AMD Radeon R9 M370X Struggling to play games (i.e. GTA V) - bootcamp

Hi nspells154

Can you upload your bootcamp drivers (the ones downloaded via BCA in El Capitan while you were making the bootable drive) on dropbox or some other sharing media? I want to try those drivers with my Windows 8.1 pro.

Thanks

@Gaurav Bhola: Our request might be impossible, please let me explain. I just installed El Capitan beta, then Boot Camp (Windows 8.1). Wow, El Capitan creates Boot Camp partition and installs Windows WITHOUT flash drive. Basically, it creates temporary partition on SSD drive, boots it to install Windows (this partition is the replacement of flash drive), then deletes it automatically, I think merging it back with OS X partition. Good news: Windows installs so fast, you won't believe it. Bad news: Boot Camp drivers folder isn't persistent.

I don't have the recent rMBP, but by reading some threads (there and on other sites) I believe nothing will really help. Radeon card, although the good one, is simply not suitable for rMBP chassis. Even previous GeForce 650M/750M were known to have throttling issues, but Radeon R9 M370X has even higher TDP. I've read that only the keeping the relatively light load might be the solution, like playing older game at 60FPS while the card can do, say, 90FPS. Or, playing modern game at 30FPS fixed framerate (possible with e.g. RadeonPro tweaker).

It's only the theory, I mean I don't have this Mid-2015 model, can't check personally. But I'm developing the power management tool for Boot Camp (see www.powerplan7.com), so I can tell with confidence, every single Mac I tested during the few last years was suffering from throttling issues, and from generation to generation it's unfortunately getting even worse.

Loner , do you think if I buy expensive cooling pads I can put my macbook turbo'd boosted at 3.7ghz without having to worry about it ?

You can try the cooling pads. I am not sure how effective they are, despite claims to the contrary. The volume of air and rate of flow that is available and can be achieved is still controlled by the design of the Mac. Please also be aware, the more air you blow through such calling systems, the more dust accumulates inside the chassis, and has an offsetting effect on the cooling. A desktop is better solution, unless mobility is critical.

I have bought two cooling pads in the past in the £30-40 price range and I can confirm that they did absolutely nothing. The only positive effect that they could bring is lifting the corners of the laptop up to allow airflow underneath. You could simulate this however by just getting 4 of the same sized books and putting them at each corner to lift the laptop up. I wouldn't bother with the cooling pad.

Hey Vladimir

After updating to El-Capitan public beta, I was able to abstract the BootCamp drivers while installing windows 8 through bootcamp. But those drivers seem to be same as before. Version, File size etc. everything is same. But after I booted windows8, AMD GPU was not being detected even after installing the amd gpu drivers. I guess there might be some driver issues with windows 8. So I will try windows 8.1 now.

ELC and all other versions (after Snow Leopard 10.6.8) go to Apple CDN (and ESD servers) for BC drivers based on Model Identifier and Hardware UUID.

nspells154 procedure as documented is

Step One: Install El Capitan public beta

Step Two: update El capitan public beta through the app store

Step Three: reinstall Win 8.1 through Bootcamp. (note though, that it will not auto-boot into the correct partition this time, each time the computer restarts you must hold down the option key and select Windows)

Step four: follow all normal steps for installation, after windows installs you will be prompted to install Bootcamp drivers. CLICK YES!

Step five: you are almost done! When prompted by AMD control panel for any sort of setup, select NO and CLOSE. Do not attempt to update any drivers or tweak any AMD settings.

In Step 3, re-installation of Windows is where the issue of exposing hardware gets corrected. In most failed cases, users are unable to see the AMD GPU or have incorrect drivers. This procedure also installs Apple-provided BC drivers in step 4, not WHQL or AMD-provided drivers.

I have checked ELC downloads on a couple of Macs, and they provide the same as what Mavericks or Yosemite provide.

So, I missed Step Two earlier.

Now I have upgraded El Capitan public beta and BootCampAssistant version has gone from 6.0.0 (514) to 6.0.0 (516). I ll let you know what happens after installing windows 8.1 pro.

While I don't have this Mac, I have read very detailed discussion (on one Ukrainian forum). To summarize, nothing, no-th-ing can help. Somebody studied the behavior in detail, measuring the GPU-Z sensors output, etc. The Radeon R9 M370X chip cannot be used with Macbook Pro fans and chassis for more than 5-15 minutes while the GPU core load continuously exceeds 65% or so. Cannot be used because of unavoidable overheating. The card is good, but it needs better cooling. Period. Any modern game creates higher load, so the overheating is just the question of time, 5 minutes, 10, 15, but it WILL start throttling severely, jumping down up 400 MHz or so every second.

Guys, Looks like nspells154 is absolutely right.
I now followed the exact same procedure as he mentioned and after successful installation of the windows 8.1, for the first time I felt that it is the cleanest installation since after bootcamp drivers installation the AMD GPU got detected flawlessly. It didnt happen earlier, I had to manually install the AMD drivers from the bootcamp setup.

So, I played for around 20 minutes. The gameplay was **** smooth and enjoyable. Earlier the fps problem was coming even after 3-5 minutes. So 20 minutes without any issue : hence, I can expect it to work without any issue even for 1 hour or so ;-).

Enjoy guys, and yeah about El Capitan:

I am on public beta 3. I use this PC for my work as well i.e. for programming and software development. And I am not facing any serious issue on El Capitan. I upgraded Yosemite to El Capitan Beta, so all my data remained preserved.

Have a good time playing.

Wow, congratulations. So those people who stated nothing helps didn't try ELC yet. One thing, though... Can you get the free FurMark bench, and run it's test for 2-3 minutes? Those people wrote it doesn't keep more than 1 ( ! ) minute in this test. We will see how much has the situation improved

Hey doode are you telling me that you have better GTA V performance with windows from el capitan ? if yes what settings are you playing gta 5 on and at what fps

Ok, I will do this and let you know.

Exactly Piloooow. This time I had a 40 minutes+ playing session and it was superb. No FPS drop and smooth play. I tried on 1280*800 and 1024*786 with all settings to high except Texture Quality (set to Medium).

So, the earlier problem (when windows was along with yosemite) was that after 2-3 minutes of gameplay there was a repeated FPS shock after each 10-15 seconds which is now resolved and I am happy.

But no thanks to apple, because they still dont even know where the issue is... forget about resolution.

What is the version of the driver before and after ELC?