6990M doesn't feel as fast as I think it should...

I have a p150hm with an i7 2630qm / radeon hd 6990m. I just played Crysis and was surprised that I had to turn the settings all to medium to have a steady 30-40 fps. That was at native resolution of 1920x1080 btw. The game ran fine when I tuned the settings to medium but I was expecting more. Maybe it's just because it's a laptop gpu or something. Skyrim runs decently at high settings, around 40 fps with aa turned off. The game recommended ultra but I only get around 25fps on ultra settings w/ aa turned off. How does my performance compare to you guys? Is there something wrong with my gpu or was I expecting too much?

 

You should run a benchmark like 3Dmark 11 or Vantage so you can compare your scores. Also, you might want to check if your drivers are up to date.

 

My current drivers say they are "Catalyst version 12.1", which AMD says are the newest.

 

Ran 3DMark 11 Basic Edition and my score was "P3695"

 

That sounds about right. You can compare the graphics score to benchmarks here:
AMD Radeon HD 6990M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Interesting, I would have thought you could get high on Crysis? Anyone else care to share how they got on with Crysis? I do know that it is still a resource hog game!

 

Not true the 6990M can certainly run crysis at full hd reso and get frames above 30fps average. I wonder if his card is behaving properly in games. Perhaps the drivers aren't letting the card perform as it should.

My experience was that with the 6970M at stock clocks crysis breezed by with frames going between 35-50 fps constantly. The 6990M is a good bit more powerful.

 

Mind posting temperatures while running games?

 

I think your card is actually running as it should. I had it last week and Crysis is such a demanding game like BF3 is so Full hd medium with crysis with 30fps+ and no overclock sounds pretty fair.

 

Um, there is no medium setting on Crysis, doesnt it start at high, then very high etc etc? Or is this Crysis 2 Im thinking about?

Regardless a single 6990m or 580m isnt going to run Crysis maxed out at 1080p. To run SOOTHLY at 1080p your going to have all the settings turned down. If you want to run Crysis or Crysis 2 smoothly on a laptop at 1080p with settings cranked up you need Crossfire or Sli. Simple as that.

 

No way, a single Radeon 6970m or 6990m(they are basically the same in performance)to run at 1920x1080 is going to have all the settings turned down if you want to have smooth gameplay in the 50-60fps range.

 

Crysis is one of those games by which people test their huge multi-GPU setups. We have the mobile version of the card, not the desktop version.

Yes it's powerful, but there are limitations. Breezing by with maximum settings on the hardest game out there when we've already made the compromise of having a mobile computer versus a desktop? Expectations are too high.

 

google and download gpu-z and check that your gpu is running at 715 core clock and 900 memory clock when you play games.

sometimes the clocks will lock at 300 core 900 memory. and it will neither go idle nor full-load. obviously severely limiting gaming performance. restarting usually fixes it. i have no idea why this happens. ive seen it happen now and then, and it was more frequent when i first got the laptop.

oh and also make sure your power settings are set to performance. there are 2 different settings to check. ones the windows one. check in the system tray for the other one. its an icon that looks like a laptop.

for the record 6990M can run crysis @1080p with maximum settings (vanilla game, no reality mods etc..) with playable fps. ~25-30. maybe not optimal, especially for a shooter, but for the single player mode id still categorize as playable.

 

A 6990m CANNOT play Crysis or Crysis 2 at 1080p at max settings. Not even close. And 25-30fps is not what I call "playable" either. A video card averageing 25-30fps on Crysis or Crysis 2 will have MANY MANY dips into the single digits with framerate. That is not playable. The golden rule of thumb is if you card cant average 60fps under normal playing conditions, then the settings are set too high. Simple as that.

 

wow unreal. I read every post in this thread.

Crysis 1 runs at 36fps average on all veryhigh 1080p with overclocking.

in fact you can run crysis1 with a ultra high config and average 34fps.

the bottom line is his card is not performing as it should.

 

ah the 6990m can play crysis maxed. period

 

Can you even hear yourself talking?

The difference is 160 shader cores which when you compare to the 6970M having 960 is around a 15% increase, higher stock core clocks and a couple of thousands 3Dmark points in performance terms "basically the same in terms of performance" claims stupid quote of the day IMO.

Crysis 2 with ultra settings 1080p + the Directx 11 and Texture mods and I see 30-40fps. Dual card fanboys...

As above OP check your temps but you should be seeing a lot higher than what you are currently. Check you are running in performance mode and your clocks are running at 3D performance for your 6990M.

 

I know that may be technically sound, but the vast majority of folks save for the most battle-hardened enthusiasts do not ascribe to that. There is a disconnect of expectations if you tell someone that out of the blue, as most folks do not have the same quality thresholds.

 

uhh i own a laptop with a single 6990M. and i just said it can play it lol

 

Maybe you should re-think fast!

 

LOL! Yeah, trust me I KNOW that.....

Some people just like and are into PS3 gaming is how I look at it. They are used to choppy 30fps play. THey just dont realize that percieved depth of field and optical resolution take a huge hit at "30fps" and dont mind the regular stuttering they get during heavy action or draw scenes. Your card is performing optimally when its able to match the display's refresh rate in sync.

 

My temps never go above 72 degrees when playing Skyrim or Crysis. Both my Windows power plan and the "Power Conservation Mode" on my computer have been set to high performance. I have AMD Overdrive set to it's max of 740 / 1000. Manual fan control at 100% and something called power play is enabled. I tried disabling power play and my frames in Skyrim immediately dipped from 28fps to 5fps. When I turned power play back on my frames jumped right back up to around 25-30fps.

My settings in skyrim are all on high, with all the view distance options maxed out. Turning down shadows from ultra to high seems to give me a nice frame boost, game averages around 40fps now that I did that.

 

A quick reply to your comments on PS3 gaming. I feel that the 30fps on console games isn't anywhere near as noticeable as 30fps on a PC. Maybe it's because we have more precision with a mouse and we notice it more, but it's weird. I vastly prefer 60fps on PC's because it's noticeably less smooth at 30fps, but when I play console games I barely notice.

 

Crysis doesn't like ATI. It's built to work with Nvidia. Kinda like Far Cry 2, where the GTX 285 beats out a 5870.

Also, CrossfireX doesn't work well for Crysis either, yet the 580M SLI pushes over 60fps on highest settings, whereas the 6990M CFX manages 45fps. Mind you an actual HD 6990 gets less than the 580M SLI too, so that should say something. >.>

The cards overclock surprisingly well actually. You should be capable of 850/1100 pretty easily.

 

It has alot to do with the quality of your TV display most times plus the fact you can graphically tweak a PC game I find, expectations are different as well. Most people don't calibrate their displays as well and TV's tend to have their contrast and brightness levels set poorly where blooming tends to reduce the pixel seperation. Regardless to me playing a game on the PS3 is equivalent to a low end pc gaming experience at best and normally with upscaling(PS3 upconverts most game from 720p to 1080p). On some games thats all you need, others you dont.

 

Crysis was made with the Nvidia hardware architecture in mind, but the Crossfire config runs better now than you realize. Crysis and Crysis 2 average north of 50fps on a 6970m crossfire config(What I have,and I get about 55fps averaged on my 6970m crossfire config with an i7 2670QM at max settings)with the newer drivers out. The 45fps spec your giving I believe is with a much older driver. Ive seen some of the newer CCC drivers make a big improvement in overall framerate on quite a few games that used to run much better with an Nvida GPU solution.

 

I'm referring to the monstrosity of a rig I have sitting in my home. Trust me when I say I can annihilate Crysis if I want to. However, The average framerate I get is around 45fps with everything turned up, x8AA included. On that note as well, the 580M SLI generally does better than my 6990 because Crysis was coded for Nvidia. Just sayin'.

 

I dont want to offend anyone but....

my 6990m overclocked plays crysis at 30-50fps usually high 30s and is extremely smooth. If exremely smooth is unplayable by your definition then maybe...just saying

 

You might be pulling 40fps(averaged) if everything is optimized, but IMO its still too low. As stated before how it performs under light action/visual scenes it probably can do that, but when the action is heavy and the draw scenes extreme your still running into alot of chopping and stuttering. Your graphic settings should be dialed so your video card can play buttery smooth through those heavy scenes which heavily tax the gpu system. And on Crysis and Crysis 2 with a single 6970 or 6990 GPU at 1080p native resolution that means your playing with video settings set much lower. Even using 2 Ati 6 series cards in crossfire require the settings be set below extreme/maxed out to achieve a fluid 60fps.

 

Curious as to what rig you have ntrain?

You spend a lot of time slating ATI the 6 series high end cards and anything that is not crossfire or SLI but claim a lot of things that the majority of the people on this forum know to be untrue and its funny that you think one card is not enough to run anything smoothly when crossfire is completely software dependent and rarely reaps a double gain in performance unless it is from a benchmark test.

Your views are as misguided as Bill Clinton's when he decided to hire a young brunette assistant to help out around the White House.

 

high 30s isn't playable!? Rubbish lol. tHe 6990M can destroy Crysis 1 period. 60fps means nothing. Your eyes won't tell difference between 40 and 60 so long as the framerate is consistant.

 

lol. ntrain

you said something settings have to be dialed down quite a bit.

turn objects to high, turn shadows to medium, and leave the rest at veryhigh and you will average more than 60fps. the game will look maxed and run at 60fps.

Im not sure if you realize this but its impossible to notice 30 vs 60 vs 500 fps. the eyes just dont work that way. and during the most intense scenes i get 30 min.

Im not trying to troll you or anything. but I think your mistaken, high 30s is butter smooth and it doesnt stutter at all during any scene. and you dont need to turn the settings to medium.

after all this is not our topic and to answer the OP question. yes your 6990m is not working correctly as when i set all medium i think I average 80fps.

 

There is only one definition of playable. It means that you are able to play and enjoy a video game. On the other hand, unplayable means you are unable to play and enjoy a video game experience. That is it. I could care less about the actual fps numbers, knowing that I'm running the game on max, selecting things like 8xAA vs 4xAA just for the purpose of maxing out for virtually zero visual gains. Those things have nothing to do with an ability to play the game.

There is absolutely nothing there to support the claim that you MUST have 60fps to have a playable game experience. I have a desktop with Radeon HD 6970 and my old GTX 260M laptop. Skyrim gets 60+ fps maxed out on my desktop and around 30 FPS on the laptop with lowered shadows and 4 AA. I can enjoy both of these experiences and the games are playable in both cases.

 

While I don't agree about the 30 vs 60fps thing, especially for all games, I find that for Crysis and other recent FPS with motion blur it's really hard to distinguish between 40-60fps. Where as in the old days of CS or even Quake 3, if you weren't getting above 50fps, you could easily feel at a disadvantage.

My problem with 30fps is that this is where mouse lag generally hits. And especially so if you dip below 30fps. With the newer engines, with the exception of the source engine, there is no way to get rid of mouse lag below 30fps so, again, you can easily feel at a disadvantage.

Very good advice about shadows, though. It's always the first setting I turn down to gain performance.

 

Do consider movies are typically 24fps some are 30fps. It is hard to see any difference even in games at higher FPS. The advantage you get when you get 60fps in games is that when you get those more intensive parts where fps drop you'll still be at a smooth FPS.

 

Stop saying it isnt playable ntrain. Thats a very incorrect and misleading way of saying "i have very high expectations and like to rule out everyone who doesnt"

 

This is correct for most games.

For me, having 50+ fps average in games is important because I want it only dipping as low as 30s.

Playing at an avg of 30 is a no go for me. ESP for animation/effects heavy games where animation canceling at any split second means living or dying. (dota/cs 1.4/HoN)

Many people get 40+ fps playing Crysis on the 6990m.
I think it'll be best to have a mix of medium/high/ultra settings.

 

That's a little disingenuous though, because movies use motion blur to make the 24fps look smoother and less noticeable. That's why a movie at 24fps will in general look a lot better than a game. BUT, it's also why a single movie frame will lack the detail present in a single frame from a video game.

Frame rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your point still holds though that above 30fps, it's more limited to the individual whether they can notice any difference.

 

Oh, again with this "you can't see above certain FPS" adage... Let me put my 50 cents as graphics programmer.

You can't perceive blinking above ~20FPS. That's was the reason for movie FPS 24, to prevent you from seeing series of separate blinks for each frame as early projector shutter worked.

But you can perfectly perceive motion FPS difference between 30 and 60, and even between 40 and 60. Just get any object that is moving fast enough.
The difference will be how smooth it moves or how blurry is it. The higher FPS is, more it looks like real fast moving object especially when your eyes are tracking it (try tracking fast moving car with your eyes IRL, it will not be blurry!)

I guess if you want your screen to look like movie, 30FPS should be enough with proper motion blur.
If you want your screen look like a window into reality, higher FPS is better - no cap (just depends on how fast objects could move across field of view in specific game you playing).

 

Thats the thing, I dont really consider say either the 6970m or 6990m a "high end" card on its own. Its actually a midrange graphics card at best in reality. Same with the Nvidia 570 or 580m mobile GPU's. But when you pair them up, together on most games they allow for a substantial increase in framerate(not saying a garenteed doubling or anything, but enough so where its a noticeable difference)while allow for graphical quality settings to be raised up a bit as well. A pair of any of the aformentioned above gives you in reality the performance of a single higher end desktop graphics card, which is really what you need to play the majority of games at or near 60fps with the detail turned up(and this is based on the heavy action scenes).

 

Bingo! Excellent post, and its exactly my point of view, and explains my optical perception on picture "depth" and percieved resoltion(motion resoltion specifically). It also minimizes or eliminates those occasial forrays into a scene that taxes the graphics card from getting choppy percieved by the eyes. There are alot of other benefits that havent even been mentioned yet, but this pretty much hits the nail on the head.

 

Well 30fps is "playable" but its far from optimal when your average framerate is low. Thats my point in a nutshell.

 

ok to put it simply.

crysis does not dip into the 20s or single digits as you claim. 30 is smooth but not as smooth as 60fps thats a fact.

OP if your only getting 40fps with all on medium your card is not working correctly.

 

I can not afford to waste anymore of my life reading your posts and you could have just admitted you have a desktop and save yourself the trouble.

It is fine to have an opinion but in your case....

 

If your playing Crysis averaging 30fps, then you run into instances where the framerate drops into the low teens and single digits without question. Toss up a program that records your fps and see for yourself. Hell even when I run Crysis at 60fps, there are still times when it dips into the 30fps range. Its not a 100% constant the framerate.

 

Well then maybe you shouldn't have even wasted your time typeing this post. Simply put if there is something or someone typing something you don't like or agree with then move along. Nothing or nobody is forcing you to agree with anything read here. Not my fault your horseblinds are locked to your head though.

 

True and after all it could be worse, I could be you. It is not our ie ''Notebook gamers'' fault that your Desktopreview website sucks it is just that we put intelligence over performance.

Single 6990M FTW.

 

LOL, if you were me or like me, trust me, it would be a big improvement for you. Oh and if these "desktop" comments are pointed at me because I didnt outright state what I have for a laptop. All you needed to do was a simple search. But seeing as its not that simple obviously for you, I run a P180HM with a pair of 6970m's. And am about to pick up an M18x within the next week or 2 as well. They are really the only laptop(Plus the X7200) models that can truely give "desktop" performance when it comes to graphical performance for games IMO. I also have an F series Sony with a 540m, and briefly had an MSI with a 560m, so Im pretty well versed on the performance of what these laptop gpu's are really capable of with quite a few current games. My stance honestly sides with conservative opinions on what I feel they are capable of too.

 

Enjoy the Alienware forum. I think it will suit your needs perfectly.

 

Do realize that "conservative" to you still puts you in a very small percentile of folks and is considered "extreme" in a high-end way by the majority. All you've said about your experience and what you've invested time-wise and money-wise indicate this.