PCI-E bus interface speed problem on dual AMD Radeon 6970M cards. Please help me.

[Arjan Lindsay]

Hello, TH community. I just joined in.

First let me post the basic specs of my AW M18X laptop so things will be a bit clear:
i7 2630QM @ 2.0GHz
2x Radeon 6970M on CrossFire
16GB 1600 RAM
2x 500GB 7200rpm HDDs, I guess they are WDs.

I have an odd problem with the PCI-E speeds on the GPUs, card #1 runs on x1 1.1 with memory type detected as Hynix, and card #2 runs on x8 1.1 with memory type detected as Autodetect. It results in horrible framerates in games (I play FO4, GTA V, FarCry 4). I have Catalyst 15.8 installed now, installed it clean. No overclocks. Tried the GPU-Z render test, 3DMark 11, all the same ultra laggy.
Before this happened, the GPUs were alternating x1 1.1 - x8 1.1 and the normal x8 2.0 - x8 2.0; it ran fine normally then about 10 minutes in game it steps down to those dreaded AGP speeds. Then I get out of the game, about 10 minutes later it comes back to normal. Over and over until last week. Now it's always on x1 1.1 - x8 1.1.
I can't find any solution. I am very frustrated, as I barely used this laptop.

Please help me. Thank you very much, sincerely.

 

[hang-the-9]

Uninstall the reference AMD drivers and install the drivers from the laptop vendor support site. The only officially supported drivers for laptops are the ones the laptop vendor provides. If that still causes issues, I'd contact the support group for your laptop.