Hi All,
I recently purchased a 15" 2011 MBP, however was very disapointed by the 6490m - hardly an upgrade from the HD3000.
The majority of 2010/2011 games are only playable at a decent framerate at 1024 x 768, something I don't feel is acceptable from a "high end" system.
So I set out to try improve the performance of this GPU in any way possible, and would like to share the results in the hope that it might help other people.
All of these tips are for Windows.
1. Update the Radeon drivers
The bootcamp driver is quite old (11.2), and the "normal" Catalyst drivers report unsupported hardware.
Use the ATI Hotfix drivers to update to 11.5b, which offers performance boosts for many games.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst115ahotfix.aspx
2. Overclock the 6490m slightly
Firstly, download and install Rivatuner
http://downloads.guru3d.com/downloadget.php?id=163&file=4&evp=b0d1360d4d6f6dc2017ceaf2b4e67ad7
Navigate to C:\Program Files\RivaTuner and open RivaTuner.cfg
Look for the section marked [GPU_1002], you will see a subsection called RV770 - add the text without quotes "6760h" to the end of this line.
It should look like this now
RV770 = 9440h-9443h,944Ch,6760h
Save and run RivaTuner, click on the arrow next to "Customize", then click on the picture of a graphics card.
Click "Enable Low Level Overclocking" and when asked, click "detect".
Now use the sliders to adjust the core/memory frequencies, I managed 928/986MHz respectively.
So, how did this impact performance? Well, playing "Witcher 2" at low settings at 1280 x 768 gave me 5-20 FPS outdoors. The overclock boosted this to a **consistant** +20FPS.
Crysis 2 at medium settings 1024 x 768 medium settings, is giving me 30 - 50 FPS (using the advanced graphics config tool to remove MSAA and Ansiotropy).
Not perfect, but a more enjoyable experience!
Stabilitywise, it's been fine...I've haven't noticed much extra heat but this system does get hot quickly in Windows.
Goes without saying but the overclock is at your own risk, etc, etc.
I recently purchased a 15" 2011 MBP, however was very disapointed by the 6490m - hardly an upgrade from the HD3000.
The majority of 2010/2011 games are only playable at a decent framerate at 1024 x 768, something I don't feel is acceptable from a "high end" system.
So I set out to try improve the performance of this GPU in any way possible, and would like to share the results in the hope that it might help other people.
All of these tips are for Windows.
1. Update the Radeon drivers
The bootcamp driver is quite old (11.2), and the "normal" Catalyst drivers report unsupported hardware.
Use the ATI Hotfix drivers to update to 11.5b, which offers performance boosts for many games.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst115ahotfix.aspx
2. Overclock the 6490m slightly
Firstly, download and install Rivatuner
http://downloads.guru3d.com/downloadget.php?id=163&file=4&evp=b0d1360d4d6f6dc2017ceaf2b4e67ad7
Navigate to C:\Program Files\RivaTuner and open RivaTuner.cfg
Look for the section marked [GPU_1002], you will see a subsection called RV770 - add the text without quotes "6760h" to the end of this line.
It should look like this now
RV770 = 9440h-9443h,944Ch,6760h
Save and run RivaTuner, click on the arrow next to "Customize", then click on the picture of a graphics card.
Click "Enable Low Level Overclocking" and when asked, click "detect".
Now use the sliders to adjust the core/memory frequencies, I managed 928/986MHz respectively.
So, how did this impact performance? Well, playing "Witcher 2" at low settings at 1280 x 768 gave me 5-20 FPS outdoors. The overclock boosted this to a **consistant** +20FPS.
Crysis 2 at medium settings 1024 x 768 medium settings, is giving me 30 - 50 FPS (using the advanced graphics config tool to remove MSAA and Ansiotropy).
Not perfect, but a more enjoyable experience!
Stabilitywise, it's been fine...I've haven't noticed much extra heat but this system does get hot quickly in Windows.
Goes without saying but the overclock is at your own risk, etc, etc.
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