m17x R2 Questions.

OK so i just got my new m17x R2 with the specs listed in my signature. Ive had an R1 with a core 2 t9600 and dual 260m nvidias for a little while but it just got replaced with this. Basically i have a few questions.

-First and most important i think.. why is it when i go into GPU-Z and check out the sensors my clock speeds for both ATI cards are 250 Mhz for the core and 200 Mhz for the memory.. I'm pretty sure it should be at 550/888 respectively. It DOES go UP to those numbers when under load, but why even go down at idle? i dont get it, and these are the first ATI cards ive had.

-Why can i not set my resolution to 1680*1050? is this some strange ATI thing? thats my favorite resolution and i dont see why super powerful cards like this cant do it.

-Kinda specific one here, i was just installing Starcraft 2 onto this machine(worked fine on the R1) and it said that my drivers may be uncompatible with SC2.. Does anyone know about this? More generally, does anyone know the best drivers to have?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

I also just noticed under the DirectX support field within GPU-Z that it says 10.1/SM4.1. Now i dont know Exactly what that means, but i know its not 11 and arent these cards DX 11 cards? I know under dxdiag it says my DirectX version is 11 so im kinda confused here..

 

There are 3d clocks and 2d clocks so when sitting on the desktop they should be sitting on the 2d clocks to preserve energy and cause less heat etc..

Not sure whats up with the 1680x1050 thing but these are the Starcraft drivers you need ...

GPU-75: ATI Catalyst? 10.7a Beta Driver

 

just looked it up and i guess they are only 10.1 DX

 

Ok so I am in Starcraft 2 right now with those 10.7a drivers and first off, SC2 says that my video card is unrecognized.. w/e as long as it works. But, my core clocks and memory clocks are still 250/200 while in game any clues?

 

im also seeing a very thin vertical line at times during the cinematic i was playing.. does that have to do with XF?

 

now my clock rates are stuck at 300/400 somehow.. They seem to jump up to 550/888 when the temperature goes up.. maybe the temperature just goes up cause its using the correct clock rate? either way i need to get this figured out.. quick

 

When the clockspeed increases, the temperature increases.

When you arent gaming, the clockspeeds will be low, and temps will be low.

When you ARE gaming, the clockspeeds go up, and the temps go up with them.

Its all automatic, and working properly.

-Ash

 

you must not have read my post.. i am IN SC2 and the clocks are at 250/200 and i get lower fps than i did with my 260m sli R1 laptop

 

oh one other thing(sorry bout the multiple posts, just kinda scatter brained right now..) Ive been monitoring temps, clocks etc while running furmark and if i have the "Enable PowerPlay" check box within Catalyst checked, the clocks will be 250/200 not running furmark and 550/888 While running furmark. If i disable the checkbox then my clocks stay at a consistent 300/400 during all activity. Also like i said earlier, WITH the checkbox checked, the one that allows me 550/888 in furmark... i still am getting 250/200 in SC2 which results in like 15 fps while sitting in the bridge doing nothing at 1920*1200 everything ultra(i know i shouldnt be getting great fps but i just wanted to see the worst case scenario... this is worse than that though, because the cards are running at such low power)

 

You need powerplay for the clockspeeds to run at full speed.

The clockspeed should be at full speed in SC2.

Run GPU-z and have it monitor the primary card in the background (continue to update this screen when... etc).

Run SC2 for 5 minutes, then alt tab out and look at the graph.

Mouse over the higher sections of the graph and let us know your clockspeeds for those highpoints.

-Ash

 

PowerPlay needs to show max performance when plugged in.
Ensure Stealth mode is NOT active.
Ensure you're using the 'High Performance' power profile in Windows.
Ensure that you are indeed plugged into the wall.
Ensure that Crossfire is enabled.
If all of these conditions are being met, you should be running at full 3D clocks.

 

I just got my M17x yesterday, so I'd imagine they were built around the same time. I get over 100 fps in SC2 and it goes down to 80 in heavy combat. That's with the 10.7 (not 10.7a) driver and everything on Ultra.

What do you get in 3dmark 06 with default settings?

 

Intense, you realize that he's running a 620 CPU and 4870s, right? You can't compare the two setups.

 

im about to try everything again,
Stealth mode is off
power play is enabled with maximum performance set for both plugged in and battery.
i am indeed plugged in
crossfire is enabled
using high performance setting(was using a custom version of that before)

just a note, i have an lcd app which shows me the sensor values for GPUz While in game so i can see if it fluctuates.

@Intense I ran 3dmark06 pretty much right after i started up the computer for the first time and got 15811 or something around that. that was BEFORE i updated the drivers.

 

ok so the clock rates are correct now. It still seems like im getting lower FPS than with the r1 laptop though.. The other part that is bothering the crap out of me is the resolutions... i have NO resolutions other than 1920*1200 and 1280*800 that equal a 1.6 ratio.. which you know happens to be the ratio of the dimensions of my screen.... anyone else with 4870's have weird resolutions?

 

Are you sure the 10.7 driver installed correctly? I have never been able to install the drivers "normally" because I have Visual Studio installed (need it for work) and there has been a VC++ library compatability issue with the ATI installer since early this year that has never been fixed. I have to run the installer, cancel out once the install wizard starts, and then manually update my display driver. The manual driver update is done by going to Device Manager, right clicking the video adater, and selecting "update driver" then pointing it to the folder where the ATI driver unpacked itself during the aborted install.

Regarding the display resolution, you can tryy to force it to anything you want. Look in your "My Documents\StarCraft II" folder and edit the variables.txt file. In here you will see width and height settings that you can modify.

There are a bunch of other things in there too you can toy with. If you ever mess it up really good then just delete the file and SC will make a new one with default values the next time you start the game.

Two good ones to set (until we get a more stable driver) are "frameratecap", which I have set to 60, and "frameratecapGlue" which I have set to 30. These will throttle the game so that it doesn't try to run any faster than that. For some players (like myself), the extra load increases occurrences of GPU crashes/resets/BSODs. Also, the "glue" in the setting name refers to the various loading screens, multiplayer game lobbies and the bridge (or Char base camp). Framerate doesn't really matter much there so I cap framerate for those to 30 to give my system a breather.