Question / Help Dual Graphic Card Laptop setup for ME3 (Record)

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Mr.Phil1st

New Member
Well, I've been trying several ways to set the program to work. Sadly enough, I own a laptop. It is a good quality laptop, but unfortunately, it might be a little weak for this.

I don't think I have the capacity to stream videos. Also, I'd rather record them directly on my computer and upload them afterwards, which will probably be easier for my system, resource-wise.

First what I'm trying to do: record a let's play for mass effect 3 at 1080p with my commentary.

I'm running Mass Effect 3 at 1920x1080 with no lag. I also modded the game to have better textures with no lag either. I have recorded both in Full Screen (where at some point, the image just froze for the rest of the video while sound and voice kept going normally) and in Windowed mod (for the vid I posted later).

When I record with OBS, I don't get any lag in the actual game, recording at either 1080p or 720p.

I have recorded both with Game Capture and Windows Capture modes.

However, this is what I see, when I play the vid afterwards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBEFLh_JMN0

System specs:
-I have only one hard drive with around 600 GB. I have been told that If I had another HDD (one that's different than the one OBS's installed on), it would be best for recording, but I only have an external hard drive and supposedly, these are not compatible most of the times. (It's probably USB 2.0)
My laptop is an AMD NV75S07h.
Has 6 GB RAM
4 Cores
Contains a dual graphical card system, one for economy (Radeon 7400M) and one for performance (Radeon HD 6520G).

I have tried to use the AMD Catalyst Control Center to set Mass Effect to use only one graphical card, but I'm not too sure how. Could this be why my vid is choppy like that?

Anyone has an idea on what I should do to fix-it? Or has a similar system and managed to set-it to work?
 
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Lain

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Lain
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Mr.Phil1st

New Member
I tried recording again yesterday.
For this, I set both ME3 and OBS within the Catalyst center to both have Dual graphics disabled (would posting screenshots of how they are setup help you help me set this up properly??).
At mid video, I switched from Fullscreen to Windowed (no borders), I think it's called.
It was recorded at 1080p, using Game Capture and 25 000 bitrate, with very fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MMxr_PgwyY&list=UU0xr6YTPgyaV5Vi5-HlRFrA
Here's my log:
http://www.4shared.com/file/1xqe7fCtba/2014-09-17-2136-23.html
http://pastebin.com/4qPw18at

By the way, I coughed just to make sure it was recording voice properly, and it was, so that's great!

I'd like to record at 1080p, since I seek to showcase the improvement in textures, but I could downscale to 720p, if that's the only way. It would not be too bad, but 480p would make this kind of pointless :S

Tonight, I'll test superfast and ultrafast.

I heard it would be best to use very high bitrate, to have no "choppyness". The vid I looked about this spoke of setting-it to something like 45 000 kb/s. I set mine at 25 000. As the dev, what would you recommend?

By the way, this is the tutorial I used to try to set things up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI-ODUk9Slg

Any help will be appreciated! Thank you for your time, Jim!
 
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Mr.Phil1st

New Member
Can anyone with a laptop sporting 2 radeon cards tell me how to force the game and OBS into using just the high performance card?
 
D2ultima

D2ultima

Member
Your CPU is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too weak. Mobile APUs are awful for CPU-intensive tasks. They often hit a thermal limit, or a power drain limit, sometimes both, and will throttle or otherwise limit performance. You likely would not be able to record 1080p 25000 bitrate on "ultrafast" even.

Also, you appear to be on Windows 8; I would suggest likely recording by setting the game to borderless fullscreen and using monitor capture if game capture or window capture are too demanding for you; monitor capture on Windows 8/8.1 is a dream.

For your settings, you could try using 8000 bitrate, 1080p 30fps, "high" encoding profile (which you currently have set) and "superfast" or "ultrafast" CPU preset. If it works, you can raise the bitrate little by little and see if you manage to top out somewhere near 10,000 or 12,000... if you're lucky and your CPU can do it, then great. If not... well you may need to simply record in 720p.
 
D2ultima

D2ultima

Member
I am not certain you are using Enduro, nor how to set up enduro like that. Once again, monitor capture ought to work with borderless fullscreen, and since you're on Windows 8/8.1 it should be efficient
 
D2ultima

D2ultima

Member
Enduro is AMD's version of Optimus. It allows the dedicated GPU to turn off and use the integrated GPU. I do not know if you're using it with hybrid CrossfireX
 
M

Mr.Phil1st

New Member
Enduro does not seem to be installed on my laptop. Is-it something that I should manually install, or does the fact that I do not have-it means I should not try to get-it? It seems to me that instead of Enduro, I have Catalyst installed...
 
D2ultima

D2ultima

Member
Enduro is not something you choose. Either you have it or you don't, just like nVidia Optimus. I suggest googling it for more information.
 
M

Mr.Phil1st

New Member
I tested things with 720p (not downscaling, just setting everything at 720p). It looks fairly good. Guess it will have to do...
 
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