Processor Upgrade NP9170

Alright guys, here we go:

I have an NP9170 with a 680m and the 3630QM in it. I have noticed that a number of my games suffer noticeable performance drops when I enable CPU heavy systems such as shadows, water quality, and those sorts of things. Since I don't see a peak in the performance of the 680, I am assuming I am limited by the processor considering that most games do not make full use of the quad core. At this point I would like to verify that this is correct and there isn't another bottleneck I am hitting.

IF This is, in fact, the limitation I'm pondering going for a new processor once the Haswells come out. Of course the NP9170 uses Ivy and the sockets are not the same, so I will be looking for a really good upgrade that fits in my current socket.

The drawback is my limited knowledge of the processors above the 3630 that are available and the benefits/drawbacks of each. Does anyone feel like educating me as to the general pros and cons of a few of them and possibly an expected price range?

Thanks for your time!
Jeremy

 

AFAIK the 3630qm doesnt bottleneck the 680m at all.

your best line of upgrade is the 3940xm

check to see what is the load of the gpu on said games

 

If this is the case, is there a known throttling issue I am unaware of?

 

You could try using Throttlestop to keep your turbo enabled. Worked to stabilise my framerate in GTA4 (3820QM).

 

nope. AFAIK shadows are gpu bound as well.

you wanna see your cpu gagging? fire shogun 2 tw and put everything in max, then do a battle of 40 VS 40, when all the gritty things start, zoom in to the troops. That will gag it alright, I think it will be 15fps or at max 25fps

 

It is just those features you're enabling that are taxing the GPU. They'll look much better on a desktop but a notebook GPU cant handle them quite as well. Any games in particular you're seeing this one?

 

Both shadows and water quality are GPU bound (usually based on shaders, more or less complex). Are you sure it is your CPU that is being maxxed out? Not too many games that can make that huge of a dent on a 3630... Check out your frame rendering time with and without said features. If it is essentially unchanged, we are talking about CPU stuff. If it changes alot, it is GPU related.

However, if you are considering a new CPU, take a look at the 3740qm, as it is unlocked (meaning you can overclock it by 400Mhz). It is marginally more expensive than a 3630, but quite more powerful. Of course this difference isn't that big in most games, unless they are much more CPU bound (heavy use of AI, pathfinding, or software physics engines and the likes).

 

Well, I have always assumed shadows were processor generated (I haven't been a major player in computer parts since the birth for dual cores and my 4200+).

I use Battlefield 3 and WoW as my main examples since they work at such different ends of the spectrum. To begin with they both suffer from a common problem. If I have them in full screen without Vsync they both tear so badly that it is unplayable to me. I am very sensitive to tearing and it is actually painful to look at for me (It gives me terrible headaches). If I lock Vsync on both of them they both run better, but they when turning the screen they both suffer from a terrible stutter. It isn't enough to really stop me from playing wow, but Battlefield 3 becomes unplayable.

I learned that if I ran them in a Fullscreen Window mode, they didn't suffer from either of these problems. I have kept them running like this since I discovered it (I use a third party program to play BF3 this way). I tell you all this because I just recently started looking into why the shadows felt like they were damaging my frame rates so much. I believed that the 3630 was powerful enough that it wouldn't hinder the 680m in the least bit. That is why I was against the issue in the first place. My assumption that the shadows are processor generated actually foils my thoughts that the processor is limiting the card anyway.

I test ran it today, lots of play while watching the numbers. With the shadows and such enabled, in full screen with vsync off I was getting 40-70 fps in WoW. The Processor was running between 20-40% (Hovered between 20 and 30 on most of the, 1 to 2 spikes hit 40) The card never got over 60% usage.

This is why I explained everything. Even running as I normally do (full screen window mode, settings lowered) I get EXACTLY the same usages.

Why would this be?

 

all previous generations cpu can be thrown away if 3630qm is not enough

 

who says they shouldnt be thrown away? im sure intel wouldnt mind one bit moah moneh bebe!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Well Xtrophy, I'm pretty sure that your CPU isn't much to blame. You mention you have frame rate drops when "turning" around in BF3. All modern GPU cards make visibility tests, in order to ensure that they will only draw what is in fact inside your field of view (projection). When turning around, new objects come into your field of view, and thus, need to be drawn. There are several techniques to speed up drawing these objects (think cache), and as such, when looking into "places" you haven't looked recently, or in a while, it is not uncommon for FPS to plummet a bit.

To add to this, if I remember correctly, in BF3 you have motion blur when you turn around. Add this post-processing effect at high resolutions, and your draw calls take a little bit longer! I'm not sure what technique they used for motion blur (vector or object, but probably vector), but it may also take a toll.

Finally, some games are constantly loading and unloading textures and geometry from disk, ram and GPU. Memory bandwith helps a lot on these instances.

So, can you give us a little more info ? What ram are you using (frequency, timings, is it dual channel?) and what are your GPU clocks? Also, do you notice dramatic improvements when changing post-processing settings on those games?

Cheers.

 

Jaycob:

I might get hell for this, but I run Hyper X Plug and play. They are the 9 CAS variety at 1600. Dual Channel and 8 gigs, 2x4 both in the bottom slots of the laptop.

My GPU clocks are 915/2250 and I run the vbios here which clocks it up to 980 under use. I've been running this for quite awhile (I stressed it for a few days of course when I set it up to run like this) and I have had perfect stability.

I haven't been able to test the post processing for sure, Battlelog won't let me on due to the ddos attacks, Wow doesn't have the option directly. I don't want to test other games at this moment because I don't know for sure if they have the problem or not, I haven't been playing anything else in the last month or two. When I get home back to the laptop I can see if a different game suffers from the same problem.

 

XTrophy, your hardware is really top of the line. That being said, my bet is now with v-sync:

When running at high FPS, v-sync will try to guarantee 1 Frame drawing per refresh cycle of your LCD (you might know it as VBI). Supposing you have a 60HZ one, it will "cap" the FPS at 60FPS.

Now, if it is running lower than 60FPS, it can get messy:

Lower than 60FPS, say, 45FPS, means that you no longer can show one new frame per refresh cycle. Now, we could, say, draw 15 of those frames twice, and the other 30 once only, but that would be very uneven and you'd notice. Some v-sync implementations (using double buffering) halve the FPS based on your monitor refresh rate (60Hz/2) in order to draw 1 Frame twice(or four times!) in consecutive refresh cycles of the monitor in order to keep it all synced. In our example, a double buffer enabled vsync at 45FPS would make the game run at 30FPS .

This is the main issue with vsync. Triple Buffering helps a lot, and I'd suggest you'd force it on.

That is IF the issue is with the v-sync. Just going out on a limb here...

 

Yeah, I know how Vsync itself works, my issue is is that with out Vsync my games tear to badly to actually be played (At least in my eyes, as I said I am VERY sensitive to screen tearing). With Vsync on and in full screen they stutter like mad when turning, even if I am at a smoothed 60 fps. Wow for instance feels like it is running at 30 fps, but with the exact same settings in full screen windowed mode it runs beautifully. I don't have an issue with playing it on full screen windowed mode at all, my problem arises when there are some games that don't do full screen windowed mode.

Realistically I was looking for processor upgrades to fix the fact that shadows and such are massive frame rate hits. If everything I have been told in this thread is true, that is a waste of time seeing as how most games these days draw shadows from the card. However, I would love to know if anyone else suffers from the stuttering and tearing I have. I turned off post processing in BF3 and saw little as far as improvement goes without full screen windowed mode on.

As I mentioned, this isn't a major problem for me. I can run every game that allows me to in full screen windowed and it won't bother me a bit. The problems start when I have to run a third party program (such as BF3) to do it. I would rather not have to do that to get the best performance out of my laptop.

 

Sorry for the lecture Xtrophy. I tend to get carried away!

I also play quite a bit of BF3. I don't use v-sync, as I crank up the settings, meaning I get an average of 45 or so FPS.

You say you play in borderless windowed mode. If I remember correctly, v-sync doesn't work in windowed mode, only in full screen. I would ask you to log your FPS to a file in both full screen and borderless window mode so that we could check what is different...

Cheers mate.