Did anyone pinpoint the reason as to the m15x lack of performance in Crysis?

apologies. i just thought since the information given was for a person who don't use it in a wrong way was ok. anyway, my posts on that topic has been deleted.

apologies again.

 

Abs - Does your fps drop below 20? Because "supposedly" the Sager does not drop below 20. (which I think is B.S. but who knows)

 

idk
akami one more to 200 congrats

 

well whoever said it doesnt drop below 20 is lying. If i play at 1440x900 (my native res) at ALL high options, i barely drop below 22 fps, with custom configs of high -very high (natural mod 1.2) it hardly ever drops below 25fps, and i get above 35 in most places (especially the jungle areas give very good fps). In areas where there are long view distances and many explosions with many tanks/aircraft my fps drops to about 23 fps. in most cases i am above 27 fps. You guys should try the driver i listed earlier, it just might help your downclocking issues.

 

I'll say it before, and I'll say it again, any drivers other than 167.55 keep the card constantly downclocked with the m15x, so changing drivers at this point is not an option

 

Yea Naticus - That's interesting because people were saying that the Sager Didn't drop below 20 fps EVER, which is why I think most of us were hyped up about this issue. Also - Abs, are you playing in DX9 and do you have the natural mod for crysis? These things are supposed to increase performance!! - I enjoyed your video btw! Can't wait for #2 ;P

 

It drops to about 18 in the really intense situations, but it stays well over 20 during all other situations, I have also been running it in 1080p so I still think that is awesome.

 

Using SysTool you can overclock the card (I could not overclock it using RivaTuner). According to SysTool, with no settings changed, this is what it shows:

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3532/systoolyq8.jpg

Potentially, when it "downclocks" (for whatever reason) it uses the settings for power saver. Tonight I will perform a test to see if I can force it to stay the same.

My memory really needs to get here...

 

Hey Lessaj - Welcome to the forum

 

Will give the Systool a test and se how it goes.

Nope still not able to exit low power mode with Systool.

So back to 167.55. SIGH!!!

 

You would think they would have put a little bit more testing into their product? =]

 

So far the system has been great. The only issus i have right now are

- No OC for the Extreme CPU I purchased.
- Total lack of drivers. No Vista X64 support and no current release of new Video Drivers.

 

Running RMClock and SysTool, I didn't see the GPU's clock speeds go down at at after playing Crysis for an hour. The CPU stayed at it's 2.8 GHz (goes down to 1.2 when it's not doing anything).

Also, I get the feeling that SysTool wasn't even actually overclocking the card, as my FPS in Crysis (Standing still, aiming toward something to prevent mixed results) didn't even go up. However, one thing I wanted to test, and didn't, was upping the Reduced Power settings to be on par with the maximum performance to see if it did anything.

 

you cant overclock notebook GPU's without creating an ISO file I thought? It may say that it overclocks but then will return to default settings when u close the tool. I believe you also have to flash the bios to overclock once you find your optimum settings.

 

I just left SysTool running. Changed the clock speeds, pressed wirite, messed them up, pressed read, and it was at what set it to.

HOWEVER!

Increasing the clocks does NOTHING. I was still getting the same FPS.

NTune did nothing (in fact, if you move the slider, it moves it right back to 500 or 799).

Testing ATITool now.

 

If that doesn't work, try Rivatuner also, Lessaj. Let us know how it goes.

 

The GPU is BIOS Locked. The only way to OC the GPU is with a reflash bios with higher clocks. Or somebody making a new bios for the GTX with the core and mem unlocked.

 

UPDATE!

NTune does NOT allow the card to increase clock speed, BUT, you can go DOWN. So my thing is kind of stuck at 125... This is bad...

P.S. ATITool doesn't work either since the 3D view doesn't show up. It won't allow it to.

P.P.S. RivaTUner does not work either. There is no option to see nor adjust the clock speeds.

 

So is the GPU underclocking in games? or no

 

As far as I know thus far Akami, no. However I still have to test some things (and I also need to find a program that can actually attempt to do something).

 

yeah there is, but you have to edit the config file to get RivaTuner to recognize the 8800M

here's what you edit: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=206897

 

Lessaj - Try to see if your fps matches that of sager's while playing Crysis in DX9 with the Natural mod in 1440x900. Also - In your next video could you include you playing CS:S in a well populated online server? I know CS:S is a bit old but it's still pretty intensive when playing online.

 

I don't have CS:S.

Thanks for the RivaTuner trick, testing things now.

 

Hmmm... It seems that changing the clocks still does nothing. I suspect that when running in Crysis, it forces the computer to use the reduced power settings, which you can't change! (Go figure!)

For the time being, I'm stumped. I tossed all the clocks all the way to the right and still... >.<

 

is yours now still stuck at 125 as you said?

 

so are we saying the the card clocks down when running crysis? how would that happen?
very odd

and I think alienware should come clean on their driver mods so we can get to work tweaking the beast ..... well those of you who have yours...... day 21 and still phase 4!

 

Well people seem to have luck with the 167.43 driver, so perhaps I'll try that. I'm trying to figure out to to force Crysis to run DX 9 (I don't have the right click option to play in DX9).

EDIT: GRB, I rebooted and it was OK.

EDIT2: The only reason that I don't believe it's underclocking when running Crysis is because Systool is still reading the same clock speeds. Also, I can change the Reduced Power settings using SysTool, and Riva is seeing them changed.

 

Guys we have tried everything with every driver out there. The only Video driver that allows full performance of teh 8800m GTX on the M15x is the AW video drivers. We are stuck trying with the AW 167.55 drivers.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=220355

Here is a post where we got the guys from laptopvideo2go.com involved to try and help us out. I have tried some of the modded INF files but nothing has a made difference yet.

 

Got Crysis running in DX9. These FPS results are from where I was standing in my second video. The action is taken place shortly afterward.

DX9 Medium - 33
DX10 medium - 25
DX9 High - 22
DX10 High - 18

I have also tested action using the same settings to compare smoothness.

DX9 Medium Stock - Can be anywhere from 10-20 at times, and other times 25-35. Spiked to 50 when looking down to pick up ammo.
DX9 Medium OC - High 20 to low 30's. Very playable and smooth.
DX10 Medium Stock - Low 20's to high 20's, spiking at 45-50ish. Drops down to 11 depending on just how much is going on, but it still playable.
DX10 Medium OC - Low 20's to high 20's. Very playable and smooth.
DX9 High Stock - Lags down to 10 a lot. Otherwise high 10's to 22-ish. Not very playable, but can be done.
DX9 High OC - Low to high 10's. Not so great.
DX10 High Stock - Anywhere from 10-20. Dropped down to 8/9 for about 15 seconds for some reaosn, must have been loading, but was almost unplayable during that time.
DX10 High OC - 12 to 16 FPS. Very playable, and surprisingly smooth.

The OC settings (Using RivaTuner and SysTool) look like this:

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/9421/overclockedag0.jpg

 

There will be no more updates from me tonight as I have a raid in WoW. Have fun narrowing this down.

 

I don't get how absinthe gets "30 average" and its super playable at "high" and "very high" and you are confirming what I expect to have from crysis..which is a struggle at high. What is accounting for the discrepancy you guys think? Absinthe can you run fraps and post the results?

 

Why don't people just try the patch he posted on their respective computers? His performance results could be a lie, a fluke, or be 100% accurate. But he gave you the info you need to be able to duplicate it. Just saying. If I had a computer that could run Crysis I would try it myself.

 

He isn't lieing..... You can clearly see in his video that the FPS drops below 20. Personally - if the m15x does not perform as well as a similarly speced sager - then Alienware has some explaining to do.

 

@Lessaj7
so it's possible to install the 167.43 driver without having the 8800M gtx to be underclocking all the time? And you even mananged to OC it or did I misunterstand you?

Could you please tell us how many FPS you get in the same situations with the patch 1.1 applied. (That's what absinthe did and he said that this patch improves the performance of the game a lot)

 

My results on the previous page are after patch 1.1. I will test 167.43 tonight.

 

how "bad" are the stock drivers? I dont have my m15x yet, but are they really that much worse then whatever sager can use?

 

The sagers can use the latest driver that are out. With the M15x we are stuck using older 167.55 drivers. And for crysis they suck.

 

Im going to be honest with you guys. I have been having a great time with crysis, and yes, it does max out at 30, and like I said, it is only in non intense situations, it does drop below 2o at intense times, but as I also said, the lag does not last long. Making headshots on my pc, (dual 7900 gtx, 2gb ram, 2.4 ghz procesor) with crysis, is a nightmare, practically impossible. Every time I would shoot the game would lag, and everything went to ass.
When I started playing crysis on this pc, after installing the retail patch, My fps were more consistant, I can make headshots all the time.
Honestly, the game runs great on this computer, I have never played it and seen it like this, the fps are smooth enough imo to not be a bother.
I put in a request for a digital camera at my school, so I can finally give you guys a good video

 

Yay. Absinthe42 my hero...... dot dot dot

Anyways, Thanks alot for taking the time Abs. You da man.

 

@ Absinthe42, do you think there is a problem with the cooling at all then? does it ever get dangerously hot in there after long crysis - sessions?

thanks

 

Hey I think there is something wrong with fraps. When I set every setting to very high and put the screen to 12oop it was telling me that I was getting around 20-30 fps. I think all of my testing has been off. Because it is giving me the same results as my 1080p/ some very high settings. But I KNOW it is running at around 5-10 prob less haha. So does anyone know what can cause this FRAPs issue???

 

Try to see if there's an ingame command to view FPS. Fraps blows

 

I think you can use one of the Config files and enable the Dev overlay. I thik t was the Gaco CFg file.

 

Quite honestly, the only thing I can think to do right now, is to pinpoint what controls Stealth Mode in the AW driver, then install the Sager drivers and just modify them to include that stealth mode control.

I've never tampered with drivers however, so I would not be able to be of much help really.

 

in the crysis shortcut (either on your desktop, or in all programs) you can edit the target to have "-DEVMODE" at the end (without quotation marks) and that will show the FPS, as well as allow you to skip the like eight advertisements they have at the start

 

Nice GRB - Thanks for finding that. Also - GRB was your GPU only messing up in Crysis? Or does it underclock in other games as well? - Also if you want to try world in conflict i have a 10 day free guest pass

 

It's in all games that drive the temperature up high enough (of course some simpler games don't)

 

Damn..... ETA on them sending you a new card?

 

well they've told me to send it in for repairs, which I will do in two weeks. It will take another two weeks after that before I have it back.

 

Ah Damn.... Sorry to hear that it's going to take so long. Hopefully they can fix it quickly and get it back to you asap.