AW17 R4 - Can't play Witcher III GOTY

I have a top of the range R4 with GTX1080 and 32 Gb RAM. I have not overclocked it as it has always played Skyrim SE without much fuss but I bought Witcher 3 on Friday and am unable to play it due to constant stuttering. The fans are running at full blast and all I'm trying to do is run with Ciri in the opening training sequence.

Can anyone give me any tips on how to solve this please because I'm sure the hardware is more than ample for this game?

 

Well,since it's an alienware I'll go with overheat.

Download MSI afterburner and turn temps on in OSD.

 

overheating is a possibility considering the game is pretty and demanding. Im still waiting to play it after I get a 1070 for mine lol

Anyways, if you havent done a repaste then that might be in order.

 

I will try Afterburner and if that doesn't do it I will call Dell to arrange an on-site call for repasting.
Thanks guys!

 

Afterburner won't fix it, it will only tell you the temperatures you're having during gaming and eventual powerdraw issues as well. It's only so that you know what the issue is.

 

1. Wrong board
2. Every BGA machine Alienware has put out has overheating problems thanks to garbage thermal paste. You need to repaste with Liquid Ultra or Conductonaut, no amount of "Dell Paste" is going to fix it.

Take it from a guy who cycled out 4 AW 17 R2s before giving up on BGA alienwares altogether.

 

1. Why wrong board?
2. What is a BGA Alienware?

 

BGA is ball grid array and means basicially that the CPU and graphicscard are soldered to the mainboard. The actual issue is not that GPU and CPU are BGA, but that Dell decided to make a terrible heatpipe design.

 

Why does that not surprise me?

 

Hoenstly since 2015 Alienware and Dell started doing very questionable business decisions, so I'm not suprised either. The issue is caused on other AW notebookes by the heatpipes making the CPU the condensorpoint of the heatpipes, meaning the heatpipes are heating up the CPU with the GPU, when you download MSI afterburner and check your temperatures, is your CPU on 99c?

 

No, it's hovering around 56 to 57°c. While playing Skyrim last night, it averaged 77°c but I have that heavily modded with loads of NPC's fighting at the same time.

 

Talking about witcher 3, skyrim takes absolutely no performance at all. Even modded drains no performance compared to witcher3, crysis 3 etc.

Skyrim is DX 9 based, meaning it can't use full performance of your GPU even if it wanted to.

 

Well like I said, Witcher 3 is only running at 57°c max at the moment but then I'm just starting out and in the courtyard learning how to use spells and my swords. Nevertheless, if I try running the temp doesn't go up but the game stutters making it impossible to play correctly.

Perhaps I should turn down the quality as I have most things set on ultra. I kinda figured a GTX1080 would be able to handle it with ease.

 

A gtx 1080 can run the witcher 3 at 2560x1440 at 60 fps at ultra give or take a bit. If you are running it at 4k then yes it will struggle. The issue you are referring to is kindof vague. Stuttering how? Like it makes everything jumpy? Or you see alot of screen tearing? Does your laptop have gsync enabled? What is your fps and your settings?

I am able to run the witcher 3 on ultra at 1080p at 80 fps on my 1070 and i have a 4930mx set to 4.2ghz. The game is intensive but well optimized. It should be no problem for your laptop bga or not. Something else is going on.

 

Yeah, I've got a 4k screen so I've been running at that. I tried running Skyrim at 1080p but Windows kept switching it back again saying that my PC was optimized to run at 3840 x 2160. I will try running Witcher at the default settings.

It's not exactly jumpy. The screen freezes for 1 second and then runs again. This happens continuously making it impossible to play. That said, since I have been fighting in the courtyard it hasn't done it.

According to Riva Tuner I'm running at 60 fps and I have a 7820hk set to its default 2.9ghz, Apparently it is overclockable but I have never done it before, mainly because I don't know how to.

 

GTX 1080 on witcher 3 ultra settings 57c? Yeah no, there is something goin on on your system. Even at 4k ultra witcher 3 shouldn't be unplayable, only slighlty choppy.

Can you make a screenshot of your MSI Afterburner stats when playing witcher 3?

 

You mean the 2 figures in the top left corner or do you want me to bring up the whole Afterburner interface? If the latter, how do I do that whilst in game?

 

https://www.msi.com/blog/setting-up-osd-with-msi-afterburner

do this then post a screen

 

I don't know if this will help. Incidentally, whenever a movie is playing in the game the stuttering gets bad and the sound is out of sync. Their lips keep moving for about 3 seconds after they finish speaking. I would put that down to overheating but as the screenshot shows, the temps don't seem to be too high.

 

Yeah go figure, something is defnitely wrong there. 40% GPU usage on witcher 3 on ultra 4k is NOT normal. Could you pop in more information like core clock, voltage limit and power limit?

 

I'll have to get back to you with that tomorrow. I have to leave the office now.
Yeah, I know ... "WTF is he doing playing games at work?!?!"
I can because I'm the boss.

 

I'm the type of guy who literally puts a notebook I have to repair on a desk, dissassemble it and start to work in it in the middle of the academy while people are having some kind of modules, so no wtf's from me

 

I added the other info you requested but there doesn't seem to be any power limit. I guess I am supposed to set that but I have no idea how to do it or what it should be set to.

 

And there it is. Lim power.

Your GPU doesn't get enough power, that's why It does the weird throttling. The Lim Power you see on your screen basicially indicates that the graphciscard doesn't get eough juice. Now we need to figure out how to fix that.

 

I'm all ears ... or in this particular case, all eyes.

 

Lets start wth the basics.
- What power supply do you have? How much Watt does it have?
- Did you go to the Nvidia Panel and put the mode from "optimal power" to "maxiumum performance"
- Do you have any kind of Overclock software from Alienware where you can put yout notebook in some kind of "turbo" or "sport"mode?

 

- The stock Alienware 330w power block. I have Windows power plan set to maximum.
- I can't find the Nvidia Panel although I have attached a screenshot showing all the folders under Nvidia Corp. Maybe you know which one I should be looking at? If it is the Control Panel Client, that has 2 applications in it: nvcplui.exe and NvGpuUtilization.exe.
I also have the GeForce Experience which is set to automatically optimize my games and Witcher 3 is shown in the list.
- Not that I am aware of. It came with something called Overwolf, and Alien Adrenaline which I never use but those don't have any overclocking options. I do have MSI's Afterburner though.

 

ritghclick on desktop, then there is NVIDIA control panel. then u go on 3D settings and somewhere in those tabs u'll find the power setting.

 

The power setting is already set to Optimal Power. I don't think I can do better than that, can I?
By the way, I lowered the graphics settings of the game to High instead of Ultra but it hasn't made any difference.

 

I told you to swtich from optimal power to high performance...

 

Optimal Power means when there is no draw on the screen, the GPU clock speeds is set 0 MHz to save power and then ramps up once it needs to. Sounds great on paper, works like crap. This is the number one reason why anyone might experience crappy performance from their nVIDIA GPU. What's worse, is that's the default setting in the nVIDIA Control Panel after you install a new driver often leading people to blame the driver for bad performance when it's just the fault of nVIDIA's clowns.

Set the power management to Adaptive which puts the GPU at lower clock speeds when no GPU intensive apps are in use and it would ramp the clocks up when needed. That actually works. It's the best balance between getting lower heat from the GPU and good performance in games.

When benchmarking, for the optimal results, it's best to set the power management to High Performance.

Mind you, after you change the power management to whatever you set it to, a reboot is mandatory for the new clocks to take effect.

Classical nVIDIA Swiss Cheese

 

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I was away on business.
I thought Optimal was the highest setting. I changed it to Maximum Performance and tried again for about 30 mins but there is little change. Sometimes the Lim Power symbol disappears. Other times it returns. Overall the game is very choppy and the sound from ALL videos ends a few seconds before the actors lips stop moving.