Clevo M570U, Vista and Gaming performance

Hi,

I recently bought a clevo M570U and the very helpful information I found on this forum really helped me in making the decision. So many thanks to all the contributors.

I decided to install Vista Ultimate Edition on my new laptop.
I am using the 100.65 nvidia drivers (with modded inf) I picked from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/.
I benchmarked with 3dmark05 (score ~9400) and 3dmark06 (score ~5300) which is (I think) what I should get.

I installed fear and I am getting low framerate in some situations.
When I run the in-game benchmark, I get unpredictable results: sometimes >80 fps average (=what I should get), some other times 20 fps average...
It seems kind of random. All the other games I tested (SupCom, Company of Heroes) are far more stable...

Any of you guys know what could be wrong?
Drivers not mature yet (btw fixed aspect ratio scaling does not work)?
Pb specific to FEAR and Vista compatibility?

Thanks,
Mateottr

 

your benchmark scores seem right, although under XP you should get a slightly higher score because the nVidia drivers are not fully optimized yet for Vista.

As for your games, make sure that they are up-to-date, and get the dual-core patch for them if available (its the game's programming that will need this patch, not up to the OS)

Specifically, I tested FEAR under Vista, it had a noticeable loss in performance compared to XP environment. I am pretty sure that it will run smoother as soon as nVidia figure out the optimizations and do a few more driver releases.

here is my thread about this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=101617

 

Nvidia's drivers for Windows Vista are not that good at the moment, so expect performance to be lower than XP as Gophn said. Drivers will improve with time and the performance gap between Vista and XP will be narrowed.

You may consider turning on VSync to get more stable framerates. It will cap the framerates at the screen's refresh rate (probably 60FPS), so you won't have framerates skyrocketing all over the place. More stable framerates = better gaming experience.

Congratulations on the laptop by the way, and thanks for joining the forums.

 

Hey Gophn and Chaz, thanks for the replies.

Indeed I expect the game performance in Vista to be less than XP, all the more because of non(-yet) mature drivers.

However the problem I have with FEAR is something special. I investigated a bit further: after about 5 minutes into the game, the framerate will drop and stabilize at 30fps, no matter what resolution and performance settings I use.
It sounds very odd I know, but I tested it over and over again:
I launch the game, do the performance test several times in a row, the first 2 times I get an average fps of 60 (at resolution 1280x768), after that I get 28-29fps all the time (without changing any settings). If I exit the game and restart it, I get again 5 minutes of normal functioning before the limitation @30fps.
I cross checked with fraps, in game (solo or multi), the framerate fluctuates between 40-80 during the first 5 minutes after starting the game, and then clips at a stable 30 no matter what !!!

I tried to force disabling the vsync (the opposite of what Chaz proposed ;-)), in case it would be the source of the framerate limitation, but that didn't help at all.
Again I don't have the problem with other games, I played hours of Company of heroes and SupCom, and there the framerate is normal (fluctuates and more 30 fps).

Wow, anyone has a clue what's going on with the combination FEAR + M570U (w. 9750 GTX) + 100.65 drivers + VISTA ?!?

MateoTTR

 

check the temp of the GPU (use RivaTuner) while this is occurring within FEAR.

its a slim chance, but the GPU might be downclocking when it hits a certain temp.

 

Oh well, I just tried the command and conquer 3 demo, and same thing happens (right from the start of the game this time).
I get a constant and stable 30fps no matter what are the settings.

I monitored GPU temperature with FEAR and Rivatuner. Core temperature was 40° idle. Temperature went up to 65° during the performance tests. I kept on alt tabbing until the framerate drop to 30 fps occurred. There were no real increase of the core temp when it happened, as I had a stable 60-65° for several minutes already...

Unfortunately, Rivatuner does show framerate with FEAR otherwise I would have captured the graph to let you have a look.

 

umm... u dont have to ALT-TAB to monitor GPU temp, in my guide, i show how to turn on the OSD (on-screen display) for the temp while your are in-game.

that is strange though, maybe FEAR might need a new patch for Vista environment. Or you have to disable Vsync.

 

Finally recorded fps with FEAR (using fraps).
I loaded a save game, then continuously stared at a wall (to get high framerate). After some time, framerate suddenly drops below 30

 

I followed your guide (very nice btw), but for some reason OSD doesn't work with rivatuner (Vista compatibility issue?).

Also I tried force enabling/disabling vsync, that does not seem to affect the framerate at all. I guess the feature might not be implemented yet (fixed aspect ratio doesn't work either).

 

o i did not think about Vista not compatible with the OSD... i have not tried that yet in Vista.

hmm... strange indeed.

In the meantime, I would recommend to try another game too see if the same thing happens.

C&C3 demo seems to have a 30fps cap anyways.

 

So far I can say Company of heroes and Supreme Commander are ok (framerates are what they should be and fluctuate above 30).
FEAR: framerate drops to 30 after some time.
CnC3 demo: framerate is blocked at 30 all the time, no matter the resolution.

A rough guess is that vsync is probably poorly implemented in the drivers, and depending on how the games try to control it, we have some decrepency.

Any other forum members have VISTA on 5760 and can comment on framerates?

 

Nvidia confirmed that vsync option cannot be set from the driver control panel:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13113

 

Have you tried the nvidia driver on the sager site for vista and the 5760 (M570U)?

 

No, I imagined that the drivers from laptopvideo2go were the most up-to-date. I'll try the sager drivers as soon as I get home though.

Can you tell me what's the version of the drivers on sager site?

 

Give it a few more releases of the drivers and I believe RivaTuner is about to release a new version to improve the OSD issue within the Vista environment.

RivaTuner works the OSD off of the drivers, it needs to be updated to utilize those drivers... as for the Vista environment, it need to be updated to fully support DX9L and/or DX10.

I'll update my guide when I get a hold of it.

 

The funny thing is that fraps seems to get the OSD thing working right. I guess it relies on some other technique to do that.

I tried the sager nvidia drivers, they obviously correspond to some older release. My 3dmark05 score went down from 9450 to 7700, ouch...
The problem in FEAR is still there.
Regarding CnC3 demo I confirm there is a native framerate limitation @30fps. So FEAR seems to be the only posing problems for me that far.