m17x 7970m graphics performance

I received my m17x R4 a couple of days ago. It has the 7970m chip. When running Lord of the Rings Online MMO, it struggles to get 30 fps (1080 resolution) in very high graphics mode (ultra high being the highest).

Does this sound right? From what I've read other people can run say world of Warcraft on highest graphic settings easily. Is there some way to determine that everything is working fine with my laptop?

P.S. I don't have an SSD yet, but wouldn't have thought that would make a difference to frame rate.

 

SSD will not impact your frame rate in the slightest. What drivers you running?

 

Out of the box drivers. under device manager for the 7970m I've got version 8.934.2.0

 

might be worth trying to update them and see if you get a performance increase. You should be able to install the latest beta drivers right over top of your current dell drivers. I would wait for somebody to confirm it first though as I haven't really looked at the install process for the 7970m drivers.

 

Thanks for that. just assumed the latest drivers came installed. I installed the Enduro over the top and I seem to have gained about 15-20 fps in the most graphic intense areas, about 40-50 fps. Most the time its 60-70 fps now.

 

Remember if enduro is giving you grief you can turn it off when you wont be moving about and don't need the battery life.

 

Yeah I spoke too soon. Loading the game later on gave me a black screen and the message saying driver stopped responding and has recovere, but it won't let me start the game. So I roll back the driver and windows doesn't start. Recovered from that using system restore, back to old 'out the box' drivers, but this morning, windows didn't boot. Can hear the windows chime and just a blank screen. Re-boot, and it works okay having changed nothing!!! My SSD should be arriving in the next couple of days, so I'm going to limp along until then, and do a fresh install on the SSD. From what I've read, its best to remove intel and AMD drivers, restart, install LATEST intel 4000 drivers, restart, install the AMD 13.11 beta, and should be good to go.

Has anyone else had issues with the 7970m running anything other than the 'out the box' drivers?

 

I have had no obvious issues with the 7970m, but I leave the HD 4000 off.

 

Well this has really pi$$ed me off. I had a similar issue with an XPS laptop and 540m where the card would crash in games. I bought this to overcome that and I'm getting similar issues. Just installed the latest Intel 4000 drivers, then installed the 13.11 drivers, and once again, the driver stops responding in game and I get thrown to desktop.

Has anyone got any advice for me?

 

Turn off the HD4000 and go with the latest non enduro drivers

 

I used FN F7 to turn off intel 4000, I went into device manager and only the AMD was showing. I uninstalled the AMD driver, restarted, and device manager only showed vga adaptor. So I installed the 13.11 driver, ccc, etc, but its still crashing in game and sending me to desktop. I didn't disable iGPU in the bios, is this necessary? What am I doing wrong here?

the only stable drivers seem to be the dell ones, but they give me like half the frame rate of the AMD ones. I als notice the fan never kicks up with the dell drivers, but does with the AMD ones, which shows the Dell ones really undertax the 7970.

 

So I go back to dual graphics, install the latest Intel 4000 drivers and the Dell 7970m drivers, and now I get a BSoD whilst in game!!! WTH

 

Are you using win 7 or win 8? The latest beta's kept crashing on windows 8 for me so I went back to 7. What temps are you running during this game? It's not necessary to do a clean install with the latest beta drivers.

 

I'm running Win7 64bit

Basically it won't run with anything but the stock drivers, which give about 40% less performance. Any other combination kicks me mid game with a windows noticifcation saying 'driver has stopped responding and has recovered'. I've now also disabled iGPU in the bios, but Intel 4000 is still showing in device mamanger and I can access the Intel Integrated graphics control panel!!!

When HW monitor finally listed the AMD rather than the Intel 4000, temps were about 65 with the fan coming on and off. With the stock drivers, the fan doesn't even beecome audible, and I can't see the temps now because HW monitor only lists the Intel 4000 temps.

 

If your having this many problems right out of the box then it sounds like something is def wrong. You have disabled the HD4000 and updated the ATI drivers a few times including a full reset and your still having problems would suggest a deeper problem I am afraid. Have you tried running anything else yet? perhaps it is an incompatibility with that game and the GPU I would try getting ahold of Alienware and explaining the problem to them. Judging by what I can find for requirements for that game you should be just slaughtering the FPS for it with an M17X.

There is also another thread on these forums from someone who has the same problem so it is possibly a game glitch. That being said the fact that your display wasn't working properly also concerns me. I would suggest possibly a bad GPU but I could easily be wrong. Best bet is to phone and see what they say.

 

If this is fresh out the box as mentioned above. I'd re install the intel gpu and call up Alienware support let them remotely take over you unit and see if they can fix it. worst case they find you have a bad card. For the most part they're phone techs are very good and can get to the bottom of this.

 

This a really good option. Try calling and see where that gets you instead of continuously having to wipe/install drivers.

 

Download 3DMark Vantage or 3DMark 11, run a benchmark.
Post the link to your result, we will be able to judge if performance is up to par with the specs or if something is wrong.

 

Okay, done a fresh windows install today using Dell disk as had a BSoD this morning and I could only get into Windows in safe mode. I have been messing with drivers a lot so it could have been that. I used latest Intel 4000 drivers and the AMD 13.1, haven't had a blue screen as yet, and have played LOTRO and have crashed to desktop once with message 'AMD driver has stopped responding and has recovered. I ran 3D Vantage with the following results, seems okay:

3DMark Score 23009
3DMarksGraphics Score 23172
CPU Score 22533
Jane Nash 73.5 FPS
New Calico 62.1 FPS
AI Test 3064 operations/s
Physics Test 31 operations/s

As long as I don't start getting a BSoD again, I'm wondering if the games at fault. Going to try World of Tanks at some point. If I blue screen, I'll contact dell.