Poor Diablo III performance?

I have an M18X with 6970's in Crossfire. 16 gigs of ram.

No matter what I do with the in game settings it runs like crap and stutters. Not exactly a powerhouse of a game so I don't understand why?

 

Updated drivers and that helped but it is marginally better.

This laptop should be making Diablo III it's ...

 

With vertical sync enabled, all settings on max, i'm @ a constant 60 fps. I am still in act 1, close to finishing it (I think).

I assume you have checked to see that crossfire is working on this game? That's my only thought, assuming again your system is running fine on other games.

 

It seemed to run better when I disabled crossfire. I'll try enabling again and see if it makes a difference.

The performance is very inconsistent with FPS all over the place, I don't get it.

You are running NVIDIA though, I think this is a driver issue.

 

That makes sense. AMD's been having problems with CF lately. If you read the recent reviews over at Anand or even HardOCP, you'll see they're recommending against Crossfire because AMD's dropped the ball. Go SLI or go single card if AMD.

If it applies to desktop, it applies to laptop since the drivers are the same.

 

you need updated crossfire profile from amd, get in line
if lucky amd will release it with the monthly driver updates.
keep close eye on this site:
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

 

Works fine at 60fps here with max settings so it's most likely a crossfire issue, I am sure with such a huge title AMD should be dishing out an update soon.

 

That's what we thought with Skyrim, no dice.

 

There are people complaining about stuttering and massive fps drops especially when they fight huge mobs. Some of these people have desktop 680SLI. It's a problem with the game right now. Blizzard will eventually fix it

 

So far the game has been running at a solid 60 fps for me with CFX enabled.

I'm using Catalyst 12.4 + 12.4 CAP 1

 

I am using the Driver from the Dell website and have not had any issue with the game at all and I have xfire 6990.

 

Been doing some searching on this and it seems people had this problem since January with the FPS jumping all over the place: Diablo 3 Beta Crossfire *sigh* - Guru3D.com Forums

Guess we just have to wait on ATI. This whole ATI sucks with drivers thing isn't overblown like I thought it was.

 

Something else I have noticed, the FPS is really high when I first enter the game but it drops rapidly after that and just seems to keep dropping. Not sure why...

 

Ok, used the RadeonPro utility and set it to MVPUMODE alternate frame and I got into the game and had over 200 fps. Problem is after a minute or so it dropped down again and is sluggish.

Going to keep tweaking but this is progress at least.

 

Catalyst 12.4 + 12.4 CAP 1 here as well, running fine at 60fps.

 

What is 12.4 CAP? Maybe I need that.

 

Catalyst Application Profiles
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx

 

Diablo 3 runs perfect in Crossfire mode with fully balanced GPUs using the 12.4 driver with the 12.4 CAP 1 on my M18x. No issues at all. FPS is as smooth as a baby's bottom.

 

These are my temps just playing about a minute in Diablo III before any monsters, is this causing the issue? Likely why my framerate drops from super high to low?

 

Blizzard announced that the game has issues with ATI cards (driver problems), known issue. Amd is aware and working on it.

 

Thanks. Just wonder why it seems some have this issue and some don't.

 

that temp is really high for me a get to 82 tops. Might want to look into repasting or calling tech pupport. It could be throttling down to help the heat lower.

 

I downloaded a utility to keep the fans on the whole time but it still seems to run hot and additionally I still think it is a driver issue.

I'll still go get a cooler and I'll look into upgrading to 7970's soon.

 

With your high temps I just am wondering when was the last time you blew out the dust from your cooling fans underneath your M18x? I am sure you are aware, but you remove the battery and unscrew the four small black screws holding your bottom bezel on and the cooling fans will be staring you in the face. I clean mine with a medium size compressor every month to keep optimal cooling and dust collects VERY fast in the fans and will dramatically change your temps if you don't clean it regularly. Blow onto the fans and the back grills. Be thorough about it, but not too close if it is a high powered compressor like mine. I am sure you game with the laptop on a clean flat surface as well. Those temps are way out of line for peak. I would guess dust buildup.

Also, with that said, what are your foreground and background FPS settings in Diablo 3? I run 120/8 and vsync on and I get very smooth framerates consistently throughout the game with GPU power to spare and so should you. This game is way less demanding than, say, Skyrim. Skyrim also runs perfectly smooth on my M18x in ultra settings with the high res texture packs with a good frame limiter because the game over renders a bit.

I will check my max temps in D3 in a bit and let you know what I am seeing.

Just curious... are you using BIOS A05? You should if you are not. That corrects a cooling fan issue with the ATI chipset.

Signing out, talk to you soon.

 

I double checked on my M18x. Running D3 at peak temps of 75C. That is about where you should be in a room with an ambient temp averaging 75F. Again, check for dust buildup.

 

I will check for dust buildup tonight and report back, thanks.

 

There was a wall of dust blocking my fans! Look at my temps now:

 

from what i am analyzing with this game;

it is not a game issue techincally because all it needs is a gtx 260 equivalent to max it out. the pauses and stutter are a result of their servers beign overloaded. every move you make is registered with their servers for record-keeping, like an mmo as in WoW. once their increase their server performance or the user base drops the problems will go away.

 

That is the truth. When the servers went back up last night and no one was on in the beginning the hitches and stuttering almost completely disappeared. Smooth as butter.

 

So... glad I could help... do you see an improvement with Diablo 3 now???

 

There should be a sticky regarding cleaning out fans and wonky FPS problems. I had the same exact problem with SWTOR, cleaned out my fans (only very little dust build-up) and everything was perfect again.

I think the heat sinks in these things are just very susceptible to dust buildup and require extra care.

 

Yep! Big time, although I still think there are driver issues.

 

anyone in hell yet, or inferno? ( off topic )

 

I think if we continue along these lines, we should get a new Diablo III thread

 

I'm trying the various classes, so I'm late in questing...

 

I'm having a lot of fun with my demon hunter. Rapid fire is just cool against large groups of mobs I feel a bit like Rambo.

 

What makes you say that? ATI and Blizzard released the 12.4a hotfix for older video cards, but otherwise they work great. What sort of issues are you still having?

 

Worked for a few days but now I am getting an issue where I bring up the launcher, hit play and then nothing happens. If I try to open it again it says the program is already running but I can't access it, not even in task manager. There are two processes running in the background though. One is agent.exe the other is diablo3.exe. If I exit those and try to start the game again I get the launcher and a repeat of the same issue. I have tried re-installing, running as admin and I have deleted my battle.net folder too. It started working for a brief amount of time last night but when I woke up this morning I encountered the same issue again. If anyone has any ideas that would be awesome! Thanks in advance guys!

I've also tried running it without norton installed, assuming that was the issue but that didn't work either

 

Hate to say it but I think your problems probably all stem from rubbish AMD driver support at the moment for 7970m gpu's.....maybe try disabling crossfire and see how you go with that for starters...

 

I am hell mode at the moment and others are beginning Inferno.

 

Got it working with a different set of modded drivers

 

Ah... AMD strikes again...

 

I've had this problem as have many others. check over at the D3 forums. I don't think it's an AMD specific issue, I think it's a Agent.exe issue. Next time just cancel Agent.exe and let the launcher "finish" downloading, when the green bar fills up then click play. Mayb have to try a few times, but it worked for me. I haven't had this problem in a few days though.

 

Installed Diablo 3 on my M18x with dual AMD and factory drivers and works fine for me, btw.

 

New user here so please forgive me if this is posted somewhere. I browsed in the amd xfire thread...

I have a m18x with two 6990m's with the 2670QM i7 processor.

I got my laptop a few days ago and just downloaded the system manager and noticed my second GPU isn't being utilized when I play Diablo 3. I have read on the D3 forums that many people are simply disabling Xfire. Currently with Xfire enabled (but only one card is being utilized) i get 60-70 fps.

I obviously would like to use both of my cards. Any advice?

 

I'm using the 12.5 beta drivers as of right now and there is no issue.

 

Hi Murtagh. Welcome to our community. We're happy you joined us.

If the Catalyst 12.5 drivers don't fix the problem, the next release might. Since Diablo 3 is brand new, lack of good CF support is sort of expected. I would not be too surprised to see the next driver or an AMD CAP release will help. Keep and eye on Rage3D and http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/pages/crossfirex-app-profiles.aspx for a new AMD CAP with Diablo 3 support. (CAP 12.4 does not mention Diablo 3, but if you haven't already tried it, I would say give it a shot... nothing to lose and everything to be gained.)

As you are getting 60-70 FPS it should be more than adequately playable until the driver support is there.

 

Thanks for the support and feedback. This is my first CF set up and I'm eager to learn all about it. Yes the game is very playable, I'm just wanting to utilize both cards for performance/temp reasons. I'm at work right now but once I'm home, I will make sure I have Catalyst 12.5 drivers.

Again thanks for the info!

 

I have uninstalled my drivers and re-installed the new ones (I thought i did this correctly, but if I go into Device Manager it still says Driver version 8.851.2.0?).

It seems that D3 is using both of my GPU's now, but I'm still only getting around 60 FPS, isn't this low for a m18x with CF 6990m's? Any advice and what kind of FPS are you getting? My step Dad is getting 70 fps with his old m15x with a single Nivida 260m...

Current plan of action:

Download and install DriverSweeper and CCleaner.
Follow Mr.Fox's directions on clean driver installation.
Download RadeonPro.

Any other advice?

 

Do you have vertical sync on in Diablo 3 options? If yes, then the max fps == your screen hz, so it means your max fps would be 60. If you uncheck that options then you can see even 200 FPS.