Finally Official 7970M Driver released - AMD Catalyst 12.6 WHQL and 12.7 Beta

i have issue on youTube, my driver stop working the screen goin black. and i don't have AMD

 

Hey to get back to you guys about my tests:
BF3 still working perfectly and seamless
Metro 2033 Working perfectly and seamless (except once scene where I dropped to around 20 FPS for a few moments, usually around 70)
Crysis working perfectly seamless
Skryim works perfectly INDOORS (constant 55-60 FPS)
Skryim STUTTERS outdoors (constant 55-60 FPS)

I still have no had any major problem, but Skryim is annoying to play outside. Good thing I'm not looking to play that right now

Mr. Fox: you said you've been running a fully default setup for some time now... just to confirm, does that include the ULPS being enabled?

 

Yes, that is correct... no mods to the registry to make the AMD product work correctly. Everything at defaults in CCC. No Afterburner running and no HWiNFO64 running. As I am testing games I allow the game to select the parameters or click on the button to set defaults, even if I don't particularly like the default settings (such as vsynch enabled).

To start over again with a fresh Catalyst package I manually installed Standard VGA drivers in Device Manager first. Then, after uninstalling all AMD software, I ran DriverSweeper in Safe Mode, followed by CCleaner's registry tool until no errors were found with scanning. I then opened the registry and manually removed all registry keys with references to ATI and AMD graphics hardware and drivers. (That took a few minutes finding all of them, and it was amazing how much was left after DriverSweeper and CCleaner. After rebooting, my system had a few fits installing the drivers. Now, after all of that, the system behaves essentially the same as before. The only difference is that it works improperly without any fancy aftermarket bells and whistles to serve as a distraction from the AMD problems.

 

Mr. Fox, I am seriously beginning to wonder if there is an issue between the R1 and R2 - BIOS differences?

I only bring this up because you and I have similar driver clearing procedures (I do not force load default VGA adapters), and we are having totally different experiences. It actually pains me that you and several others are having NOTHING but issues

 

have you ever thought about ghosting your drive at a clean slate point? That would take a little long but it is only like 10 clicks and you don't have to worry about missing something... Just wondering.

 

Yes, I already have that drive image available. Unfortunately, it's an image with the current drivers, none of which work correctly. If or when AMD finally releases a driver that works correctly, I will make a newer drive image with the better driver installed.

 

I am starting to think that this might just be a hardware problem..mixed with a driver problem..Arestavo have you had your cards replaced? these problems are universal between the r1 and the r2.. and only 1 or 2 people around the web state they are getting good performance..

 

I think Mr. Fox has done everything correct, and I'm at a loss for what could be causing his problems while I have none (though I'm scared to try the multiple youtube video thing ).

It could be BIOS. it could be a small hardware defect... but like he's noted you wouldn't expect driver releases to be able to fix these issues (and cause others) if they truly came from something other than the driver. It's strange.

 

The YouTube video problem could be a conflict between the amd driver and flash player.

 

No, I haven't had them replaced. Also, I am running the same VBIOS as you, as a matter of fact.

 

Well i have had black screen issues in past and am not nowon 12.7. In xfire. I dont get black screen with grey lines just plain black. I am using hwinfo and afterburner osd to monitor but not overclock. I use a vbios if i overclock now as afterburner runs a little off when clocking up the gpus versus vbios. I use stock regeistry do ulps and crossfire autolink at default. I get the load drops rarely but happen in various games with no warnjng usually after loadkng a new scene until another scene is loaded. I can play dirt 3 and have full 99% loaad and load the next track to find gpus staying around 50% usage each. Witcher 2 finally played for a few hours striaght and had no crash at all in xfire finally on 12.7. Not saying its fixed but last i had tried nothing made xfire stay functional long in Witcher 2.
Thaks mrFox about you comment. Another way to put it is relate it to how Edison made the light bulb he found 1000+ materials that didnt work as a filament before finding tungsten i think heck he even tried horse hair lol.

 

The first light bulbs used charred cardboard for their filaments

 

Lol thats funny we should go back to that

 

hey R.V. will you upgrade to nv also?

 

Bumbo only way i would upgrade from my current cards is if i can replace with 680m. Seeing as that is unlikely possible for me i will not be switching to Nvidia. I am not a fan of either company had gpus from both and each have their downfalls. My experience on two 580m for me not anyone ese was sad. My previous 6970m had more fps in anything i played but thats due to very poor clocking 580m. Im not happy with the overal xfire performance and stability of 7970m but I am not going to have a replacement route to 680m so no way im upgrading at the cost they are over the 7970m cards. I do miss nvidia control panel as the settings are far superior and overall most nvidia drivers yeild total stability. Id love a 680m but no ones just going to drop one in my lap lol. Are yiu going to get 680m Bumbo?

 

Now I was playing DiRT Showdown for about 30 minutes and it just freeze. No response for about 5 seconds. After that the game completely shutdown and in the taskbar ther was an X saying the display driver has stop responding and it has recovered. After that I start the game (without restarting the system) and it worked... Ahhh AMD...

 

Geez, I must be a "green" as they come with PC gaming. I have seen others here call themselves noobies....boy they are light years ahead of me.


My M18 is totally stock. I am running whatever drivers come from Dell. Apparently I must be the only person on here still running these...lol.

I have read every page and trying very hard to learn what is going on here.

I don't know if this helps, but I can let you guys know what is going on with the stock drivers....

I have only been playing Crysis 2...and it seems to run perfectly fine. Single player and online. Also works fine on a 1080p 46' 120hz samsung (actually looks better on my TV)...

Once in a blue moon I get the...."driver stop working but recovered". It has happened maybe 3 times since I received my M18, 14 days ago.

I am not running chrome, but I opened up 5 tabs in IE and then opened Youtube and ran some HD videos....No problems.


Like I said I have read every page here in this thread, and I think I am more lost than ever.

So IS there an official driver for our Xfire, like the OP Peter has stated?

Or is there a desktop version and you guys are using them?

What is the difference between Beta and WHQL?

What is CAP....?


I haven't changed my drivers cause I have NO idea how to yet, but it seems I maybe having less problems than most, so I am kinda glad, I guess???

Judging from the past, will AMD ever come thru with a mobile Xfire driver? Kinda really pisses me off that I spent 4k on a laptop and I have to be worried that it will play the newest games.

Really, this is unacceptable.


Thanks guys, I will continue to read on and learn from the smart guys.


BTW.....what a freaking beautiful machine!!!!!!

 

The M18x is an awesome machine, Mcoupe. If yours is working correctly, I would recommend not doing anything at all. If it's not broke, don't fix it, LOL. The latest driver is often not the greatest driver, and that is especially true with AMD. The best driver is one that works best and it sounds like you're having no issues.

 

Totally agree with this. I don't update my GPU drivers often. If it works just fine, I say leave it as is.

 

Here's an example of one of the many random issues that come and go. Notice anything missing in the video? What the video does not effectively capture is the terrible flickering and display jerking that occurs when this kind of thing happens. This is with stock Dell Level 3 CPU settings in BIOS, GPUs running at stock everything and default settings in CCC. What's interesting is that one minute everything can work flawless, and then BAM... you get stuff like this happening. I ran Vantage through its paces on a complete run immediately prior to this and it worked absolutely perfectly. Anyone not willing to put up with this sort of thing, or worse, for an uncertain period of time until AMD releases drivers to fix their broken product needs to configure their new system (Alienware, Clevo or otherwise) with NVIDIA GPUs. If you're building a new gaming desktop with multi-GPU, save yourself some heartache and go green. You'll thank me later.

<embed src="http://img705.imageshack.us/flvplayer.swf?f=Pfile28897v" width='640' height="380" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>
Watch it on YouTube

 

totally true M.r Fox

 

12.5 Beta 7900 MOD (from benchmark3d.com) is stable drivers for me (12.6 beta and 12.7 beta were unstable → random lockups/freezes/black screens in diablo 3)

 

I may go back and try that driver again. It had serious problems before, even worse than this.

 

Exactly my thoughts. I believe I stated this as soon as I joined this forum a couple weeks back...I have 20 years of work with computer hardware specifically, I've experienced lots of issues and this is 100% for sure is a compound problem; a mixed bag of issues both hardware and software(drivers).

It is well know that the first 7970m(s) were defective and its likely that a few are still out in the wild, if you have graphic corruption issues I would RMA to the seller as they were probably sold bad cards like the ones Eurocom and Sager received. I personally waited until I the % of getting one of these bad apples was low and my only issue thus far has been a disconnected Xfire link (which Dell has paid me to fix). No bluescreens while gaming on either stock, 12.6 or 12.7...I was seeing some graphic corruption before I clean installed 12.6 because I lazily installed over stock drivers at first 80), but after I saw the vast improvement in Xfire utilization the switch was a no brainier. The only BS I have had on win 7 was related to a missing PCI driver. Great machine, ty as sales team, techs are ok, but not great...tried to replace the whole machine just for a Xfire cable and poor QC wrist-rest...regardless I am getting these blemished parts replaced. Skyrim is the only game that performs badly that I own. It should obviously be near 100fps with this much power and that it is not.

rough avgs

Bf3 70-90 fps
LFD2 - 200 fps
LOL - 460fps
Metro2033 - 70, except the first fog room.
Diablo 3 160 fps
More test coming soon.

 

It is entirely possible that it is a combination of defective hardware and buggy drivers. Perhaps Compal received stock from the same defective batch. One would have to wonder if AMD did not officially recall all of them, then why not? I think it is also possible that one (or some) of the components on the PCB are running much hotter than we know. Just because the core is cool (on the assumption that the sensor readings are actually accurate) does not mean the memory and voltage regulators are not overheating. This might explain why they work fine sometimes and at other times they do not. I have ordered more IC Diamond and new thermal pads and will be exploring whether the possibility of improved thermals has any effect on the behavior of the GPUs.

 

Heihachi i had those probs in Diablo 3 on 12.5,12.6,127 only if i overclocked a bit to high. But not having it on 12.7 as often. I think all the drivers still exhibit the exact same issues for everyone just different times apps and situations. Juliant what you described in Dirt hasnt happened to me yet that exact thing happened to me in the Witcher 2 on stock clocks. I played one night hours and no prob next day i play i get the black screen but not freezing i hit ctrl alt delete and close the not responding witcher 2 and i sometimes see the driver reset like you did. But sadly i must restart after that as i attempt to load a game after and it locks up immediately.

I was saying after leaving 5870m years ago that why on 6970m is vram temp and voltgae regulator temps no longer sensor accessible. That was a major issue. I had to repaste my vram as i noticed temps got to hot into 90c and after fixing vram temp never went over 76c... so i get the 580m and same thing where are the readings gone. Now here i am on 7970m and i agree and have stated same thig long ago. We cant see our other temps since amd and nvidia decided we dont need extra sensors... thats why iused stock fan control and ttested overclocks finding basdd on temp limits my cards balk at much over 880core in gaming for awhile. They can bench no prob but i think mrfox is right on both. Kne there is big prob that voltage regulators and vram and back part of these cards are bulding heat and causing probs. There seems to be some bad batches but how do we know. Ive seen artifacts at stock clocks sadly. So how can you tell between bad drivers and possible bad cards how are we supposed to sort through that?

 

Seems Clevo customers did not benefit from a delayed release. It appears waiting for a "new batch" merely postponed their misery.

 

AMD is broken in their flagship mobile gpu no matter where or what it is in. They seem to be trying to make AMD users all jump ship and go to Nvidia.

 

Except for me, because it works now - I'd love to have the 680M SLI, but the price put me Red.

That said, there are a lot of folks with problems to be certain.

 

Well, I'm not giving up on fixing them yet. There has to be something simple that is being overlooked. It could be a defective product that cannot be fixed, but we need to exhaust our resources before declaring that to be the case. After seeing the issue with thermal problems on the Clevo, that seems like a good place to rule out a problem on our system. It's pretty obvious to me that we cannot rely on the core sensors to give us an accurate understanding of what is going on with the AMD GPU assembly. My sensors disappear and reappear all the time, so I don't know what they are telling me is right.

I'm sure something with the 680M will eventually surface that will have someone wanting to jump ship there, too. It happens all the time, LOL. Those that stuck with the GTX 580M SLI through the throttling issues ended up with a superior product in their M18x. That can happen here, too.

It is starting to be really cumbersome having two M18x threads for 7970M. Would it make more sense to merge them than have to bounce back and forth between them? I was also thinking the same thing about having two 680M threads. I kind of hate it when that happens. It makes discussions difficult to follow. Thoughts?

 

Wow, that is some BIZARRE benching there, Mr. Fox! - AMD's very own "black hole" has sucked everything in around it....I knew AMD sucked, but didnt realise they sucked THIS much....

 

Your black hole comment made me laugh.

 

At least I'm glad it brought a chuckle amongst all this BS.

 

Honestly, Stevie... these are pretty bad problems and they need to be fixed, pronto. But, at the end of the day, I am not overly worried about it. Even if 7970M turns out to not be fixable, (which I doubt will be the case,) there are other GPU options that work really well. The GTX 580M SLI setup is very close to perfection. These issues do not diminish the awesomeness of the M18x one iota. It remains an awesome beast and the best gaming laptop money can buy in spite of AMD's lackluster showing with 7970M CrossFire. It's just a crying shame AMD didn't hold back release of the GPU a month or two in order guarantee the release of a show-stopper. This could have easily been AMD's time in the spotlight and a long overdue spot in the winner's circle.

 

I coulndt have said it better if I had tried......

 

i have to desagree with you on that, r.v. because with the nvidia driver Version 304.79 - BETA i get a lot of freezing on diablo3. so i think that the real problem with the 7970M is the driver

 

Bumbo, on the EVGA forums I have read that for the 500 series, the WHQL 296.10 (I think that's the revision) works the best right now for just that reason.

 

ooh, i have to chek it out and thanks for that inf. by the way any complaints about your 7970M?

 

The only issue that I am having with my 7970M Crossfire is in The Witcher 2 - on Ultra settings, sans Uber sampling, FPS dips to 40 when running around, and GPU usage drops too.

I play Crysis 2, BF3, Mass Effect 3, Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, Skyrim, Aliens Vs. Predator (the "new" one), Deus Ex: HE, Dirt 3, Dirt Showdown, Driver San Francisco, Fable III, Far Cry 2, L.A. Noir, Max Payne 3, Metro 2033, Red Faction: Armageddon, Spec Ops: The Line, and Bulletstorm to name the ones I have played a good deal since installing 12.7 BETA desktop version. Thankfully, they all work perfectly.

It is unfortunate that other folks aren't so lucky... From memory, it seems that the folks with overclocked CPUs are having the most problems. Well, at least those with overclockable CPUs.

 

Yes, 296.10 is generally the best driver for 580M SLI. It worked very well with my system. It was rock solid, but the 3XX.XX drivers did not do very well for me. I think the 3XX.XX drivers are more optimized for Kepler than for Fermi video cards.

Arestavo, I wondered about the CPU being overclocked... in particular, whether the power draw was robbing the GPUs of sufficient power to work correctly. I have tried setting stock Dell Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 settings and even tried disabling the Extreme Edition features in the BIOS. I also wondered about BCLK being too high and whether that may be crashing the PCIe bus. I lowered BCLK to 100 (99.8 in Windows) and setting BIOS defaults. I tried flashing A04 and A05 with BIOS defaults. None of those efforts relating to the CPU made any difference. Looking back on it, that was an unlikely fix, but I wanted to make sure that I exhaust all the possibilities in the search of a fix.

 

Why are you telling the people here about it..? They can't do nothing except suggest pointless work-arounds that will more or less mess something else up in the long run.

Let AMD know about the problem/issue you've experienced over at this link.. AMD Issue Reporting Form for AMD Catalystâ„¢ 12.6 and 12.7 Beta

Go into as much detail as you want.

That goes for everyone else here in this forum board.. tell AMD about any problems you've experienced because.. believe it or not, they take any issues/problems with their products very seriously. Help them, Help you.

 

Pretty sure at this point people don't have much faith in AMD, maybe that is why they don't go directly to them....

 

You're kidding, right? Why on earth would a technology forum even exist otherwise? It's not about singing kumbaya and roasting marshmallows.

I agree with the suggestion to report issues to AMD, and think that is a good thing to do. But questioning why people would report their issues in this or any other community and have discussion around them leaves me scratching my head. The only thing that is pointless is the comment "They can't do nothing except suggest pointless work-arounds that will more or less mess something else up in the long run." I hope that you are referring to your own inability to offer any additional recommendations and not the collective knowledge and experience of the community.

How is your 7970M CrossFire system working?

 

)) Nice one Mr. Fox. +1 rep

First of all from the time I am in this forum I learned so much and believe it or not, I could fix my m17x R2 (blind bios) with the knowledge of the members of this forum. The guy has no idea how much this place matters for everyone.

 

Being that my previous gpu was that card Bumbo i already realize that. But the thing is none of use trust beta drivers completely. Of course the beta isnt the most stable its for testing just like our betas. So would agree that you like i did have a completely working stable sli capable whql driver. I know when i had 580 i did. So my true point ids that there is no saving grace for 7970m. There isnt a whql driver that works for all of us. It doeant present us with stability over its beta brothers. The driver is just not in existence. The 580m driver is. I do expect and have already seen a few people returnjng their machines to replace with an Nvidia based system... its alrady happening. I just want a stable system bumbo thats all.

About the above on cpu overclock i did as mrfox and had same results. I tested the cards stock clocks and the bios on my machine fully stock. That doesnt mean level 1 overclock... i mean fully reset bios defaults... no change instability.i thiught the same but no cou or memory option of mine has hindered a single thjng.

We need them fixed or i dont care that 580m had probs and is good now. AMD doesnt have a track record to say that they would fix it like Nvidia did. Maybe i will follow that link and note all the issues at AMD as there seems to be a prob with AMD thinkjng that this is a small scale prob not the entire line of cars.

 

No, but at this rate it may be about singing kumbaya and roasting video cards.

 

hehehe, good one!

 

I have to agree with Mr. Fox and note that this opinion is ridiculous. If no one had complained about the issues we all are having, Mr. Fox and others in this thread wouldn't have posted their solutions and workarounds that I found so very useful - which helped me get my machine to a 95% problem-free state.

There's certainly value in notifying the manufacturers of their problems, but you forget the value of the pooled knowledge in this forum which can make my machine jump from 50% problem-free to 95% as we wait for a miracle driver which can knock of the last 5%.

 

most of those problem can be relative to poor people knowledge on how to tweak the machine, at exception of some expert. I think, not offense intended.

 

Just thought I'd post this here too.