LOTRO and the 7970m

Hello all.

Anyone playing LOTRO with a 7970m? What are your results? I'm running everything on high/ultra high and the game looks gorgeous. However, it is prone to crashes. Usually when I enter an indoor area there is a chance the game will crash, and last night a crash happened while I was in a cave just fighting enemies.

So, is there any way to stop these crashes from happening? I really don't want to scale down my graphical settings. I paid a lot of money to be able to run this game at ultra high settings, so turning them down would be pointless on my part. But if there is anything I can do to help stop it crashing, I'm all ears.

Any advice/thoughts on this?

 

Check your event viewer after a crash to see if the faulting module is atidxx32.dll. If so, the only way to fix the crashing (assuming you're on the latest drivers) is to run the game in windowed or borderless windowed mode. There are applications that set games to borderless windowed mode if the game doesn't have that option. I know it sucks to have to run in windowed mode, so those apps come in handy.

 

Hey there, I'm having problems with LOTRO as well with my m17x with 7970m. the thread is here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/713214-m17x-7970m-graphics-performance.html

basically, if I try to run the latest AMD drivers for the 7970m, after afew hours I crash to desktop with a message saying driver stopped responding and has recovered. Is this similar to you? What driver version are you using? I can run ultra high graphics with the latest drivers with frame rates of 100fps around the landscape, and 50-60 fps in towns. It rarely drops below 30fps unless its one of those split second stutters that seem to pause gameplay momentarily. But the joy is short lived because I crash to desktop with the latest drivers. Then when I try to reload the game, it does the same thing during game loading, i.e. it doesn't even get to character select screen sometimes.

I can only now play the game with old drivers that dell supply on their website, which give about 40% performance loss over the latest AMD ones.

 

Hi pmn100.

Your issue sounds exactly like mine. I too get great FPS with everything on max settings, including Sync to Refresh Rate (makes the game smooth as butter with no screen tearing) and Triple Buffering. The game runs great on those settings and only dips to around 40 FPS sometimes when Bree is crowded.

But anyway, as you say, the joy is short lived because it crashes. Mine crashes to a black screen. The music keeps playing and it appears as though the game is still running, even though the screen shows my desktop, but when I try to click anywhere on my desktop, it sounds as though I'm clicking things in the game. I have to ctrl+alt+del to end the process or it will just stay like that.

Yes, I sometimes get the message that the driver stopped responding and has recovered, but I also get a message that says "Game error 128 - Try using a lower bit depth or resolution to run the game" blah blah blah. 2 different types of crashes, same result. I have to ctrl+alt+del to end it and restart it again.

It also happens frequently when I'm first entering buildings. It also seems to happen in some indoor areas that I'm just running around in at the time. The game will lock up and yeah, crash again.

It's a shame because this game is amazing but it just sucks the life out of me when I crash all the time.

I'm using the 13.1 drivers. I have tried disabling Enduro to see if that helps, and surprisingly, so far I haven't gotten any crashes in my latest game session. I went in and out of doors and areas fine with no issues. So for now, I'm going to stick with that and see if it helps long-term.

Also, you can try disabling some graphical settings and seeing if that helps. Triple Buffering and Sync to Refresh Rate would be the first to mess with. I've also heard some people rolling back to DirectX10 or 9 even, but I'm not sure if that's something you want to do. I sure as heck don't!

Good luck and let me know how it turns out for you.

 

I done a clean install of windows today after getting a BSoD this morning on startup. Couldn't get into windows at all. Probably due to messing with drivers back and forth. Anyway, clean install, latest Intel 4000 driver and 13.1 AMD driver. Not getting blue screen on start up (yet), but did get a crash in game with the message AMD driver stopped responding and has recovered. have since logged back in and playing again, but sure it will crash again. have you had a crash since disabled Enduro? And how did you go about that with FN F7? Or within BIOS?

 

I haven't had a crash since I disabled Enduro. I just FN F7 and restarted when I was prompted to. When it booted back up it had to install drivers once again, it did automatically and I had to restart again. On the second restart everything was fine and the game hasn't crashed since then.

 

Ran all day today without a crash. Things are looking good! If it stays like this, I will be happy. We'll see.

 

I crashed, so disabled Enduro, crashed still when I tried to log in. Done a shut down and reboot, then was able to log in again. Have since made some changes as detailed here: Windows 7 Crash to Desktop (post #3) and ran okay for the rest of the night. So, we'll see.

 

Well, I'm still crashing. In random places in the game and in a specific place too. There is a door in game that whenever I approach, the game crashes to desktop, without fail. If I back up to the door with my camera facing the other way, it doesn't crash, but as soon as I turn my character or camera towards the door, the driver crashes to desktop. What is this? Bad game code or bad driver?

 

No idea. Probably on AMD's end to be honest. They optimized 13.1 and newer drivers but really only fixed performance issues in certain big name titles. I doubt they did anything for LOTRO, so really, playing LOTRO on 13.1 is probably the same as playing it on the stock card drivers. I could be wrong but that's my hunch.

Anyway, I haven't crashed since disabling Enduro, and I've been running heavy, all day sessions the past few days. I guess it's different for every computer, though.

Did you try running on DX9? I've heard people fix a lot of the issues with crashing by reverting back to DX9. Maybe try turning off certain resource-intensive graphical settings, and then see if you still crash in that same spot.

Just curious, what spot is it that you're crashing?

 

This information might also help you.

When I disabled Enduro, somehow the 7970m drivers reverted back to stock drivers. So I've been playing crash-free on stock drivers. The drivers are from 3/7/2012. I'm afraid to update them because they are working so well for me now. Hmm. I can always roll them back, right? I think I'll update again and see if it continues to perform well.

 

I crash on approaching the door to exit the mead hall in snowbourn, rohan. various other places too, but randomly.

My SSD arrived today so I've done yet another fresh install. I'm not going to install any other software and I'm using the 13.1 Enduro driver that the AMD tool downloaded after scanning my hardware. this install also already had Enduro disabled so I assume FN F7 is a hardware switch rather than software. So I don't have intel graphics installed either. I'll report back after I get the game running to see if I still crash at that point.

And no I haven't tried reducing graphic quality. just not prepared to do that. I didn't buy a top end gaming laptop to run in medium graphics if you know what I mean. but I could test I suppose.

 

Ah well, stock drivers for me I think worked as well, but the fps was horrible. ultra high graphics would stay above 30fps most the time, but not by much, but they should be much higher than that for this card. the latest 13.1 drivers gave a 40% boost to frame rates, and ultra high graphics was running much smoother due to the higher fps. If you use ' ctrl f ' in game, you get the frame rate up. That's why I;m not prepared to use the old drivers, because performance is noticably worse.

 

Yeah, you're right, I did notice some decreased performance since disabling Enduro and going back to stock drivers. Bree when crowded hovers around 30 FPS and you get a little stuttering at times. It was definitely smoother with 13.1. I'm installing 13.2 beta now and seeing what happens. According to the people over on the LOTRO forums, AMD now knows about the 13.1 issues with LOTRO and possibly will be fixing it. We'll see if that ever happens. Maybe if enough people complain to them it will happen sooner. But apparently, 13.1 caused a lot of people to have issues over on the LOTRO forums. Just do a google search for "13.1 catalyst lotro" and you'll see some posts over there.

 

thanks, just read that thread and its the exact problem I'm having. I just installed the beta driver, and I can now go in and out of the mead hall door without issue, lol. here's hoping it solves the other random crashes I'm getting.

 

No problem. Hopefully they patch it. You and I should both contact AMD and tell them about our issues. The more people who harp on them about it, the higher likelihood they do something about it.

Glad you're working okay now, though. I'm doing fine with the beta drivers but I haven't tried going indoors yet. Hopefully they stay stable.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/ticketprocess.aspx

 

Also curious, do you get this weird graphical lighting glitch in Rivendell at night? All the pathways and buildings "breathe" whenever I'm moving. It's like an acid trip or something. It's almost like someone is holding a magnet over the screen whenever I move, and you get those weird wave patterns. Does not look good at all. Curious if that happens with yours too.

 

lol, next time its night I'll head to Rivendale and take a look. Could be the graphical effects there, like Lorien, think there's a bit of a glow about the place. I'll report back.

Edit: Just had a look, all looks normal to me, nothing obvious like you describe.

 

Nevermind, I think what I was seeing was massive amounts of bloom, lol. I jacked the bloom all the way up awhile ago and forgot I did so, so I guess that was it

 

Also curious pmn, did you do anything to change the graphical settings in Catalyst Control Center? You can override the game settings and do things like upgrade the anti-aliasing and increase the quality of the images. I find that changing the anti-aliasing from multisampling to adaptive multisampling drains the FPS quite a bit. I prefer the FPS to be over 60 so it's nice and smooth. What do you think? Do you mess with those settings at all?

 

No I haven't messed with anything in the CCC. I adjust only the in game gfx settings. I have sync to refresh rate on, graphics on ultra high with draw distance down one to very high. Thats about it. Good news is two days now with no crashes on the 13.2 drivers. I think performance might be a little less, not too sure, but not by much.

 

Glad to hear you're not getting any crashes. I have not crashed either on 13.2, but I did get this weird glitch where I had to exit the game and come back. I entered a building and my character started falling and rising uncontrollably, and splashing about as though he was in water. Really weird. I didn't try /stuck I just restarted the client and it was fine.

You might want to try this to make the game even prettier. Go to Catalyst Control Center, under the Gaming menu, find the anti-aliasing method and set it to supersampling. Then turn the AA down in the game to 4x (anything higher really hurts the FPS), and tell me what you think. I think the game looks even nicer believe it or not with these settings. The textures are noticeably more sharper. I'd like to know what you think about these settings. Seems to me that the supersampling makes a huge difference.

 

Will check it out once I'm back on. The falling/swimming thing I've seen before. Game glitch I'm sure rather than anything to do with the laptop/settings.

 

Yes it does look nicer, but the frame rate drop is too much for my liking. I had ultra high graphics, the SSAA, triple buffering, and 4x AA and in Rohan, the frame rates are too low, about 30ish I think. I've also read SSAA taxes the chip quite hard. I've gone with very high graphics now with mods on adv to bring some detail up to ultra high, and sticking with 4x AA in game and the middle AA setting in CCC. With this I'm getting near on 60fps all the time. Something to be aware of, as you level through the game, the graphics get more demanding (or the coding isn't as optimised), and your frame rates drop. Rohan and mounted combat is pretty hard on the graphics and frame rates are noticably worse on landscape than they are in say bree land. Also, there's a 13.3 beta out, I haven't tried it yet.

 

Yeah, I turned SSAA to 2x because I couldn't stand the performance hit I was getting at 4x. At 2x it runs spectacularly, though. Over 60 FPS constantly. Very nice.

However, when I set it to the middle option in CCC, I still get a bad performance hit. It's almost no different from turning on SSAA. That's weird, you say you get much better performance with adaptive AA? Maybe I'm not doing something right, but I was getting the same FPS I was with SSAA at 4x. No difference.

Do you have to restart the client each time to make changes? Or can I just log out or log back in. I'll try restarting the client next time on the middle AA setting and see if that works...

 

No, I was in high graphics, not ultra high. At ultra high, AMSS, and x4 AA, still too laggy. Although ultra high, MSAA, and x4 AA works fine, buts its not as good. I've settled for ultra high, SSAA, x2 AA (in game setting), and sync to refresh. Seems to sit at the 62 fps limit most the time, and gameplay looks smooth. I also turn off the 3D character animation as that has always cost a couple of fps.

I don't think you have to restart the client. I notice the difference right away when switching from MSAA to SSAA in the CCC.

 

Ok, so we're running the same settings then. I settled on 2x SSAA as well. Performs nicely and looks good.

 

The latest update on the 29th seems to have broken my game. I get terrible FPS now, even dropping into single digits at times with lots of stuttering and lag. Anyone else having this problem since that update? I guess I will try updating my AMD drivers and seeing if that helps...