Frame Rate Issues with G74S and SWTOR

[Retired]

Hi everyone I recently was given a G74S Asus gaming laptop as a christmass gift, however my fav game I am playing atm is having issues. I have included my DXDIAG but briefly my specs are :

Intel Core i7 2670QM 2.20GHz
12.0 GB Ram
64 Bit Win 7 OS
560M Nvidia Card

Everywhere I go I am getting incredibly bad Frame Rates, a friends desktop in the same house on the same network gets really good frame rates even in the Imperial Fleet Hub. And her desktop is 2 years older then the laptop. I am getting 5 to 15 FPS in the SWTOR game and 1 to 3 FPS in the Imperial Fleet area. Its really not playable yet others with the same laptop on HIGH settings are getting v.good FPS all on low settings.

I have tried GPU drivers, reinstalls, de-fragging etc but can not seem to sort this out, is my system a lemon? not as good as I was told?

I have been told that I need to do a clean reinstall of my windows for my G74S laptop, how do I find the specific drivers I n eed aside from the GPU driver (I did look at the drivers thread but was confused by what I actuallly needed)?

Thanks for any help I am newbie at all this.

[fuzon1337]

Hi

I would strongly recommend you to do a clean install of your new notebook. During bootup push F9 and do a factory restore or something like that 🙂

When you have done the clean install of your notebook, be sure to get rid off all the bloatware that you don't need (P4G, ATK is recommended to have)

To the drivers you need you can find them at Support Asus and find your model there. With the intel hardware, go to Intel Driver Update Utility. This tool from intel will search your notebook and check for the latest drivers that they support.

Then it's very important that you update your wireless card (atheros) drivers to that card you can find in the Drivers, Apps and How-to's 🙂

[fostert]

fuzon1337 wrote:
Hi

I would strongly recommend you to do a clean install of your new notebook. During bootup push F9 and do a factory restore or something like that 🙂

When you have done the clean install of your notebook, be sure to get rid off all the bloatware that you don't need (P4G, ATK is recommended to have)

A factory restore will repollute the drive with ASUS' polluteware, and uninstalling all of this manually will leave behind it a fragmented registry, empty directories and trees, log files, and possibly even worse, processes that still run on boot that you can't get rid of. An optimum method is a wipe and a clean install of Windows 7, followed by a minimal set of drivers you need for the notebook (really ASUS ATK is all that should go on there), then drivers for your work/gaming environment (e.g. nvidia drivers, driver updates for the wifi and touchpad, etc). You can grab a totally legal unactivated copy of Windows 7 HP Setup DVD from the drivers threads here, and activate it after instal with your own key (a sticker on the notebook's underside).

[fuzon1337]

fostert wrote:
A factory restore will repollute the drive with ASUS' polluteware, and uninstalling all of this manually will leave behind it a fragmented registry, empty directories and trees, log files, and possibly even worse, processes that still run on boot that you can't get rid of.

Then I would download CCleaner (register) to get rid of that junk, then you don't got that problems anymore.

But I'm agreed with you that it's a harder way to go by my explanation with factory restore then a clean install.

[Anotha_Guy]

Hey every one, I'm also a new user of the G74S. I got it about 2 monthes ago straight out of the box and fell in love. It played Wow on max settings easily with no loss in FPS. I just got the TOR and I can play it on max, but with about 30-35 FPS, is there anything I can do to up this? At the level I play TOR now I get 60 FPS but thats with a few options on either low/off. I know the current driver for my Nvidia is at 268.37 and that theres updates out there, I tried down loading one though and got an error saying that the program doesnt detect the hardware (I was using Nvidia's driver update program).

Now I know Im new and should probably give more info, I just dont know whats relevant or not. If any one could lend me some assistance, Id be eternally grateful.

More Info: CPU - Intel Core i7-2630QM, 2.0 GHz
Memory - 12 GB
HDD - 750GB + 750GB
ODD - 4X BLU-RAY
OS - Win7 Premium
Video Card - GeForce GTX 560M/268.37 Driver

[Bojamijams]

Definitely download the latest driver. I got the beta 290.xx driver. If Auto-detect failed for you, just choose 500M series, then 560m, then your OS and version and download it that way.

Make sure you have ThrottleStop 4.0 and configured properly.

With those two things I play SWTOR at Max everything and dip down to about 20FPS on the Imperial Fleet station with everyone around me. Otherwise a comfortable 40+ Fps.

Also my video card is running at 920Core/1300Mem so far.

[Anotha_Guy]

nVidia 295.18 Beta was the driver i just downloaded and I was able to install it no issue. A problem has popped up though, every so often my screen goes black and comes back after a seconds saying the driver failed and recovered. Should I revert back to what I had or is there some thing Im missing here?

[dstrakele]

Anotha_Guy wrote:
nVidia 295.18 Beta was the driver i just downloaded and I was able to install it no issue. A problem has popped up though, every so often my screen goes black and comes back after a seconds saying the driver failed and recovered. Should I revert back to what I had or is there some thing Im missing here?

You are experiencing a Timeout Detection and Recovery (TDR) error. Basically, if Windows detects a delay of 2 seconds from the graphics driver, it will attempt to reset the GPU. See http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=215256

I'd be tempted to roll back if you were not experiencing a TDR with an earlier version driver. I'd also recommend posting on the NVIDIA forum to make them aware of the issue and receive specialized help.

[fostert]

fuzon1337 wrote:
Then I would download CCleaner (register) to get rid of that junk, then you don't got that problems anymore.

But I'm agreed with you that it's a harder way to go by my explanation with factory restore then a clean install.

Never rely on third party software to clean up a mess made by another third party software in the infamous windows registry. You create a second mess. 😉

[zsld0423]

Hey there Abhoth, to answer your questions, I doubt your computer is a lemon 😛 It is a great laptop, I'm typing this response on it now lol.
But yes, it would probably be a good idea to do a wipe and re-install of Windows since the programs/drivers it has pre-installed are usually out of date. For Drivers, most of them you can find right here

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?5224-Drivers-Apps-and-How-to-s

If anything, in Device Manager make a note of the drivers that are on there, or at least the company that made it (say for instance the Ethernet driver, I had to play around with them a bit because I didn't realize I needed the Realtek Driver, but the other driver simply gave me an error when trying to install so I knew it had to be the other).

Another possible reason for the lower frame rates could be due to the Throttling which occurs on these laptops. The Windows-Level workaround is to install a program called ThrottleStop to fix it, although you must run the program whenever you boot your computer up/restart it. The alternative is to make changes to the BIOS and flash an edited version (may seem scary/technical but it's very easy). It is outlined more in these threads.

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?3322-Sandybridge-Throttle-Issue-and-Workaround

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?2329-ATTENTION-G73-53SW-Owners-CPU-Throttling-to-798mhz-and...

Hopefully this gives you some insight and fixes your issues with your new computer! If you have any other questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to get you an answer asap.

-Zach