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).
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
king-dubs - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
It is already possible to enable Enduro 5.5 UI, as I posted here (step-by-step directions):http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?p=13370...
arcticjoe - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
yeah, i've tried that - it changed a few things but Crysis 2 seems to be worse than before and BF3 maybe a little better than before.hulawafu77 - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
I highly doubt this is a fix, and morel likely just a UI face cleanup, and AMD just stalling since they still can't fix it. But if you want to try it, here it is.http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost.php?p=1337031...
Montage - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
That is not the same as Enduro 5.5 and it doesn't work. Wait for the official or beta drivers. Hulawafu77, though pessimists don't get disappointed that easily they also can never be truly happy...DarkStryke - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
I really feel for the suckers (as AMD is basically calling them) that bought into the 7970M enduro. Having a product out a solid 6 months, with a fix still realistically nowhere, talk about a company that doesn't deserve to see another dime from customers. Then you add on top of it the removal of support threads on third party forums because they shed light on a product which is complete garbage, and well, you can't make up better motivation for people to move to nVidia (whom is far from a saint themselves).I heard the same bull for months on the desktop, 'we're working on crossfire fixes soon', and well, that's still never worked as well as SLI.
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
Has it really been out and in customer hands for six months? Seriously? Because the first unit we could get for review just got here about a six weeks ago. I think the first shipments would have been around ten weeks ago. Six months since announcement is very different from six months since a customer actually had product in hand. The very first PRE-RELEASE hardware with IVB processors that we tested was only done in April, with the official launch on the 23rd.So best case, people have had Enduro with IVB and 7970M for 4.5 months, and the first reviews I can find of anything with 7970M are the M17x R4 posted in late May. That was likely first shipment hardware as well (before customers started getting units), but even if it's not that would mean we're down to 3.5 months. Unless I'm missing something, like maybe someone was doing SNB systems with 7970M? I'm curious: who can find the oldest official review of a notebook with 7970M?
hulawafu77 - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
It's been out for months. I know I've had mine for over 3 months now. And I got it after the debacle that took AMD more than a month I think to fix where the fail rate on the 7970M was 20%. So it's been out for about 5 months I'd guess. Pretty sure people had em in April.hulawafu77 - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
Yeah It's been about 3-4 months, not 6 months. But the GCN core has been out longer than that I thought. This issue is not just about Clevo/7970M, this is about Enduro and 7xxx GCN, which is affecting Lenovo, HP and other OEMs also.Either way, AMD should have had drivers that work on day 1 release. Didn't have to be most optimized for performance, but c'mon, when it's slower in games than a GPU that is supposedly 2x slower? That's disgraceful.
hulawafu77 - Thursday, September 6, 2012 - link
Man I wish there was an edit button. But I believe AMD should have been honest, they must have known Enduro was broken for months before the 7970M launch. They should have told Clevo and their vendors, it's broken. Please do not use a muxless design in the meantime just in case, give us the option to disable it in the BIOS like Alienware did on the M18x or a switch on the M17x. Clevo only began to use muxless this round, I don't think it's coincidence with 7970M which is supposed to be supporting Enduro. They probably would have done it sooner as Optimus was already functioning with muxless. Last years models don't support switchable graphics at all and unaffected. They could have done that with current models if AMD was honest with Clevo.Maybe AMD did tell Clevo and Clevo decided to screw it, we'll implement a technology that doesn't work right now. For some reason I doubt that.
JarredWalton - Friday, September 7, 2012 - link
Broken is all relative. It works, but it doesn't work as fast as people would like -- meaning, a high-end GPU like the 7970M ends up underperforming. As far as being broken in the sense of driver updates, AMD hasn't ever shipped a mobile GPU with switchable graphics that would qualify as "fixed" -- only NVIDIA's Optimus has managed that. Enduro 5.5 marks the start of the next stage of AMD's switchable graphics efforts in that sense.Mind you, Sony, Lenovo, HP, and others have therefore been shipping "broken" solutions for several years. Though I suppose if you don't want driver updates, they've have only been seriously underperforming with GCN.