Fixed my Utilization issue?

Well, I don't know if this is a legit fix or not. I actually have no idea if this will work for anyone else at all however since it worked for me I thought I would post it and hope that it does help someone else.

I installed the 12.5 drivers. While they worked for Diablo 3, they did not work for Tera. The game was playable, but it was only using about 60% of the card max no matter what. So I gave up on it.

All I did was overclock the card just a bit (I followed Slick's guide). 25 points to be exact. Wha-la, my utilization went to full for Tera and it runs perfectly.

I have no idea if this will work for anyone else, much less any other games I use, but since then I have tried numerous that I run and have had no issues at all with them.

 

YES!!! EXACTLY!!! It is weird, but I have seen the same behaviour. When OC to 950/1350 the GPU utilisation is much higher in games. In Crysis 2 instead of +/- 72 % I see 98 %.

 

could you try MSI Kombustor 2.3? i cant get mine above 85% utilization using its default burn in settings. Same for furmark, GPU usage is always at 86%.

 

I only use Kombustor 2.3.0. and GPU burn-in test tab to make it to 99% utilisation.

Kombustor Panel Settings:

GPU Burn-in tab:

3D API = Direct3D 11
Post-FX checked

Settings tab:

8x MSAA
fulscreen checked
resolution 1920x1080

 

right, i just did some experimenting with different kombustor settings and it looks like to get 99% utilization i need to use DX11 or 10. If opengl or dx9 are used i get around 75% usage.

 

Probably DX9 effects are too lightweight for the GPU, and the actual BUS/pipeline is the bottleneck (to communicate with CPU). That's what I'm thinking/pondering anyway.

I'd be worried but only if FPS was low AND utilization was low. (which I heard some ppl had)

 

fps is low.. lower than 6970m.

 

Yeah my FPS was a lot lower than it needed to be. That was my issue. From what I can tell, and through my experiments it has worked with both Tera, CoH and League of Legends. In these games if I was fresh off a restart or something of the like then the FPS would be about half of what it should be or less. During these times the GPU would be at about half and Afterburner (Which I have gotten to work flawlessly with some work) would read that the card was firing at 300 core and 150 memory.

Even a 10 increase in both creates the increase. I went from about 15-20 on Tera on the highest to 60-70. League of legends went from 30 on the highest to 200. CoH I did not have a way to measure it, but it was clearly a difference.

I found that even in games where the FPS felt perfect, that small 10 mhz overclock was enough to increase the actual fps.

From what I can tell, the 7970 is staying in idle mode unless forced to "wake up" so to speak. I think our issue with the utilization is that the drivers that are currently out do not have any idea how to actually wake up and use the 7970m They activate it for 3d applications, but don't wake it up. So it sticks at the clocks that it idles at.

I believe that when we overclock it it can't fall back down into that idle mode and it sticks at the clocks and speeds it should be at which should cancel the utilization issue.

This is all theory of course.

 

sadly overclocking to even 1ghz GPU 1.5ghz mem only gives me 1-2 extra fps in games that are having issues, so the nature of your low fps issue must had been different.

 

thanks for sharing xtrophy

i will save this for later so i can remember when i get my machine

and that theory sounds like it may hold water
time will tell though

 

Hi ppl,
Can someone check if Ati Tray Tools works with the 7970M? Because if it works perhaps it can force the 7970M to "awake" for work

Thank you,
Best Regards to all

 

the 7970m on this clevo seems working without problem
Test GeForce GTX 680M vs. Radeon HD 7970M - Notebookcheck.com Tests

 

not sure about that, if you look bellow at gaming benchmarks 7970m in clevo with 3720qm is sometimes as much as 10-20% slower than alienware m17x r4 7970m with 3610qm.

 

i think the driver on their machine is a bit different from ours but still have some room for improvement. guess the folks there are working to address the issue.

 

Alienwares drivers/bios are indeed better. their ability to turn off enduro helps. while clevo units dont necessarily have the same penalty that AW had in all their games when enduro is on, there still seems to be some underlying issue that is crippling clevo performance in certain titles. look at the brightside though... our already stellar performance will only get better!

 

@articjoe
Yeah I was almost positive it wouldn't help everyone, I just thought I would throw it out there in case it did help someone.

As for the Alienware vs the Clevo, they can turn off enduro and install any driver from ATI that claims support for the 7900 series. My assumption based on my theory would be that since no enduro is running on the Alienwares they don't put the 7970 into an idle state meaning it never has to be woken up.

Of course, I have nothing to back this up.

I'll give the ATI tools a try sometime tonight and report back to see what happened.

 

To littlecx: I love how the specific Ensight benchmark showed the 7970M to perform nearly 200% more than the GTX 680M. Once I get into the chunk of my major classes in computer engineering I will be using CAD programs frequently.

It is interesting that the 7970M is more effective than the GTX 680M for almost all design software. I guess AMD may actually be the choice to go with for professionals, which to my knowledge usually wasn't the case.

The benchmark also showed that with a 7970M, performance is close and OFTEN better than the GTX 680M by a couple frames. Interesting.