Topic: Duel GPU Laptop - Integrated and Dedicated card issues

[ambit3d]

On an Alienware with an Intel GPU and dedicated Nvidia 650M we are unable to get Lumion to recognize the Nvidia card. I have been searching online FAQs and Forums. I went through the info on Lumion's forums as well.

http://lumion3d.com/forum/f-a-q/crashdriver-crashblue-screen-on-laptops/
and
http://lumion3d.com/forum/f-a-q/laptop-pc%27s-integrated-intel-graphics/

We have tried just about everything to get the Nvidia 650M to work with Lumion.

(1) All drivers are up to date, including the Optimus Driver.
(2) We went through the Nvidia Control Panel and added Lumion to the GPU list.
(3) We right-clicked on Lumion and indicated to run on the 650M card.
(4) We disabled the Intel integrated card but that just gave us a blank screen (since the intel GPU process all the visual data for Windows 7). Interesting enough though, we used GoToMeeting and I could see the person screen  but they could not. It looked like it was running in safe mode. So the computer would not even re-route video through the 650m card.

Lumion, when it starts, only uses the integrated card. When we try option 3 above, Lumion launches and then disappears. We can see Lumion running in the process tree in Task Manager.


Is there anything else we can try? The 650M will work with games and SketchUp. We tried adding Lumion to the Alienware game manager as well.

Is there a way to force Lumion to use Direct X instead of Open GL (not sure if this would work anyway).

We tried all this with Lumion 4.0.2 but had problems with 3.2.1 as well.
Thanks
Daniel

[peterm]

Sounds like you have done and tried most things to make it work.  The drivers and setting in Optimus will enable Lumion to work, if the card itself is capable of running Lumion.

The specs and Passmark for the card are low, with Passmark 1297 which is 25% below the recommended minimum hardware for simple scenes.

Either the card itself is incapable for some specific hardware reason, or it's just not capable, even though some lessor GPU's do run Lumion, this is an M series card.  With that version I don't think there is any way to overclock to get more performance from the card.

Did v3.2.1 work in any way?

You can run the DXDiag report and post here, Windows --> Run -->DXDiag.

Unfortunately I suspect if you have not got things going with what you have done then that's it, it's not going to work with Lumion.

Equally important is that even if you got it working, the user is not going to be able to do much with it, and will most likely constantly hit issues, extreme limitations on what can be put in the scene etc.

Suggest the need to consider alternative hardware.

[ambit3d]

Hi Peter

Thanks for the reply. I think the user just wants to try Lumion and then plans on upgrading the card on a desktop system.

I will have him post the DXDiag. I think it is a hardware issue with the Alienware computers but I am far from being an expert. I will keep working with him.

Thanks again.
Daniel

[romanstine9]

Attached is the dxdiag.txt file. Thanks!

[peterm]

Thanks.

DXDiag Report does not indicate anything that points to problems.

There is one thing you could try.  There's not much free disk space on C drive.  Free up say 10 to 20 GB, clear temp folders and also run a Pc utility tool to check and clean the Windows Registry file.

If those do not help, then  it may have to be put down to an issue with the GPU, and have a look at running Lumion on some other hardware.