Windows7 ATI PowerPlay Missing (thus GPU not down-clocking)

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Windows7 ATI PowerPlay Missing (thus GPU not down-clocking)

Hello,

Basically as the topic says - I have installed Catalyst Control Centre to configure a few things. First issue was that the drivers from AMD say that the hardware is incompatible - is this normal ?

Secondly, CCC did install, but under the PowerPlay tab all the options are empty and therefore I can not select anything ...

Any ideas ?

MacBook Pro 15' 2011, Windows 7

Posted on Mar 13, 2011 8:12 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

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Mar 13, 2011 8:38 AM in response to suchy101

I guess that after installing Apple Boot Camp updated to 3.2 you may have to uninstall the version of the driver and program (or rollback driver portion) and then install the Catalyst driver for mobile device.

some have trouble, but many are able, and it is a very common question (ie, asked over and over constantly here)

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Answer 2

suchy101 Author

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Mar 13, 2011 8:45 AM in response to The hatter

thanks for the response.

I did have a browse before I posted but did not find anything TBH.

I will give it a go. I have some reservations as to how uninstalling the current driver will make a difference for the new one to recognize the hardware any different (ie it says now there is no compatible HW to install the driver) but hey - still worth a try.

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Answer 3

The hatter

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Mar 13, 2011 8:50 AM in response to suchy101

I think whatever Apple installs as part of Boot Camp 3.x has caused trouble, so uninstall the program, uninstall the driver (device manager, do NOT uninstall the DEVICE though), then restart. Microsfosft could/should detect 'new hardware found.'

I don't have a MBP, and funny enough, people often dont' come back to say how they got theirs to work 😟

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Answer 4

suchy101 Author

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Mar 13, 2011 9:01 AM in response to The hatter

Nope, whatever I do, I keep getting a message that "ATI Catalyst Mobility cannot be downloaded due to incompatible hardware/software on your computer. Your computer does not contain a proper graphics adapter".

Did anyone managed to install standard AMD drivers on these new 2011 MBP's?

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Answer 5

The hatter

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Mar 13, 2011 9:09 AM in response to suchy101

What gpu do you have?

Catalyst Windows 7 64-bit Radeon 5xxx series
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/mobile/catalystmobility_64-bitutil.exe

I don't know what you mean by 'downloaded' rather than "installed"

There is a separate Catalyst Control Center but you don't want that.
You want the full package.

The following notebooks are not compatible with this release:
•Any notebook launched after this driver release
•Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks using Intel® chipsets.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst112ReleaseNotes.aspx

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Answer 6

suchy101 Author

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Mar 13, 2011 9:10 AM in response to The hatter

I have quoted exactly that ATI says to me - and it is right. I am using the exact files you link to and if you notice, the driver is only 1.1MB in size - therefore it detects hardware first, then downloads what is needen and installs it.

As I mentioned in my initial post - I did install the Catalysst Control Centre only just fine, but it was missing PowerPlay. Thought I need to update drivers but this is where I am stuck.

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Answer 7

suchy101 Author

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Mar 13, 2011 9:13 AM in response to suchy101

RIGHT !

This means they will not work, ever, or am I reading it wrong ?

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Answer 8

suchy101 Author

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Mar 13, 2011 9:27 AM in response to suchy101

actually, since I uninstalled the driver it now is being shown as "Standard VGS Adapter".

The Catalyst Package installs just fine but the driver is not installed ...

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Answer 9

The hatter

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Mar 13, 2011 11:01 AM in response to suchy101

Okay, didn't realize until today that ATI just used a 'stub' installer to grab the full package. So I take it you can't download manually and keep the copy, or not as easy. All my experience is actually with nVidia for the last 5 yrs.

At least Windows you can uninstall a driver, or rollback a current version to prior. Use to be that Driver Sweeper 2.x was also needed but I don't think that is true now, but might be worth a shot.

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

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Answer 10

suchy101 Author

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Mar 14, 2011 5:05 AM in response to The hatter

okay, so basically stuck in square one.

It seems that there are a separate MAC drivers on AMD website, that are designed for BootCamp specifically :

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Step1: MAC graphics
Step2: Apple BootCamp,

but these are the ones I had since the beginning - no PowerPlay, no power management.

Has anyone had some luck with this ?

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Answer 11

ReMacs

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Mar 14, 2011 6:00 AM in response to suchy101

Youmight look into this?

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php

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Answer 12

The hatter

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Mar 14, 2011 6:42 AM in response to suchy101

This just smells of total bull and no one should get to call this a supported setup, operating system or configuration if you have to go through this.

I thought Boot Camp 3.2 or something by now. Leopard was suppose to be the end of the beta phase for Boot Camp (even though 2.0 was the same as 1.4 so there was nothing to fix).

Here we are with Windows 7 being out for nearly 18 months.

Mod drives and Laptop2Go is too much like calling a hackintosh a supported system, or do ALL PC laptops have to go through this?

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Answer 13

Mar 16, 2011 4:16 PM in response to The hatter

I have been unable to install the latest Catalyst drivers as well.
I managed to do so on my iMac i7 with the small installer but with my MacBook Pro 17" i7 from 2011 the drivers just won't install. The 11.4 beta didn't do anything either. I really hope though to get support for our Books in the next Catalyst release. Trust me the BootCamp drivers don't give you all the power your Mac has. New drivers are gonna speed things up big time. They did so on my iMac and I can't wait to get Catalyst on my MacBook Pro 🙂

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Answer 14

suchy101 Author

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Mar 17, 2011 5:55 AM in response to Daniel Drogies

thanks for that man.

It is at least good to know that :
1) I am not the only one with the issue
2) there is something to wait for (as I am expecting performance/usability increase)

On a side note: years and years ago, when laptops were a novelty, it was very normal that 80% of software (and especially games) just did not work due to proprietary drivers that were released by the laptop manufacturers. Naturally things got a lot better and eventually the problems became non-existent and now a laptop matches a desktop (not in raw power, but it runs everything nowadays).

Here we come to Apple MacBooks. It is my very first Mac and I decided to get one because I am all for well though and actually ENGINEERED design that WORKS (vs constant shape and form changes of other manufacturers for the wow-bling effect instead of actual usability). Other reason was it runs Windows in case I do not like OSX. Well, I do not like OSX because : mouse acceleration issue which is absolutely ridiculous, and lack of certain software that I need (total commander equivalent, binaries lecher to name a few I stumbled upon during 2 day try-run).

Well to be frank - I am getting a huge dejavu of the old days on both OSX and Windows so far.

Sorry for the essay but I just head to let some steam off guys.

Lets hope things will get better quickly with those Catalysts.

BTW : I have raised a TechSupport ticket with AMD a week ago - no response whatsoever so I dunno ....

peace.

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Answer 15

Vector32

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Mar 18, 2011 4:59 AM in response to suchy101

Not sure if this will help, but I'll mention what I have working on my MBP 2011 w/ Windows 7 (64 bit):

-Install Bootcamp 3.2 from Snow Leopard DVD
-No dice with Catalyst Software Suite installer 11.2 (catalyst mobility_64-bitutil.exe). I can't remember exact error but it couldn't find a compatible card.
-Installed Catalyst Control Center (11-2 mobility_vista_win7_32-64ccc.exe)
-Installed HydraVision Package (11-2 mobility_vista_win7_32-64hydravision.exe)
-Installed AMD Media Codec Package (11-2 mobility_vista_win7_32-64xcode.exe)

Driver is reported as 8.812.0.0 (1/4/2011) and I believe that this did not change during the CCC install. I think it recognized that it was there and left it alone.

I haven't played with the PowerPlay settings, but it looks like it gives me the option to set an active power plan and then enable PowerPlay for either "Plugged In" and/or "Battery". Plus there are 3 additional check boxes for refresh rate, brightness, and color depth.

Are these settings meant to allow for the onboard Intel video to kick in? My Vaio has a switch that is actually pretty sweet that allows for Intel/Nvidia or both (ondemand), but I have been wondering how the MBP did the switching.

I also got a couple minidisplay cables and tested them. Both the minidisplay to HDMI and VGA worked (they are both Encore Electronics adapters), but the VGA only gets 1680x1050 even though the cable says that it is rated for 1920x1200. And the HDMI doesn't do sound. This seems to be consistent in Windows and OSX.

My biggest problem (and actually the reason that I stumbled on this thread) has been the Bluetooth driver support under Bootcamp, which appears to be way off course. I won't divert this thread on that tangent...

Hopefully this helped at least a little... I am pretty big into backing up and restoring with Ghost, so if you want me to try anything let me know, I can back it out easy enough.

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