AMD’s Enduro Switchable Graphics Levels Up
by Jarred Walton on September 6, 2012 3:00 AM ESTOther Technical Details and Performance Expectations
So far we’ve discussed the past and near future of AMD’s Enduro/Switchable Graphics, but we haven’t gone into the technical aspects much. We’ve covered most of this previously (and neither AMD nor NVIDIA provide a ton of detail as to how precisely they’re doing the work), but there are a couple other tidbits we wanted to briefly discuss before wrapping up.
At a high level, all of the display outputs on a laptop now connect to the Intel iGPU, and AMD is able to route their content through the PCIe bus to the embedded graphics and out to the display. Nothing has really changed there; content is copied from the dGPU to the iGPU output in some fashion and you get the ability to switch seamlessly between the two GPUs. We also mentioned earlier that AMD has now removed the need for the active PCIe bus when the GPU is powered down, which drops power use of the dGPU from less than 100mW or so down to 0W.
One thing that hasn’t changed is AMD’s use of Link Adapter Mode (LDA) where NVIDIA uses Multi Adapter Mode, but we now have an explanation of why this difference exists. As far as we could tell, there’s not really an inherent superiority of either mode for general use. The primary reason AMD uses LDA is that they also have a chipset business, where NVIDIA has bowed out of making chipsets. Why this matters is that LDA is what facilitates AMD’s Dual Graphics (formerly Hybrid CrossFire)—the dGPU and the iGPU working together to render a scene. This is less important on Intel platforms, as AMD isn’t trying to do any cooperative rendering with Intel iGPUs; they potentially could in the future if desired, but that seems unlikely given the difficulty of getting even similar GPUs to work together. AMD also indicates that the use of LDA provides full support for Windows 8 Metro applications; I would assume NVIDIA also supports Metro apps, so unless that proves to not be the case (and we should know soon enough), other than Dual Graphics it appears that Enduro and Optimus are essentially at parity in terms of how they function, with software/drivers being the key differentiator.
Something else we’re still waiting to see is the packaging of the new Mobility Catalyst drivers. AMD didn’t provide us with the actual installation files—they installed them for us as they were still in a rather early state. That being the case, we aren’t sure if the Mobility Catalyst drivers for Enduro systems will feature totally independent drivers as far as Intel iGPUs are concerned, but that appears to be the case. If all goes as planned, you will be able to update your AMD dGPU drivers separately from your Intel iGPU drivers without any trouble once the Enduro Catalyst drivers start coming out.
Performance Expectations
AMD let us borrow a Sager notebook for a short time after the preview to test out the new “Enduro 5.5” drivers, and they also helped us install the drivers on a Clevo P170EM system from AVADirect. We’ll be providing a full review with performance data for the P170EM in the near future, but in the meantime we wanted to show off the Sager notebook as well as discuss performance expectations. Here's a rundown of the system specs for the Sager NP9150 along with some photos.
| Sager NP9150 / Clevo P150EM Specifications | |
| Processor |
Intel i7-3720QM (Quad-core 2.60-3.60GHz, 6MB L3, 22nm, 45W) |
| Chipset | HM77 |
| Memory | 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1600 |
| Graphics |
Intel HD 4000 (16 EUs, up to 1250MHz) AMD Radeon HD 7970M 2GB GDDR5 (1280 cores @ 850MHz, 256-bit 4800MHz RAM) |
| Display | 15.6" WLED Glossy 16:9 1080p (1920x1080) |
| Storage | 180GB Intel 520 SSD |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit |
| Price | $1919 as configured (9/05/2012) |
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The Sager unit is their rebranded Clevo P150EM, and it has many of the same design issues that we’ve seen with Clevo in the past. The backlit keyboard with zoned lighting is a new addition, and they’ve tweaked the keyboard layout as well. Interestingly (and frustratingly), while they’ve mostly fixed my complaints with the 10-key layout, they went ahead and screwed up the main keyboard layout. The Windows key is now to the right of the spacebar, and there’s a second backslash key just right of the spacebar. I’m also not a fan of the tactile feedback from the keys, though it’s not terrible. Outside of the keyboard quirks and overly abundant use of plastic for the chassis, though, the performance is certainly there.
We ran through our current suite of games at the native 1080p on the P150EM with settings maxed out in most titles. Total War: Shogun 2 wouldn’t allow us to select Very High settings (a problem we’ve encountered on other systems in the past where the game incorrectly detects the amount of video memory and/or iGPU feature set rather than looking at the dGPU), but otherwise we get very respectable frame rates. Civilization V continues to be a bit sluggish at max settings (around 26FPS), but the brutal Battlefield 3 manages 36FPS and could very easily reach 40+ FPS if you disable 4xMSAA and just use FXAA. Those are the three lowest performing games we tested, with everything else running smoothly in the 45+ FPS range. A quick look at the last GTX 580M system we tested shows performance is better in over half of the games, and slightly lower in the other three titles. We’ll have a second look at the P170EM with a GTX 680M from AVADirect shortly after our full HD 7970M review, though, so stay tuned.
Finally, AMD did inform us that the current drivers aren’t fully optimized for performance (particularly with the 7970M), so we should hopefully see some gains with the final driver release—or if not then, the next release. Performance with GCN architecture desktop cards has been a little erratic since the launch, up until the latest Catalyst 12.7 drivers. I believe that the current beta drivers I’m using also predate 12.7 in some aspects (though they're version 9.0.0.0), so if that’s the case then the official release should clean things up quite a bit.
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TokamakH3 - Friday, September 7, 2012 - link
Reading the article, one would never know the P170EM he has is much less powerful than an exactly spec'd MSI or Alienware system, all because of Enduro.sirizak - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
Can we get a comment from Anand in here that he is taking this issue up with AMD? He may just have enough reputation to wake them from their slumber on this ongoing and damaging issue.Please Anand, help us fight the good fight!!
silverblue - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
I think the fact that Jarred works at AT should be more than enough. :)If AMD are having developmental issues, it'd be nice if they could open up their development more, get more external help. Not every gamer shies away from diagnosing a good problem, and there's a lot of clever people out there who can at least pinpoint issues with certain hardware configurations. All too often, complaints drown everything else out.
hulawafu77 - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
Unfortunately AMD is giving the cold shoulder to everyone on this issue. Caveman on Rage3D has confronted a stone wall when inquiring about progress on Enduro. AnandTech did reach out to AMD and all they got was a rumored fix with two drivers for a 12 month period with proper GCN support. That's incredible...We have one tweet for the customers, that's it. Nothing more. If it wasn't for Anandtech here, we wouldn't eve know there is a suppose Enduro 5.5 in the works, if that is actually being worked on. Andandtech was not given a test build on the driver to see if it actually works.
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
This whole article is a result of us "taking it up with AMD". I know people who already bought the product want it fixed yesterday, but that's just not the way things work, especially with driver development. Mess up the drivers in some small way and everyone gets BSODs. Heck, they could have everything ready for the drivers to release and just need to do a solid two months of QA before sending it out to the public. I won't share the specifics, but let me just say that if AMD had given me the beta driver and I had tried to do the install on my own, I'm pretty sure that I would have ended up doing a full reinstall of my OS and apps. That's not because the driver is broken, but the install routine wasn't fully optimized at the time (two weeks ago). That's part of what they're still working on, along with other performance optimizations.Seanzky - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
Quick question, Jarred. I'm not trying to put you on the spotlight here, but maybe you know. Obviously, we've already tried reaching out to resellers and even Clevo. Do you think their silence to our inquires means they ignored us or do you think they actually relayed our concerns to AMD? Because if it were the latter, I would think AMD gave them the same assurance AMD gave you which the resellers would do well to relay to us. Your article, I call it the "great hope for Enduro", is the first I've ever heard of AMD working on anything remotely related to the issues we're experiencing. Honestly.What are your thoughts on those because I feel like resellers are somewhat avoiding us based on some of the feedback I've seen. I just want to know this isn't my imagination or paranoia.
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
I think the resellers were trying to avoid telling people that there are no immediate fixes available. I'm sure they brought it up with AMD, and AMD's response was likely, "We're working on it but don't have a definite time for when our fix will be available." When that happens, the best thing from the reseller's standpoint is usually to say nothing. I'm not saying it's best for the consumers, mind you, but it's better to keep your mouth shut than to admit to problems, and if anyone is really vocal you just let them return the product.As for AMD, I commented above just a second ago that I'm betting the driver team eventually had to come back and tell marketing and management that they needed a solid six months of time to fix and test the new drivers before they could address the problems with Enduro. Management was likely pissed, but what can you do when your drivers aren't working the way you want? It's not like you can just hire new people or do a quick hack that makes everything better, so you have to wait, and again silence is often better than promising something you can't deliver (yet).
The fact that AMD gave me a firm deadline of October 31 for the public release of the drivers I'm using is really good news. Last year when I ripped on DSG (pre-Enduro but essentially the same), AMD told me they were working on getting regular driver updates "soon" and independent AMD and Intel driver installs "after that". I asked for some time frame and got hemming and hawing. This time, we have a date, we have beta (or maybe pre-beta) drivers in hand, and I really do expect AMD to at least get the 9.0 series Enduro Catalyst drivers out by the end of October, and hopefully sooner. I think those drivers will still have issues, but provided all of the framework is in place for future updates, things can only go up from there.
Seanzky - Friday, September 7, 2012 - link
I hope your optimism ends up right over my lost of faith in AMD. It would really suck, to say the least, if this was AMD taking us for another spin.andrewaggb - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
I've always stuck with non-switchable graphics despite the worse battery life because I wanted a guarantee of driver updates.This sounds terrible though. And deleting threads and not responding sounds a lot like people trying to cover up a problem. That makes me not very optimistic that a new magic driver will fix the problem.
Best of luck. I've had excellent driver feedback/response from AMD in the past, so it's sad to hear things have gone way down hill.
hulawafu77 - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
So do we all with high performance. But AMD is now implementing switchable graphics muxless design to even their high end products.Let's just hope AnandTech's inquiry into switchable graphics support is correct and AMD is taking this seriously.