Silent Hunter 3 vs. Nvidia Optimus

Fish In The Water · 11-26-11, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kpt. Hess

first of all, I'd like to thank Fish and jimbuna again for their kind help with their mod suggestions for SH3. You guys have been a great help!

Very kind of you to say and you're most welcome.

Wish I could be of more help with the graphics issue, but I suspect it may be limited. I use nHancer on my other rig otherwise I get just the sun halo or AA but not both. Haven't tried Inspector although there are folks around here who are familiar with it and they could probably suggest a switch or two. Good luck and I hope you get some answers soon.

flakmonkey · 12-04-11, 11:45 AM

Hmm, i have a fairly similar system to yourself, core i5, 8gb ram and an nvidia gt540m with optimus (intel 3000 series)

I cant say ive experienced the same issue, sh3 was shown on the installed programs list and did auto select the nvidia gpu by default, im using the 285.62 drivers.

Have you tried manually adding sh3.exe and creating a profile for it? Under the game profiles you should be able to click on add and manually navigate to sh3s location.

Tonga · 12-05-11, 10:40 AM

Hi flakmonkey,

setting up a profile was one of the first things I did. Usually this works well, however not in this case, even with the same driver version as you have.

BUT:

Instead of finding a direct solution, I have at least found the problem's cause - by accident, so to speak. Some days ago I installed GTR2 again, a racing simulation, and all worked well - game was recognised even without setting up a profile first. Then I copied some files into the game directory to use the modified d3d9.dll of ENBseries (to improve visual quality and effects).
After starting GTR2 with this modified d3d9.dll it wasn't recognised by Nvidia Optimus anymore and the Intel HD Graphics were used instead. Without this dll, everything was fine again.

This made me think, and therefore I checked in SH3 again and found out that for some odd reason, JSGME had not deleted the d3d9.dll from my MaGui Widescreen mod properly from the game folder. A manual delete solved the problem, but at the same time left me with the usual 4:3 ratio instead of 16:9.

For SH3 this basically means that every mod that adds widescreen capability and/or resolutions differing from the programme's native resolution will cause Nvidia Optimus to select the Intel GPU. This probably happens because Optimus fails to read the DirectX-Version from the d3d9.dll correctly and therefore does not include the Nvidia GPU. At least that is what I'm guessing from the driver's behaviour.

So, the solution will probably be to wait for the new 29x drivers, hoping that Nvidia might have caught up on that problem...

12-04-11, 11:45 AM	#2
flakmonkey Grey Wolf Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Staffordshire, Uk Posts: 944 Downloads: 78 Uploads: 0	Hmm, i have a fairly similar system to yourself, core i5, 8gb ram and an nvidia gt540m with optimus (intel 3000 series) I cant say ive experienced the same issue, sh3 was shown on the installed programs list and did auto select the nvidia gpu by default, im using the 285.62 drivers. Have you tried manually adding sh3.exe and creating a profile for it? Under the game profiles you should be able to click on add and manually navigate to sh3s location. __________________

12-05-11, 10:40 AM	#3
Tonga Formerly Kpt. Hess Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: 39.20 nmi from U 9 Posts: 54 Downloads: 261 Uploads: 0	Hi flakmonkey, setting up a profile was one of the first things I did. Usually this works well, however not in this case, even with the same driver version as you have. BUT: Instead of finding a direct solution, I have at least found the problem's cause - by accident, so to speak. Some days ago I installed GTR2 again, a racing simulation, and all worked well - game was recognised even without setting up a profile first. Then I copied some files into the game directory to use the modified d3d9.dll of ENBseries (to improve visual quality and effects). After starting GTR2 with this modified d3d9.dll it wasn't recognised by Nvidia Optimus anymore and the Intel HD Graphics were used instead. Without this dll, everything was fine again. This made me think, and therefore I checked in SH3 again and found out that for some odd reason, JSGME had not deleted the d3d9.dll from my MaGui Widescreen mod properly from the game folder. A manual delete solved the problem, but at the same time left me with the usual 4:3 ratio instead of 16:9. For SH3 this basically means that every mod that adds widescreen capability and/or resolutions differing from the programme's native resolution will cause Nvidia Optimus to select the Intel GPU. This probably happens because Optimus fails to read the DirectX-Version from the d3d9.dll correctly and therefore does not include the Nvidia GPU. At least that is what I'm guessing from the driver's behaviour. So, the solution will probably be to wait for the new 29x drivers, hoping that Nvidia might have caught up on that problem... Last edited by Tonga; 12-05-11 at 10:50 AM.