New laptop and a few problems already :<

[Falney]

Hello

I just received my new Optimus 5 Laptop yesterday and I went and installed a copy of windows 8 pro on it that I had on the shelf unused. (I was originally going to install win 7 until I was told the drivers wouldn't work on it)

I have installed the lan drivers then the intel ones, followed by the nVidia drivers.

Unfortunately a few issues have arrived,

According to dxdiag, I have an 8core cpu. Instead of reading 4 core, 8 threads, it is reading 8 cores 8 threads.

It is also recognising the intel graphics chip but not the nVidia one.


I was playing Minecraft earlier today and getting 12fps. This evening I ran a 3DMark benchmark test and got a score of 2394 which is pretty pathetic with a quad core 2.8ghz and 24gb ram with the nVidia GTX 765m, 3DMark also brought up an "unrecognised cpu" error at the end of the tests. The third test (with the fight scene was running at 3-5fps)

Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated. (restoring the original OS is out of the question, I deleted the partition and it was a trial license.)

Thanks

 

[dogbot]

I am not a gamer but this is how I see it.

You probably have about the right prforfance you should expect from your hardware. Looks like you have a good processor but that will not make much difference for gaming. Similarly the 24 GB of ram is largely wasted. The graphics card is where you could have done better since most gamers requiring high fps would have gone for something like a GTX 680 or 780 M/MX.

I have extracted some scores from passmark http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
The scores are not nescessarily orientated around gaming but are the only thing I know which gives a comparison. The scores are averages. A better idea of what to expect is to click on the particular card and scroll down to the last 5 results.

Desktop gamers cards 5-8000 passmark

Laptop
GTX680MX 4381
GTX780M 4051
GTX680M 3592
GTX770M 2719
GTX675MX 2496 (mine 2680)
GTX675M 2263
GTX670MX 2054
GTX670M 1907
GTX765M 1888
GT 750M 1648
GTX660M 1469

Since I am not a gamer I won't comment on those figures. Other gamers will have more knowledge on what you should expect from a GTX765M.
Here is my 3D Mark http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/470472 for a GTX675MX
Fire Strike was also jerky for me with low frame rates but the other 2 demos were OK.

 

[Akerific]

This doesn't sound right could you post your full specs? My Optimus V runs everything smoothly pretty much including minecraft.
Also i have Windows 7 on mine and the drivers work fine

 

[dogbot]

Your CPU may be 'unrecognised' because it is a relatively new processor and maybe not enough samples have done to cause the processor details to be entered into the 3D Mark system.

My laptop details are in the 3D Mark test it is a Vortex III with i7-3740QM, 16 GB ram and nVidia GTX 675MX graphics card. I have no idea what it would run minecraft like and I am not attempting to say how well your laptop can play games (I don't know).

You have the newer GTX 765M (not to be confused with 675) card for which you get a 3D Mark score of 2394. What I tried to do was gather some relative numbers to see how representative that score might be. 3D Mark gives a value for gaming laptops of 3384 but I would expect that to be biased towards the high powered cards if only because those are the cards most likely to be tested. My 675 has a value of 2818 which I know (or hope) is reasonable. From the passmark results your 3D Mark should be lower, and it is, but I don't know by how much it should be lower.

In 3D Mark I have just done a search for GTX 765M results. I found about 40 valid results with the main bunch of scores in the region 2500 to 2700. If we look at the results that include the invalid results (due to processor and driver recognition) then yours is http://www.3dmark.com/fs/699278 and is rated at 152 out of about 450 so there are a lot below you. I looked at another 3D Mark result with a higher score but all the individual scores were only slightly greater and no one of your scores stood out as really being low. As it stands your score is a bit lower than average but I don't think it would make that much difference - but again, I'm no expert on gaming.

 

[Falney]

If all I am doing is gaming, I would agree that the ram was going to go to waste, how ever I will be doing a lot of 3D rendering with the computer as well.

I would have liked to have chosen a better graphics card also, but this was the only one listed with the optimus V chassis.

If I have you reassuring me that this is the performance I should be getting from it then ok, however it is a little frustrating that my 6 year old desktop out performs a shiny, new, up-to-date laptop that cost 3 times the amount.


Thanks

 

[dogbot]

OK, the i7-4900 makes sense for CPU rendering. Like you ,I wanted a laptop for rendering where in my case it was for video editing. I needed a good CPU but almost any reasonable GPU would have done. However I chose one that I thought would give an overall balanced performance. Also like you, I wanted to check on whether I did have the expected performance or if I had been sold a pup.

I tested using 3DMark and 3DMark11. These are primarily gaming tests aimed at determining the ability of graphics cards to render and output to the screen. The actual result was on a par with other good results so I was satisfied. Had I had really low results like some people, then I would have been worried. Your result was slightly down, 2400 compared with an average of about 2500-2600. If this worries you then perhaps a gamer can tell you how to fine tune to get it better. All this says nothing about the processor which does not seem to make much difference for these tests.

Optimus decides which GPU will be used. For general use this will be the default Intel graphics to conserve battery life. For gaming, it will be the nVidia card. However it sometimes gets it wrong or you want to use one in particular. This can be done manually in the nVidia settings by changing the settings for a particular program.

There are probably many CPU benchmark programs which I am not familiar with but a test I did use was 'Passmark'. As an example here is my result http://www.passmark.com/baselines/V8/display.php?id=7013155243 Of interest here is the CPU mark. The averaged results are here http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html For your i7-4900MQ the CPU mark is 8962. However a better comparison is obtained by clicking on the CPU name and scrolling down to the last 5 results. That will give a better idea of the spread of results. Ideally you should get 9000 - 9300.
If you do the test it might use the Intel GPU as default. In that case reset as described above. It won't make any difference to the CPU result but will if you want to compare the 3D graphics mark. Best of luck.

 

[dogbot]

I can understand your nervousness about wondering whether your laptop perforfance is up to scratch. On the face of it, the laptop should be better than an old desktop but I have no idea what the comparison is. There are two issues, gaming and rendering.

If minecraft is particularly bad, check if it is using the intel graphics instead of the nVidia.

Are you saying that the rendering speed is worse than that obtained with the desktop, or have you not done comparative tests yet.

 

[samhol]

Definitely doesn't sound right. My Optimus V runs Minecraft at a very solid 60FPS (with vsync enabled, much higher without).

 

[rav007]

I am just passing through to get a feel for the optimus v before I buy, checking the issues so far.

I can't tell you how reliable dxdiag is at identifying the new haswell i7s', have you tried running cpu-z and hwinfo? I find these to be more polished/reliable. The threads are mistaken for cores in various software who can't establish hyperthreading because they dont know the new cpu architecture. The software will see the CPU capable of running 8 independent calculations simultaneously and will assume 8 cores with 1 thread each hence 8 cores 8 threads.

As for performance, according to notebookcheck http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-765M.92907.0.html 3Dmark '13 scores indicate a figure in the region of 2500 for your card and I think some of these will be overclocked.

Have you manually enabled the Nvidia card for minecraft? I think it is likely to default run the intel HD graphics if you have not, which could be the reason for your low fps. GPU-z would be a good monitor for this too, get that launched and sit in the background and ensure you enable the data to save to a log file so you can monitor it. If it is using the nvidia card you should get some changes in clock speeds and temps for the card in gpu-z.

If all else fails you can try the simple uninstall and reinstall drivers. Did you allow them to be detected automatically? Did you use a drivers disk? Did you download from Clevo? If pcspecialist isnt able to find a resolve then you should also look at other Clevo W350stq resellers as they may have drivers available for download that work.

 

[Falney]

How would I check which one it is running? When I look at dxdiag it only shows the intel GPU. If this mean's it is infact using the intel GPU, How do I set it to use the nVidia GPU?

I dont know if it makes any difference, but the VGA button light is perma' on and pressing it does nothing to change the fact.


EDIT

After some research and poking around, I figured out how to change the graphics to nVidia, it required updates and tinkeringi n the control panel. No tutorials I found helped as they pointed to things I didnt have on my nVidia control panel.

experimentation ftw. Not to benchmark again and see how I do.


Thanks for the help

 

[ubuysa]

How would I check which one it is running? When I look at dxdiag it only shows the intel GPU. If this mean's it is infact using the intel GPU, How do I set it to use the nVidia GPU?

I dont know if it makes any difference, but the VGA button light is perma' on and pressing it does nothing to change the fact.

On my Optimus IV (and I guess the Optimus V is the same) there are four small LEDs above the keyboard. The right hand two tell you which GPU is being used.

The green LED (second from right) indicated the Intel GPU is being used.

The yellow LED (far right) indicates the nVidia GPU is being used.

The VGA switch needs to be orange to use the nVidia GPU (that sets it in Optimus mode where the GPU is selectable). If the VGA switch is green then only the Intel GPU will be used.

If you open the nVidia Control Panel (right click on the system tray icon and select it from the menu) you can specify both the default GPU and which applications use which GPU. Click on Adjust 3D Settings in the menu on the left.

The Global Settings tab lets you select the default GPU (Automatic means Optimus mode selects the GPU) but you can make the nVidia GPU the default if you want (in my experience some applications still won't use the nVidia GPU - perhaps they can't?).

The Program Settings tab lets you specify for individual programs which GPU will be used (again, some applications can't use the nVidia GPU even if you select it here).

I hope that helps?