GPU problem with SC4.

[simmytu 605]

Hello all Simtropolis members 

 

I recently bought a new high end Samsung Series 7 Chronos 770Z7E S0-NL, which has these following specs:

Intel Core i7 3635QM 

AMD Radeon HD 8870M 

8GB RAM

1TB HDD

1080p IPS panel.

Windows 7 Profesional and all drivers are working. (Did a downgrade, W8 recovery partition is still available) 

SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, retail box + updated to the latest version.

 

For more information, here is the link to the laptop review

(http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Samsung-Series-7-Chronos-770Z7E-Notebook.89376.0.html)

 

My following problem. 

I like playing SC4 a lot, but the game doesn't want to run on the powerful AMD GPU, the game keeps running on the IGPU of the i7 CPU. That causes my game to lag a lot. 3 FPS when I turn the shadows on medium. When I turn off the shadows the game doesn't lag anymore. That's fine but the game gets quite boring (and empty) without any shadows turned on.

I tried running the game on lowest settings and only shadows on medium but the same problem keeps occur. 

What I've tried;

1. First of all I've tried to run other old games (C&C Generals, FS2004) and these games runs the whole time on the AMD GPU because these games recognises the AMD while SC4 doesn't.

2. So I started CCC (Catalyst Control Centre) + Intel Graphics MCP and selected simcity4.exe to run on high performance. I restarted my laptop and SC4 still had a lot of lag. 

3. So I looked at the web and didný find anything helpful. No one had reported this problem with an Intel + AMD GPU configuration, only Intel + Nvidia.

    I looked to other games that might have the same problem, tried what they suggested but didn't work for me unfortunately. 

4. So I tried to look at the game installation folder to see anything weird and I spotted that the game only recognises the HD 4000 instead of the Radeon 8870M.

    I tried to remove the Intel one and place the AMD instead with the correct driver name, register key and such but neverless the game keeps using the HD 4000. 

5. I installed the same game on my aunt's new HP laptop which has an A8 APU together with a 8670M and the game didn't lag and the strange thing is that the game recognises the 8670M while on my           laptop it didn't. 

6. The provided Bios doesn't have any forcing High performance gpu option, only basic things like boot order, hyperthreading and turbo managment. 

What drivers I used:

First I used the standard drivers that Samsung provided with my laptop but I had the same problems so I downloaded the latest ones for the AMD (13.11) and Intel (2143.0 I think) from their official sites and nothing has changed.

 

What I could do,

Reinstall the game for the 2nd time. 

Find other city simulation game  

 

Hopefully someone could help me with this annoying problem.

 

Bye for now 

 

I noticed that I posted this in to the wrong forum section, I'm apologizing for the inconvenience! 

 

 

(WHYY does this always happening to me  )