Badly underperforming m17x - need some protips

Hi fellow m17x-riders!

I have performance issues with my m17x, and need your help in solving this mistery.
Long story short: purchased in september, didn't really pressure it with high performance games (only playing casual LoL, Diablo 3, Portal, Borderlands, etc.) and now that I have Assassin's Creed 3 installed I'm just HORRIFIED. Not even enjoyable with all settings on lowest, and half the maximum resolution. For testing purpose I installed AC: Revelations, and it's playable with medium settings, 1600x900, but this is what I used to get from my 4 year old cheap-a$$ desk PC, it's not acceptable from the 'ultimate gaming machine'.
After I picked my jaw up and put my hidden blade away, I updated all drivers and ran a series of 3Dmark 11 tests. The results were equally terrible:

FPS results for extreme testing (1920 x 1080)
Graphics Score: 761
Physics Score: 7627
Combined Score: 1003

GT1 4,12
GT2 3,86
GT3 3,88
GT4 2,23
PT 24,21
CT 4,67

note that normal testing resulted in 10-12 fps.

Config:
Memory 8192MB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
Video Card 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM (6MB Cache, up to 3.3GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)
LCD 17.3" WideFHD (1920 x 1080) WLED LCD
Windows 7

I'm on a really basic level in terms of software-hardware tuning-things, so please explain things more clearly than you would to Mr. Spock.

Thanks in advance! :thumbsup:

Attila

 

Using GPU-Z or something which can monitor what speed your card is at can you see what clock speeds you are getting under load? I've had issues with it being stuck on half the speed it should be due to bad driver install, updating to the beta drivers would cure it though.

Try the nvidia 310.61 drivers (BETA)?

 

Thank your for your reply!

I did the testing with GPU-Z (during 3dmark 11), the results are in this picture:

Can't give a summary of it as I has no clue what is the useful information on it. It shows 100% GPU load though, but a lot of things have close to 0%.

I'm downloading the beta driver now. Expectations are low, but if it solves the problem, I'll post it as an example for future generations.

 

Tbh it looks ok from that log, just make sure the integrated gpu isnt doing all the work. Give the beta drivers a go, can always go back if it doesnt work.

 

Ignore - posted late,

 

Update: I did the tests with the beta version nvidia driver, results were equally bad.
Summary: Having the most up-to-date drivers didn't help.
How can I make sure it isn't the integrated GPU working? I guess it doesn't, but who knows. Something has to be REALLY bad here, my ultimate gaming machine performs worse than mediocre machines. Can it be hardware problem?

update 2: AC3 runs fine now, even on medium-high settings, but 3Dmark still is terrible. It should be way better, isn't it?

 

do you overclock the gpu or is it standard?
Btw those beta drivers were to address the AC3 performance issues.
3D mark I guess is about right since your running the extreme tests, what about the normal typical testing, aparently you should get around 2400 on the 'normal' mode.
I don't know what the performance should be since I have the 680m not 660m. For any frame rate issues try lowering the Antialias (AA) to 2x or 0 as that will give best performance gain for little sacrifice.

 

I don't do overclocking, as I'm afraid of losing the guarantee if something goes wrong. Maybe it's a stupid fear, as I mentioned, I'm not really experienced in this field.

Normal testing yields 10-12 avg. fps, and as you estimated, 2200 combined score. So I guess I'll just calm down a bit, maybe it's working as intended. But I'm still suspicious.
A million thanks for your help!

 

no worries, hope I helped, sounds like its normal to me, shouldn't be worrying.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - Benchmarks
Link above shows that your achieving what is expected so I wouldnt worry, its pretty intensive those benchmarks.

Happy gaming

 

First thing I would have done is FN+F7 to switch to solely dedicated graphics and not rely on the Optimus switchable graphics. I'd then have updated to the latest or BETA drivers for the 660m. This ensures that the integrated Intel graphics are ruled out of the equation.


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