ATI 7470M driver issues Recently i found myself in the need to update my Ati Drivers. Before going further down here are the specs: Laptop- Asus X54HR, Intel I3 2350M @ 2.3GHZ, Ati Radeon 7470M 1GB DDR3 http://imgur.com/a/J8y6J 4gb ram running Windows 7 SP1 . I am aware that when it comes to laptops it's best to stick with the drivers offered by the manufacturer but up until 12.8 i have found no problems using the drivers from ATI( also i am aware it might hinder the system but never the less the 12.8 v is running slightly better than those offered by ASUS wich are 2 years old). Trough the autodetect installer offered by ATI i get http://imgur.com/wG9Bb1M so i went ahead nontheless and tried to instal the latest 13.6 beta drivers from ATI. Before doing so i uninstalled the previous drivers, rebooted in safemode, used drivesweeper to get rid of any traces of the old drivers, and installed the new ones. Installation goes without any problems until i have to reboot. After rebooting my laptop screen goes blank(with Windows running) and i can only operate the laptop trough an external display, where it shows my new drivers running properly but detects my card as being a 6400M series card. I can't turn my laptop screen back on( I am aware that some issues of this problems have to do with either gamma correction or screen brightness being ofset but none of the fixes worked for me). So i uninstalled the 13.6 drivers(13.4 WHQL presents itself with the same issue) and tried to install some modded drivers( more specifically Dox's 13.5 http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/30186-catalyst-135/ ) which i was able to only run in testmode regardless of the fact that i signed them using Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider. The issue that my card was not recognized properly persisted (still detecting my card as 6400m) and the drivers were not working when booting Windows normally. So i reverted back to the last version of drivers that work (12.8). Now i am aware that some laptop manufactures lock the GPU-s (appears to be the case with ASUS) so it only works with generic manufacturer drivers. Now to some benchmarks and why i am in a search to enable me to update my drivers: I am aware the temperatures of the CPU( ~80) and the GPU( ~85 during heavy use) might be a bit high but they should still work within normal parameters ( I used to own a Nvidia GT 8400GS that would rock the world during summer @ 90-95 without hindering performance). Even after a clean start( letting the laptop cool down) i am experiencing heavy stuttering in games like COD WaW (everything set to low setting) and League of Legends ( which has fluctuating FPS whenever it pleases going from 40-50 FPS to 10 regardless of how intensive the graphic card is used). These issues started manifesting themselves a few months ago, be it due to game updates or issues that are beyond me. Skyrim used to run fine after tweaking the setting to accomodate my specs but recently it's going from 25-30FPS to 3-10 FPS randomly. Funny enough Bioshock Infinite runs as smooth as ever even tough it is a relatively new release. The same for Batman Arkham Assylum last time i played it. So the discrepancies shown in the games above (working vs suddenly not working anymore) lead me to believe that software posses a bigger issue than hardware. So i reinstalled my Windows, brought all available drivers to the latest versions(Intel INF, Realtek, USB, DirectX, etc) and the Catalyst 12.8. Disabled all non-essential Windows features(Aero, animations, shadows, etc) but the issues are still there. I went ahead and got myself a copy of Windows 8. Now here comes the interesting fact. On Windows 8 i am able to install the 13.6 driver but all games seem to run worse. So i went ahead and reverted to 12.8 on Win8 and the issue persisted. Went ahead and installed the drivers provided by Asus and the issue was still there. So i gave Windows 8 a nono and went back to Windows 7. So i am here begging the question: Is there a workaround to the ASUS OEM? Are there any tweaked drivers be it 12.11 or later to work with this brand or any workarounds so that AMD recognizes the hardware? Anyone else on a mobility card find themselves with a blank screen after installing the new drivers and if so is there any viable workaround? I apologize if i didn't include any information that might help you troubleshoot and if that's the case just pose the question and ill do my best to include it. P.S. : I am aware that this laptop model is not exactly categorized for gaming use but it used to run games perfectly fine until recent software changes brought either to Windows, DirectX, etc. Also i am aware such symptoms might indicate a hardware failure of some kind but i find that hard to believe. In any case ultimately if nothing works i will have the laptop serviced.
