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7970M Drivers?

Post Date: 2014-01-12

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kertain View Drop Down
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  Quote kertain Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: 7970M Drivers?
    Posted: 12 Jan 2014 at 12:27pm
Afternoon,
We purchased a 9170 laptop about a year about the 7970M AMD card.

At that time we had a bunch of issues with drivers and the system running games very poorly(seemed like an issues with the switchable graphics). We finally found the right combination of Intel and AMD Beta drivers to get the system running "ok". Some games would still run very poorly for whatever reason, but most were acceptable.

Last week Catalyst stopped working and the system started running very poorly. My brother ended up reverting to a very old driver version (one of the many we tested) and now the system is in a very poor state again. Obviously this was the wrong course of action on his part..but too late now :)

I am in the process of wiping all AMD drivers off the system in safe mode and getting it back to default drivers.

However: when I look for the most up to date drivers from AMD it does not mention the 7900m series only the 7000m series in the notes.
Also when I try to auto detect drivers via AMDs tool it tells me that the card is unsupported. The case notes also recommend getting the drivers from the manufacturer for any notebook mobile series.

The only "offical" drivers I can find are over 1.5 years old from Sager: http://www2.sagernotebook.com/pages/notebooks/download.cfm?ProductType=9170

Can't find anything newer and those drivers had ALL sorts of issues orginally.
Any suggestions? What is the best supported version should I be using?

Sorry for the long winded post, just wanted to provide the entire background.

Thanks!
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bprat22 View Drop Down
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  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 12 Jan 2014 at 12:53pm
Here's a link with latest 13.12 drivers. The 7000m series I believe includes the 7970m. Issue date is 12/2013.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+Vista+-+64

I hope this is what your looking for. I do little with laptops but did find this.

Hope it helps.

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Alex View Drop Down
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  Quote Alex Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 12 Jan 2014 at 3:42pm
That should do the trick! As always, bprat22 is on it!
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bprat22 View Drop Down
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  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 12 Jan 2014 at 5:01pm
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Tidgxor View Drop Down
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  Quote Tidgxor Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 12 Jan 2014 at 6:35pm
 Awesome
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kertain View Drop Down
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  Quote kertain Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Jan 2014 at 7:29am
Thanks guys, but no cigar :)
We completely cleaned off the AMD drivers/Catalyst and got the system back to default VGA windows drivers (used DriveSweeper and DriverFusion in safe mode)

When we tried to install that package above it would not give an error, but close the installer and not update the drivers nor even install Catalyst...so no good there.

After further research the case notes mention this:

MD Mobility Radeon™ Family Compatibility
AMD Catalyst Mobility is a notebook reference graphics driver with limited support for system vendor specific features. When used with Windows Vista or Windows 7, the user experience may be limited or compromised.
The Installation Verification Software is designed to prevent driver download on certain notebook products. This is to help protect against the installing of drivers that may disable features or functionality provided by the system manufacturer. When used with Windows Vista or Windows 7, the user experience may be limited or compromised. In such a situation, it is recommended to revert back to the driver provided by your system vendor for your specific platform. Please contact your system vendor for the most recent drivers for your notebook.



So we went here to find this "Driver Verification Tool"
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/mobile?os=Windows%207%20-%2064

Downloaded the tool, which then scanned the system and downloaded and prompted install of the AMD Mobility driver. I was unable to find this driver any other way other than via that tool.

After we installed the Mobility package it got the drivers updated and installed the most recent Catalyst version.

We immediately noticed an improvement on games that ran very poorly originally and for the past year: Diablo III and Skyrim. Huge improvements :)

Its a shame my brother had to run with a very sub par performance due to drivers.
It seems we got this card very early and there were issues with how switchable graphics were handled.
Nice to see AMD has a distinct driver set for the mobility cards..seems to run way better.

Hope this info helps people in the future and thanks for your help.
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bprat22 View Drop Down
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  Quote bprat22 Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 13 Jan 2014 at 7:33am
Thanks for the info.   Strong


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