borderlands 2 and 7970m performance?

anyone playing borderlands2 on 7970m can report what kind of performance they are getting on max settings? after sleeping dogs horrible performance i cant risk buying a game on 7970m without checking first

 

I thought BL2 isn't coming out until the 18th? Three days from today? Can anyone from the future confirm? ;P

 

Europe gets it at the 21th while its 18th for the US.

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Sleeping Dogs has horrible performance on 7970m? News to me.

 

It doesn't perform very well on my 7970m. I can average 25 fps on ultra and get about 10fps from scaling back AA, another 5 from reducing SSAO. Other options do nothing for performance. I don't mind 40fps, especially at near-ultra levels, but it's very unstable. When driving the frame rate reliably dips below 20, whether I'm using the settings described above or the high or medium presets. The card just doesn't have good scaling, either because of enduro or because it has to rout through the iGPU.
Edit: I see you use an Alienware so Enduro doesn't give you the same headache it gives everyone else. AMD is promising to fix it with a patch but I suspect the 7970m will always perform below expected levels if your machine has no mux.

 

Yeah that's all enduro and it's pretty lame. I've heard the same news about the upcoming driver and I hope it is what they're alluding it to be. Just not right to put a product on the market that doesn't work the way it's supposed to, then go around to forums and shut down threads by manufacturers who are trying to help their customers resolve it.

As a standalone the 7970m's a good card, but after experiencing it for a few months now I can safely say I'll be replacing it with a green team alternative when I have some extra cash again. And that's from someone who isn't dealing with enduro issues.

As far as your running borderlands 2, it's tough to say how it will perform. You could wait until tuesday and see feedback from other enduro users, but then you miss out on the pre-order bonuses. Or pick it up now at GMG for a huge discount and just keep it on the backlog until you're ready to play, and consider it more of an investment with the possibility that you'll get to enjoy it sooner than later.

 

What issues have you been having with the 7970m? I was under the impression that were it not for the nonexistent driver support, the 7970m would run basically on par with the 680m (or so the notebookcheck benchmarks would indicate).

 

As far as performance it's great. I've got over 130 mods including enb and still get a very smooth 30+ fps on Skyrim after some heavy tweaking, which is pretty amazing for a mobile graphics card. The problems I don't like dealing with involve AMD's drivers. They've gotten a lot better over the last few months with 12.8 WHQL, but I still won't use CCC for anything. Amongst other issues, I never know when vsync/tb is going to apply and I've had to do a lot of work to get my games performing at their peak. Some of that does come with pc gaming, which I'm cool with and it's why I got a pc - to be able to make those adjustments, but at the price point of these cards I would rather deal with drivers that do what they're supposed to do. Plus having physx in my games (like borderlands 2) wouldn't hurt.

 

On alienware or MSI but on Clevo 7970M run pretty badly because you can't disable enduro.

 

Hasn't clevo released a crossfire 7970m laptop now wondering if same problems persist.

On a side note why is there not a borderlands 2 discussion thread with steam ID's so we can all hunt skags together

 

I have no idea. Feel free to add me as I'll be hunting skags a LOT starting this week and none of my friends are pc gamers. :thumbsup:

 

Crossfire / SLI notebooks dont usually ship with Enduro / Optimus as far as i know.

 

They don't. Several resellers confirmed this. It does not work in SLi / Crossfire

 

Huh.

What type of enb mod are you using?

I tried that:
Extreme HDR graphic enhancement ENBSeries at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim mods and community
on my 680M with all the other HD graphics mods and at stock clocks it dropped my FPS to single digits.

 

I'm using Climates of Tamriel v1.1b with the Project ENB CoT preset. Some other stuff like high res textures take off a few of my fps but ENB is the biggest chunk. Without it I run about 52-60 steady capped at 60. A part of the tweaking I mentioned came from modifying the enbseries.ini from the install. Had to enable some of the fixes and other tweaks to get it perfect for my system, otherwise it was choppy and unplayable. Couple resources to check out:

Documentation - TES Skyrim
Guide:ENB - S.T.E.P. Project Wiki (wip)

 

Just thought I would share this here. I just found it, and it has really got my hype going for this game. It shows off some pretty cool systems that haven't been covered much.

WELCOME TO BORDERLANDS 2: An Introduction by Sir Hammerlock - YouTube

Also, Character skins are customizable

"BOOYA!"

 

Can you play this game cross-platform? (eg PC users can play w 360/ps3 players).

 

No cross platform support announced.

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So can anyone who's played Borderlands 2 on the 7970m share their experience? I don't want to spend the $60 if I can't expect decent performance.

 

Sleeping Dogs runs great on the 7970M with Enduro disabled.

 

Unfortunately not for a few more days in Europe, I have a Euro key, since it is 50% off the price of Steam.

 

I was hoping Ithian would tell us performance and fps when it gets released

also the Sir hammerlock video is awesome

"see those bandits notice how they aren't on fire.... Maya shall fix that"


I do feel for non 680m owners after seeing the physix demo can't help but wish the 680m or the 680m sli version was cheaper

 

I do too lol. Physx still runs but heavy firefights crush the framerates down to a steady 20fps. Not using it though is really tough because it looks great, and just running around when there aren't thousands of scattered bandit chunks with blood oozing all over the ground nets a pretty steady 50-60fps. If I wasn't convinced to go green as soon as I can afford it before, this game sent me over the top.

My results will be different from someone with enduro headaches so keep that in mind: The game generally runs incredibly smooth and is a huge improvement performance-wise over the first game. Everything is more fluid and responsive from movement to gunfire.

I'm still in the middle of tweaking everything including the ini files. They're very similar to the first game (willowgame.ini, willowengine.ini, etc) and even though the in-game graphics settings have a ton more options there are still a few things I've needed to tweak in the configuration.

The biggest problem I'm having right now is random slowdown. I'll be wondering around the map and one section will reduce by 10-20 frames. Turn around and it's back up to 60. Combat also reduces frames quite a bit even with physx set to low. It's the same if I uninstall physx and switch over to integrated physics. Driving a vehicle also reduces framerates. Keep in mind this is with everything (except physx) at max settings.

I'm currently bringing down settings that don't remove much eye candy, like bullet decals etc to see if there's an improvement. There's also the consideration that a patch could come along and solve everything. It's far from unplayable, but I'm a bit OCD with getting consistent performance out of my games and commonly spend days tweaking the settings.

tl;dr - I'm still ironing out the details and trying to optimize, but generally performance sits easily at 60fps capped with some hiccups.

Update: I've installed the 12.9 Sept. 4 betas and the 12.8 CAP3's, and things seem to be much, much better. Significantly so.

 

I'm running a 7970m on my R3 and have played this game for around a good 5-6 hours (fun game btw). I'm currently running the modded 12.7 drivers found in Slickdude's 7970m installation thread (AMD Catalyst 8.981.2.0 12.7 BETA June 26 – 7900 MOD – BenchmarK3D). I've noticed slowdowns; so bad that it makes the game unplayable. Seems to happen during big fights but the weird thing is that even if I stare at a wall or ground, my frames are still extremely low. I tried lowering the resolution down to 800x600 with no improvement. My temperatures are good as well (2760qm 70-75 degrees, gpu is 65-68). I guess I will try the 12.9 Sept 4 drivers and see if it improves anything.

One last thing I forgot to mention; when I browse my inventory the game will freeze and the screen will turn black for a second. Only happens when in my inventory menu, and will happen randomly; sometimes twice in a row. I'm wondering if this is related to the drivers too.

 

The 12.9 betas/12.8-cap3's seem to have helped a lot with the slowdowns for me, but they're still very present. I get it a lot when I'm looking around the large map outside of Sanctuary and many times in combat. I'm not sure if it has to do with dynamic shadows (like the first game) so I'm still testing. My thinking is that it's a game engine problem, as similar slowdows in big fights are also happening on the 360 and there a lot of reports on the PC version having heavy slowdowns on the gearbox forums, so a future patch might be able to help.

Let us know if your black screens are resolved by the beta drivers.

 

I've played Borderlands 2 for roughly 13 hours now. Throughout that time I've experienced some pretty huge firefights, done a lot of vehicle travel and combat, as well as viewed some expansive vistas. Performance wise, the 7970M is eating this game alive in my machine. I'm using 12.8 beta (8.982, August 6th release) drivers, have every setting at max (except PhysX on low) with vsync on, and am getting a solid 60FPS on stock clocks. I've seen the framerate drop to mid 50's a few times here and there when there is a ton of stuff going on, but other than that it's been pretty stable and without an FPS counter on I'd probably not have noticed.

I did a few minor tests with PhysX on high as well (god, so awamazing!) and frames kept on trucking at 60FPS until combat, in which case they'd drop to mid 40's. Once things started getting really crazy though, they would hit the mid 20's, which isn't acceptable, so I'll likely be turning it back to low and just try and forget what I previously saw.

Fortunately as I have this installed in my HM series machine, Enduro is a non-issue, and this card runs as intended, which is beautifully. I'm sure with a mild overclock the frames wouldn't even dip into the 50's when in a massive expansive area with tons of enemies and combat going on, but to be honest that isn't an issue so I'll be sticking at stock like with the rest of my games thus far.

 

@Wallzii can you tell how to enable PhysX on 7970m?

 

u just need to set it in the game option,the cpu will handle the physx effect

 

I loaded the unofficial 12.9 beta drivers and they seemed to load without any issues; after using driver sweeper. I am still experiencing the inventory freeze/flicker to black screen problem. I am thinking that maybe it's just the game itself. I have not had a chance to fight in any big battles. I was annoyed with the freezing that I just shut the game off. I also accidentally used my golden key so I exited the game (without saving) and hoped that I would have my golden key but ended up losing that and the two purple guns that I had...
psshht.

 

That's understandable. FWIW a lot of people with different configurations are having all kinds of problems running this game. Even people with a GTX 680 are dropping into the 30's and 40's. The ones getting the worst of it seem to be people with AMD CPU's. Lot of reports there of the game chugging along even with powerful graphics cards.

Right now I've got it running pretty steady with only occasional FPS drops during combat and minor stutters in large maps. I keep my view distance on high, fxaa off, dof off (which I prefer), and have edited willowengine.ini a lot to get it where it is. I increased my shadow quality a bit and it hasn't affected the frame rate but did give some nicer eye candy to look at.

I still haven't seen anyone with your inventory black screen issue but I'll keep an eye out.

 

High Physx on the 680M provides absolutely zero slowdowns, everything runs fluidly on everything set to highest. That being said, I didn't note anything to right home about with this Physx gimmick, it's actually somewhat distracting during large boss fights with all the debris and fluids gushing all over the place.

Excellent game, but wow, am I dying a lot in it. Need to improve my FPS skills a bit more

 

In reply to sleeping dogs performance, my 17x r4 runs it at 1080p, extreme everything, max AF and 2x AA at 60fps silky smooth. As for borderlands, ill test it when I get it. Im using the official 12.8's with enduro disabled.

 

Are you speaking from personal experience with regards to BL2 680M performance?

With maxed out settings, 980/1125 clocks, and 306.whatever WHQL, I get a steady 60fps while moving around, drops to 40-55 when shooting at a few enemies or at the walls while turning, and in intense combat it dips as low as 25.

Does yours remain above 30 even when things get really hairy? If you've played up to the area with the swirling sandpit type thing, did you notice some slowdowns there? In my experience GPU usage doesn't exceed 80% in most cases, even if the fps is sub-60, so I'm not sure what's up at the moment.

 

Tossed some more settings around and now getting a pretty steady 60fps with everything on, view distance maxed, fxaa back on. Can drop to ~50-55 when sprinting especially in sanctuary. Added medium physx for kicks and it's playable enough for the time being. Occasionally change view distance to reset particles when they build up too high after combat but it's liveable. Poor cpu.

PS for enduro users, rumor is an attempt at a fix is coming in the october release.

That thing's a framerate killer. I had to re-run that area (bloodshot whateverhold) 3 or 4 times between the original quest, porting back to sanc before the last fight and having to re-run it, plus subsequent side quests I got after the first run. Each time that room was a pain. Anytime you look towards the center; BAM choppsville. I spammed gunzerk and tried to run it as fast as possible.

 

Although I haven't been that far into the game (I'm on my second or third quest in Sanctuary), I am talking from personal experience, yes.

Try setting the game to that 22-62 smooth FPS mode, it might help. I'm also not too heavy on the settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel:

Antialiasing mode: Enhance
Antialiasing setting: 8x CSAA
Antialiasing transparency: Off -> no multisampling and supersampling BS that kills games and gives diminishing returns at best.
Texture filtering - Anistropic sample option: On -> although it was off when I was playing BL2, but every FPS counts.
Texture filtering - Quality: Quality -> not 'high quality', although I've read it's not relevant to today's games, but still.
Texture filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On
Triple Buffering: On
Vsync: On

Games still look very good for me with those settings, and I don't suffocate my card while forcing it to render stuff I can barely notice. To each his own, of course, but I prefer more FPS than excessive eyecandy beyond a certain point.

Edit: OK, I've just tested a bit more and multisampling doesn't cause a slowdown on this game, so it's good enough to stay, I guess. The game stays at a contant 60 FPS in general, and in heavy firefights the FPS drops to ~36 FPS, but not below that, which is OK with me.</snip>

 

BL2 running 60 FPS everything maxed on 7970M here.

 

well what really matters to me is when things get intense like in quests or heavy action sequence , to all who are saying the game run steady 60 fps on 7970m , does it stay at 60fps when there is heavy action on screen?

 

Notebookcheck have tested the game, this is what they got (where they tested)
You can also see the difference between low PhysX and high in the test: http://www.notebookcheck.com/Benchmarkcheck-Borderlands-2.82053.0.html

 

The PhysX portion of that comparison is largely meaningless. Even they admit that there are hardly any effects in the segment they tested. I've found that fps drops to 25-35ish on High PhysX when lots of stuff is going on, and 30-37ish on medium PhysX in the same situations. I'm guessing Low PhysX will leave everything smooth.

This is all with my sigged P150EM and a 680M overclocked to 980/1150.

 

Kinda depends on the area you're in. Some spots like fink's slaughterhouse it stays pretty constant the entire time even though there's a ton of stuff happening on screen. But then I go to the creature slaughterdome and certain enemies popping out of the ground along with acid splatter and other effects can cause the framerate to dip at times. How much of that is the card and how much is the game is hard to tell.

I did up a video showing my computer's performance. The first half (up to the slaughter dome footage) I made with this thread in mind. OSD is on and almost all the footage is recorded with a camera, so you see the real fps of the game that I see. The second half was impromptu footage I captured with MSI AB while we were dying in slaughter dome (I turned off OSD here since the fps are not accurate during software recording). Physx is on medium for most of the time lapse and there is a side-by-side sequence showing physx medium vs. low. My post with the video is here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/670572-all-alienware-laptop-gaming-videos-thread-11.html#post8859596

Though this is supposed to be a 7970m thread just thought of something that may help you get better fps. I noticed some people on the gearbox forums saying to force physx through your gpu driver. This seemed to help tremendously for those who reported on it.

 

Nevermind, deleted

 

Any chance you could shoot me a link? I'd rather not derail this thread further but my search-fu seems to be lacking. I haven't been able to find info on the Gearbox forums after searching for a bit.

 

Sure. I had to dig back a bit to find these but hopefully they help. Seems like your card should be getting you better framerates but keep in mind there are people with high-end desktop cards getting similar numbers to what you posted. I'd say keep trying different settings until you're sure you can't get any better fps or you get fed up and are ready to jump off a cliff.

Graphics much smoother after trying this... - The Gearbox Software Forums - physx driver setting
Possible fix for slow down on GTX 680 w/Physx enabled - The Gearbox Software Forums - physx ini change

Also some general advice for everyone - disable Steam cloud sync for this game. There are a bunch of threads going back to launch of people losing hours of progress and their ranks from a bad sync after Steam servers go down.