AMD Catalyst 11.2 Now Available

If the video is hardware accelerated, you will remain at video clocks, not full clocks, if the video is open. This applies to all the recent radeons, including the 6970s.
 
It is hardware accelerate...

Not quite sure why there is a problem for you..
 
shansoft said:
Not quite sure why there is a problem for you..
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If you mean me, it has ALWAYS been a problem for the 5800's, and it was effecting the 6X00's as well.

Sounds like they might have fixed it for the 6X00's but left out the 5800's :(
 
Unknown-One said:
If you mean me, it has ALWAYS been a problem for the 5800's, and it was effecting the 6X00's as well.

Sounds like they might have fixed it for the 6X00's but left out the 5800's :(
Click to expand...

I tested this on my 6950, hooked up a second monitor and tried it. There is no flicker when you run dual monitors, the clocks switch up automatically. This is with overdrive enabled or disabled.

But, the issue with playing hardware accelerated video on one screen and trying to play games on the other screen is still there. I am using the 11.1a driver though.

Maybe AMD should do what Nvidia does and just run full clock speeds when a second monitor is attached, but maybe that can only be done at bios level that it's not something that can be fixed by drivers, it's a hardware state that's set in the bios when leaving the factory.
 
reaper12 said:
I tested this on my 6950, hooked up a second monitor and tried it. There is no flicker when you run dual monitors, the clocks switch up automatically. This is with overdrive enabled or disabled.
Click to expand...
As long as your memory clock stays full-speed in all power states, you shouldn't see any flickering on secondary monitors.

You'll only see flickering if the memory clock changes (temporary flicker while the new value is set), or if the memory clock is set too low (constant flicker) as is what happens when you enable ATi Overdrive on some cards.

For example, the idle speed on an HD5850 will drop from 400 / 1000 all the way to 157 / 300 if you enable ATi Overdrive on Catalyst 11.2, causing constant flickering. You have to use a profile hack to work-around the issue and trick Catalyst Control Center to idle the card at the correct clockspeeds again WITH Overdrive enabled.

reaper12 said:
But, the issue with playing hardware accelerated video on one screen and trying to play games on the other screen is still there. I am using the 11.1a driver though.
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What happens if you update to 11.2? Shansoft and ocellaris say 11.2 managed to fix the issue on their 6X00 series cards.

I can confirm the UVD clock issue remains unresolved on HD5800 series cards.
 
Is there any performance drop off if you only install the drivers. I installed the catalyst suite and it pretty much crashed my sons computer to the point i had to re-install windows 7. I installed the suite and it would lock up at the windows star screen. Do you only loose the ability to use overdrive and the other adjustable features ? Is there something else I can use besides the ati catalyst manager ? I am still googling and looking through the rest of the forums. But I figured i would ask

I7 920 not overclocked
4gb 1333mhz
6850
 
Unknown-One said:
As long as your memory clock stays full-speed in all power states, you shouldn't see any flickering on secondary monitors.

You'll only see flickering if the memory clock changes (temporary flicker while the new value is set), or if the memory clock is set too low (constant flicker) as is what happens when you enable ATi Overdrive on some cards.

For example, the idle speed on an HD5850 will drop from 400 / 1000 all the way to 157 / 300 if you enable ATi Overdrive on Catalyst 11.2, causing constant flickering. You have to use a profile hack to work-around the issue and trick Catalyst Control Center to idle the card at the correct clockspeeds again WITH Overdrive enabled.


What happens if you update to 11.2? Shansoft and ocellaris say 11.2 managed to fix the issue on their 6X00 series cards.

I can confirm the UVD clock issue remains unresolved on HD5800 series cards.
Click to expand...

I can confirm that there is no flicker at all using dual monitors on a 6950. I have turned on and off video, played games, turned overdrive on and off with no flickering even when the memory clock changes.

This issue must be hardware/bios related that they fixed in the 6xxx series cards and can't fix in the 5xxx series cards without releasing bios upgrades. Maybe that's the reason they brought out the 69xx series cards with the bios switch, so that they might be able to address bios problems in future without the worry about the user bricking his card and having to RMA it.

11.2 is an older driver than a 11.1a. I suppose I can give 11.2 a go and see what happens. Of course if this works, then you know it's a hardware/bios problem with the 5xxx series cards and it will never be fixed with a driver release.
 
I can confirm I have flickering with my 6950 using dual monitors with 11.2. If your 11.1 is stable, do not change it :) This is a different problem with my computer than the one i posted above. I have a 24" gateway and a 32" sharp. When I watch a blue ray movie on the 32" I get a bunch of flickering on both monitors. I read a few google posts and turned off the ATI overdrive. Have had a little flickering since then. Every once in a while, I see it. But it is not so prevalent as before. I also saw that there was some conflict with windows 7 aero theme and the fix seemed to be to go use the basic theme instead.
 
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Thanks JG3. I was only going to install 11.2 to test dual monitors for the gaming while playing a video bug.

I don't get any flicker at all. Are you using two different resolutions on your monitors? If you are can you try setting the resolution on both screens to the same thing and see do you get flicker?

And that's a strange problem you are having with the catalyst control suite. Does it only crash when you try to open it after install? Or does it crash while installing?

Did you try downloading the again? Maybe your download got corrupt?
 
2 resolutions, one is 1920 x1200 and the other is 1920 x 1080. That could be a little bit of the problem. But I spent allot of time googling and it he flickering seems to be something that allot of people are having problems with. I fought with the catalyst problem for 6 hours last night, I eventually just formatted the drive and reloaded win 7. It was late and I did not want to fight with the catalyst control center if it did not work last night so who knows, It could work. The only problem free computer I have right now is my gaming rig and it works perfect. I have a 6950 in that also but only one 25.5" monitor. I am going to find a set or drivers that are stable and keep them until my next video card upgrade. It would have to be something major, like 20 percent framerates :) to get me to upgrade drivers again. I might try 11.1 and see if that gets rid of the flickering. It could be a combination of things with that. The blu ray player, the blue ray playback software, the 32" tv. But right now, the flicker is minimal and does not mess with the playback of blu-ray movies, or do it during games. It is just the fact that its not working a 100 % that drives me a little crazy :)
 
Unknown-One said:
Woah, that did make it significantly better. Added it to the driver bug thread as a possible work-around. Thanks!
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You're welcome! :)

I tried it when I got home and still no dice, lol :( What exactly did you do? I tried leaving the pointer scheme to default Aero, and disabling shadows through the little checkbox, and I still get the lag. I tried setting the scheme to inverted (+shadows disabled), still lag.

Oh well, back to 10.11 for me :p
 
lol, fair enough, it's a lot of trouble when things go wrong.

The only thing I will say, is that if you use different resolutions there seems to be more chance of the flicker. I setup both monitors at 1920*1080 and there was no flicker at all!!

I don't use two monitors myself on a day to day basis.
 
reaper12 said:
I can confirm that there is no flicker at all using dual monitors on a 6950. I have turned on and off video, played games, turned overdrive on and off with no flickering even when the memory clock changes.
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If that's true of the entire 6X00 series, and not just your sample, then they've finally fixed the issue that started this mess in the first place on the 5800 series.

We used to have scaling memory clockspeeds on the 5800 series, but the cards flickered like crazy so AMD locked the memclock to full 3D speed at all times. Clockspeed scaling has never worked correctly across-the-board since. I have to agree with you, it looks like they're attempting to cover-up a hardware problem that they can't actually fix by limiting the number of times the condition is encountered (aside from the UVD glitch, they have managed to avoid it completely, but have sacrificed power savings to do so).

reaper12 said:
This issue must be hardware/bios related that they fixed in the 6xxx series cards and can't fix in the 5xxx series cards without releasing bios upgrades.
[snip]
Of course if this works, then you know it's a hardware/bios problem with the 5xxx series cards and it will never be fixed with a driver release.
Click to expand...
If that's the case, then AMD is in a serious pickle.

- If it can be fixed with a BIOS update (a proper fix, not the crappy work-around we're doing now), then they can have their partners accept RMA's to flash the cards and get them fixed.
- If it can't be fixed with a BIOS update, time to issue a recall. :(

Either way, it's going to cost them...
 
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Seems that's related to the RAM speed switching, as when I'm watching videos or flash content, my RAM runs at full speed while the core runs at 500MHz. When I modified the HD 4870 BIOS to lower the RAM speed, I had some screen flashing when switching from low to high speed, could be related to the GDDR5 memory on all those cards?
 
My 5850 has been getting stuck at 100% GPU loads ever since 10.12. Any ideas on potential fixes? I did read that disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox or w/ Adobe could help, but it did nothing for me.
 
I have a 6970 here, and could not run dual monitors at stock speeds. RAM speeds were full, and core was 550. I would get gray/dark gray lines across the screen with just the desktop (win 7 aero), or both screens would go black on any 3D app I tried. I'd also get artifacts out of nowhere when on the desktop, and odd brackets around the mouse. I did a clean rip and install, then tried it again when I had issues. I rolled back to 11.1 drivers..problem solved. No flicker, no crashing, clocks do the same as before. I don't know what ATI did, but it doesn't work on my machine.
 
Found my first issue tonight. Fired up Crysis and was getting 19 fps. WTF??

I tinkered around with everything and ran the benchmark and was only getting 20 or so. I uninstalled then reinstalled 11.2, restarted my computer and I seem to be ok now. Im actually a little over where I was I think. With 10.10e I was getting 55 fps average in the Crysis benchmark with everything on High and 2x AA. Now Im up to 58 average. Not a huge deal but still pretty sweet to pick up 3 fps just off a new driver.

Not sure what happened there but glad it was an easy fix.
 
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I just got a 6870 a week or so ago. I installed the 11.2 and have had good stability, but I ran 3dmark 11 and am getting around P2700 with my x6 at 3.6. I have been to busy to figure out whats going on but thats not right. I have trixx installed, idle clocks 300/300 and load 900/1050. Seems like it's not a clocking issue. Any one else have similar issues or ideas?
 
Gym Rat said:
Found my first issue tonight. Fired up Crysis and was getting 19 fps. WTF??

I tinkered around with everything and ran the benchmark and was only getting 20 or so. I uninstalled then reinstalled 11.2, restarted my computer and I seem to be ok now. Im actually a little over where I was I think. With 10.10e I was getting 55 fps average in the Crysis benchmark with everything on High and 2x AA. Now Im up to 58 average. Not a huge deal but still pretty sweet to pick up 3 fps just off a new driver.

Not sure what happened there but glad it was an easy fix.
Click to expand...

How did you measure your FPS? I have been playing Crisis 2 with FRAPS on and my number doesnt show up in game. Weird.
 
I used the Crysis benchmark program. It runs 4 loops, the 1st of which is always lower. The average fps of the previous run is displayed in the upper left of the screen. I take the fps of the last 3 runs then average them together. Was 58.6 or something like that.

FRAPS always works in my version. Try hitting F12. That toggles screen position and off. If no luck, hit the "~" key and type "r_displayinfo 1". This will turn on a bunch of info in the upper left of the screen which includes fps. It gets pretty annoying after a while but you can see what your frame rates are.
 
Gym Rat said:
I used the Crysis benchmark program. It runs 4 loops, the 1st of which is always lower. The average fps of the previous run is displayed in the upper left of the screen. I take the fps of the last 3 runs then average them together. Was 58.6 or something like that.

FRAPS always works in my version. Try hitting F12. That toggles screen position and off. If no luck, hit the "~" key and type "r_displayinfo 1". This will turn on a bunch of info in the upper left of the screen which includes fps. It gets pretty annoying after a while but you can see what your frame rates are.
Click to expand...

Thanks, i got FRAPS to work im not sure why it wasnt. What is the crysis benchmark program? Crysis 2? Is it in the demo or what?
 
Unknown-One said:
For example, the idle speed on an HD5850 will drop from 400 / 1000 all the way to 157 / 300 if you enable ATi Overdrive on Catalyst 11.2, causing constant flickering. You have to use a profile hack to work-around the issue and trick Catalyst Control Center to idle the card at the correct clockspeeds again WITH Overdrive enabled.
Click to expand...

can you elaborate more on this hack ?
 
Bbq said:
can you elaborate more on this hack ?
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Bug #6 from The AMD Driver Bug Thread

Symptoms:
If you use anything but default clockspeeds in ATi Overdrive, your card begins to idle at 157MHz core, 300MHz RAM. These clockspeeds are too low, and can cause secondary monitors to flicker or corrupt in other ways.

Causes:
Appears to be a conflict between PowerPlay idle states, the newly defined idle clocks assigned by the driver (AMD's attempted fix for another driver bug), and ATi Overdrive causing those newly defined idle states to be overridden.

Workaround:
1. Catalyst Control Center > Graphics > ATi Overdrive.
2. Set your desired 3D clockspeed and apply it.
3. Your card's idle clock will have dropped to 157 / 300. Ignore that for now.
4. Options > Profiles > Profile Manager.
5. Name the profile "OverdriveFix" and make sure "ATi Overdrive" is checked.
6. Save the profile, but DO NOT apply it yet.
7. Navigate to "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles\"
8. Right click "OverdriveFix.xml" and select "Edit"
9. Edit the clockspeeds and voltages as appropriate for your card.
Code: 
        <Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="40000" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="55000" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="72500" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="PowerControl_0">
          <Property name="Want" value="0" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="100000" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="100000" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="100000" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="CoreVoltageTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="1000" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="1038" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="1088" />
        </Feature>
Code: 
        <Feature name="CoreClockTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="40000" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="60000" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="85000" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="PowerControl_0">
          <Property name="Want" value="0" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="120000" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="120000" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="120000" />
        </Feature>
        <Feature name="CoreVoltageTarget_0">
          <Property name="Want_0" value="1063" />
          <Property name="Want_1" value="1063" />
          <Property name="Want_2" value="1160" />
        </Feature>
10. Save the XML file.
11. Catalyst Control Center > Options > Profiles > Activate Profile > OverdriveFix
12. If only the core clock changed, repeat step 11 (apply the profile again).
13. Your idle clockspeed should now be correct. 400/1000 for the HD5850, or 400/1200 for the HD5870.

Official fix:
None. Unresolved as of Catalyst 11.2
Click to expand...

This should also generate a shortcut for the profile, drop that in the "Startup" folder in your start menu. Sometimes, the idle speed will be forgotten after a reboot, this will make sure it's re-applied.
 
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