Series 7 Chronos All Models: Push for SAMSUNG to implement "FIXED MODE" in BIOS

We will not sure if there is a BIOS fix. The chance they are going to develope is small, but that is not impossible to do. We only heard that because of hardware limitation from Samsung, but most of the time, OEM try to screw us but say something like that but they know they could do that, only just take more time than usual.

 

i just recivedthis update. I cant try it now, but i hope something good




bios update 13FD

 

I got it a few hours ago. Did not notice anything new.... I WANT A CHANGELOG! ;-)

 

no new option for video switcher in bios ?

 

nope, nothing....

 

Lol. That bios is 2nd in a month. What a process!!!

 

Samsung has mysteriously non-documented BIOS...

 

I still can't get my switchable graphics to work, even with the 8.94 driver posted on the previous page... what applications have you guys gotten to work? I am trying to play Skyrim and on the launcher, I go to the options screen and on the drop-down menu for graphics adapters there is only the Intel one. I listed it as high-performance on Catalyst but no difference. Howd you guys tell it was working?

 

You need to set both the launcher and the game itself to use the AMD card. The laucher allows you to customize the settings, which means that it saves the settings to config file for the game to load. Then it will run the actually game file. I believe the game file is TESV.exe. Try to set both of them and see if there is any change at all. If not, then you are out of luck since game might not compatible with most graphic card. Or you could try to update the new patch and see if it works or not.

 

Yeah, I did that. Still nothing... I guess mine is just screwed. Good thing I'm waiting on Samsung support for my refund

 

Some people on this forum think this will never happen. idk, maybe it is hardware limited? Anyway, the autoswitching graphics seem to work fine otherwise (with 8.94). Just no way to force discrete graphics. But isn't that against the point of a highly portable laptop such as the chronos 7? If you want to sit on your and play video games all day ) ), get a dedicated game console, or a desktop computer, or one of those ugly- alienware bricks.

For most programs, and most usage (graphics-intensive games are the exception), you won't be able to distinguish a practical difference between the ATI card and the Intel HD3000.

 

I must say that after the 8.940 update OpenGL runs perfect using the AMD GPU! I use this notebook most of the time for doing some pre-visualizations in After Effects and Premiere Pro while beeing on the train. Its just a perfect balance between power and battery lifetime. I love this notebook!

 

Exactly my point!

 

Has anyone gotten Skyrim to work on this laptop with the new drivers? That is the test that I am using to determine whether or not my GPU is working.

 

These topics seem to suggest it works with the old drivers:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/624864-samsung-series-7-6750m-benchmarks.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/633292-samsung-series-7-laptop-games-work-games-dont-5.html

Not sure about the new ones as I don't own the game.

 

Skirim works PERFECT with the 8.940 driver with ALL settings to HIGH and highest resolution! no problem at all! I played almost 40 hours

 

Does it detect the AMD card in options in the launcher? How did you configure the switchable graphics? Did you set both TESV.exe and SkyrimLauncher.exe to high? TELL ME EVERYTHING haha. I'm going to be shipping the laptop back soon if I can't get this working

 

The launcher shows the INTEL HD Adapter! This is correct, because the intel card works as a proxy for Direct X calls and passes them to the AMD card (this is sometimes confusing but its correct!)! You should set both to HIGH so the detection works!

 

And all you did was install the 8.94 drivers from this page? I did that and set both Skyrim .exe files to High Performance but I still get unplayable FPS on low settings

 

As a side note, I am launching this game through Steam... is this relevant?

 

Well that's definitely good to hear. I just ordered this laptop, then found this thread. Thanks for the info!

 

Yes, i use Stream.

Yes, all i did was installing 8.940. A few things you should check/remember:Check the Power-Safe settings of the AMD driver in the CCC. High performance is by default only available when u ahave the power-chord plugged in!

 

Hi guys, I've been reading this topic for a while and it isn't clear for me.
I was planning to buy this laptop (i7, 6750m) very soon, but with the GPU issues I read, I'm not really sure.
Also does anyone has heating issues with the i7??
I mainly want it for using Photoshop, does it recognise the GPU already with the new drivers??

I'd appreciate you help me make my decision.
Thanks for helping!

 

It's been stated over and over in this and several other threads that the switching GPU is not an issue anymore since 8.940 drivers.

As for heat issues, it depends on a lot of factors, but mainly what you consider to be an issue.

Will this computer overheat and break? No. For me that means there is no real issue.

Is it possible to experience some throttling in some games? Yes, but depending on the game it might not even be noticable.

 

I got the i7 and use Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro,.... No problems at all. Everything works flawless and perfect! NOTE: The GPU acceleration (OpenGL) in Photoshop is only used for very very limited features of Photoshop - blame Adobe ;-)

 

Thanks a lot for the quick reply! I think I'll go for it. Since you use it for editing, what can you tell me about the screen, I read it has good values of contrast, color range, but still a bit worse than mac book pro's...
Are you happy with it?

 

Well the screen is not the best i've seen. I would not do final color correction on this screen ;-) But hey...its a NOTEBOOK, not a workstation! This notebook is ~ €1100,- so its a perfect balance between power, quality and price!

 

Hello All,

I would like to thank you all for the wealth of knowledge and info in this thread. I have made this account to post this message because I have tried EVERYTHING on my Samsung 7 700Z5a-5A SOA but I cant seem to get back the ATI card to work.

When I first got the laptop I installed all the updated drivers and BIOS. I remember seeing the option to configure the switchable graphics when I right clicked. I decided that I wanted to upgrade the operating system to windows 7 ultimate and to partition the drives to my liking. When reinstalling the drivers, I get the Intel HD Graphics 3000 installed but when i try to install the 8.940 driver you guys say fixes it, It finishes but nothing changes. I have tried a fresh install... driver sweeper.. the leshcat drivers... reinstalling from the recovery disk that came with the computer.

I'm pretty savvy with the computer and this has frustrated me to no end because I have tried just about everything apart from taking the computer apart. Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated.

Ive got AMD system monitor, HWinfo, sandra si soft.. all that good stuff. and nothing is able to find it. I have tried driver sweeper, windows update, driver reviver.. I dont know what else to do

 

Send it back to Samsung. The AMD card could be dead like one of my sets was.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I've been in denial about that possibility. I am not familiar with laptop graphics cards but I am pretty sure they are built in and cannot be replaced. Right?

Going to start the process to send it back I guess. Very sad times.

 

I talked to a rep who said it would take 5-7 days to get the process completed. Is that how long it took for you?

another question.. does the AMD Radeon card show up in device manager? Im pretty sure i remember seeing it at one point under the intel hd 3000 when I first had it working.

 

This is how the system informations should look like when u have 8.940 installed:

 

You should always see it. If you don't, then it is not recognised and likely dead.

 

so what does it mean if it looks like this?

i installed 8.940 but opengl won't work in autocad

 

Are those clock speeds automatic, or can you set them somehow? Mine was sitting at 100MHz while rendering some clips in Premiere...

 

Premiere pro does not use any OpenGL for final media-rendering. Thats one of the biggest missunderstandings...

 

Ah....So is that entirely up to the processor then or what?

 

It depends on which effects you are using and if the Mercury-Engine can use CUDA (nvidia). Mostly its a CPU task... but thats nothing really new ;-)

 

And diablo 3? Someone played? i played but fullscreen 1600 it works slowly... i change to 1240 or 800x 600 and works fine... I tested withe the cord pulled off.. The amd only works on cord? The high definiton only works when the notebook is plugged?
i am using the 8.940 but i tested only wth the cord off... i dont know if diablo is using intel or amd...

 

That is because of AMD PowerPlay. You want to go to Control Catalyst and change that option to suit the power option you need. About D3, set switchable to high performance for D3. Additionally, if you want to set to HD, then lower your settings or use medium resolution with a little bit higher options. The reason for that because D3 uses both CPU and GPU, but the CPU is more intense and since the Series 7 is a little difficult to disperse heat, which allows the CPU can work normally, so that it won't perform like some gaming laptops. Eventhough the card can handle D3, it cannot max out the option of D3. My desktop GTX 560 Ti cannot even max settings with HD resolution. Hopefully for the final release, Blizz can fix and increase the performance.

 

Thanks man! I changed the powersave to BETTER PERFORMANCE and runs diablo 3... the beta is down this moment, so i can t see the results , but your explanation was very very helpful. tkz

 

I haven't played Diablo but I basically have the same problem with framerates when the computer isn't plugged in. It's not surprising, since most laptops' performance goes way down when using battery power. So it's not really a problem with the computer.

But the problem with the graphics being slow...That I don't know. It might actually be a problem with the graphics switching, but I don't play Diablo so I wouldn't know.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't know that the problem has been resolved already.

 

Hey I hope this question hasn't been answered yet, but does anyone know why this 8.940 update isn't present on Samsung page for the S04 model? I tried looking but it wasn't there...

 

They pulled it off the site or didn't uploaded to current pages. You either have to find it in this long thread or someone is willing to post you the link.

 

Don't know the reason for that, but there is a link in the first page if you want to download it. After that, Easy Software Manager will notice that there is an available update, but that versio is 8.930, so you just need to ignore that.

 

Any news on this solution? I'm very interested!

Also, can anyone confirm that Civilization 5 will not run properly (very low framerate) even with the 8940 drivers and everything set to high performance? Any ideas?

 

I got a tool done that is working, just need a few small changes and some text/information added. I'll try to get it done during the weekend, if I'm not playing the GW2 beta the whole time.

Oh, and I'm pondering where to host the file. Been thinking about setting up a simple website on my Raspberry PI when it arrives, because I don't want any of my real servers to be open to the outside, but perhaps there are some other decent options aswell...

 

Great! Looking forward to it!

EDIT: If you need anyone to "beta test" it, I would be happy to do so!

 

I tested the new Lashcat driver with Catalyst 9.51
It seems to work really fast. In 3D Mark 06 I get 9800 points with only an I5.

 

I decided to test them as well - now the AMD card is switched on all of the time... That itself would not be much of a problem if it wouldn't cause the fan to spin loudly all the time as well (even though the load on the GPU is 0% outside of any demanding program). At the same time, though, Civilization 5 finally works. What to do!?!? Does anyone have any idea how to combine the compatibility of Leshcat's drivers with the automatic turning off of the AMD card when it is not needed? PLEASE?

EDIT: I wonder if maybe installing some parts of the Samsung drivers after installing Leshcat's drivers would solve this problem? But I don't know what to start with? Maybe the CCC?