HardOCP News
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AMD sends word that the new Catalyst 13.8 Beta drivers are now out. Highlights of the Windows AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta release:
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AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta
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lilbabycat
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Does this apply to ALL Crossfire setups, or only the most recent gen (7xxx series)? Does this apply to all titles or do app specific implementations have to be written?
S
sonsonate
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Back to 5000 series, from what I read, as it is a driver-based solution. All DX10 and DX11, no DX9 or OpenGL and no Eyefinity either.
Edit: And after reading PC Perspective's take on it, 3-way Crossfire isn't quite as steady as 2-way.
Edit: And after reading PC Perspective's take on it, 3-way Crossfire isn't quite as steady as 2-way.
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delsydsoftware
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I got the driver earlier this morning. It seems to have removed some of the screen-tearing I was seeing in vsync'd apps, which is nice. So, those partial frames probably aren't present. But, without eyefinity support, it's kinda useless. With 2x 6950s in crossfire, I rarely have any issues with a single 1080p display. I was hoping to resolve some of the funkiness across 3 displays, though. I guess that either requires syncing hardware that doesn't exist in my card, or another driver update.
Geforcepat
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I thought this was also supposed to help frame pacing in single card setups also
D
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I thought this was also supposed to help frame pacing in single card setups also
Single cards have never had an issue with this, so I don't know what there is to fix.
delsydsoftware
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So, these drivers made a massive difference for me in Saint's Row 3. They game was probably the worst for stuttering, and it is mostly very fluid now. It still occasionally stutters, but it felt nearly unplayable before. Before, fraps reported 45-60fps, but it felt like it was 20FPS. Now, it actually feels like 45-60fps.
AMD stated long ago that they weren't really going to pursue WHQL certification. Everything they release will be considered "BETA" (even the ones that they would've submitted to WHQL anyway)
I thought this was also supposed to help frame pacing in single card setups also
Lol what? Was your single card having trouble alternating frames with... itself?
horrorshow
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Sooooo..... from now on all we'll be getting are "beta" drivers?
For real? No more WHQL?
Why does it matter? WHQL means squat really... at least one of the card-killing drivers Nvidia released were WHQL certified.
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Single cards have never had an issue with this, so I don't know what there is to fix.
Actually, single AMD cards do have issues with frame times. Techreport has several articles on it, going back to fall 2012. They are one of the direct reasons AMD has started to fix this stuff. I first became aware of it about a month ago. Frame Time improvements for single AMD cards have been quietly added to publicly available drivers, since a couple of releases ago. I assume support expands in each release. Because at first, it was in the form of a few game specific driver profiles embedded into the driver. I haven't seen any confirmation yet if it's still being taken care of via game specific profiles, or if they have actually made a public release of a core driver rewrite (said by AMD to be in the works). This new beta may be it. I guess we'll have to wait for Techreport to let us know, since they have mature testing measures for this stuff.
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Geforcepat
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I'm really glad to see they're addressing this issue finally. I have dual 6870s and most games the microstutter is low but some games (Bioshock Infinite for one) never really felt smooth even though I was getting around 100 fps. I might just have to play through that one again.
Unknown-One
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Yup, I've been waiting for these single-card frametime fixes to materialize for a while now... ever since this article, really http://techreport.com/news/24136/dr...e-radeon-frame-latencies-in-series-of-updates
Got excited for a second... nope, this is still an issue too.
Tamlin_WSGF
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Unknown-One
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Not seeing any improvements on my end as of yet with the 13.8's... are you saying I should go back to the 13.2's?
All good here
Tamlin_WSGF
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As I told you in the other thread, I haven't tested 6970. I can only confirm its been fixed for a long time for 7970. Make a ticked @ AMD if it doesn't work.
I don't know if Geforce legacy cards are fixed for Skyrim either:
http://techreport.com/review/23419/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-ti-graphics-card-reviewed/7
All I can say, as mentioned in the other thread, is that my 7970 plays Skyrim much smoother then my GTX 570 ever did.
Its fixed for the 79XX at least:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...ils-Capture-based-Graphics-Performance-Test-8
Unknown-One
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Dunno if you kept up with the AMD Driver Bug thread, but I have their phone number(s). I'm more tempted to call them up than make a ticket if they're leaving yet another generation of cards behind...
I can confirm it's no-longer a problem on the GTX 260 I have on hand, at the very least. Fairly old card, and there's no hitching in Skyrim with it.
So you're saying I should ditch the HD 6970?
If the only solution is a new card, I'm more apt to go Nvidia at this point. That's why the 6970 is in a secondary system as it is... too many driver / hardware issues where the only solution was to get a new card (and going with a new AMD card wouldn't have fixed everything either).
Tamlin_WSGF
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Good. And you can even yell at them from me if this is true, because that sucks. I did keep up a bit with the AMD driver bug thread. Good work there.
Good.
Probably beats my GTX 570 Phantom then. No, I'm confirming a fix for the 7970.So you're saying I should ditch the HD 6970?
Yes, why not? If it doesn't play the games you wish to play and you already have a card that can (GTX 780 if I remember correctly), sell it (6970) to some bitcoiners or something and at least get something out of it.
Unknown-One
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Your GTX 570 is probably fixed as well.Good.
Well, the secondary system that the 6970 now lives in gets used for gaming when friends come over. I had hoped the massive reduction in demand on the card (one screen instead of 3, no multi-monitor spanning, no overclock, etc) would make it run trouble-free for once.
I could sell it and snag another Nvidia card, but I'm not sure how much a no-brand HD 6970 goes for these days. Was a gift from AMD, so there's no warranty and no OEM associated with it. Not even a sticker on the stock heatsink. I kinda figure I'm stuck with it, so I'm trying to make the best of it
Tamlin_WSGF
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I could sell it and snag another Nvidia card, but I'm not sure how much a no-brand HD 6970 goes for these days. Was a gift from AMD, so there's no warranty and no OEM associated with it. Not even a sticker on the stock heatsink
Can't help you with that. I normally just give away my old cards or retire them in an older machine. Checked Ebay, but those were greedy. Should be ok for bitcoiners though and you can just put it in description that its unbranded and without warranty. If it doesn't sell for what you wish, you don't loose anything, so why not? Give it a shot.
Unknown-One
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Well, I'd like to continue to keep tabs on AMD's driver situation. I'd lose access to a recent card to test against. I like verifying things myself rather than hoping someone else is reporting accurately.If it doesn't sell for what you wish, you don't loose anything, so why not? Give it a shot.
Just because I'm deeply unhappy with AMD right now doesn't mean I don't want them to do well.
horrorshow
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It's sad, I'm on a single 6950 and 12.8 still seems best in my case etc....
Tamlin_WSGF
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Hey, I sometimes buy stuff just to try out features, so I can understand that. I just answered since you brought it up.
Personally, I would prefer you called AMD and yelled at them, if it turns out they don't support older cards. I have an old 5870 in my HTPC, perhaps I should try Skyrim out on it ...
That's not quite what they said. They said they would no longer be WHQL'ing a driver every month. They will get WHQL when they feel it is appropriate to update the driver rather than on a scheduled basis.
In my experience, the measured frame time delivery problem by other sites does not translate into an impact on the game play experience offered by the card. Yes, you can measure frame time delivery issues all day long, but at the end of the day, a single AMD card versus a single NVIDIA card tends to produce a playable experience in a given game at about the same FPS rate (which was not the case with Crossfire prior to this driver).
I could also point out that the games used to demonstrate the single card "issue" are being benched at frame rates that are 2-3x what is considered playable, thus, to a person playing the game it would never be noticed as the inconsistent delivery would be counterbalanced by the higher FPS.
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Frame Time and its consistency is not tied framerate. A lot can happen in a second, that we are sensitive to. Long and/or inconsistent frame times most definitely impact game play experience. [H] said it themselves, if for some reason you don't trust techreport.
A relatively high frame rate does not necessarily equate to consistent frametimes. Techreport is not just reporting on this to get page views or to drum up controversy. They have several DENSE articles on frametimes with more information than most benchmark results nuts are probably willing to read. They have presented plenty of evidence (videos included) that demonstrate the problems with AMD, even on single cards. and have broken down the numbers in several ways, to avoid skewed graphs and whatnot. Sure, AMD delivered a good/decent experience with most games. Fact is, before AMD's first beta driver for frame times in January (not a public release), their frame times where way less tight and consistant than Nvidia and a lot more frames took a lot of time to be delivered. AMD openly admitted they hadn't been internally tracking their frametimes for a long time. It's something that went completely overlooked and has been allowed to fester.
Techport have also demonstrated where AMD has since GREATLY improved frametime issues (with public drivers, since about March), and where they still need work. I.E. last I looked, not even all HD 7 cards where benefitting from the improvements, let alone other series. and of course, not all games are benefitting, either. But it's been a great progress in a relatively short amount of time. The improvements for single cards are, relatively speaking, as dramatic as framepacing is for crossfire.
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collegeboy69us
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was running the latest beta drivers fine for a day or two, last night during some regular web surfing, I had my display bork out to a scrambled grey/black mess... computer was running fine, still downloading/working, just the video output was borked.
Back to 13.4's I guess -- damn AMD, I know they are trying, but damn.
The one problem I've had that's existed since I've had my 7000 series cards was screen tearing at the desktop after a reboot... the only fix I've found (temporary) being to go into the catalyst control panel and toggle on then back off the LCD overdrive feature.
Back to 13.4's I guess -- damn AMD, I know they are trying, but damn.
The one problem I've had that's existed since I've had my 7000 series cards was screen tearing at the desktop after a reboot... the only fix I've found (temporary) being to go into the catalyst control panel and toggle on then back off the LCD overdrive feature.
I'm not disputing the evidence or the quality of their work. I'm also not disputing that there are/were frame time issues. At the end of the day, charts, graphs, frametimes and FPS don't matter to gaming - what matters is whether you get the best visual and immersive experience while playing a game. With the premise that a higher frame rate can compensate for inconsistent frametimes from a gamer's experience perspective, then if the single card issues were that bad, I would need 45FPS on an AMD card to feel the same as 35FPS on an NVIDIA card. In my single card experiences, that has simply not been the case (even though that IS the case for Crossfire vs SLI, at least until 13.8's release). I think the single card frametime issues were identified by looking at data whereas multicard frametime issues were identified by playing games. If you take the data away, I don't think you could tell a difference between AMD and NVIDIA single card setup at a given frame rate.
Unknown-One
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So, I had a fun bug crop up last night. Was watching Netflix on my media center PC (where my HD 6970 now resides), and suddenly this happened:
Sorry about the quality, I had to take a photo of the monitor to capture the problem. Click the thumbnail for a full size image.
The card somehow wrapped the desktop 2/3rds of the way around (look at the position of the clock on the taskbar). Everything displayed shifted and wrapped. Move the mouse off the right-hand edge of the screen and it wraps to the left. I tried to toggle a few settings to get it to "snap" back to normal, but I eventually had to reboot the machine to get it to right itself.
So yeah, looks like dropping to a single screen on that card hasn't really helped reduce the number of bugs I'm encountering... it's just causing new ones to appear.
Sorry about the quality, I had to take a photo of the monitor to capture the problem. Click the thumbnail for a full size image.
The card somehow wrapped the desktop 2/3rds of the way around (look at the position of the clock on the taskbar). Everything displayed shifted and wrapped. Move the mouse off the right-hand edge of the screen and it wraps to the left. I tried to toggle a few settings to get it to "snap" back to normal, but I eventually had to reboot the machine to get it to right itself.
So yeah, looks like dropping to a single screen on that card hasn't really helped reduce the number of bugs I'm encountering... it's just causing new ones to appear.
leSLIe
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So, I had a fun bug crop up last night. Was watching Netflix on my media center PC (where my HD 6970 now resides), and suddenly this happened:
frame pacing is working great there!
Unknown-One
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It's probably a display timing bug of some sort, doubt it has anything to do with pacing.
So, I had a fun bug crop up last night. Was watching Netflix on my media center PC (where my HD 6970 now resides), and suddenly this happened:
The new centralized clock and start button is a feature, not a bug.
Oh that's win 8. No that's a bug.
Unknown-One
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Erm... keeping the taskbar centered is only a feature on multi-monitor. That's a single screen... also, it wouldn't cause the entire desktop to wrap like that.
Did you miss the Explorer window wrapping around to the left side of the screen after being moved off the right?
AMD's drivers are thinking with portals, apparently >_>