A Consumer Nightmare – Alienware M18x-R2 + AMD 7970M Crossfire

By On · 14 Comments


Alienware M18x

Image: Dell Computer Corporation

UPDATE: AMD has since resolved most of the issues noted in this article with the release of Catalyst 12.11 beta. You can get the details in our 7970M Crossfire vs 680M SLI article. 

Alienware’s flagship system M18x just got a refresh last month when it debuted with AMD’s new 7970M graphics card in Crossfire configuration. This new 28nm video card based on the “Pitcairn” architecture features 1280 stream processors with a whopping 32 ROPs and 2 GB of GDDR5 RAM. What do all these numbers mean? Absolutely nothing if you buy the M18x-R2 with 7970M Crossfire!

Well to be more accurate and fair, there are no official drivers from AMD or Dell that support 7970M in Crossfire mode, thus users are left to fend for themselves by hobbling together leaked beta drivers that often cause more problems than they solve.

We spoke to two owners of the M18x-R2, Speedy_Gonzalez and GTO_PA011 and both of their experiences were nearly identical:

Popular DX 11 titles such as Batman Arkham City showed decreased performance with Crossfire enabled  or at best a 5 FPS gain vs a single 7970M. The same was true for Skyrim where both users noticed severe frame rate fluctuation between 16-60 fps vs a single card where it holds steady at a higher frame rate. The issue with Skyrim is not isolated to the 7970M series either, other Crossfire owners report similar findings. Max Payne 3, a hotly anticipated sequel by Rockstar Games shows flickering in game menus.

Some power users would argue that they should try the newest 12.7 beta drivers from AMD to see if that remedies the problem and unfortunately they’d find there’s no improvement at all. Speedy_Gonzalez reports that 12.6 and 12.7 beta produce random BSODs and do not have working color profiles.

The obvious solution must be to call Dell and ask for support right? After all, Dell advertises premium next day service and online support for their Alienware notebooks. Unfortunately, Speedy_Gonzalez tried this to no avail. After spending 3 hours with Alienware tech support installing and uninstalling random drivers,  he was told that they would like to replace his motherboard and video cards for an obvious software problem.

When  Speedy asked for an upgrade to nVidia’s upcoming 680M or a refund, he was denied both options and told that replacing hardware is Alienware’s first option. Yes that left me scratching my head too thinking WTF?

It’s been over a month since M18x-R2 with AMD’s new 7970M wonder card was released and so far neither company has produced results. AMD has passed the responsibility on to Dell while Dell claims they haven’t received a proper base driver from AMD. Meanwhile, customers that pay $3000+ for a supposed top end gaming system are left with empty promises.

 

Source: Calling out to Alienware Support Where are our Official AMD 7970m Crossfire drivers ??.



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  • http://profile.yahoo.com/D5YZIKRGQZE25TTDRGZPAOA54E John

    I have the same issues as an M18X R2 owner. I called Alienware about this, and won’t drop the matter with them until the 7970M is properly supported, or they refund me.

  • DumbDumbnotebookreview

    Hi my name is DumbDumb on NBR and I have 7970s in my m18x r1 that were supplied to me by Dell.. to keep it fair this is not just a R2 problem but a problem with all 7970s in general.. if you have 7970s be prepared to get no ware with them.. 12.5 seems to be the best beta drivers at the moment but those fail miserably and come up short..
    if the problem is not fixed a free up grade to the 680s for all legit 7970 owners should be a realistic option for us..
    and if you happen to own an r1 and got your cards from dell dont call as they will offer you some thing far lower in specs than what you currently have..

    im not a fan boy of ether tbh and id be happy with the cards if they would just fix the dang problem!!!!!!!!

    • http://www.techinferno.com Brian K.

      Yes you’re right the 7970Ms can be purchased directly from Dell for use in M18x-R1. However, officially Dell does not support 7970M for the M18x-R1 thus it was not mentioned in the article. 

  • TaintedMeat

    I spent roughly $3,800 on my system, getting the best CPU so that I could encode games at 1080P for streaming. Strangely enough the thing that held me back was the two 7970Ms being incompatible with the streaming software X-split. It has a new feature that causes the driver to crash and then recover shutting down the stream at random. NEVER would have thought that the video cards would be what would hold me back considering streaming is CPU dependent. 

    Here is a link regarding the issue:

    https://www.xsplit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5058&start=220&pself=viewtopic.php 

    I realized the issue being on-going, and am returning my system for a refund to go with a Desktop with the single 690 card instead. Would be nice to be compensated for this inconvenience on my new system, considering I’ve been without a computer that can do what I want for over a month while my money has been spent the whole time….

    • http://www.techinferno.com Brian K.

      I shared a similar experience when trying to encode movies when I had Crossfire 6990M video cards in my M18x. The system would routinely BSOD in the middle of encoding and I was never able to find a solution. This is just one of many issues currently plaguing the mobile Radeon (and perhaps desktop) series.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/XQTARO4FWP32PAIUXNOFMKNFNQ real_temp

    Thanks Brian for documenting this problem.  Hopefully your article ends up on the desk of someone high enough up the chain at Alienware or AMD so something is actually done about this. Consumers are being used as guinea pigs and are being forced to try and work out the bugs in hardware / software that is nowhere near ready to be shipped.

    The mainstream media that is financially supported by Intel, AMD and Dell are always afraid to tell it like it is.

    • http://www.techinferno.com Brian K.

      Thanks, we try our best to be advocates of the consumer and take no sides. In my personal opinion, Dell and AMD are both equally culpable for selling an unfinished product and should be held responsible for providing working drivers for the mobile 7970 graphics cards. Dell has had one month to push AMD for a working reference driver which exceeds the reasonable time frame for any customer that should have had a system that worked out of the box. 

      This sort of practice has been going on for a long time in the high end consumer gaming notebook world and not much has been done to change it since gaming notebooks don’t get the kind of attention that desktops and tablets do.

  • http://www.facebook.com/george.guerra.3762 George Guerra

    Interesting…granted I have only been playing SWTOR and Diablo III on my new m18x with dual 7970m, but after installing 12.7 beta drivers, playing SWTOR, in particular, is awesome - the occasional stuttering (likely low fps), pixelation, or flickering I was experiencing ALL GONE and all on max settings for all game graphics.  NO issues or instability experienced at all, too.  The older Dell drivers that came with the laptop simply sucked.

  • Arnold Hue

    Well I’m not a fan of AMD or Nvidia, but I admit, with all the complains I’ve went straight to ordering 680m Sli, even with the huge HUGE premium I just payed. Lets see how it goes…

    • http://www.techinferno.com Brian K.

      Good choice, there seems to be too many problems with the 7970M with all the major vendors. Clevo was affected the worst because they use Enduro and it can’t be switched off (like it can for Alienware) so its killing their gaming performance.

  • Carl Nepveu

    still the same .. now that months (read with and S) … this is a real sad thing… everytime i play a game i know this thing gona get me a black screen at any moment!

  • Marc Waters

    M18x R1 here with 7970m crossfire and no driver has solved this and this is now months later in fact months since this article was written. This is unacceptable. I have loaded every driver that can be compatible with the 7970m and it does fix anything. I get crashes while surfing and almost all games have graphic anomalies to black screen to plain freezing and even had a red screen with random txt this is the worst Co video card company at this point. No support and no clear resolution.

  • Unhappy

    This is my last purchase from DELL. M18x failing motherboard again in 12 month old machine, and my XPS1730 failed video cards at 2.5 years. Goodbye DELL your products are not worthy.

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