G73 - Great For Level Editing, Not So Hot For Maya...Or Is Something Up? Video Inside......

Hey guys, so I finally have Maya 2008 working on my G73 and it seems to do just fine. However it seems extremely laggy when I try and sculpt geometry and in this case I'm using a NURBS plane. I know a few of you work in this software as well so I figured I'd see what you guys think. I know this may only be a laptop but I used to work in Maya just fine on my E6600 desktop with an nVidia 640MB 8800GTS, so the G73 shouldn't have an issue at all.

Here's the video, basically it's just wicked laggy and you can really notice it near the end of the video when the terrain just "pops" and changes instead of a nice smooth transition.

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Have you ever check the Maya performance in a desktop pc with a 5870/5770 vga with 10.8 drivers? Just for discard a laptop issue. From your video, the program runs, and is my guess is just a driver/software incompatibility. Try getting an updated version of Maya or used an Autodesk recommended driver suite.

 

Well the fact that the 5800 series isn't even on Maya's supported list is worrisome.

 

That's odd. I don't have issues like that in Maya...it runs very smoothly on my G73.

 

Well I just updated from 10.6 to 10.8 and on a gaming stand point it plays ever better than it did before, from a Maya stand point I have the same issue.

Sabre-what drivers/OS/version of Maya are you running?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...m/500390-g73-5870-softmod-firepro-8800-a.html

Try out that guide i made, it will give maya quite a boost. But if it doesn't then you can be sure it is not the fault of the graphic driver. I would say its something more to do with the operating system. Is your maya 2008 64bit or 32bit?

 

It's relieving to hear I'm not the only one who's had issues developing witht he g73.

I've also had poor (compared to my 8800M GTX) performance on Unity while running 9.12 stock.

I'd imagine since the 5870M isn't supported by a majority of software, problems such as these would arise.

 

I'm using Maya 2008 64-Bit on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

 

I have newest vbios, 10.8 drivers, Windows 7 X64, Maya 2010 x64.

 

WTH that is the same setup I have............well minus the 2010 version of Maya.....maybe I'll install that as well and see what comes up, I'm running 2008

 

i cant see the video but try to open some old maya files u used on the desktop and see if the speed is the same.

Maybe it's just a bigger file with more polygons. I know you said nurbs but i think most softares still use polygons in the viewport.

With 3d modeling, it doesnt matter if u have quad SLI, if the poly count is high then its still going to be slow.

I wouldnt worry about modding drivers or anything. the performance shows up in benchmarks but i doubt it will show in real life. from experience if something is jerky on a 8400GS it will be jerky on a 8800GT as well. some of it is also the CPU at times. the best way to control everything is to not have everything int he viewport all the time.

 

Lame, 2011 stutters as well

 

In your video, when you move your camera it was smooth which means to me your video card isn't the problem. When my machines bogs down at work with 1mil+ polys on 2008 or 2010 it slows everything down, including camera movement in the viewport. I usually work with polys so I can't tell you want to expect with the sculpt tool. The only thing I can think of is to make sure the Asus power management stuff is set to the highest setting. You're running into a CPU bottleneck.

 

I'll double check all my power settings and report back

 

Hey guys. Coming from a game dev animator. YES, ATI will get this kind of performance you displayed on your video. First off, this card is in NO way optimized for maya for OpenGL that it uses. Second, if your sculpting geo, then dont use maya, use Zbrush or mudbox because mayas in order sculpting is kinda crap anyway. Zbrush on the other hand, works great on this machine because it only based on z buffer rendering. But just to let you know, every major film and game studio I know of uses Nvidia. From Pixar to Valve, its all nvidia based for the dev workstations because of the better drivers in maya and max.

 

Then why aren't I getting the same jaggedness/jumpiness that Almost is getting.

 

I would search the ATI website.. i've heard they have opengl drivers there..

 

Hasn't anyone actually read or tried the guide that i posted in page one???

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/500390-g73-5870-softmod-firepro-8800-a.html

It's a softmod that partially turns our radeon into a firepro. And improvements is seen all the more in maya according to benchmark. I do not use maya so i don't know but i do use 3ds max and there is improvement. So why don't you give it a try? Trust me looking around just gets you back to finding this guide.

 

What sort of input are you using - mouse or tablet? There's some absolutely horrific tablet driver elements with Windows 7 when using tablets that will slow your Maya interaction to an absolute crawl.

I just tested on my G73 with a mouse input on a 500x500 division level plane and I get 18-26fps constantly sculpting away on a poly surface with tumble performance in the upper 130fps in Maya 2011.

Any other apps open? CPU isn't downclocking itself due to power management?

 

They do. AMD has the latest OpenGL 4.0 support on their HD series. But as poster above said, it's not optimized for OpenGL professional work. Our HD series is more about consumer 3D and Direct3D.

For Maya, I suspect you want a FireGL, so the FireGL softmod may do the trick. At the same time I do not expect a 2008 Maya to recognize or support HD5870M since these cards were released nearly 2 years after.

I don't know much, but the understanding I have with these professional software, it's not just plug and play. They are pretty specific about which GPU they support and which they don't as they are specific about which features they utilize.

But with a 2010/2011 release, I don't see any reason why Maya wouldn't support a HD5xxx series. From their website seems it should.

 

I'm using a mouse and as I have Windows trimmed right now I don't have anything else running aside from Windows Sidebar with Everest Ultimate and the Intel Gadget that came with out G73's. I don't believe the CPU is downclocking at all, I'm plugged in and my Min/Max CPU is set to 100% in the power management settings with everthing else set to max performance as well.

 

What are the GPU clocks at? It's not downclocking itself to 2D mode by chance is it? You've got the latest DirectX SDK and all that jazz?

 

The GPU is set at 700/1000 and according to GPU-Z when I'm in Maya it stays there and doesn't drop to the 405/1000 setting that would be 2D. My DirectX is updated as I'm running brand new games without any issues at all. As far as I know I'm set and shouldn't have any issues, I'm not sure what causes the problem and I'm frustrated because I'm not exactly a noob when it comes to this stuff but I can't figure it out haha!

 

Also for what it's worth I just installed it on my wife's MBP, it's the 15" with the C2D, 4GB of RAM, and the 9600GT GPU and it's working just fine...I'm using Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit in Bootcamp and the same mouse I was using on my G73.

 

Wow... I need to read closer sometimes. Any reason why you're using NURBS specifically? The polygon sculpt code was threaded around Maya 2008/2009 if memory serves me right which is why the polygon performance when sculpting is so much faster than NURBS. Nurbs geometry sculpt is not multi-threaded so you're only ever accessing a single thread on Core0 which is why the performance is so bad. NURBS are a PITA to thread as well

Also to clarify this is solely CPU bound code that processes this so your E6600 would be much better at this due to a higher single core clock frequency than our mobile i7 920's which bounce around a lot speed wise.

 

Ahhhh I got ya, I used NURBS because it's the tutorial I found However I just tried using poly instead and it flew like a Lambo thanks for that. Since you're a Maya guru, which would be best for making terrain to import into a game engine?

 

Always use polygons. I know some people who will use subd's and convert to polygons but it's all poly's these days.

NURBS is old school stuff - long forgotten patch modeling days but some film shops still stand by them.

 

Yup, Blue Sky and a other use them. For games, never touch nurbs as it gets converted to poly during tessellation anyway.

 

@Almost_Tactful

Why don't u just give the patched driver a try? A radeon card like what we have is optimized for gaming. It does horribly when it comes handling complex textures and stuff. These are my results from running specviewpref.

Before

SPECviewperf10
1280x1024

3dmax 04 - 17.49
catia 02 - 13.93
ensight 03 - 26.99
maya 02 - 29.46
proe 04 - 11.75
sw 01 - 29.67
tcvis 01 - 6.87
ugnx 12.57

After

3dmax 04 - 45.54
catia 02 - 35.54
ensight 03 - 58.21
maya 02 - 215.25
proe 04 - 42.09
sw 01 - 93.47
tcvis 01 - 35.62
ugnx 01 - 55.83

As you can see maya benefits the most from doing the mod. The only problem is that we loose our UDV feature. No more video hardware acceleration. I admit it isn't a mod for everyone. But if you need a viewport boost, this is the way to go. No official driver from ati will let your radeon perform like a firepro. It would be like stabbing themselves if they did release a radeon driver to perform like a firepro

 

Those are some wicked impressive numbers and I have to say I've seen your thread a few times now haha, keeps pulling me back in, but I'm weary because while I work in Maya and Max I also work in the Unreal Engine in various editors (and other engines as well) including the May version of the UDK. That being said, do you know how it will effect Unreal, Source, Aurora, and the Crytek engines?

 

I don't use those but all i can tell you is that, i did try running 3dmark and also playing games with the patched driver. Those still work just fine. IMO i still had at least 90% of my gaming potential. The 3dmark score was almost identical to my radeon sores. So i'd say no harm giving it a try. If it doesn't work just remove the driver thats all. You'll be done in 5mins.

 

I think I will give it a go prolly shoot for this Saturday when I have some downtime and deadlines aren't breathing down my neck haha!

 

I'd say just stick with the Radeon and the drivers, softmod's are always a grey area and you are definitely going to be out of support the second someone knows you're running a soft mod. At least with the Radeon you know people like myself run the same thing and we talk with ATI all the time about any driver issues with Maya on any cards.

I've never once in all my years of doing 3D found a reason to use a professional card over a GeForce/Radeon (I've almost always used GeForce though) unless you rewind way back to the days of 3dfx and their Oxygen cards which later got stomped by the Diamond Viper cards for thousands less anyways

 

Well that settles that lol, knowing where you work and what you do I'll stick with your advice boosted, no offence to gerard at all in fact +rep for figuring it out but I want to play it safe and remain on the same support page as everyone else lol

 

Just wanted to say it wasn't me who figured it out, it was schoko from guru3d forums who is the mastermind. All i really did was to save others the trouble of finding all the updated info. Well when you need the extra "boost" the alternative is always around the corner thx for the +rep

 

I get no problems with Unity on my G73. Win7 64 bit, 10.8 everything else is stock.