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The Asus HD7970-DC2-3GD5 and MSI R7970 Lightning; the solution for tearing in the 79XX family
http://www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=23598		 Page 21 of 23
Author:  overstitch [ 14 May 2012, 22:10 ]
Post subject:  12.5 Pre worked for me for a
12.5 Pre worked for me for a while, then one day they started causing Mass Effect 3 to crash (hard lock) without reason or justification, even after a clean restart. I'm betting that this is a case of the drivers work when they want to work :P I swear AMD has to have something they can't understand in hardware causing all of this grief with drivers. *sigh*

I was able to play Mass Effect 3 for a few hours on the 12.4s before the hard locked my system just as a I made it to the final decision point. Luckily the game auto-saved and prevented me from destroying my computer uncontrollably :P
Author:  g0del [ 15 May 2012, 00:25 ]
Post subject:  Moose wrote:g0del
[quote]Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I didn't say "reference", I said "referenced". Specifically, I have this HD7970-DC2-3GD5 card.


Excuse me, I didn't catch that. Well, if you have tearing, then it must be either;
1. Plugged in the monitors wrong;
2. Somehow drivers are wrong;
3. A defect card (probably the clock generator).

If it's the first case it's easy; with this card you need to hook up all three monitors on the Displayports. You can't mix the DVI outputs with the Displayports (not even with adapters) because that causes tearing.

If it's the second case; you need to make sure you have the correct drivers. AMD has released special drivers for the 7900 series, you need to download those. If the problem still occurs, clear the harddrive and do a clean install to make sure any previous drivers aren't screwing up.

If it's the third case; good luck. I have no idea how to prove that your card's hardware is actually broken, so I suggest you send it back to the shop and let it get tested there.

Moose

PS: Could you tell me what monitors you use? There are users here that have native DVI monitors mixed up with native DP monitors, connected to their cards without adapters, and experience no tearing.
I have a Dell U2410 as my center monitor (the one experiencing tearing), and two Dell U2412M monitors on the sides. All three monitors are connected by displayport, no adapters or converters. Just ordinary displayport cables right from the card to the monitors.

I don't have the driver you listed installed, when I installed the card I simply got the latest driver from AMD (cat 12.4) and installed that. When I get home I'll try those drivers, and maybe try switching the monitors around to see if its' a particular port on the card that's giving me issues.
Author:  suiken_2mieu [ 16 May 2012, 22:43 ]
Post subject:  g0bel: You may also want to
g0bel: You may also want to pull the edid data from all three monitors and check that they all are running at the same refresh rate. Sometimes you get the edid saying to run at 59.99Hz and 60Hz etc. Making an edid mask might fix your issue.
Author:  BirdOtt [ 18 May 2012, 01:05 ]
Post subject:  Further Experiences
A quick update on my trials and tribulations:

Things have settled down a bit. I put Windows on auto-update. The lockups have been reduced significantly. When I start Windows, I must be patient and wait for GPU weak to boot up and run for maybe 30 seconds before minimizing it, and also wait for the HDD Activity light to stop blinking. If I do that, the Display driver does not fail and recover. I do not know why waiting works; perhaps it is related to STEAM or Windows booting up and doing whatever they do! As indicated previously, this display driver failure NEVER occurs when the Windows start screen is on. It only happens occasionally now when I try to use programs within Windows 7.

The problem with Winamp has been solved! One person on the Winamp forum advised me that if I use 150% text size with the BIG Bento skin, it will not work. He said it is a known BUG! He was right! So I changed the text to 125% and it now works flawlessly. :)

I now have a new problem to address. :( I am running Railworks 3 Train Simulator 2012. Initially it would NOT load and I had an error message saying AGP driver was missing. It definitely was missing. :) I had installed the drivers from the disk that came with the graphics card and for some reason the CCC was mucked up. The download of the AMD driver 12.4 solved that and the Catalyst Control Center now works. Railworks 3 works too. I can now drive sim trains! De-rail them too! :) I am now trying (several days so far) to install the RailDriver software and hardware. So far no success there. I am conversing with the PI Engineering folks who designed the RailDriver hardware and software.. I hope to solve that sometime this year! :)

I have not tried the Displayport connections yet, nor 3 monitors. I might do that this coming weekend. I try to do things one at a time, or else I get them all mucked up and I get confused. I've been confused a lot lately.

I have not installed my ASUS Xonar STX PCIe sound card yet either.

I am running AMD Display Driver 8.961.0.0 at this time. I will check out the special AMD driver Moose identified. I am not sure which version that is yet.

The AMD driver that I downloaded did NOT include AVIVO and Hydravision as they are apparently considered optional by AMD and I was not given a choice if I recall correctly. Are those needed for eyefinity or any other applications with the ASUS HD 7970 DC2T?
Author:  BirdOtt [ 18 May 2012, 01:11 ]
Post subject:  Wijkert comment re 79XX cards in power save mode
I disabled power saving features and operate at "performance" with NEVER as the setting for sleep options. That seems to cut down on the PC sleeping and hanging lockups. I have just set up a screensaver today in case I forget to return to the PC before going to bed! :)
Author:  BirdOtt [ 18 May 2012, 01:15 ]
Post subject:  Haldi 8.961 is 12.4 right?
Yes, 8.961 is AMD download 12.4. I don't know why they do the identification this way! Seems confusing to me :)
Author:  BirdOtt [ 18 May 2012, 03:07 ]
Post subject:  Special 7970 Drivers
Hi Moose. I went to the site you identified for the special 7970 drivers. The site does not indicate which AMD version it is, but does indicate that it is 130.82 MB and dated 1/18/2012.

When I looked at AMD's site at: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx , they identify drivers as follows:

SIZE Revision Number Release Date
153.5 12.4 4/25/2012
161 12.3 3/28/2012
162 12.2 3/7/2012
109 11.12 12/13/2012
100.9 11.11 11/15/2011
95.7 11.10 10/31/2011
92.3 11.9 9/28/2011

I did not see an AMD version with the same size and date as the site you provided.

Can you provide any insight regarding this particular driver? Which AMD site did it come from? Is it an AMD driver or a modified version, or a partial version?
Author:  Wijkert [ 18 May 2012, 08:09 ]
Post subject:  BirdOtt wrote:The AMD driver
The AMD driver that I downloaded did NOT include AVIVO and Hydravision as they are apparently considered optional by AMD and I was not given a choice if I recall correctly. Are those needed for eyefinity or any other applications with the ASUS HD 7970 DC2T?


Both programs aren't essential for your setup. You can use Hydravision to be able to maximize windows to a single screen instead of all three.

I disabled power saving features and operate at "performance" with NEVER as the setting for sleep options. That seems to cut down on the PC sleeping and hanging lockups. I have just set up a screensaver today in case I forget to return to the PC before going to bed! :)


It has been my observation that some power savings settings are indeed causing crashes. Never turning the monitor helps, because the card won't go into a power saving mode when at least one monitor is active. I have not have a display not responding, since I stopped turning my monitor of a week ago. You don't need to use a screensaver though, unless you are using an old crt monitor. All current monitors won't 'burn in' when you leave them on for longer periods of time.
Author:  BirdOtt [ 18 May 2012, 17:25 ]
Post subject:  Thanks Wijkert for your comments
I did turn the Screen Saver on, but it appears not to work anyway! I went away and came back after the time delay and the monitor was still on without screen saver on. Oh well. Not a big deal as you indicated.

Yes, the power save options seem to be more trouble than they are worth.

I find that if I minimize GPU tweak (which starts all the time on boot-up by default), and click on almost anything before the Notify and Info popup windows shut off, I will get the error message that the Display Driver has stopped working and recovered successfully. However, if I wait until they disappear and the HDD indicator stops flashing, I will not get that message. I wonder what is causing it to occur.

Are you running the same g-card driver that Moose recommended? Or something else?
Author:  Wijkert [ 18 May 2012, 21:07 ]
Post subject:  BirdOtt wrote:Are you running
Are you running the same g-card driver that Moose recommended? Or something else?


I am running 8.97-120418a (aka 12.5 unofficial beta). It seems that I had more trouble with the different 12.4 versions. That might be why they have a bad rep (also because of artifacts in several game though).
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