ATI GPUs and Borderlands

I'm in the process of returning my GeForce GTX 480M equipped notebook (Sager 8850) because of problems with the display. I've been thinking about trying an Alienware M17x with CrossfireX 5870s. I fairly regularly play Borderlands, which has always worked flawlessly on NVIDIA GPUs, being that it's a TWIMTBP game. I've also read that the game has had some major issues on ATI GPUs, which is making me hesitant to go with the 5870s.

With the vast range of folks here who have ATI mobile GPUs, I'm sure there are at least a few of you who play Borderlands. Do you have any insight as to how the game runs on your systems?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

In the laptop in my spec i run in it maxed expect dynamic shadows and AA, AF with average 40-50 FPS 1366x768
When i hook it up to a HD screen it runs like 30 FPS, never goes below 30

 

When you get it, don't update the ati driver to 10.7, because some people have experienced freezing due to memory leakage. They said the game worked flawlessly when using older driver version.

But from what I've read, there is a way to fix the leakage; you press ctrl alt del -> task manager and wait for the memory usage for borderlands.exe to go down and then return to borderlands.

Anyways, in terms of performance, crossfire 5870s will run the game at highest setting most likely.

 

I have played it alot with a ati 4650 and had no problems. There are some settings in the config file that may increase performance on Ati cards. Can not remember which one? I read about them on XS forum.

There in:
C:\Users\"UserName"\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\WillowEngine.ini

Think it was:

[Engine.ISVHacks]
bInitializeShadersOnDemand=False
DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=False
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=False

[Engine.GameEngine]
bSmoothFrameRate=False

 

I have played it on my Mobility 4850 with no problems. It looks great and plays great. I didn't have to do any tweaking.

 

I have two ATI systems and have borderlands since release. I never had any issues at all from day one.

What problems are you talking about?

 

I currently have M17x equipped with 5870s in 10.7 drivers. I played Borderlands the other day and I can run it at max setting on 1920 x 1200 with shadows off to maintain 62 FPS all day. With shadows on, it can drops to 40-50ish but I'm too used to eye candy. Shadows don't really bother me anyways, game still looks good without it.

One more thing, most of the people downloads 10.7 in order to fix Starcraft 2 issues. If your planning to stick with Borderlands, I advice you to stick with Dell driver. It gives the same performance.

 

Same, no issues with mine and borderlands.

 

Most of my friends with desktop systems have Radeon HD4800 series cards, and we all play together. They never mentioned any issues and they run it maxed without issues.

 

Turn off Catalyst AI. With it on (10.6 drivers, since 10.7 freeze my computer at boot), I was barely getting 30 fps with everything on low. With it off, I get almost a constant 60, everything maxed (desktop Radeon 4890).

 

As far as I know, the freezing problem only occurs to radeon hd 5000 series. I could be mistaken, but I had the freezing problem with mobility radeon hd 5870 with 10.7 driver.

 

Hm I never have this freezing problem and I've been running 10.7 for about a week now. The only problem I'm having is the sleep issue and turning off issue. Computer won't shut down properly. Other than that, everything is perfectly fine.

 

The memory leak happened to me on my 4650 too. I left it at the menu screen for around 20min and the game was taking up around 2gigs of RAM when I got back to it.

Luckily I have 6 gigs so no freezing

 

it's funny, because my laptop has 4GB ram, and it still froze a few times (around 2~3 times). I know those freezes were not due to overheating as my computer's monitor did not turn off.

 

The problems I had with borderland were two: Game freeze using stock driver provided by asus. Also dynamic shadow on has huge impact on fps for my system.

 

did this memory leakage issue get fixed anywhere?

I've recently started playing on my M15X - its got an ATI 5850 and every 20 - 30 mins the game stops, drops me from multi-player too, and yes Ctrl + Alt + delete and wait on task manager does "work" but its a real pain.

I'm on the 10.7 drivers.

 

I am with Doublee on this one. No issues what so ever, I OC'd my cards and am on the latest 11.6 drivers and I get 60+ FPS all maxed out. Plus I throw an OC on my 720 all the time so I am sure that has helped. Never had any freezing or memory leaking at all. Great game just wish I had more people to play with. I also don't have the sleep and shutdown issues.

I actually run it the same as my friends desktop with a 6970 and a Q8200(Epic Bottleneck) which He OC to 3.08GHZ. Maxed out Graphics settings.

 

I didn't think Dell had opted out of the AMD driver program... is there a reason you're running such an old version of the drivers?