Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Fairly poor performance

Did you try running a GPU monitoring program to make sure the game is using your GPU and not the integrated graphics? I remember there was a fix in patch 1.0.87.0, "In multi GPU environments, prefer the fastest GPU". Perhaps there are still issues.

I've decided to throw some hardware at my performance problem and it went away. I plugged my old GTX570 into the second PCIe slot, in addition to the GTX670 I already have. Dedicated the 570 to PhysX, and am seeing a dramatic performance increase in all my games, including DOS. I'm up to around 70fps on Ultra settings (everything turned on), from around 28fps on Low settings (everything turned off).

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense actually. I'm not sure if DOS uses PhysX, but even if it does, the fps increase I got seems a bit disproportionate. Oh well, can't complain, the game runs really smoothly now. Not to mention all the other games I'm able to max out now. Sweet.

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by "custom drivers", and how did you get your box to boot windows in 6 seconds, using Intel's rapid start?

To be honest, I didn't know that such programs existed lol Any recommendations?

I have my power management profile set to "high performance", and my Catalyst Control Center has the Original Sin executable set to "high performance" (i.e. discrete graphics) as well.

It doesn't.

GPU-Z is a helpful and free utility that will monitor it. Maybe it will shed some light on what is going on. Good luck.

I was actually surprised how good the alpha ran on my (pretty crappy) notebook

It's an
Intel i3 2.4Ghz
4GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 5650M(obility) with 1GB (slightly overclocked)
Windows 8.1 with AMD Catalyst 13.9 driver

I get decent FPS in all areas (town is "worst" of course) with medium settings and Antialiasing, Bloom & Godrays turned on.

Defined decent.

Decent meaning no noticeable stuttering most of the time.
Outside of the town I get ~30fps, on the marketplace inside the town it's ~25fps, which is still quite ok.
Worst fps I get is the burning ship with ~17fps or so, but that was the only place that ran that bad.

Running on a 1366x768 resolution, forgot to add that, so no 1080p.

Yeah, I know, no super smooth 60fps, but on that old potato I mentioned above I was still surprised.

I wonder if part of my problem is that Dell don't seem to be updating the Catalyst driver regularly on their site. Is version "2012.0319.239.261" the same as yours?

@Windemere: Thanks!

Can you try to use Radeon Mobility tool to update the drivers?

Mine is a Dell notebook too, the Catalyst Control Center is version 2013.0830.1944.33589.
The problem is that under Windows 7 I cannot upgrade the driver (Dell doesn't provide upgrades and the official one results in a bluescreen upon installation). Under Windows 8 (and 8.1) however I can use the official driver with the above mentioned Radeon Mobility tool.

That being said, upgrading helps a little, especially with performance in newer games but it doesn't do wonders (for me, but my card is pretty old by now).

I'm not brave enough to try the Mobility tool, I'm afraid ^^ But the difference in drivers is the only thing I can think of to explain the discrepancy in performance between our two machines. Unless DOS simply doesn't like the 7970 right now :-/

EDIT: So I ran DOS with GPU-Z in the background, and guess what: GPU load on the 7570m is at 0% so it appears that even though EOCApp.exe is set to "High Performance" in the Catalyst Control Center, DOS is not using the discrete GPU. That explains a lot lol Question is, how would I fix that?

I'm not sure how is this is possible. Are you saying you managed to run the game on integrated GPU of your laptop?

Well, I'm impressed.

As for your question, lemme see: right click on the EoCApp.exe and press "Run using Radeon HD 7xxxM" Should be something like that.

Yep, it appears to be running on the Intel HD 4000, which explains why it runs so horribly even at the lowest settings. Unfortunately, there is no option in the right-click menu or properties dialogue for the game to use the 7570M---the only place I've ever been able to set this is from the Catalyst Control Center, and it has always worked with other games.

But it does not in case with DOS? Interesting.

Could you please remove current drivers you have installed (they are from dell, right?), download DriverSweeper and clean up the leftovers, and then install latest drivers with AMD Mobility Tool. Plug in power cable and set "High Performace mode" and try again to force the game to run on on your Radeon.

Seems like DOS cannot detect your 7570M. There is a chance it could be solved with new drivers but otherwise you will have to contact Larian support describing the problem.

It reminds me: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthre...se-my-graphics-card.-AMD-Radeon-HD-7670M

UPD:

Additional, you could try some tricks:

1. Enter the BIOS during laptop boot process and try to find an option related to "integrated/interal gpu/graphics". I haven't seen such on modern Dells but if you are lucky it may happen you can disable it in there.

2. Try to run some small application that for sure uses your Radeon. May be Windows Media Player? Something like that. And then start DOS. I remember a year or two ago it did trick for me i na similar case.

I'm not really comfortable with using anything but the official drivers---even if Dell doesn't see fit to update them. I think I will just report the issue to Larian instead, and hope that the issue is fixed leading up to release But thanks so much for your suggestions

Well, it may happen that you would need to (most likey) update drives anyway so...

In the Catalyst Control Center, try switching the D:OS executable to integrated graphics. If the performance drops (or the game just crashes trying to load), the 0% load on the discrete graphics could be a bug in GPU-Z. If the performance is the same, switch the setting back to high performance and see if that helps.
You could also try setting it to automatic, and see if the game picks the discrete graphics then, even though it doesn't appear to when it is specifically told to.

Performance was noticeable worse when set to "power saving", but I couldn't test automatic because there isn't a setting that facilitates this. It appears that once you have assigned a setting to an application from within CCC you don't have the option of reverting it to "unassigned."

So yeah, maybe it's a bug with GPU-Z after all... Although it picks up the load for other games just fine, so...