Xotic PC NP9150: Striking Back At Kepler With Radeon HD 7970M

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[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Guys, when you run a game with the included driver, it defaults to the integrated GPU on the FIRST RUN. So, you exit the game and find a popup menu.The popup menu asks if, at next application launch, you want to use the AMD or Intel GPU. You choose the AMD GPU.Now, this is supposedly the feature that "everyone with the problem" wished they had. And the feature is here, so I'm waiting to hear more specifics about how "the problem" persists when the AMD GPU has already been selected.[/citation]

Don't mean to be rude but did you honestly think we would have spent 5 months without figuring that out? Many people in Notebook review forums are quite advanced in this stuff. We have tried everything. Everything. At the moment, there is no way to deal with the Enduro issues.

Here is also the facebook page that spreads awareness of the issue:

http://www.facebook.com/Amd7000mEnduroUtilizationAwareness
 



sorry crashman, but the issue mentioned above is something entirely different - we are definitely running via 7970m GPU for games (believe me you know right away when you are running on HD4000 / HD3000, fps absolutely crawls), but that 7970m fails to run at 99% utilization on certain games / maps / scenes. Sometimes all it takes is several objects to enter the scene and my utilization drops to as low as 60%.

This post here has a lot of data / screenshots / youtube vids:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/682097-7970m-logging-thread-games-utilization-issues-only-post-logs-no-questions-please-2.html#post8779261

we have tried all the available drivers to no avail. i have personally reinstalled windows 5 times now, tried every driver combo possible, tried removing various bits of hardware from the laptop, disabling cores (to rules out power draw issue), turning down screen brightness, mem testing my whole 16gb of ram, trying 3 different CPUs (one sandy bridge 2 ivy bridge), swapped SSDs, etc. end result is always the same.
my theory at the moment is that there is a DMA bandwidth bottleneck where dGPU has to copy data to iGPU. Nvidia apparently uses something they call "optimus copy engine" which does not pause the rendering engines whilst data is being copied, whether AMDs implementation does the same is unclear at this point.
 
Hey, check this out:
[citation][nom]Vozier on Thursday, September 13, 2012[/nom]

FINALLY the official news we all waited for

Originally Posted by Marc@AMD
I want to thank all those users that have been patient in this matter, and peristent in providing helpful information and feedback to the community.

We have received some positive news from the Driver Development Team. A driver is planned to be released in the near future that will provide significant improvements to notebooks enabled withAMD Enduro™ Technology.

Please stay tuned to our support.amd.com site for the driver posting.

Source: AMD Game Forums - The Clevo 7970M Enduro/under-utilization debacle

[/citation]

One of the latest comments on the Anand article that was linked earlier, here's another link to it:
http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/6243?cPage=19&all=False&sort=0&page=1&slug=amds-enduro-switchable-graphics-levels-up#comments

Maybe there is some hope after all.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]Hey, check this out:One of the latest comments on the Anand article that was linked earlier, here's another link to it:http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Inde [...] p#commentsMaybe there is some hope after all.[/citation]

We were aware of this. While it is hopeful to know that AMD is working to enhance Enduro, they haven't adressed the GPU under utilization issue. We would like to know if it is fixable, and if a fix is coming. This incoming driver will at least inlcude a facelift to Enduro UI, but we don't know if it brings anything else to the table. The latest leaked drivers weren't too hope giving, since they included pretty much the facelift I mentioned (no fix for under utilization)

All I (we?) want, is for AMD to officially acknowledge the Enduro under utilization issue, and to tell us if a fix is coming in the near future. Many are still debating wether or not to switch to a 680M, when their resellers still allow it.
 
[citation][nom]montage[/nom]We were aware of this. While it is hopeful to know that AMD is working to enhance Enduro, they haven't adressed the GPU under utilization issue. We would like to know if it is fixable, and if a fix is coming. This incoming driver will at least inlcude a facelift to Enduro UI, but we don't know if it brings anything else to the table. The latest leaked drivers weren't too hope giving, since they included pretty much the facelift I mentioned (no fix for under utilization)All I (we?) want, is for AMD to officially acknowledge the Enduro under utilization issue, and to tell us if a fix is coming in the near future. Many are still debating wether or not to switch to a 680M, when their resellers still allow it.[/citation]Yes. I can't tell you what I'm saying yes to, however.
 
All,
Update is posted (last page of the story is all-new). Hopefully we've presented some new information re: an anticipated fix and an official acknowledgement/explanation of the issue.
A sincere thank-you to the folks who brought this to our attention, and I hope you find the follow-up timely, accurate, and informative.
As always, we'll work diligently to get you answers to your questions as quickly as possible!
Best,
Chris Angelini
 
[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]All,Update is posted (last page of the story is all-new). Hopefully we've presented some new information re: an anticipated fix and an official acknowledgement/explanation of the issue. A sincere thank-you to the folks who brought this to our attention, and I hope you find the follow-up timely, accurate, and informative.As always, we'll work diligently to get you answers to your questions as quickly as possible!Best,Chris Angelini[/citation]

Thank you so much! This means a lot to all us 7970M users with Enduro issues, many of whom have second guessed their purchases for a long time. This is the first time AMD has directly implied a fix to the under utilization issue. 1-5% under utilization is something I can easily live with, if it helps me save 300€ :)

Thanks for the people at Tom's for hearing our complaints and for discussing the matter with AMD (and in such a short time!). Way to go guys, way to go!
 
My guess is though the Dirt3 results were affected by this, I don't think the low results with the low settings are a cpu scaling issue.

To those saying how much better the gtx680m is the benchmarks I've seen definitely don't back that up. Well maybe it's 5% faster or so overall (as always depends on the settings and games used) but the HD7970M is something like a ~300$ option whereas the GTX680M is ~600$.
Granted OC potential should be quite a bit higher but there's a reason these mobile graphic cards are usually restricted to "only" 100W. So if you're intending to really OC your mobile graphics it might be ok-ish though even then it cannot approach perf/price of HD7970M. If you don't overclock, the value compared to hd7970m is just abysimal - you'd totally laugh at the desktop GTX670 too if it would cost twice as much as a HD7950... But granted it is working right now whereas amd needs to fix their enduro issues first.
 
Facts are facts- the 680M is far superior to the 7970M, and I can say this. because I OWN the 7970m, and bought it prematurely before the 680m came out.
After it came out, we all saw how much more powerful the 680M is in games, has better FPS rates in most of the games, has better battery life, and supports Physix, CUDA, and 3D. I regret buying the 7970m, and should have waited longer for the 680M, but I made a mistake, and now am moving on with my stupid decision.
 
Hey Guys can you please do a comparison between the HD 7970M and the HD 7870(with a similar desktop c.p.u).
Thanx.
 
On another note, incredible that it's necessary to make a virtual protest movement and go through a tech journalist just to have a major hardware producer fix an obvious and serious bug in their product..
 


Yep... pretty pathetic on AMD's behalf.
 
Why do people say it's only Enduro (7000 series)-specific issue? It also applies to earlier PX4.0 (Bacon) configurations, like Radeon 6630M+Intel HD 3000. The problem is very apparent in app-based switching mode, and you can't resolve it unless you disable switchable graphics altogether, which CAN be possible on SOME laptops, but not all.
If AMD hotfix doesn't cover 6630M, I'll be extremely pissed off.
 
[citation][nom]menigmand[/nom]On another note, incredible that it's necessary to make a virtual protest movement and go through a tech journalist just to have a major hardware producer fix an obvious and serious bug in their product..[/citation]They've been working on it for months, they just didn't want to talk about it. Doing so would have convinced 100% of a market not to buy a product that affects maybe 10% of the market.
 


That doesn't even make sense.
 
Well then, let me explain it to you...I can do that in one word...Abit.

To be more accurate, you tell the world "Our part doesn't work but we hope to have a solution in a few months", and guess what happens? Nobody buys it for those months. And then, when the solution is delayed, you still look like you're being dishonest.

Sales wise, it was better for AMD to rely on the fact that most buyers were unaffected while it worked on a solution. Some of you guys will say "I'll never trust them again" but perhaps an equal number of buyers would have said "I'll never buy anything from such an inept company" if they had been forthright about the issue.

As proven by Abit, official statements are a big risk for tech companies. They often find it less risky to leak their progress through unofficial channels. In the case of Abit, they would have been better off to leak information about an extended warranty program rather than make a statement that got them sued for cash, rather than repairs.
 
Just to clarify, this issue affects virtually all Enduro enabled graphics cards, so I would had appreciated AMD letting me know that there is something being done.
Anyway, they've made a business decision to keep quiet about the issue, which may have sold a few more of affected units than if they'd had made the issue public. However in the process they probably permanently lost quite a few potential future customers... I cant speak for anyone else, but as a matter of principle I will probably refrain from purchasing any AMD products again, - instead I would gladly spend extra few hundred to get a product that works and has decent support with severe problems.
To buy my current laptop I had sold my previous HM series clevo for half the price I had paid for it the previous year, so imagine how peeved off I was when I realized that my previous machine with 6970m card actually performed better in many games. on top of that, I have wasted half a year on checking and posting on forums, harassing AMD to act and arguing with their inept support techs who were near consistently denying there was an issue even when there were hundreds of posts to support our case... never again.
 
So with Toms acknowledgement finally... all the people who says theres no problem with amd's gpu... ur just signifigantly OWNED. STop lying on the internet. yall dont have the gpu, yall dont know the problem, ur just trying to say it doesnt exist. Stop being a halt to progress. MANY people payed alot of money for their laptops and the performance claims of amd. THEY didnt pay to BETA TEST their crappy enduro. IT is all AMD's fault and no one elses. AMD even went out of its way asking other forums to remove ppl with the problem's post.
 
I had a sager 9150 with the AMD 7970m but I upgraded to the 680m. It was the best upgrade I have made. AMD is not doing s*** about it, they really need to fix their drivers. The Alienware has a button to shut off the buggy enduro in the Bios. I wish Clevo had the same thing in their Bios.

This was the first time I bought a AMD graphics card in over 5 years and I will continue to avoid them in the future.
 
Did you read to the bottom of the post? They have a fix.......... better late than never I say. However I should point out that never having this issue in the first place would of been the best solution for AMD!
 
I dont believe that fix will do anything, and AMD said that the drivers for the so called fix is still in BETA. It will take many more months for the fixed drivers to be released. I dont believe in there time table. AMD can kiss by metal rear behind.

And too late now, I already upgraded to the 680m.
 
Well at least give them chance to release the new driver before you condemn it!! Plus I think you can't really call it an upgrade, but more of a "sidegrade" by spending so much on the 680m. I would of thought at least waiting to see how the new driver performs before spending so much cash would of been the more sensible option. I hope the extra money you paid is worth the occasional 1 FPS improvement you might get.
 
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