Awful Framerates in SC: Conviction

I've got an M11x R2 with the i7 and 4GB RAM. I can run Fallout 3 with max everything (excluding AA) at 25-35 FPS, and medium-high with 30-40FPS. Similarly, in Borderlands, I can run at max with 30-40 and medium 35-50 FPS.

When running Splinter Cell, I get 15-20FPS at the lowest possible settings, and 5-15 at max settings, no AA. I'm running the beta 257.21 drivers, and have tried it on the stock drivers I got with the shipped laptop (just received on 7/22). I have also tried fully overclocked, a moderate overclock, and no overclock, as well as enabling and disabling Turbo Boost in the BIOS with little to no improvement. My Alienware Command Center is the A07 software currently on High Performance with all settings at Max Performance, while plugged into an outlet.

Can anyone help me figure out what is going on? I'd presume that this is a CPU issue, given the minimal difference in performance between min and max settings, but I can watch Youtube videos of people running the game far better with the original Core 2 Duo.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: 2 more things worth noting: First, I have manually added Conviction_game.exe (the same executable I use to launch the game) to the white list and had it use the Nvidia GPU (although I'm not 100% sure if that's how I should do it).

Secondly, there seems to be a weird stutter on the FMV logo videos as the game boots up. I can play 1080p video using the integrated graphics without this stutter, so I'm not sure if this is a sign of something going on, or just a meaningless glitch.

 

Might be worth giving the latest nvidia drivers a go, you'll need the kopicha/nautis nvdm file too but it's easily done.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-258.96-whql-driver.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...r-258-96-whql-discussion-relating-m11xr2.html

 

outspaced: I just updated the drivers and restarted. I think there MAY be some tiny performance increase in Conviction, but honestly, that's probably just placebo.

Still <20FPS at all times with stuttering during the prerendered logo videos and loading screens.

 

Yeah, I just checked the videos from youtube and SC Conviction seems to be fine using core 2 duo. Weird. It must be some optimus issue on iX cpus. Someone else with a r2 and this game should try it.

 

Did you disable powermizer? It's the only thing I can think of.

http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/nvpmmanager/

if you get this sorted I might well buy the game . . . !

Also, I was having trouble with Doom 3 freezing up so I went to the nvidia control panel and made a new profile for Doom 3, where I turned of loads of the the 3d options or just left them to application decides. Maybe give that a go if you haven't already.

 

Hello Waffle, I have mention this quite sometime back SC:Conviction is a game that is very very badly optimize on the PC version. It's a known thing. Only thing you can do at this point of time to overcome this issue is to disable your powermizer, OC your GPU and you will be able to run the game better even at high settings. CPU OC portion is all up to you. I dont think there will be any significant difference on this portion for this game. One weird thing still does not go away is the shuttering in video that you mention during the opening. Yes I personally do find it weird too. Also for some reason when this game is running the GPU actually got downclock. This is partially one of the reason for the sluggish performance. This is where disabling powermizer would help. Either UBISoft needs patching to solve it or probably require Nvidia to do something. But dont get high hopes from UBIsoft thou. They suck big time since they dont actually support the mobile version of GPUs for their games. Hope the solution work out for you.

 

I just used the PowerMizer manager posted earlier, and no success. Still stuttery video, still framerates in the high teens/low 20s.
Going from medium-high to lowest settings made the framerate go from 22 to 24 FPS. That's including going from 16x AF and 2x AA to 0 and 0. Whatever the issue is here, I don't think it's GPU related, as new drivers and drastic visual option changes have little to no effect on the framerate. It does seem to tax the CPU when running it, judging by the tiny graphs on Task Manager, so maybe it's some sort of issue with Hyper Threading? The game runs smooth on my Phenom II desktop, so I don't think it's multi-core related (although that processor is obviously worlds faster than a laptop i7).

Here is a video of SC being run on an R1 at max settings. No FPS counter, but it seems significantly faster (>30?) than mine is on low.

Thanks again to everyone who has provided useful information about this. It's not a huge deal if I can't play this one game on here, but I certainly don't like inexplicable slowdown on a 3-day-old $1300 laptop.

 

as i have mention before this game is just ting in its coding on the PC version. the developers needs to be shot in their head for publishing the game in this state.

look here Splinter Cell: Conviction Performance In-depth > CPU Performance - TechSpot

even some top of the line desktop PC set up have choppy fps. the game does not utilize multicore very well.

now come to think of it it could be related to hyperthreading since the game dont run quite well with quadcore. i am still at work now so wont be able to try till i get home later. i suggest you to try something. after you launch the game. alt tab out to windows, run your task manager. look up for your scc process right click on it and select on set cpu affinity. try to uncheck core 1 and 3 which are the "virtual cores" then try the game again. this way might make the game utilize the CPU better and stress the CPU enough to give some turbo boost kick in. try it and let me know if it works.

 

I sadly have been working in over-drive mode the last week since getting my machine, but have happily managed to run Dragon Age wonderfully well in my spare moments. I am looking forward to getting SC2 running this Tuesday.

The m11x is a god-send to me as it has allowed me to turn it into a full fledged developement and gaming machine that is unbelievable mobile!

 

check out the SC thread. I posted the CE unnboxing video there. Looks awesome. Cant wait for mine to arrive

 

I installed SC: Conviction on my m11x. When I first ran it, it was very choppy. I added the executable to the nvidia whitelist and it ran fine after that.

 

actually on low settings its fairly playable without any tweaking. dont expect good fps with this game as if you can see from my previous post. even really high spec desktop PCs struggle with the fps. i dont have to repeat this again but sad to say its just a badly optimized game on the PC counterpart despite its running on Unreal Engine 2.5 which m11x is suppose to smoke it.

generally when in crowded area will get an avg of 20-30fps. on other occasions its always around 30-40+ fps. no additional tweaks require to get this result via the modded 258.96 drivers. the only weird issue is at certain cut scene sequence the video seems to jerky. its annoying to look at i agree but it doesnt happen that way in game play so its still fine.

the game is pretty good imo but the bad optimization kill it in a way. in games like BFBC2 on stock without any OC on neither the CPU/GPU with some setting tweaks. you can already run the game at a min of 30-60fps. and thats with 4xMSAA and 16xAni with most settings on high. This clearly show how flaw the game engine is for SC:C

 

Thread closed due to flaming.

Reminder, no discussion of 'cracking'. Post in the other SC thread or the main game discussion thread - we have multiples and they will be closed shortly.