AMD’s Enduro Switchable Graphics Levels Up
by Jarred Walton on September 6, 2012 3:00 AM ESTClosing Thoughts
It’s been a long road for AMD’s switchable graphics drivers, but if AMD can deliver everything they’re promising, we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
There have been two major frustrations over the past couple of years for us: first, we just haven’t seen much in the way of AMD mobile GPUs for review. That’s not because the systems aren’t out there, but most of the OEMs using AMD GPUs have been hesitant at best to sample them to reviewers. That’s a problem because when hardware isn’t getting reviewed, it usually means there’s not a huge amount of public interest, which means that the hardware isn’t selling. None of us want the graphics arena to turn into a one sided affair, but NVIDIA’s Optimus initiative has really caught hold since launching and AMD hasn’t had a proper answer—until now.
The second issue with AMD’s mobile graphics solutions has been the drivers. Discrete-only notebooks have been able to get driver updates, but only at the cost of usable battery life; meanwhile the more interesting switchable solutions have received essentially nothing in the way of driver updates from the laptop OEMs—the Sony VAIO C I tested a year ago continues to have most of the same driver problems, and the last driver update from Sony in October 2011 uses 8.850 series drivers from AMD (roughly matching up with the Catalyst 11.5 release). HP’s ENVY 15t-3000 is a more recent offering with an Ivy Bridge CPU and HD 7750M graphics, and the drivers there are 8.951 (Catalyst 12.3) and haven’t been updated in months. If you purchase a laptop with a discrete GPU, presumably you want to use that GPU for gaming or other graphics applications, and that means you’ll want to get driver updates on occasion. Prior to the Enduro 5.5 update that hasn’t generally been possible, and we’re eager to see that change.
Overall, we’re pleased to see AMD taking a serious look at their switchable graphics technology and working to bring it up to the level of the competition. We wish it would have happened sooner, but at least it's not too late to get things headed in the right direction—and we'd suggest that perhaps dropping the monthly driver updates is part of the reason we're finally getting needed Enduro enhancements. Right now, it feels as if Enduro 5.5 is basically where Optimus was back in early 2010, so AMD’s not out of the woods yet, but get us a couple driver updates this year and we’ll be ready to believe that Mobility Radeon users will receive the same level of driver support as desktop Radeon users.
We’ve never really had a problem with the performance of AMD’s mobile GPUs, and in recent years they have often managed to trump NVIDIA on a bang-for-the-buck analysis. Unfortunately, without driver updates we’ve been hesitant to recommend laptops with AMD’s mobile GPUs. The 7000M “London” GPUs (basically GCN/Southern Islands for mobile users) have a lot to offer, and with the updates to Enduro and regular driver releases from AMD, the mobile graphics competition is about to get a lot more interesting. Competition is always nice to see.
For anyone interested in seeing the full set of “Enduro 5.5” slides, the above gallery is available.
Update: Many readers have commented (and there are lengthy forum posts elsewhere) on issues with the 7970M GPU being underutilized while playing games. I ran a few quick tests of my own with the preview drivers to see if things are any better. All tests were run at 1080p, with the games set to either "Medium" or "Maximum" settings. Here are the results:
| Clevo P170EM GPU Utilization | ||
| Game | 1080p ~Medium | 1080p ~Maximum |
| Batman: Arkham City | 47% | 100% |
| Diablo III | 98% | 99% |
| DiRT 3 | 62% | 100% |
| Elder Scrolls: Skyrim | 54% | 60% |
Obviously, the GPU isn't being maxed out in terms of what it can do in many of our test cases, and our complete benchmark results back this up. Especially at lower detail settings and lower resolutions, the HD 7970M isn't scaling to the sort of frame rates we'd expect. Is this a problem with Enduro in general, or just with the current drivers? AMD might also be intentionally scaling down GPU utilization (and thus performance) at lower quality settings, as the difference between 100 FPS and 150 FPS isn't particularly important on a 60 Hz LCD.
That said, in many cases we're seeing slightly lower performance with the preview drivers than the initial drivers, so clearly there's optimization work that needs to be done, and we may see improved results with the public release (most likely in October). While many people are frustrated with the current situation, I maintain that getting regular driver updates is the first hurdle that AMD needs to address; once that's in place, future driver releases can hopefully improve performance (along with GPU utilization).
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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.