Clevo P170EM HD7970M (pos) gfx problems

[MatTheCat]

Some of you may remember me bitching about the fact that Steam had locked me out of most of my games due to me to having a good enough internet connection on the vessel I am working on, even though I told Steam to sign me in only in offline mode.

Anyways, my gaming problems with the aforementioned Laptop have now progressed to the next stage beyond merely being locked out of games cos i chose to buy them instead of steal them.

When I first got my laptop rigged up, gaming performance was good. Enduro (switches graphics from HD4000 to HD7970) worked flawlessly and in really demanding games such as Crysis 3, my GPU usage would read 96% constantly.

Lately however, I am noticing that in Crysis 3, my HD7970 will happily maintain 80-90% for ten minutes or so, thereafter it wants to drop down to 50% use, where it will stay. as is imaginable, the frame rate starts to suck.

Even in non demanding games such as Pro Evo Soccer 2013, Enduro has started not even bothering to tell the HD7970 to kick in at all.

Since I have not actually done anything to my laptop except for game, MPEGs, Mp3s, and with work with Office/Excel, this degradation is not due to 'conflicts' but due to the system creating errors/corrupting itself.

Without an internet connection cable of more than 4.8Kb/s, nor a back up of any drivers. I have tried system restores which didnt work. Then I tried to 'repair' the AMD drivers through the Control Panel. Now, CCC has a Host Application Error, and will not load up at all. The HD7970 will not apply itself to any games at all, with one exception, FIFA 13.

At this point I have various questions going through my head.

Not only am asking myself why such an expensive laptop should be such a pos (lets face it Clevo owners, these machines are No crap...although very powerful as gaming notebooks, they have very poor overall design and build quality with very unstable bios' to boot), but whether I could approach Clevo as per my 2 year warranty and tell them that the HD7970 card is not fit for purpose, refund or nvidia replacement please!?

But all this will be dealt with later. In the meantime, could any Clevo owner acquainted with the same problems (or anyone else for that matter) suggest or give me a link to a procedure for dealing with a jiggered up CCC/driver issue, when I have no possible access to the original driver .exe file?

 

[MatTheCat]

Since my previous post was long and rambling and not to the point. Here is a shortened version.

I am asking if there are any other Clevo owners (with AMD gfx) who could inform me why the Clevo|AMD HD7970 is such a p.o.s?

Why, all of a sudden, does the gfx card decide to stop giving me full power in demanding games when it was ok before?

Why, all of a sudden, even with certain low demand games, does the gfx card run them like crap when it ran them just fine a few days before?

Why did uninstalling an reinstalling the AMD drivers not resolve this issue?

and finally a multiple choice one:

Why did I spend 1500 GBP on a gaming laptop?

a. so I could game as a bit of light relief gaming between shifts when I am working for weeks at a time offshore?

b. so I could take the daily aggravation I have with PC gaming with me to sea, in order that I **** yet further hours of my free time down the bottomless pit of PC bug fixing?

I cant help but wonder if the common denomimator here is No AMD and thier p.o.s drivers. Perhaps their is a reason why AMD is so cheap compared with Nvidia.

 

[MatTheCat]

Hi,

I can't say I can replicate your problems.

I have a Clevo with AMD graphics, the only problems I had with it were being unable to change brightness when I installed the AMD generic drivers. When I installed Clevo's drivers, everything was fine.

Are you running AMD's own drivers or one's from Clevo?

I installed the Clevo drivers, and then update with the drivers from AMD.

When i left to go offshore with my laptop 4 weeks ago, everything was fine. From that, I can assume that the drivers I was using were appropriate for my laptop.

Since then however, conflicts have arisen and no matter what I try, those conflicts won't dissappear. My problem is the exact same problem as many people have with Clevo/AMD laptops, in that the GPU will not put enough of its resources into running certain games, whether that game be a resource hog such as Crysis 3 or non demanding games such as PES 2013. Unlike most who have this problem, I had no problems at all to begin with and since I haven't installed anything on my Laptop in that time I can only assume that my laptop has self-generated the problems I am having now.

I was half wondering if these GPUs leave the factory working great but degenerate very quickly should the end user actually want to use their laptop for demanding games, and thus this throttling effect is a defense mechanism of the GPU.

When I get back onshore, instead of being out in the garden getting fresh air and excercise, I suppose I am going to burn yet more hours of my life into doing a fresh OS install and all the rest of it.........unless of course I come by information before then that would suggest that the AMD cards are not fit for purpose and needs to be changed, plain and simple.

 

[MatTheCat]

Back after a short break for my rampant psuedo swearing.

Thanks to those who have put input into this thread.

My conclusion is that the AMD HD7970M + Enduro is firmly in the sin bin of all Clevo laptop configurations. Even if it all works flawlessly to begin with. This setup is ultra prone to crashing and bugs developing, leaving the drivers on your OS a complete unfixable mess. This means regular fresh installs and/or just accepting bad performance.

To anyone researching whether to go with the HD7970M, I would say that unless you are getting an Alienware or other laptop that allows manual swich to the HD7970M, steer well clear of it. Either accept reduced performance (and headaches) in the similarly priced GTX670M, or if you have the cash, go with the vastly more expensive GTX 680M.

I am now pressing for part exchanging my HD7970M for the GTX 680M. Much more expensive for more or less the same performance, true. But I would happily have paid the difference to have avoided the headaches that I have had.

As someone else in another thread said. The AMDs are cheap for a reason!

 

[MatTheCat]

problem was this gen that nvidia ripped off its mobile customers and AMD pulled an ace of a card out of the bag so that £300 gpu difference for the extra 10% seemed even more ludicrous

AMD 7970m isn't a fail, it works when it stands alone. The drivers for enduro are Carp, they probably always will be.

personally id get the 670mx (or replacement 7xx) it will be good solid performance on both linux and windows.

Wouldn't matter if the AMD 7970 jumped out the laptop and brought you breakfast in bed on a Sunday morning. If it is a complete headache when paired with Enduro, and the two must come together, then it is to be avoided.

 

[MatTheCat]

which i agree with. But the two 'must-nt' come together as Alienware and a few other marques that go dedicated allow for a FN key disable of IGP or even a bios level disable of IGP so enduro doesnt affect things. This is a widely (and i think embarrassing issue for AMD) accepted problem, ive seen acer, toshiba,, dell, lenovo go dedicated only because of problems with enduro.

you just chose a laptop that didnt. the cards are fine on their own as i said. Tough break, the early 7970m's were defective effectively but now there fine and with drivers can keep close to a £300 more expensive card.

Im not an AMD fan boy but they do provide excellent competition to Nvidia, just look how Nvidia didnt expect the 7970m to perform like it did and charged around £600 for a 680m ! which is the price of a whole mid range laptop and the cost of two full desktop 1ghz 7970 GPU's ! .. nvidia are like some elitist rich boy made company who believe they have god like presence and they proved they could sell a marginally faster card (titan) for £1000 ! just stupid.

its a sheer rip. I dont blame you for choosing the 7970m, i would and may even get the 8970m when it comes out but i WONT choose a laptop that has no ability to disable the internal GPU.

come to think of it doesnt the 370em from Sager have SLI and the IGP disabled?

Good point.

I have been in touch with OcUK customer support asking for an upgrade to the GTX 680M in part exchange for the HD7970M. They said that they couldnt do the exchange, but I could get a refund on the whole laptop and then buy whatever laptop I wanted.

Perhaps I need to check out the 370EM, as the GTX 680 really is a rip. The HD7970 when it worked, offered excellent performance, until it just didnt.

 

[MatTheCat]

Been tinkering around further with this damn laptop trying to get it to work before I RMA it.


Haven't fixed it, but I accidentally discovered that If I send the Laptop 'to sleep', when I am running a 3D application, then the HD7970M kicks in and I get full performance.....until a menu screen loads up that is. Then when main game screens kicks again, I have to repeat process.

Absolutely laughable.

I know nothing about coding drivers but surely writing something that simply tells a component to 'work' cant be that hard.

This laptop is going back. Saddest thing is that I couldnt give two hoots about the Intel HD4000 iGPU. If this laptop came with just the HD7970 with powerplay, then I would be dleighted with it.

 

[MatTheCat]

May be a bit late now but I have a p150EM and I found that the way you install drivers can have an affect on the gpu's utilization and performance, try disabling any internet security software you may have before installing new drivers, delete the AMD folder from C: and do an express uninstall of the older drivers before installing any new ones, also if you're installing any WHQL drivers install them as an admin. I've been using this method for a while now and I've found a few games that were getting sub par performance are now all getting over 90% utilization, there are a couple of games that I still get issues with but it's much better than when I first got the laptop. Don't expect this to fix all everything like I said it doesn't sort every game, AMD kind of dropped the ball with their Enduro stuff and I'm doubtful we'll ever see a complete fix for it

I tried the absolute lot. Sometimes trying the exact same thing several times which is exactly how I know the AMD drivers are so bad.

Attempt 1: Complete driver and registry key wipe, install with manufacturers drivers.

Result 1: CCC fails to load or be properly recognised in OS.

Attempt 2: Complete driver and registry key wipe, install with manufacturers drivers.

Result 2: CCC loads, Enduro puportedly recognises applications, most games experience throttling.

and the whole nonsense continues like this with everything I try until I get to the point where I cant take it no more. Even if I fixed it 100%. The fact it is that these problems will rear their ugly heads once again through no fault of my own. Not good enough for a 1500GBP machine. RMA'd it. Now only looking at Nvidia gaming laptops. May hang back a while to wait on 780GTX and Haswell though.

 

[MatTheCat]

You do realise people have the same or similar issues with nVidia laptops?

Instead of getting butthurt about the issues you've had, be level headed and sensible.

Whatever.

I don't pay 1500GBP for a luxury entertainment device that is going to inexplicably start screwing up on me in the middle of the very sort of 6 week offshore stints that the thing was bought for. I dont want to spend any of the free time I get when I am away fiddling around for hours and days with damn laptop drivers.

I shall get a GTX 780M laptop just as soon as they become available. If I have anywhere near the same level of issues with that as I did with the HD7970M laptop, then that will get RMA'd as well and I will just settle for a bog standard laptop for a fraction of the price. If gaming laptop vendors can't get thier gaming laptops to work properly, then they shouldn't be selling them.