Seeking advice on AMD Drivers - Vortex III w/ 7970M

[dangro474]

Seeking advice on Vortex III w/ 7970M purchase

Hi guys and girls,

I'm more or less set on purchasing the spec below:

Chassis & Display
Vortex Series: 15.6" Matte 95% Gamut LED Widescreen (1920x1080) (£79)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-3610QM (2.30GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
AMD® Radeon® HD 7970M - 2GB DDR5 Video RAM (PRE-ORDER, ETA END OF MAY)
Memory - Hard Disk
750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
SONY BD-5750H 6x BLURAY WRITER & CYBERLINK SOFTWARE (£79)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Firewire & Video Editing
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
Battery
Vortex Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)
Dead Pixel Guarantee
1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs (£19)
Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £1,453.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/VortexIII-15/

My only concern is the 7970M. I'm not worried about its performance or stability, but up until now i've always opted for Nvidia GPUs, and with the 680M so far off i'm inclined on opting for the 7970M.

The last AMD GPU i've used is the 5870M, which although was [erfectly stable and fast, did get quite hot. The AMD drivers were also pretty poor in comparisson to Nvidia drivers of the time.

I was wondering if any AMD owners could confirm a few points:

• Does forced vsync and triple buffering work with current radeon drivers? As they didn't during the age of the 5870M.
• Has anyone experienced serious issues in games with AMD GPUs?

Thanks for the help, i've been hanging on for as long as possible

- Dan

 

[baron75mk2]

Hi there , i have had a few radeon cards myself & have my likes & dislikes about them

Likes (Radeon/ATI)
1) cooler than nvidia for the most part
2) slightly sharper video output than nvidia
3) drivers are a little better for customisation
4) consume less power than nvidia equivilants

Dislikes ;

1) the issue with v-sync not being forced through the driver ( no its still not working & has not worked ever ! so i dont think it will ever get fixed for some reason , stupid as the force option is there & if you force "off" it will in fact force it off , but not on - NOT GOOD IF YOU HAVE A GAME WITH NO V-SYNCH OPTION AS SO MANY CONSOLE PORTS ARE DOING NOWADAYS)
2) Poor crossfire performance compaired to SLI.
3) splitup (screen tear) with crossfire in in-game videos ( & even in game its self mass effect 2 & devil may cry 4 to name a few)
4) having to go off & get "cap" profiles all the time with crossfire , when the sli profiles are included in the drivers & auto updated as well in nvidia.
5) Drivers always reporting wrong information in amd overdrive - fan speeds , temps & gpu information (mainly only affects crossfire)
6) poor open GL implementation (lots of issues with older games like doom 3 etc)

V-synch can be forced however , you need riva tuner once you have it there is an extra program called "direct 3d overider" ( i extracted it myself from the program file & made a "layable" of it so i didnt have to keep installing rivatuner to use it)

With this program you can force triple buffering & v-synch on DX9,10 & even DX11 games as well as open gl games , if you are running x86 its easy just keep it running at startup & check the global option & force agressive detection & it will v-sync everything you launch with no issues.

on X64 its a little more problematic as if you force globaly it can mess up the desktop & some other apps (windows live mail being one of them) , you will see graphics corruption & flickering etc - so what you need to do is do it by a game by game basis & turn "global" detection lvl to off.

i can confirm its fine on the games with x64 but not on the desktop & some 2d things - but fine on everything in x86.

Hope this helps :yes:

 

[dangro474]

Hi Baron,

Thanks for the info. I have used d3doverride in the past with my 5870M to compensate for the lack of proper vsync, however i had assumed that in the odd 2 year ssince then AMD ha dpulled their finger out :/

Your info regarding crossfire has put me off the possibility of purchasing a dual GPU system even more, however with this laptop it would not be an issue.

I love Doom 3 :/ What sort of issues did you experience? I have to admit that i did not experience any with my old 5870M.

 

[dangro474]

Regarding D3Doverride in x64; I did notice that windows liv emessenger was playing around with global vsync enabled, but after adding an exclusion it was fine.

 

[baron75mk2]

Hi Baron,

Thanks for the info. I have used d3doverride in the past with my 5870M to compensate for the lack of proper vsync, however i had assumed that in the odd 2 year ssince then AMD ha dpulled their finger out :/

Your info regarding crossfire has put me off the possibility of purchasing a dual GPU system even more, however with this laptop it would not be an issue.

I love Doom 3 :/ What sort of issues did you experience? I have to admit that i did not experience any with my old 5870M.

Well if your playing just the standard doom 3 with no graphics mods then your fine , but if like me you like to tweak the graphics with open gl mods (all of them for doom 3 are open gl mods i think) , then you get all sorts of issues , black textures , complete whiteout , all sorts of problems - i have a little known mod myself made by an austrailin guy & its the ultimate mod for doom 3 it adds lights in different colours for all the guns , completely re textures all the guns adding silly amounts of bump mapping & specular on the guns (you wont see better lookng guns on any game , not even modern games) , complete overhaul of all sounds in the game , adds HDR lighting , complete real world ambient occlusion , dynamic shadows , complete redrawn & textured charachters & a ton of other stuff , but it wont work at all on radeon - plus the standalone specular , prey & a whole other host of mods will not work on radeon , but will on nvidia.

As far as a muti gpu solution in the future , dont be put off - just go for Nvidia SLI , it rocks - its just crossfire that isnt to good - but an ATI / radeon card is great by its self - its just that open gl isnt to good & something to consider as its making a comeback as extentions in certain games - but definately problematic in older games like doom 3 ( when modded )

& no they have not pulled thier finger out where forcing v-sync is concerned & never will in my opinion & its needed now more than ever as so many console ports are coming out with no in game option for it.

 

[baron75mk2]

Regarding D3Doverride in x64; I did notice that windows liv emessenger was playing around with global vsync enabled, but after adding an exclusion it was fine.

Yes it will , but its not only messenger that does it , from time to time you will see flashing across the desktop & other places as well , its best to just turn global off & just add whatever game needs to be forced to it & then turn the detection on for those games - it avoids issues elsewhere.

 

[dangro474]

Yes it will , but its not only messenger that does it , from time to time you will see flashing across the desktop & other places as well , its best to just turn global off & just add whatever game needs to be forced to it & then turn the detection on for those games - it avoids issues elsewhere.

Thanks for the info.

I find it hard to believe that AMD STILL haven't pulled their finger out and addressed this issue. What a joke.

Still, arguably setting up a profile for games that reqwuire forced vsync in d3doverride requires no more effort than doing so in the Nvidia control panel / CCC. I'm just concerned that should D3DO eventually stop working, AMD card users would be left with nothing.

 

[baron75mk2]

Thanks for the info.

I find it hard to believe that AMD STILL haven't pulled their finger out and addressed this issue. What a joke.

Still, arguably setting up a profile for games that reqwuire forced vsync in d3doverride requires no more effort than doing so in the Nvidia control panel / CCC. I'm just concerned that should D3DO eventually stop working, AMD card users would be left with nothing.

Thing that makes nvidia better than all of it is when you force v-sync globally , it forces everything completely (exept some dx10 & 11 games , but battlefield 3 is the only one i have encountered so far) - you dontnhave to set up game profiles for it , just force in global settings

But yes its a mystery to me why you can in fact force "off" but not "on" - its definately not some patent that nvidia owns as there are various programs that do it oither that d3d overider - but it has never worked in radeon at all.

& like yourself i was also concerned that if D3DO stopped working in the future i would be stuffed for v-sync on any game that doesn not have it built in to the game ( & a lot do these days , console ports are increasingly the norm now for pc , i dont mind this but please put a v-sync , & hz option in there its not hard)

But this is why i went back to nvidia - plus i wanted to do a two card set up & crossfire has to many issues compaired to SLI for me