Radeon R9 M370X Performance

[LucasG]

So I recently bought a new MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015 which includes the Radeon R9. I went ahead and installed Windows 10 on a separate partition to play games such as GTA V every once in a while. With that said, it doesn't seem to run that well even when lowering settings. I've tried downloading the latest drivers provided by Radeon (which also seem to be a whole version below the latest they offer for non-mac graphics card). Any ideas for improving performance?

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Buy something else, preferably something with a modern NVIDIA graphics card in it they are much better for gaming it's that simple, something with a 960M or 970M graphics card.

Your bought the wrong laptop for the job, gaming laptops have the name for a reason.

 

[PTLove]

So I recently bought a new MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015 which includes the Radeon R9. I went ahead and installed Windows 10 on a separate partition to play games such as GTA V every once in a while. With that said, it doesn't seem to run that well even when lowering settings. I've tried downloading the latest drivers provided by Radeon (which also seem to be a whole version below the latest they offer for non-mac graphics card). Any ideas for improving performance?

Macbook Pro's are not good gaming machines. Hopefully your not looking for something serious with the laptop in that regard.

Your machine should get you 1280*800 on medium settings relatively well. Are you achieving that performance? If not, then there might be a driver installation issue to look at. If you are getting that performance however I would say you are right on target.

 

[RevToTheRedline]

you're going to want something with a minimum of a GTX 960M, preferably a 970M to play GTA 5 even remotely better than you can on a PS4 for example.. PS4 runs most all details at high and very high, there was an article breaking down its exact settings it uses, but 1920x1080, high/very high detail set, like 60% population so on and so forth. you aren't even gonna get close to that on a m370x, and probably not very good on a 960m either.

 

[Queen6]

Want to play games in a thin & light form factor, buy a Dell XPS 15, Mac`s are one of the least optimised portables for gaming irrespective of OS. I have tried a top tier XPS 15 it never broke 85C, All the 15" Macbook Pro`s I have owned and used all hit 100C and or throttle.

Unfortunately there is no fix, as the rMBP hardware is not designed as a gaming platform, so it will always perform subpar in comparison to a Windows OEM equivalent such as the XPS 15.

Q-6

 

[Aditya_S]

I rem meet see somewhere on this forum that someone was getting bad performance from th M370X on GTA 5, but after installing the correct drivers, he could run it on high settings at 2880x1800 resolution 50-60 frames per second
Edit: *remembering

 

[RevToTheRedline]

^ i want to call complete BS on that, a GTX 970M which is a monster of a mobile graphics card, about 3.5-4x more powerful than the r9 m370x.. At high settings, 1080p only gets about 57fps in GTA5 with the 970.

The r9 does not have the raw power, plain and simple, its got a low GPU clock, low RAM clock, 128 bit bus... heck the r9's memory bandwidth is only 72GB/s where as the GTX 970m is a whopping 224GB/s

I've done all the Windows 10 bootcamp with the latest greatest AMD Crimson drivers, this is not a gaming machine, end of story, where it shines is editing 4k video in final cut pro which is what i use it for daily.

Having also tested the previous driver update and the one released about 2 weeks ago, there is absolutely zero fps improvement in games.. I've not played GTA5 because Im not going to re buy it again on Steam when i have it on PS4.. But videos on youtube, with a mix of high and normal settings 35-40 fps, which is playable, but graphics wise nothing to brag about.

 

[LucasG]

Sounds like I will definitely keep another PC for gaming. I was just hoping to be able to run something along those lines even if not at best just to have something to waste some time on. Otherwise I will simply erase my Windows partition. I am definitely not moving back to Windows for my work and personal computer needs. The only reason I would use Windows is for improved gaming performance.

 

[emilioestevez]

The problem with that GPU (that isn't present on the nVidia GPUs) is that it throttles.

 

[zergslayer69]

Hopefully the refreshed macbook pros in June (just an assumption) will have a geforce 960m equivalent or better. You won't be gaming at 2880 res but it'll close the gap quite a bit with mid range gaming laptops. But based on the last chips, it'll probably be some geforce 950 equivalent because apple seems to enjoy giving us graphics power that's just "good enough".

 

[RevToTheRedline]

The problem with that GPU (that isn't present on the nVidia GPUs) is that it throttles.

It actually really only throttles under OS X, quite fast too. Under Windows 10 testing it doesn't throttle really at all and maintains a steady frame rate in gaming.

 

[venom600]

What I want to know is what other graphics drivers work for this card? The ATI utility keeps downloading updates and then saying they won't work with this card.

 

[RevToTheRedline]

Venom, google this "AMD bootcamp drivers" and its like the first link on the AMD.com page, the latest windows 10 ones were released a couple weeks ago.

You can't just use AMD Crimson drivers from the normal download page, because the R9 M370x is a custom chip by AMD/Apple it doesn't exist in any other system. But that being said, they are the same current Crimson drivers, or at least within the last couple versions, just with implementation of support for the R9. And its advised to get the best performance use Windows 10, because they are basically not releasing new drivers for windows 8.1 anymore

EDIT

here you go http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/bootcamp