Topic: Problem with laptop

[adrianolara]

Hello!

I recently bought a laptop, hoping to learn how to use Lumion.
I've already tried the free version at my office's PC and everything went perfectly normal (actually it was the main reason I bought the laptop).
The thing is, after installing the newest free version available (3.2, i guess), the first time I started a scene, the sky went all messed up (colors and brightness) and the fps was too low.
So I went to the AMD panel control and assigned Lumion to the dedicated card on the highest performance. Then I started Lumion again and everything went right this time.
The first thing I noticed, since I imported a model and started to work, the fps was not that good, compared to the results I've obtained when I was using Lumion at my office's PC.
Despite of that, i continued working on the scene. But when I was changing the sun height and direction, everything went messed up again, like before! The sky became all shiny and some materials went black...
Can you help me out here? I'm trying to figure out what's happening... I spent a lot of money in this laptop!
And also, why Lumion is working better on my office's PC than at my laptop? My laptop specifications are far better than my office's PC...

Here my specifications for both computers:

LAPTOP:
Processor - Intel Core i7 3610QM
RAM - 16GB 1600MHz (dual channel 8 +
Integrated Graphics - Intel HD Graphics 3000
Dedicated Graphics - AMD 7970M 2GB GDDR5
OS - Windows 8 Pro x64

OFFICE'S PC:
Processor - Intel Core i5 (don't know which one)
RAM - 6GB 1600MHz (four channel - 1 + 1 + 2 + 2)
Dedicated Graphics - GeForce GTX 260
OS - Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1

Thanks in advance!!

[peterm]

Hi adrianolara

The GPU has a Passmark of 3828 which is quite reasonable.  It (should) be OK for simple to moderate scenes, and the rest of the laptop specs look OK, so its not immediately identifiable as a PC performance issue.

Refer further:
LUMION 3: Minimum hardware requirements
Passmark: Videocard Benchmarks

Can you double check that Lumion is assigned to the 7970M please.

Also, can you run the Benchmark Report (Files and click on the graph) and screencapture and attach to a post.

Then, click on the Run DXDiag button and when report saved to file, attach that to a post, its just a small text file of some system diagnostics done by DirectX.

I do recall a while back a similar AMD/ATI problem and it was an issue about the assignment of Lumion to the card by the AMD control panel tools.  However, not sure what the outcome finally was and will have to hunt up the topic, if needed.

[adrianolara]

Here it is.
Looks like my ATI's card is not being assigned to Lumion, what explains pretty much.
What do i have to do to assign it correctly?
Thanks!

[CSMcKillip]

Here it is.
Looks like my ATI's card is not being assigned to Lumion, what explains pretty much.
What do i have to do to assign it correctly?
Thanks!

you have to assign it to that card. you can right click on the lumion icon and there should be a menu option on what card to use with lumion. you also can establish the ATI card to be used thru the graphics control panel.

If you don't establish the card to the program you will have to right click on the lumion icon every time you start the program.

Chris

[adrianolara]

I'm having an issue here to assign the AMD card to Lumion...
Even when I disable the Intel card at the device manager, seems like Lumion can't assign any card, and give me the 'Device/driver does not support hardware shadow maps!' error.

All that I did by now is assigning 'high performance' at the 'switchable graphics' menu at Catalyst's control center, but when I open Lumion, it still showing the Intel card.

It's currently running, on a moderately simple scene at 14fps. But at the Photo Mode, when I put some effects, some bugs are happening....

Any ideas??

[peterm]

Hi adrianolara

Please ignore the info that says its "Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000", as you have set it in the Catalyst Control Centre it (should) have switched to Lumion OK.

That is a DX bug for GPU switching devices, and we are not able to workaround it.

Can you just double check that the laptop does have the latest Catalyst ATI drivers.  Presume it should as its a new laptop, but just in case.

The 7970M (being a mobile GPU) only has a just OK benchmark so you will only at best be able to use Lumion for small/simple/maybe moderate scenes.

The concern is the messed up graphics and the bugs you mentioned in Photo Mode.  These tend to indicate GPU problems.  Drivers first, hardware GPU next.

To eliminate a faulty install of the Free version, please uninstall, re-download a new copy and install.  Then run the samples scenes, as next.

What happens when you run, and use Photo or render a photo for the two sample scenes?  -Wenger and Artistic Effects scenes?

The DirectX report is showing a number of Errors so its not clean.  What they really mean I am not sure, maybe get it reviewed by a technician.

You may need to test the GPU, make sure its running OK.  You can do that with various report and stress tools:
1.  GPU-Z
2.  OCCT
3.  GPU Shark and stress test FurMark. 

[adrianolara]

Hi adrianolara

Please ignore the info that says its "Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000", as you have set it in the Catalyst Control Centre it (should) have switched to Lumion OK.

That is a DX bug for GPU switching devices, and we are not able to workaround it.

Can you just double check that the laptop does have the latest Catalyst ATI drivers.  Presume it should as its a new laptop, but just in case.

The 7970M (being a mobile GPU) only has a just OK benchmark so you will only at best be able to use Lumion for small/simple/maybe moderate scenes.

The concern is the messed up graphics and the bugs you mentioned in Photo Mode.  These tend to indicate GPU problems.  Drivers first, hardware GPU next.

To eliminate a faulty install of the Free version, please uninstall, re-download a new copy and install.  Then run the samples scenes, as next.

What happens when you run, and use Photo or render a photo for the two sample scenes?  -Wenger and Artistic Effects scenes?

The DirectX report is showing a number of Errors so its not clean.  What they really mean I am not sure, maybe get it reviewed by a technician.

You may need to test the GPU, make sure its running OK.  You can do that with various report and stress tools:
1.  GPU-Z
2.  OCCT
3.  GPU Shark and stress test FurMark.  

So...
I uninstalled Lumion, Uninstalled all graphic drivers and installed all of them again and now everything went fine!!
Till now, I'm not having any of those bugs, so I guess it was some kind of error that happened on the installation...
But still showing the Intel HD Graphics 4000 at the info, maybe that is some bug... But whatever! The good thing is that it's working fine!

Thank you guys!