Switchable graphic cards in laptops

Hello everyone,

agentcupcake here, long time fan of the annihilation series and I love the work you guys have been doing.

I have a question regarding switchable graphics in laptops. I have a Samsung ATIV Book NP880Z5E which features a switchable graphics card. For low-power usage (chrome, poowerpoint, etc.) it uses the Intel Graphics 4000 card. For games, it uses the Radeon Radeon HD8870M. As far as performance is concerned, i can run Crysis 3 on medium settings with 40 FPS comfortably.

My performance in PA is very poor. When the game starts i feel it runs at around 10 fps, but after six minutes or so it drops to 2/3fps, barely playable. By the looks of it the game uses the INTEL graphics card rather then the RADEON card.

I have tried updating drivers, using program supplied by AMD to force using the RADEON card for the game but all without success.

I feel the game is not as graphics intense that my system can not run it so I deduce the only remaining question (i could be wrong, obviously):

Does the game code have any checks, support or otherwise to detect the presence of a second graphics card?

Do any of you have any tips for me where else I could look? Else I think i should submit a bug/feature request.

DxDiag: http://pastebin.com/eJA08YLx

Thoughts?

You actually can check it logs, they are stored in this folder:
C:\Users\ YOUR_WINDOWS_USERNAME \AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log\
Check it yourself or attach logs to your post and I'll check it for you.

I doubt many games ever have code like that. Drivers usually contain information about games, so they manage to run them on discrete card automatically.

It's also will be useful if you attach your DxDiag.txt

Hey, thanks for the quick reply.

I dove into the logs you mentioned, and by the looks of it, it DOES use my RADEON card (see below).

Now I`m sumped at why the performance is so low... :|

[17:06:29.000] INFO Log file C:\Users\agentcupcake\AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log\PA-17-06-29.000.txt opened
[17:06:29.000] INFO Looks like we are running via Steam
[17:06:30.610] INFO GL_VENDOR: ATI Technologies Inc.
[17:06:30.610] INFO GL_RENDERER: AMD Radeon HD 8800M Series
[17:06:30.610] INFO GL_VERSION: 4.2.12337 Compatibility Profile Context 13.101.0.0
[17:06:30.610] INFO GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION: 4.30
[17:06:31.141] INFO 4.2.12337 Compatibility Profile Context 13.101.0.0
[17:06:31.141] INFO build version 51853
[17:06:31.141] INFO Coherent content root: "file:///C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Planetary Annihilation/media/ui/"
[17:06:31.141] INFO Coherent host dir: "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Planetary Annihilation\\bin_x64\\host"
[17:06:31.141] INFO Coherent local store: "C:\\Users\\agentcupcake\\AppData\\Local\\Uber Entertainment\\Planetary Annihilation\\localstore"
[17:06:31.297] ERROR reconItemLayerFromString encountered unknown value: [all]

[17:06:31.329] INFO {{FMOD}} fmod buffer size 5
[17:06:31.344] INFO Setting graphics to high
[17:06:31.407] INFO client::ClientGame::SystemReady
[17:06:33.735] INFO Setting graphics to custom
[17:06:33.782] INFO Setting camera mouse pan speed to 1x
[17:06:33.782] INFO Setting camera key pan speed to 1x
[17:06:33.782] INFO Setting camera zoom speed to 1x
[17:06:33.782] INFO Setting camera edge scroll to off (no mouse lock)
[17:06:33.782] INFO Setting planet pole lock to off
[17:06:33.782] INFO client::ClientGame::resetGameState
[17:06:33.782] INFO Mouse constraint cleared.
[17:06:41.204] INFO Connect to 75.126.116.20:9001 worked
[17:06:42.704] INFO client::ClientGame::connection_LoginAccepted
[17:06:53.329] INFO client::ClientGame::connection_SimCreated
[17:06:56.532] INFO client::ClientGame::handleLandingZones
[17:06:56.532] INFO {"message_type":"landing_zones","zone_radius":132,"points":[{"x":961.053,"y":-314.321,"z":-234.056},{"x":302.948,"y":1013.26,"z":144.558},{"x":-729.216,"y":-518.974,"z":575.937},{"x":699.03,"y":54.7067,"z":791.095}]}
[17:06:56.532] INFO client::ClientGame::handlePlayerState
[17:06:56.532] INFO {"message_type":"player_state","state":"landing"}
[17:07:01.360] INFO Building planet of radius 1060 detail 2
[17:07:06.407] INFO CSGFilter 18.0 sec
[17:07:30.329] INFO 1432289 total planet faces.
[17:07:37.391] INFO 110792 features generated.
[17:07:37.391] INFO 36.0 sec
PlanetBuilder::buildAsync: 36.0 sec
getFeatures: 98.2 msec
BuildMeshes: 5.28 sec
SetupVT: 2.82 sec
Final: 2.46 sec
Water: 33.8 usec
other: 6.41 usec
GenWater: 1.52 msec
Csg: 28.0 sec
UpdateBVH: 1.67 sec
other: 26.3 sec
PreCsg: 284. msec
Create Surface Meshes: 214. msec
Connectivity: 167. msec
other: 46.9 msec
other: 69.9 msec
UpdateBVH: 34.2 msec
GenSurface: 1.96 msec
other: 2.36 sec
other: 3.42 usec
build complete

laptop much?

Actually you have low-end discrete graphics, but I think you should get more than 10FPS on start.

I have few ideas what you might want check:

1. You need to check your power saving settings, probably your AMD GPU using low frequencies profile.
2. Also I see one specifics in your DxDiag:
   
   I don't sure how Windows 8 handle non-standard DPI (e.g might be if it's only important for text), but anyway you might try to change DPI (LINK) to standard 100% and check if your performance change.
3. You might try to install Latest Beta Driver

Well, yes. But given the benchmarks it should run at more then 2 fps. Please check out the comparison charts below:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-8870M.86798.0.html
On high settings:
Bioshock: Infinate: 51,4 FPS
SimCity 2013: 37.5
Crysis 3: 22,4

I have tried what you suggested. I installed the latest BETA driver and reverted the DPI settings both without success. Also i forced high performance for the application profile. It could be that the game needs more optimisation, but even with a 10% increase its still unplayable.

Any other ideas?

It's benchmarks of AAA consoles games (which can work even on 5-years old hardware) and PA in alpha, without any optimizations done.

Currently 2FPS is totally okay if it's happen when you have tons units on screen at end of game. But 10FPS on start isn't okay and it's might be driver-related problem.

Did you tried to set shadows to "off"?

I understand, and I`m not upset the game isnt polished yet. I just really couldn wait to but the Alpha and play this game. I`ve been playing this type of RTS since TA in 1997, I was 14 at the time and loved it! Are optimalisations going to make such a big difference?

So basically nothing I can do about that then...

Yes, all settings are at their lowest option.

Yes.

You already reported about your problem and give details about your system, it's already helpful.

If you know computers well and have free time you can make more testing, e.g try to run game on Intel card (but update it's driver first), different OSes in different resolutions, etc.

Also found interesting part at end of your DxDiag:

Okay, well thanks for all the help so far. I`m going to keep an eye on the changelogs and I`ll be sure to report back any results I have once I have some more time to test the game.

I think this topic can be closed now.

Cheers :?

Also you might check this thread as great example:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=50504

Performance might be really bad for you because you met some weird bug in drivers.
It's why I recommend to play with driver settings as much as possible. Everything might be reason of problem (runned virtual machine, open browser with flash animation, enabled/disabled effects/vsync/system if you not rebooted it's for long time).