Nvidia 660 vs 870M - Performance Troubleshooting

[Caatalyst 46]

Hello everyone!

I've been playing Dayz for about a year now. Up until recently I've been playing on a desktop machine:

 

Gigabyte X49-UD3 Motherboard

Intel i7 3820 2011 socket 3.4ghz Quad Core (Overclocked to 4.4ghz)

16GB Quad Channel memory (4x4GB PC3-12800 (800mhz)
MSI Twin Frozer - NVIDIA Geforce 660 (with up to date drivers)

Windows 7 64 Bit Premium (with latest service packs)
Samsung 320GB SSD Drive

I've invested in a descent case with good airflow, cooling and a Corsair 850Watt PSU.

I haven't really had any serious problems with Dayz. I run with most settings at high / very high and at my monitors native resolution 1920x1080. I also use 100% for the rendering setting. Generally speaking the game runs very smooth except for when I'm in cities where my FPS can drop signifcantly. I assume that DayZ is not very well optimised at this stage due to only been alpha and I've not noticed any performance gains over the year I've been playing it. If anything it's probably started to perform worse as new features have been introduced.

Anyhow, I purchased a laptop a few months ago for playing DayZ so I could have comfortable sessions in bed! I bought a custom build from Pc Specialist with the intentions of playing DayZ and other games. Here are the laptop specs

 

Intel i7-4710QM Quad Core 2.50ghz (with core boost feature I think to 3.4ghz)

8GB Kingston Hyper-X Impact 1600mhz (single stick)

Nvidia Geforce 870M Graphics Card
Kingston v300 SSD card 120GB

Windows 7 64bit Premium

 

I have to say, playing DayZ on the laptop has been very disapointing. While I expected a performance decrease due to the dedicated graphics card having the mobile stamp I wasn't expecting to have to drop most of the settings to low / very. The performance is dramatically different and the game runs very poorly on the laptop.

I've been attempting to apply as many optimisation tweaks as I can but with no prevail. If somebody could just put my mind at rest and tell me it's game over I will grit my teeth and accept the poor performance. I just wasn't expecting to lose some much FPS as the clock speeds are only different by a small amount.

Here you can view the two graphics cards in comparison:

 

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-870M-vs-GeForce-GTX-660

Many of the settings don't seem to make a huge difference in Dayz to performance. Especially when you're in cities it just gets clunky. I've made sure all the power settings for the laptop are locked on performance. This includes the Nvidia control panel settings. I've been monitoring CPU / RAM usage and they never peak, even close.

If anybody could enlighten me I would be very grateful!

Cheers,

James

 

[Baker. 1484]

James

I suspect your laptop is using the intel GPU as the 660 and 870m are the same chip 

 

GeForce GTX 660 (OEM) August 22, 2012 GK104-200-KD-A2

 

 

GeForce GTX 870M March 12, 2014 GK104

 

 

check that you have done this

Edited March 17, 2015 by B@ker

[Salva (DayZ) 52]

Hmm that's too bad. I don't have any performance tweaks for you to try - however I would recommend you to check out the Passmark GPU and CPU performance lists in the future and stay away from GPUBoss as it literally tells you nothing useful. 

 

According to this list (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html) the GTX 660 scores around 4100 points, whereas the 870M scores around 2400. Just to set your expectations right, your desktop card is roughly 1.7 times as fast so it makes sense you notice the difference.

 

I believe cards like the HD 7770 (scoring ~ 2100) are the bare minimum to run DayZ standalone. Anything slower than that will hinder your gameplay experience dramatically. The 870M is positioned just slightly above that mark so it makes sense you don't get amazing framerates even when you lower the settings. On top of that, the game is pretty horribly optimised as of now which doesn't help at all.. I don't believe your cpu is the problem in this case as both your desktop and laptop CPUs are properly fast. Hope this at least helped you understand things a bit better!

[Caatalyst 46]

Many thanks for the replies guys!

that does make sense! I expected that the mobile graphics cards would be significantly weaker which is why I went for a new generation gpu (870M).

I did just come across this guide though:

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=216291078

The -winxp function in particular has given me a significant performance increase. I'm running 40-50 fps now on medium / high settings. I strongly recommend this for anyone trying to gain some extra FPS. The only problem I'm having is that the -winxp tweak won't allow me to minimize dayz without it crashing with a memory error message.

Cheers,

James

[Caatalyst 46]

Cannot recommend the xp fix above enough!! The game runs so damn smooth now at high settings! I have left anti aliasing at low but SMAA at high and trees / grass rendering at max.

I can't understand why win xp compatability mode makes the game run so much better.