M11x R3 Performance - Was I living in La La Land?

Hey guys

So after saving up a lot of money, I bought an m11x r3 mainly for Skyrim and Law School. The machine is fantastic! I love it! Except...

The performance...

The first and only game I have installed in Mass Effect. It runs rather poorly. At medium settings the game is laggy.

Was I dreaming when I hoped this machine would be fine for these types of games?

The steps I have taken are:

1. Got the M11x (i7, 540m)
2. Installed a crucial m4 and 8gb Ram
3. Followed Batboy's guides to backing up Alienspawn, clean installing windows 7 and drivers, and restoring the Alienware look and feel
4. Everything worked great! Couldnt believe how fast the machine responded - never had an SSD before!
5. Updated the Nvidia driver to 285.62
6. Installed Mass Effect and 1.02 patch
7. Checked that the GPU was set to "High performance Nvidia processor" for Mass Effect in "Manage 3D Settings" in Nvidia Control Panel

And here I am, with a laggy Commander Shepherd.

Please, help a poor Englishman who spent everything he had on this machine!

Oooh, and check the cake my girlfriend made to accompany my birthday present!

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/401/m11xcake.jpg/

 

Just making sure, but are you playing while being unplugged from the power supply? That lowers the performance by a lot.

Over here i can play Mass Effect 2 with everything on max at 720p and it runs pretty smooth (60fps).

 

Now that is one awesome girlfriend. Best cake I've ever seen

 

Alright, we first need to make sure the GPU is actually on.
Go into the nvidia control panel, and at the top left where it says desktop, click it and there should be an option that says "Display GPU Activity Icon in Notification Area" Now it you notice in the bottom right of your desktop tool bar, there will be a new icon that looks squarish. If you don't see it, click on the little arrow to show all icons. one of them will be the GPU notification icon.

Now run Mass Effect. Load up and what not, and once your in game, alt-tab out to the desktop and check on that GPU notification icon. If it is a dull grey as opposed to colorful, it means the GPU is not on. If the color seems ambiguous, click on the icon and it will show you all games/applications that are using the GPU. If the game is indeed using the GPU, and it is still laggy, then I really am not sure what is going on.

Anyone else got ideas about the poor performance?

 

Really? I play it on my r1 just fine.

 

Why do you need play games if you have a girlfriend that can make such cake at first place?

The easiest way to check is you machine running on 100% performance is to run some benchmarks like 3dmark and compare with other machines. If you have some issued you will detect in what department you are lacking performance.

 

got an R3 as well, and honestly i am not sure why yours is struggling with the game... mine runs games more demanding than mass effect at no problem at all.

 

he probably has not taken a look at nvidia control panel n has the settings on intergrated graphics instead of hi-performance nvidia

 

7. Checked that the GPU was set to "High performance Nvidia processor" for Mass Effect in "Manage 3D Settings" in Nvidia Control Panel

Maybe at least read his post before posting?

 

He say he did.
However, there is a chance the GPU is being stubborn and not turning on.

 

Ok Guys...youve all been really helpful, so thanks..

I figured it out - and feel really stupid..Altsein was right...

I knew the GPU was on, and I had set the power options to High performance in windows settings...

I also had set the settings in Alien Fusion to high performance..

What I didnt do was go into advanced settings in Alien Fusion, scroll down to GPU performance, and set to max performance whilst on battery.

So if any one else out there reads this, make sure you go into the advanced settings!

And my girlfriend is literally loling over the comments about her cake! So thanks for putting her in a good mood!

 

Mass Effect 2 runs at 40 FPS on the FIRST M11x R1, so obviously something isn't right here.

He either hasn't whitelisted, or something... There's no reason why ME2 shouldn't be running at max settings.

 

Glad you got it working! The Mass Effect series are a great couple of games.

ME2 was really well optimised. Lets hope it's the same story for Mass Effect 3...

 

I had the same issue, I loaded up the BF3 campaign (I thought it was better than most cod ones) and it was stuttering all over the place when I played multiplayer fine. What I didn't realise is that my Girlfriend hit the switch on my charger! I will say, I was worried for more than a minute.

The cake is more impressive than the m11x though, who got you the Viz?

Not on topic, Skyrim is preloading now and I'm feeling the pain of having it installed but not being able to play it!!

 

Haha, not long to go now though!

So many good games are coming out at this time of year. Skyrim would have to be up the top of my wishlist but I have so many other games to finish before I can venture into that dungeon...

 

I've decided to not get MW3 or LA Noire just because I'm going into hibernation on Friday. Booked Friday and Monday off work as holiday

In preparation I have been playing BF3 as much as possible to get my £40 worth before I don't play it again. Also played Oblivion a little to try and calm my excitement a little!

 

glad you got it working, the r3 is awsome and i love it!

but yah that cake is boss !!!

 

That's dedication! Love it

I finish exams tomorrow so it's going to be a huge few days of gaming hibernation for me to. I never finished Oblivion but that won't be the case for Skyrim... no more games can be added to my pile of shame!

 

I can't believe someone picked that out! Ha! Internet eh! 'twas the father law
To be!

As for Skyrim, only a little over 18 HOURS here, and I have a feeling it's gonna play great on my little Alien, this machine is incredible!

 

Cheers Soprano187, you got yourself great stuff (machine and girlfriend

 

Typical, my Dad got me a Viz for my birthday last year.. But it's always the 40+ year old man who buys it!

 

Old men and Viz eh?

So I just wanna make sure this beast is running decent for Skyrim (Mass effect runs amazing!) without overclocking..

Ive never benchmarked before, but my WEI is:

PROCESSOR: 6.6
MEMORY: 7.4
GRAPHICS: 5.4
GAMING GRAPHICS: 6.7
PRIMARY HARD DISK: 7.9

That look normal?

 

The WEI uses your integrated GPU when scoring, so yea that looks about right.

 

Cheers mate! Skyrim on battery in 2 hours, get in!