Anyone not have a problem with P150EM+7970m?

Just to correct you, so far utilization performance has been pretty much the same across every driver released, - i've tested 4 or 5 of them so far.
Also, if the root of issue turns out the be this- ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...have-problem-p150em-7970m-10.html#post8820155) then it would explain unstable utilization and differences between various rendering engines. Anyway, speculation is pointless, lets just hope AMD are able to fix this with drivers, though i must say I am not very hopeful.

 

Good point

I speculate more on AMD actions scenario.
Pretty much is not equal, i am sure i have read more than a couple of comments saying things like "after installing the new driver it fixed the issue with skyrim but crysis 2 got a lot worse". Not exactly that, but something very similar.
In any event the underutilization issue has not been adressed, that much is clear, even Anandtech's article said AMD wasnt adressing it in the next driver, and that they knew so.
Again is bad they wont fix it right away, but its good news they know its present and say they will get to it.

As you say speculation is pointless, but so far speculations have been for the dark and ominous side of the story. I just want to bring a more possitive spin to it.

there are two ways of viewing all this, and the depressed one has been overtaking the scene a bit too much, not that i dont understand why, but still.. the actual real information doesnt really point to such a grim outcome as many prophetize.

 

There has been 1 driver release so far...Only one for switchable graphics+7970M

Caveman gave us some new information about the upcoming drivers:

"Without committing AMD to anything because I've got NO OFFICIAL news for you, I would expect to see a big improvement in performance for 7900M Enduro users in a future beta performance driver. Timeframe is not confirmed but I would think in about a month but I'll try to pin it down more."

 

Hello everyone. Just wanted to update you on what I found out with the data that I got from the games I play- Bioshock I & II, as promised.
Since many have provided FPS and utilization % data from the most popular major games that everyone knows about, I thought that I would show what kind of FPS rate and utilization % from other games that have not been talked about or displayed to date, to show that the Enduro issues that we talk about extend far beyond those popular games that everyone has played and listed thus far. While Enduro MAY NOT negatively affect one or two games, it does affect far more games than many- including AMD and Clevo know about. Bioshock I & II are also negatively affected by Enduro with low GPU utilization scores as well.

When I ran MSI Afterburner, I recorded a max of 60 FPS, but only 50% maximum GPU usage only. It never went above and beyond either one of those at any time during my 3 hours of playing Bioshock. Most of the time, GPU usage stayed anywhere in the range of 25% to 35%, with a brief, but occasional 50% score that lasted only seconds during gameplay.
I say brief at 50% because it was only for only a second or two, and that was it. It stayed at an average of 30% for about 75% of the time throughout my time playing Bioshock.

This should give notice to AMD, Clevo and Sager, that far more, if not all, games are affected negatively by Enduro, and I also hope that they can be made aware of this, and that a FIX can be made and implemented by next Spring 2013.


Here's what I have:

Sager 9150
(Ivy Bridge) Quad Core 3610
7970M

 

That's how Enduro is supposed to work. Staying at 60FPS is not a negative with low GPU usage. That's how Enduro saves energy. The problem comes from when games aren't running at 30 (locked) or 60FPS and there is low utilization.

 

He said a max of 60FPS. If the game ever goes much below 60 FPS, the system has failed at doing its job. That is if vsync is turned off.

Transphasic, is vsync is either enabled in game or in CCC?

 

I've played quite a few games where Enduro works properly and FPS never drops below 59.1.

 

thats nothing to do with enduro, every cards utilization will be adjusted if it reaches vsynch of fps limit, this is generally normal. enduro issue is where there is no fps limit but the rendering engine stalls anyway.

 

nope, there have been a few different drivers that, although not official, will install and work with 7970m. You have the stock clevo driver, the other driver that sager linked to in the troubleshooting thread, 9.0.0 beta driver, 12.7 and 12.8 drivers as well. I am sure there are probably others too, but I stopped trying beta drivers once i realised they do not address the issue, - whilst fps differs by a few % here and there between each set, utilization was more or less the same.

 

we were all as optimistic as you about 4-5 months ago.. how long would you wait before it turns to pessimism?
Clearly this is not a simple issue or it would have been fixed months ago and AMDs reluctance to say officially say they will fix it makes me feel uneasy. If the problem does in fact reside with the way data is being copied to iGPU then I have my doubts on whether they can change that - maybe they can optimize their drivers to improve this function, but a complete change of process is probably hardware-bound.
Best case scenario - they release a driver that works, which according to anadtech is due on 31st of October, whole 7 months since the card was launched.

 

Those drivers weren't meant for switchable configurations (I mean you can't even install them normally), except for the Sager driver but it doesn't really count.

 

at least 2 of those drivers (not counting clevo one) installed ok via Catalyst installer (9.0.0.. driver and 12.7 i think)

 

I thought you couldn't do a fresh install with them?

 

If you are not in a hurry, wait another month or so the see how the next Enduro performance driver does.

 

i think as long as clevo's intel driver is installed first you should be ok.

 

The 12.x driver (9.00) from early June installed for me without issues and did not require the odd process needed for other drivers. It has been the best (although not great by any definition) driver for me so far.

 

Is that so? I've never checked my utilization until I got this laptop as I had no reason to.

 

Even when plugged in?
This makes no sense to me. Why inhibit performance when saving power and energy is not what I want during gameplay?
That would make sense when on battery, because saving power and extending battery life makes the most sense, but not when plugged in. I can't believe that Enduro- even when plugged in, would intentionally limit GPU usage to such low levels like this when I don't want it to. This is why I cannot stand it, and want it shut off.

The FPS rates weren't locked on and staying 60, but varied at lower levels throughout the game, but it's peak level was at 60 for most of the game- generally going from 55-60 in Bioshock when I was moving and not being attacked by the roving band of lunatics.

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What do you want? 100FPS or something? You don't want it pegged at 99% the entire time when it's unneeded as that increases heat levels and increases power consumption (I'm not talking about the battery here, but your electric bill).

 

Enduro's intended function should not have anything to do with limiting performance, - under utilization is a product of faulty design and not a feature as some seem to think. Enduro's primary and only purpose is purely a switchable graphics implementation, there is no intent for it to "switch off gpu parts that are not needed", - this is a myth propagated by people who want to sell this problem as a feature rather than a fault with the product they are selling.

 

First you say it's normal, now you say under utilization is faulty? rofl

 

Thanks for the idea TrantaLocked, because I had not thought of checking to see the difference- if any, between the two settings in Bioshock, and didn't think that there would be any great differences in gameplay. But as I found out, there IS quite a HUGE difference between the two settings.
I checked the gameplay- FPS and utilization % with V-Sync on and off, just to give me and idea of comparison, and here's what I found:

V-Sync off: (from 60% to 81% and 54 to 225 FPS)
V-Sync on: (from 25-33% and 54-60 FPS)

These numbers were wildly different, as you can see. With V-Sync on, the gameplay was pretty much stable- for the most part, to around an average of those two figures of 33% and 60 FPS.

With V-Sync off, then the numbers swung wildly in every direction, for some reason- why I don't know. Maybe you guys can educate me as to why the great disparity between these two results, but when V-Sync is turned off in Bioshock, then both the Utilization % and the FPS rates goes WAY UP to really high levels.

It NEVER stayed fixed of locked on to those super high levels for either FPS or Util %, however, and for FPS rates, it fluctuated randomly from 54 FPS to around 225 FPS. When I was running around, or trying to stop from being attacked by the deranged lunatics trying to kill me in the game, both results fluctuated wildly with V-Sync off, and didn't seem to depend on where I was, nor what I was doing at the time- either running or attacking.

The utilization % fluctuated as often, too, and went up as high as 81%, which is shocking to me, as to how or why this would happen so greatly with V-Sync turned off.

I was not expecting this at all.

With V-Sync on, the numbers were very stable and relatively LOW, obviously, but with V-Sync off, it went all over the place with wild shifts of numbers scaling much, much higher upwards.

I am not sure as to why or what exactly this means within the context of the Enduro argument/issue that we have with AMD, or if these results that I have found are indicative of anything.
Since you guys know far more about this than I do, you can interpret what this means, and how or if it is significant in any way.

Your thoughts?

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I hope i will never go to the dark side.
As i stated in my analysis of the whole situation and available data i dont think AMD has worked on fixing the performance issue for 4 months, in the best of scenarios they have adressed the issue seriously for 1 month.
If you accept that possibility, wich i amply explained as very plausible, then there is absolutely no reason to be pesimistic. Mad and angry? definetely.
Also and i said this in another post, 7970M and 680M are not in the same league, they just cant be compared because their prices are so far from each other. The only reason why people compare them is because the 7970M can perform as good as the 680M, but clearly that possibility doesnt come easy.
So me, and prob hundreds of 7970M buyers betted that enduro will get fixed, and our buy would have been excelent and we could laugh on 680M buyers faces.
Now that the time frame is showing that buy wasnt so good we are crying, but i still dont think its a bad buy, only not excelent.

regards
Voz

PS: transphasic and others:
Why not post those results and figures in the Anandtech's article? With all due respect to NBR, the only one who claims to be in contact with AMD as a tester and reviewer of these issues is Jarred, the reviewer who wrote the article. I doubt he is reading all of the hundreds of threads here in other forums, so PLEASE post the info in anantech's article comment section.

 

In this case Enduro is still malfunctioning, but realize that vsync sets the FPS limit to the monitor's refresh rate, which in this case should be 60Hz. That means FPS will be limited to 60FPS with vsync on. A GPU cannot be 100% utilized if FPS is being limited.

I expected FPS to be stable with BioShock 1 with vsync off, but obviously some thing is wrong, either with the GCN architecture or Enduro. Seeing over 200FPS would seem about right, but it should stay pretty high the whole game. Utilization should be 99% at all times as well, however, once you get past 80FPS there is pretty much no difference in game response.

 

you're either being a moron or purposely under-quoting me, my full quote says:

which is 100% accurate. load up a game that runs at 200fps on any graphics card and enable vsynch, - your utilization will drop accordingly as your card is locked to your refresh rate. this has nothing to do with enduro, all graphics card do this.
with this "enduro issue" utilization drops for no apparent reason (without fps limiter or vsynch), again this does not happen with 7970m in non enduro enabled environment.

 

Thanks for that info articjoe.
Now I know more about this than before, and it is much appreciated as to what V-Sync does and how it relates/or doesn't relate to the Enduro issues.
My only question at this point is (in all the years of gaming, I have not dealt with, nor heard of 'screen tearing' before), so I would not know what to look for with V-Sync off in the games I play.
What is screen tearing, and what do I look for there?
I am now wondering if I should just keep v-sync on in Bioshock with it's 60 FPS limitations and not have to deal with that, instead of having wild swings in FPS rates from 54- 240 or so, with v-sync off.
Bioshock is a great game, and I play if often. Now I have seen the differences between the FPS rates with v-sync on and off, I think that I can deal with 60 FPS now, in that anything more than that rate is not something that I can visually detect. It all looks the same to me, to be honest, and I can't tell the difference visually between 60 and 200 FPS on my screen anyways.

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which is 100% accurate. load up a game that runs at 200fps on any graphics card and enable vsynch, - your utilization will drop accordingly as your card is locked to your refresh rate. this has nothing to do with enduro, all graphics card do this.
with this "enduro issue" utilization drops for no apparent reason (without fps limiter or vsynch), again this does not happen with 7970m in non enduro enabled environment.[/QUOTE]

 

you can usually see some screen tearing when you do quick movements, it happens very quickly and looks like the top half of the image is just a little misaligned with the bottom half. Generally I prefer gaming with vsync on as even though you get lower fps the image is a little more stable (for the lack of a better word).

 

Yes, I know what v-sync does. I'm pretty sure most people run with it on to both prevent screen tearing and to prevent framerate jumping all over, so GPU utlization will be down. Saying that low GPU utilization is faulty (when the tests were run with v-sync on and framerate being a stable 60FPS) is ridiculous on your part.

Read what was posted before going around calling people morons, yeah?

 

Thanks TrantaLocked for your info and input. It is much appreciated.
Yeah, I am getting WILD FPS rates with V-synch off. I never expected this kind of wild swings from one end to the other like this, though.

I think that what both you and arcticjoe have said about it, I think that I will keep v-synch on, because I cannot tell the difference between the 60 FPS with it on, and the 240 or whatever FPS rates that I get in Bioshock with it turned off.
It all looks the same to me.

(On an unrelated side note, I also have made a weird discovery about Bioshock that many may not know about. The guy who plays the voice of Ryan- the leader and creator of the underwater city in Bioshock, was voiced by none other than Armin Shimerman, who was Quark in Star Trek Deep Space 9! Wow. Who knew? Star trek DS9 is one of my all-time fave shows, and I had no idea...)


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when have i ever said this?

 

? Am I missing something?

 

Lol. In this instance arcticjoe is talking about v-sync being disabled and the dGPU not being fully utilised. Which is what this discussion is about. The problem with Enduro. I think you are misconstruing what he is saying.

 

Transphasic was playing BioShock with v-sync on with his first test. He complained about the low utilization and being at 60FPS. Arcticjoe said it's a fault with Enduro. Didn't start talking about v-sync being off until later on after that.

I give up.

 

dumb double post

 

this is my post:

i cant see how there is anything to do with vsynch in there.

 

And that's my point. Earlier you stated under-utilization is normal, then after you said what you just quoted, despite it being obvious transphasic had v-sync on.

 

this is getting stupid.

 

It seems to me that there is some misunderstanding here, and it's creating some hard feelings unnecessarily.

With the Enduro issues that we are having, it's the under-utilization and much lower FPS rates that are occurring when our 7970m laptops are still plugged in on AC.
This should never happen, because Enduro should only "kick-in" and work when our laptops are NOT plugged in, and ONLY the battery is then being used, as I see it.

The overall functionality of our Clevo laptops with the 7970m GPU has been in almost all cases, severely degraded solely because of Enduro, and that is our focus and hope that a "cure" will be found via a software patch from AMD by the end of the year, as some have predicted. At this point, we need some good news from AMD and SOON.

 

Good OFFICIAL NEWS

Originally Posted by Marc@AMD
I want to thank all those users that have been patient in this matter, and peristent in providing helpful information and feedback to the community.

We have received some positive news from the Driver Development Team. A driver is planned to be released in the near future that will provide significant improvements to notebooks enabled withAMD Enduro™ Technology.

Please stay tuned to our support.amd.com site for the driver posting.

Source: AMD Game Forums - The Clevo 7970M Enduro/under-utilization debacle.

 

Well, this FINALLY is a bit of good news, after all the silence of AMD and anger that many like me have felt these past few months.
However, I wonder what their definition of "in the near future" is, and just how long that is going to be.
I trust that it won't be a time frame of 12 months that they are talking about and only just 60 days at the most.


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I'll believe it when I see it. "near future" could mean anything. At least they're not having threads deleted anymore that I know of.

 

Ok Saint Thomas.

 

good updates:

 

Guys, this is a bit old (18 SEPT), but its highly encouraging news and confirms what many have been saying, the good bit is that Jarred form Anandtech is very confident the underutilization issue will be fixed..

SOURCE: Anandtechs article, page 19 of comments

Even if its old post its great news!.we can hope for the best or keep on crying like many will anyway... lol

cheers
Voz

 

Wow, how did we miss that?

 

At least in my case i stopped checking Anandtech too often, i went yesterday to post caveman-ji's latest update and found out Jarred had replied my last post from a couple of weeks ago. The comments in the article did mostly stop (as well as Jarred's replies) so i assume many stopped checking it, also the format of comment/reply helps losing late replies if you dont read them all again.

Still its a very nice piece of news, so i decided to post it in some of the related NBR threads