M17xR4 > Should I disable Enduro?

I'm new to these systems and wanted to know if turning off Enduro is generally the best thing to do from a gaming performance stand point? It seems Enduro performance with the 7970M has suffered in the past and still does.

Even though there have been patches and driver fixes sent out to increase performance I have noticed that my frame rates definitely increase with Enduro disabled so there is obviously performance potential being wasted with it on but, the fan goes crazy fast as soon as the GPU hits 62C which really kills the enjoyment of gaming. The fans are almost silent when Enduro is enabled.

What do you guys do to combat this? Do you run the Enduro fixes and other driver updates to help boost performance but accept the performance hit? Or do you guys disable Enduro entirely? If so, how do you overcome the fan noise?

Does this happen on the NVIDIA cards and indeed the older AMD cards?

 

I disable it. If I run 3DMark programs or Batman Arkham City it goes straight to the Intel 4000, and that is kinda useless in those situations.

Overcome the fan noise? Speakers or head phones ;-)

 

Does your system sounds like its ready to take off when you run Arkham City with enduro turned off?

 

I see people with NV cards having similar issues (Optimus). Most people disable the iGPU because a game refuses to use the external GPU, and they never use battery (which has a much lower life without the iGPU) anyway. Just one less thing to deal with. On mine the 120hz panel means that the iGPU is not available anyway (bonus!)

As to the noise, a good set of headphones is the answer . Mine always gets too loud for the speakers

 

You can pretty much keep enduro enabled if you're running Catalyst 13.1. That's what I've seen pretty much from most enduro users these days. There's only a small number of games that still have issues.

 

Sounds right. The drivers are getting better from what I read. Back in the day when the iGPU didn't have the capabilities to run most games it was simple. But now intel have upped the feature set some games just check for things like shader model version and use whatever it finds first.

 

I still see issues with Enduro enabled, even with 13.1

- Aion graphics settings unavailable. Cannot adjust shadow/water settings
- SWTOR - Frame-rates mostly okay but noticeably more consistent/stable with Enduro turned off
- WoW FPS noticeably better with Enduro turned off
- Arkham City - can get better frame-rates with Enduro turned off on very high/extreme settings

Have not tested much else atm butgenerally speaking frame-rates are more spikey with Enduro enabled and in the case of Aion I cannot set some visual options.

Even the Windows experience index rates the gaming graphics at 7.6 with Enduro enabled and 7.9 with it turned off. Cleary still under utilizing the AMD 7970M with 13.1

I want to squeeze as much performance as possible from the graphics without overclocking so I cna set my vuideo options as high as possible and I cant see the sense of having Enduro enabled on a pure gaming laptop that is not going to be moved and always plugged in.

 

In periods, yes. Not constantly. The fans switch on and off. I don't think it kicks into the highest gear, but it is definitely noticeable.

 

Didn't really read the above cuz I'm in a hurry.

But I LOVE that I got the 120Hz model so that Optimus and the iGPU are 100% disabled. Such a relief and no hassle at all I love it

 

Why not just keep it off when you are going to be plugged in a lot and turn it on when you need the battery life.

 

I LOVE that I saved ~700$ and can disable Enduro 100% by pressing 2 buttons

 

I use my m17xr4 as a desktop replacement 'cause I move it so little throughout the house. From day one I wanted to disable enduro and I'm quite happy with it turned off.

I remember fps ups and downs issues in Batman AC, Diablo 3, Assassins's Creed 3 and Dishonored.

Things simply got a lot better when I turned it off, as I wanted all my GPU could give me either on games or surfing the web. Since I'm not an overclocker that was the way I got it achieved. Absolutely no regrets about it!

 

Im pretty much the same. Decided to live with the extra noise, getting used to it. Definite performance increase with it off.

 

Well I suppose if you have the noise and cooling anyway tweaking the speed and getting a few more frames for your troubles seems like a fair gain....

 

I keep it off but admittedly it has gotten tons better. Performance is about equal in most cases. You can force which GPU a game uses usually. For me though I keep it off then flip it on if I have no AC power available to me (i.e. power is out in the house). I still get about an hour and a half even with Enduro off.

 

There was no way I was gonna get the M17x instead of the M18x SLI if I wasn't gonna pick 120Hz That was the deal breaker for me, and Nvidia was a must I am very happy with my M17x

 

I used to have it off but since 12.11 I have kept it on. It has gotten even better with 13.1 and I now see no real reason to keep Enduro off. Heck, I can get 5-6 hours easy on battery when not gaming if I want to.

 

I still see enough of a performance dip to keep it turned off although it has gotten a lot better, it's a long way away from the performance you gain with it disabled. Anytime I used my laptop I have one thing in mind, GAMING. I don't move it around so battery life is a non issue.

I will use it on battery and charge it every few days just so it goes through a charge cycle because with my last laptop the battery ende dup having 5 mins life because it was never used and constantly on charge.

 

13.1 and 13.2 do have significant jumps in performance for Enduro users. I had it on for about a week and saw neglectable (sp?) differences in performance. Unfortunately due to the nature on the way Enduro works (passing through the Intel card) there will always be some amount of a performance hit. I'm sure AMD will do their best to make sure that it is as small as possible.

P.S. - The current howto for monitoring your gpu and cpu performance and temps only really works if Enduro is turned off as the AMD sensors are unavailable when Enduro is on.