10.2 drivers - old games run poorly

T

Tolyngee

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 17, 2005
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While waiting for the 10.3s for my 5870...

10.2s are now solid for me at the desktop (which was my problem, gaming never was), but it appears that OLDER games play poorly...

Far Cry 2 is fine, Portal (new for me) I realized runs butter smooth, Crysis runs as to be expected, etc, Alpha Prime was never a problem...

But Doom3 runs pretty darn bad/choppy, for a game that should be smooth (if not butter smooth)...

Today I decided to install the original Far Cry...

After a few hitches (putting some DLL files into the windows/system32 dir), it appears to load fine now...

But after selecting all of my settings, etc, once I go to play the game, the intro scene runs fine, I see Jack laying in the hole, etc, but once I go to actually have control of him

BOOM

black screen of death... my monitors turn off, my video card's fan goes berzerk (sounds like it's at 150%), and I must turn it off and back on...

I'm having pretty poor luck with anything a half-decade old for some reason... But anything that should stress the card (well, more than these old games) seems to be fine...

I have noted that when Doom3's choppy, my power play seems to be going nuts, not being able to decide what clock it wants to put the card at... (FWIW; Doom3 puts GPU usage at about 20%... no reason for it to not be butter smooth?)

But now seeing how Far Cry makes my system take a dump makes me think these drivers might still be problematic... but for older games...

Power play still causing things to go bonkers???
 
It might be worth noting; both Doom 3 and FarCry use OpenGL, the rest of the games you listed use DirectX.

Perhaps these drivers are having issues supporting OpenGL properly?
 
In my system.cfg:

r_Driver = "Direct3D9"

From tweakguides:

r_Driver [OpenGL, Direct3D9] - OpenGL=Use OpenGL renderer. Direct3D9=Use default DirectX9.0 renderer. Setting the renderer to OpenGL may resolve problems and improve performance for some users, especially Nvidia graphics card owners. If you experience problems revert back to the default Direct3D9 renderer for optimal stability/compatibility.

So, I'm using DirectX, not Opengl. Maybe I'll try switching it and see what it does.

But yeah, it takes a complete dump when I try to play.
 
With Doom 3 it sounds like maybe power play doesn't think its a 3D game. Try forcing 3d clocks if you can.
 
kllrnohj said:
With Doom 3 it sounds like maybe power play doesn't think its a 3D game. Try forcing 3d clocks if you can.
Click to expand...

I understand that. But even the card running at 400 clocks (the lowest it will go), Doom3 shouldn't look like a slideshow...

Trying to force the clocks causes a GSOD... And it appears it's now the only way to get my system to GSOD. So, I'm going to let the card do what it wants, and let ATi figure out Powerplay...

But yeah, creating a profile to force clocks causes my system to go into a never-ending loop of GSOD, driver recovers, GSOD, driver recovers, etc... So, something's still funky for me...

But since my card's stable 99% with 10.2s, I'd still say it's the drivers... It's only when I try to force anything beyond ATi's stuff that I see anything...


On topic: Far cry now gives a critical exception whether I try DirectX or OpenGL... Googling the CE isn't giving me any quick fixes, beyond rolling back to old drivers...
 
Hang on, let me install Doom 3 with the 10.2's and see what happens.

Edit: No issues here. Ultra quality at 5040x1050, and it never drops below 60FPS.



Edit2: If you have an amBX kit, make sure it isn't enabled with Doom3. That seemed to kill performance pretty bad for me.
 
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Doom3 always seems to stay at a good framerate according to MSI Afterburner, but certainly feels and looks choppy, regardless of what MSIA says...

(yes, sometimes it was just about unplayable...)

Back on-topic: Far Cry still is a no-go...

Since current games are butter smooth, it's difficult to say it's my system...?
 
Tolyngee said:
Doom3 always seems to stay at a good framerate according to MSI Afterburner, but certainly feels and looks choppy, regardless of what MSIA says..
Click to expand...

The only way I was able to duplicate that kind of terrible performance in Doom 3 was by enabling amBX on it (amBX monitors the entire screen so it can update the color the some lights behind my monitors to match). It doesn't have this kind of severe impact on any newer games, just Doom 3.

Disabling amBX for Doom 3 caused the stuttering and massive lag spikes to go away instantly.

So...maybe you've got something installed that's watching your screen? Possibly a VNC mirror driver or something that monitors frame rates like FRAPS. Anything that puts an overlay on your game is suspect, even MSI afterburner.
 
Maybe...

Still no solution to Far Cry... Although attempting to get it to work and doing other games did get me computer to black screen (at the desktop hours later...) then finally BSOD with a "video driver blah blah" took a dump...

10.2s are still ~99% for me, but I hope the 10.3s are an improvement yet again...

(I'm going to stop putting off playing newer games while the hardware tech catches up if attempting to play older games causes my systems to crash and burn... I still haven't played FEAR and some stuff from back then due to this, but if these games won't run now, I'm going to bang my head against a wall...)

Although, unless you're running Eyefinity, I imagine only Crysis possibly won't run acceptably maxed out on the 5xxx series anyway... So, I may as well get to enjoying my stuff...
 
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