graphic" with the lines just doesn't do a REAL good job telling you that hehe.

 

Yeah, I suppose the reason beneath it is that there is some shared tech with hybrid crossfire and enduro. I think it is cool how they copy right into the framebuffer now. You can have a single window rendered by one GPU and then the rest of the screen rendered by the other GPU, and not even know that's happening under the hood!