7970m woes...

Hi, as a preface to this thread, I'd like to say that I'm a complete newbie when it comes to PC gaming; my NP9150 is the first gaming laptop I've ever purchased. So I really don't know what I'm doing here and I'd love some help

Anyways, my problem is that I can't figure out why some games will run well maxed and others won't. I can play Skyrim with a bunch of graphics mods on Ultra with no lag at all, yet when I try to play Borderlands on maxed settings, it lags so hard, it gets to around maybe 5 FPS (my own estimate, I didn't actually measure it). I have both applications set to High Performance in the CCC so they should both be using the 7970m right? But I suspect that Borderlands is using the HD 4000 for some reason.

*Edit: Oh, and also! Whenever I turn on anti-aliasing in Skyrim, it plays very choppily but when I turn it off it's smoother, which confuses me... Skyrim also fails to detect the 7970m, instead opting for the HD 4000 and recommending low settings, but I just put it on Ultra and I guess it just uses the 7970m in-game but in the launcher it doesn't even show the 7970m as an option in the "Graphics Adapter" section

Also another problem, relating to MSI Afterburner: I did the
UnofficialOverclockingEULA = 1
UnofficialOverclockingMode = 1
thing so I could overclock, but when I run Afterburner, both the core and memory clocks are at 0, but on top of the program it says "Graphics card: AMD Radeon HP 7970m" but it doesn't say anything at "Driver Version:" so could there be some problem with the driver? ._.


I'm using 12.7 by the way, but I installed the stock Clevo drivers first and then I installed 12.7 on top of that because I couldn't figure out how to uninstall the Clevo drivers, so I dunno if that causes a problem or not.

I'm sorry, this is a lot of beginner stuff but I've searched for hours and dug through dozens of threads on 7970m problems and I've tried everything, set the power options to high performance, applications in CCC to high performance etc etc, I tried uninstalling 12.7 and reinstalling it, I don't know what the issue is! Thanks for any help ya'll can offer

 

Well I didint try borderlands yet, so I cant help you with that, but about the 0 clock in Msi AB you first need to run some sort of dx application which set the card to life and than you will spot those clocks and be able to overclock. For example I and many others Run MSI Kombustor which is in the package with msi afterburner when you download it. Just open kombustor first and when you'll open After burner you can overclock. However the issue with borderlands is maybe also related to bad drivers, I dunno. Hopes somebody with the same issue will help you ..

 

Just as an FYI: I last tried playing Borderlands on my old i7-2600k with SLI 560Tis and it still ran like crap.

I think Borderlands is just one of those titles that needs alot of tweaking to run smoothly. You might want to try a third game and see if it is just isolated to Borderlands.

 

AA is very demanding, so turning it on will result in a noticeable performance hit.

Skyrim has two .exe files, SkyrimLauncher.exe and TESV.exe. SkyrimLauncher.exe is only that splash screen that pops up that asks whether you want to play, edit mods, etc. TESV.exe is the actual .exe that runs the game. This is what you need to set as High Performance, but it sounds like it is automatically set since you are playing on ultra fine.

 

Ah thank you so much! Using Kombustor worked just like you said

I tried Call of Duty World at War which isn't very demanding I guess but it ran smooth as butter on maxed settings. I dunno, I guess it really is just Borderlands. I'll see what I can do to make it smoother, probably just switching to 1600x900 and turning off shadows or something. Thanks for your input.

Okay, I just figured that the 7970m would be able to handle anti-aliasing but it's no biggie.

 

I am having the same issue with Shogun 2. BF3, D3, and Skyrim all work fine. I guess we just have to wait for new drivers.

 

Alright something is definitely wrong with playing Borderlands with the 7970m because even on 1600x900 and all settings to low, its giving me like 10 FPS. I'm almost certain that it's using the HD 4000 now, I just have to figure out why even though I put it in CCC as high performance it's not using the 7970m

edit: AHA! I changed the 3D profile in CCC to use the application settings, and voila it's running smoothly on everything maxed

 

It's a strong mobile card, but it will take a desktop card to be able to run a game like Skyrim with HD textures at ultra with full AA on.

 

You should probably just uninstall all your amd drivers, and just instal the drivers you got with your cd. I'm running those and every game works fine for me.

 

Skyrim runs perfectly fine for me on Ultra + 2K mod HD Textures + RCRN. I got the 7970M and i7-3610. I get around 55-60 fps. I might have to check my AA setting tonight (I'm at work atm), not sure if Ultra sets it to max.

 

For Borderlands, I uninstalled PhysX. In the /Borderlands/Binaries/ folder, there is a file called cudart.dll. I made a copy and named it physxcudart_20.dll
I am playing with everyone on/maxed except for AA and Depth of Field. I'll drop to around 55 fps on occasion. The lowest I've gotten was 45 fps. Temp maxes at around 72 C and 90% GPU utilization.

I was browsing around the Borderlands forums and came across this post: http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showpost.php?p=2637532&postcount=6

I have the GOTY edition, so this problem may have been patched. Try disabling dynamic shadows?

 

Thanks, I figured it out though, I just had to change the 3D application settings in CCC to use the application settings, and now it runs great

 

Good to know that chosing "Use application settings" might help solve this type of problem. I've run into an instance where "high performance" didn't do anything. I uninstalled, reinstalled drivers and that fixed it, but maybe I could have avoided that by doing what you did.

 

I pity the fool who doesn't use the FXAA injector with Skyrim and any other DX9 game they can. Set Pre and Post sharpen to at least half and turn the other options besides AA off and watch the game look 2x as good with virtually no performance penalty.

 

Yeah, I have Borderlands GOTY Edition installed on mine and it is working almost perfectly. I say "almost" because I get that same .dll error, even after installing the latest Physx Runtime. I just click through the error, and everything works great in-game at max settings.

 

nah, FXAA decreases detail somewhat so even in games that offer it i'd rather play with no AA at all than use it. I'm surprised BF3 includes it in its ultra preset as the image is noticeably sharper with 4x MSAA and 0 FSAA than with both on max.

 

This worked for me for Shogun 2.

 

It is dumb little bugs like these that are causing large performance problems with many Sager 7970m owners.

 

As for your MSI afterburner problem, have you tried rebooting? I had that problem and I just rebooted, now I can OC my card.

 

Were this 200 years ago i would glove slap you and challenge you to a duel. But seriously I know you've never seen the FXAA injector in action in Skyrim.