AMD's ATI Catalyst 10.2 and 10.3 Preview @ [H]

No creation of own profiles. However, you can force AFR rendering in any game by renaming the EXE of the game to AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe

Still, the benefits are great as moving the profiles out of the driver means they can provide profile updates via download, plus the multi-gpu code re-working might allow for a future feature such as profile creation

But doing this will disable game specific optimizations, right?
 
Cool News...picked up 2 4850's over the weekend and my crossfire mb is arriving from Newegg today- what perfect timing :) For the first time in my life I will be Nvidia free.
 
So, let me get this straight, because I don't quite understand. 'one step further than nvidia' comes up several times in this article here, but from what I can tell, AMD still doesn't allow me to set per app AF / AA / VSYNC / XFIRE modes, and is more or less offering what EVGA has been doing for about two years with crossfire profile updates.

But you still can't go into the control panel and 'add application' then set it to AFR-2, vsync on, 2x AA, 16x af.

How exactly does this make the signifigantly less robust driver options I currently have on my 5870 crossfire setup better than the nvidia driver that has allowed all this functionality for years?

Game specific selections such as AA(and custom AA up to 24X) AF, V-Sync have always been available in the CCC under 3D. Very similar to what nvidia does....maybe not as elaborate, but it's there.
 
And these are customized on a per - app basis or require delving into the control panel every single time you switch to a different app? Because I've never seen an ability to set NFS: shift to 4x supersampling, but mass effect 2 to adaptive multisampling 8x, without going into the CCC in between, nvidia has had this ability for years. Not to mention the ability to add a new profile for a game that isn't released yet, and set custom SLI modes.

I was really looking forward to profiles for amd, and a real, actual implementation, instead of this halfassery likely would have made my jump to crossfirex 5870s sting a little less. As is, they are far faster than tri-sli but I find this article rings a little false.
 
Wow, non-proprietary stereoscopic 3d, looks like a 5850 may be in my near future...
 
Damn... I keep wanting to look forward to Fermi's release (since I am always looking for stronger and better performance), but AMD is making it very hard for me to stay neutral these days...

I may pick up that second 5870 after all...
 
No creation of own profiles. However, you can force AFR rendering in any game by renaming the EXE of the game to AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe

Still, the benefits are great as moving the profiles out of the driver means they can provide profile updates via download, plus the multi-gpu code re-working might allow for a future feature such as profile creation

Only something EVERY SINGLE Nvidia user has had since SLi came to be. Way to be way behind the fucking ball AMD.
 
Only something EVERY SINGLE Nvidia user has had since SLi came to be. Way to be way behind the fucking ball AMD.

You must be new to the game- when I had my 6800 SLI setup I specifically remember waiting for Nvidia to come out with SLI drivers that would allow you modify profiles. SLI did NOT offer this at the beginning of SLI.
 
You must be new to the game- when I had my 6800 SLI setup I specifically remember waiting for Nvidia to come out with SLI drivers that would allow you modify profiles. SLI did NOT offer this at the beginning of SLI.

I remember those days... And it's funny how it was only about 6 years ago....
 
You must be new to the game- when I had my 6800 SLI setup I specifically remember waiting for Nvidia to come out with SLI drivers that would allow you modify profiles. SLI did NOT offer this at the beginning of SLI.

nTune launched with SLi drivers and was used for profile editing. It was later on that they merged that part of nTune into the drivers them selves.
 
I'm fine with the ultra low power states they want to implement, but if they keep causing gray screen crashes for people, there's no point. A lot of people including me have had to raise their powerplay clocks in the profile so unless they fix that part of it, it won't be useful.
 
Only something EVERY SINGLE Nvidia user has had since SLi came to be. Way to be way behind the fucking ball AMD.

muti-cards gaming were meaningless until now(because of eyefinity), now stop crying.
 
I remember per game profiles as early as the 7800 series. No excuse for ATI to release 'profiles' and miss the most important part of them when they are so far behind in the game at this point.

The more I think about this article making these wannabe profiles sound like the second coming and AMD doing such a completely halfassed job on this, the more upset I get about it.
 
Game specific selections such as AA(and custom AA up to 24X) AF, V-Sync have always been available in the CCC under 3D. Very similar to what nvidia does....maybe not as elaborate, but it's there.

And these are customized on a per - app basis or require delving into the control panel every single time you switch to a different app? Because I've never seen an ability to set NFS: shift to 4x supersampling, but mass effect 2 to adaptive multisampling 8x, without going into the CCC in between, nvidia has had this ability for years. Not to mention the ability to add a new profile for a game that isn't released yet, and set custom SLI modes.

I was really looking forward to profiles for amd, and a real, actual implementation, instead of this halfassery likely would have made my jump to crossfirex 5870s sting a little less. As is, they are far faster than tri-sli but I find this article rings a little false.

You can create profiles, but you have to manually select which profile you want to use before you start your game.

Nvidia's driver profiles, on the other hand, automatically switch for you. The drivers simply watch to see if a profiled executable has been started, and switch to the appropriate profile.
 
The one key question is this:

Does it resolve the issue with the blanking monitors so they actually get turned off, rather than going blank but not really turning off?
 
nTune launched with SLi drivers and was used for profile editing. It was later on that they merged that part of nTune into the drivers them selves.

Nope- not at first. I'm sure you are referring to Nvtweak or Coolbits, which are registry hacks and not exactly user friendly. It was a while before you were able to go into a Nvidia Driver and set up a SLI profile for a game that did not have one in the driver. To make the statement that Nvidia had a driver that a consumer can download and modify or update profiles at the very beginning of SLI is false. Doing registry hacks and using 3rd party apps doesn't count IMHO- and I don't think that occurred until the 7800 series came out.
 
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Nope- not at first. I'm sure you are referring to Nvtweak or Coolbits, which are registry hacks and not exactly user friendly. It was a while before you were able to go into a Nvidia Driver and set up a SLI profile for a game that did not have one in the driver. To make the statement that Nvidia had a driver that a consumer can download and modify or update profiles using the driver at the very beginning of SLI is false. Doing registry hacks and using 3rd party apps doesn't count IMHO- and I don't think that occurred until the 7800 series came out.

Still, the 7800 series dropped what, four full years ago? Nvidia has had custom, per app, auto-selecting profiles for 4 years, and after making a big stink about omg we have 'profiles' now AMD still doesn't.

Also coolbits was about as friendly as reghacks come. Run it, and it unlocks new pages in the control panel.
 
Yes ati have had profiles for ages, and you can switch with hotkeys if you want and have it automatically launch an application. Don't know what the big deal is really.

Also, if you want I believe you can just use ati tray tools which have had nvidia style profiles for a while as well. I really don't see why people hype this up as being a big issue.
 
I don't disagree with you..but you cant say "EVERY SINGLE Nvidia user has had since SLi came to be." Not true.
 
it's great to see such big improvements, but I'm still waiting for multi rez eyefinity!

Yes, please. My setup is a 30" 2560x1600 monitor in the center (landscape) with two 21" 1200x1600 monitors in portrait on either side. The total resolution is a perfect 4960x1600 and it would be amazing in eyefinity but it simply doesn't work. Please add support for configurations like this!
 
The one key question is this:

Does it resolve the issue with the blanking monitors so they actually get turned off, rather than going blank but not really turning off?

That is a known issue? Good, I thought it might be my monitor that was having trouble. Is there any known workaround? I think it only started happening for me recently, possibly when I updated my Catalyst drivers. I suppose that would make sense...
 
Yes ati have had profiles for ages, and you can switch with hotkeys if you want and have it automatically launch an application. Don't know what the big deal is really.

Also, if you want I believe you can just use ati tray tools which have had nvidia style profiles for a while as well. I really don't see why people hype this up as being a big issue.

Because it's something people automatically judge as 'missing' when they move (like I did) from high end nvidia cards to crossfireX 5870s. It's expected functionality at this point, and it's still missing without basically getting nhancer ATI edition (ati tray tools).

I quite appreciate being able to set a profile for a game and never screwing with it again. And having the driver auto-detect and apply my settings. I thought ati understood this and was implememting a proper profile management system, a la nvidia. But that isn't the case.
 
To the article author.. all of your comments about AMD "taking it a step farther" by allowing separate XML updates in between drivers are wrong.

NVIDIA has been doing this for months. On top of this, EVGA has been doing this for months as well, independent of NVIDIA.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_multigpu_SLI_profile_update_v4.html

Maybe Brent hasnt updated his Nvidia drivers in a couple months. hehe

Maybe you two should actually read the article first.
 
Yes, please. My setup is a 30" 2560x1600 monitor in the center (landscape) with two 21" 1200x1600 monitors in portrait on either side. The total resolution is a perfect 4960x1600 and it would be amazing in eyefinity but it simply doesn't work. Please add support for configurations like this!

+1 to this. I have a large widescreen center monitor and would love to add two smaller side monitors in potrait for added aspect ratio mixed with height at a reasonable price-point as opposed to buying 2 more expensive widescreen monitors at the larger size. I'd prefer this feature way more than '12 watts of power saving!!!' :D

I wonder how far the Bezel adjustments workthough and if there's any options to adjust it vertically. If we could vertically adjust the image similar to the bezel correction, we might be able to match landscape monitors of smaller size up with a center screen of larger size by making the image on the left/right monitors match up semi-seamlessly.
 
So, let me get this straight, because I don't quite understand. 'one step further than nvidia' comes up several times in this article here, but from what I can tell, AMD still doesn't allow me to set per app AF / AA / VSYNC / XFIRE modes, and is more or less offering what EVGA has been doing for about two years with crossfire profile updates.

But you still can't go into the control panel and 'add application' then set it to AFR-2, vsync on, 2x AA, 16x af.

How exactly does this make the signifigantly less robust driver options I currently have on my 5870 crossfire setup better than the nvidia driver that has allowed all this functionality for years?

One step further refers to the part about having a profile only update that you download and update profiles between driver releases. NV has had XML forever, AMD caught up to them on that front, but they took it one step further by setting up a system where you can download just a profile update, and update those profiles between driver releases. Clear enough now?
 
Excellent news indeed! I've been waiting for any word on profile support, CrossfireX expansion (especially) and bezel compensation. Nice to see ATI is staying on top of this.

This means I have a month to repair or replace one of my trio (XHD3000's) so I can enjoy Eyefinity again. :rolleyes: The cost of remaining [H]... :p
 
I don't like that the ATI profiles don't launch automatically when an executable starts, my only real gripe so far.

While I did enjoy that with my Nvidia drivers back with my 8800GTX and 7950GX2, it was also a massive pain in the arse for most of the time I used it. There was pretty severe problems with the system, some settings simply wouldn't save, some didn't work correctly, and if memory serves whole sections were missing for a long time like basic colour/gamma/brightness adjustments or something like that.

Everytime I updated my drivers it would reset all the profiles so I'd have to manually back up the xml file first, Nvidia would create default profiles for a lot of games which if I remember correctly you couldn't remove without hand editing the xml file...and for whatever reason I wanted a lot of mine re-done I think because they were doing all sorts of silly things like locking out various settings or forcing SLI to one specific method with certain games.

Although near when I switched to my 4870 crossfire setup it was all a bit smoother/better.

I really havn't done much with the profiles for my 4870s or 5970, I had different overclocking profiles and that was about it, the way it is now is workable for me, settings like AF I always have x16 and vsync is always force off, the only thing I tend to change a lot is AA settings based on performance of the game, but that's set to application preference and I alter that in game providing the setting is there...when it's not, no biggie, jaggies are hard to see at 2560x1600 :)
 
But doing this will disable game specific optimizations, right?

If the game is detecting the executable name, then yeah.

And these are customized on a per - app basis or require delving into the control panel every single time you switch to a different app? Because I've never seen an ability to set NFS: shift to 4x supersampling, but mass effect 2 to adaptive multisampling 8x, without going into the CCC in between, nvidia has had this ability for years. Not to mention the ability to add a new profile for a game that isn't released yet, and set custom SLI modes.

I was really looking forward to profiles for amd, and a real, actual implementation, instead of this halfassery likely would have made my jump to crossfirex 5870s sting a little less. As is, they are far faster than tri-sli but I find this article rings a little false.

Thanks for your input, it doesn't change or diminish the fact of the new features being added into Cat 10.2 and Cat 10.3.

it's great to see such big improvements, but I'm still waiting for multi rez eyefinity!

Yes, please. My setup is a 30" 2560x1600 monitor in the center (landscape) with two 21" 1200x1600 monitors in portrait on either side. The total resolution is a perfect 4960x1600 and it would be amazing in eyefinity but it simply doesn't work. Please add support for configurations like this!

I have a feeling we aren't ever going to see this without some kind of hardware change or major software change. It is sad, I too run an odd configuration, and cannot use Eyefinity on my personal system because of my tri-display setup, I like my setup this way (20" on the side turned vertical and 30" center), but the differing resolutions mean no Eyefinity.
 
One step further refers to the part about having a profile only update that you download and update profiles between driver releases. NV has had XML forever, AMD caught up to them on that front, but they took it one step further by setting up a system where you can download just a profile update, and update those profiles between driver releases. Clear enough now?

You mean like Evga has done with the SLI enhancement patches for well over the last year. Yeah, I get it. And no, in my opinion, it isn't a step further, still a solid, extremely dissapointing hop behind.
 
+1 to this. I have a large widescreen center monitor and would love to add two smaller side monitors in potrait for added aspect ratio mixed with height at a reasonable price-point as opposed to buying 2 more expensive widescreen monitors at the larger size. I'd prefer this feature way more than '12 watts of power saving!!!' :D

I wonder how far the Bezel adjustments workthough and if there's any options to adjust it vertically. If we could vertically adjust the image similar to the bezel correction, we might be able to match landscape monitors of smaller size up with a center screen of larger size by making the image on the left/right monitors match up semi-seamlessly.

There are vertical adjustments, IF you are running a vertical Eyefinity group. What you are suggesting though, I don't think will work, if I'm understanding you right, all monitors still have to be the same resolution.
 
Brent:

Is there a preformance hit from bezel management? The reason I ask is if it is rendering the extra pixels then "throwing them away" there would be. While I know ya'll hate canned-time demos, it would show this very quickly and without much work. Furthermore if there is a preformance hit, does it change as you increase the width of your bezels?

Now don't get me wrong, I would be MORE than willing to pay such a preformance hit. Just like I'm more than willing to pay the preformance hit to run at higher resolutions or run AA.
 
If the game is detecting the executable name, then yeah.



Thanks for your input, it doesn't change or diminish the fact of the new features being added into Cat 10.2 and Cat 10.3.





I have a feeling we aren't ever going to see this without some kind of hardware change or major software change. It is sad, I too run an odd configuration, and cannot use Eyefinity on my personal system because of my tri-display setup, I like my setup this way (20" on the side turned vertical and 30" center), but the differing resolutions mean no Eyefinity.

if soft TH can do it :p why can't eyefinity?
 
Brent:

Is there a preformance hit from bezel management? The reason I ask is if it is rendering the extra pixels then "throwing them away" there would be. While I know ya'll hate canned-time demos, it would show this very quickly and without much work. Furthermore if there is a preformance hit, does it change as you increase the width of your bezels?

Now don't get me wrong, I would be MORE than willing to pay such a preformance hit. Just like I'm more than willing to pay the preformance hit to run at higher resolutions or run AA.

If there is, it wasn't noticeable. I was running DiRT 2 with a 5970 at 5760x1200 with max in-game settings, 2X AA and 16X AF and getting in the 40's while racing. When I turned on Bezel Compensation and increased to 6036x1200 with the same settings, I was still in the 40's racing. I haven't done any direct performance comparisons, but perhaps I will in upcoming performance articles.
 
People have PLP working with 2560x1600 with 2 1600x1200 monitors ont he sides with SoftTH I think, I cant remember the drawback of that software though, does it impact performance a whole lot?

I looked in to this a while back, there simply isn't a decent upgrade path for people with 30" monitors, getting 2 more is not only insanely expensive but impossible to power even with 2 5970s you'd struggle in a lot of cases...not to mention that 1600x1200 IPS monitors are quite rare, I think the only single model you can get in the UK are the dells direct from dell at their epic mark up price. The only other options is to sell your 30" to fund a brand new setup, I dont know about anyone else but i'm NOT selling my 30", you couldn't get this pannel off me even if was dead!
 
If there is, it wasn't noticeable. I was running DiRT 2 with a 5970 at 5760x1200 with max in-game settings, 2X AA and 16X AF and getting in the 40's while racing. When I turned on Bezel Compensation and increased to 6036x1200 with the same settings, I was still in the 40's racing. I haven't done any direct performance comparisons, but perhaps I will in upcoming performance articles.

So it does increase the resolution then? Interesting. And a the resolutions you are talking about, it's only a ~5% increase in pixels so I wouldn't expect it to be too much.

Also, how much impact does increase the Field of View setting have on 1) FPS and 2)CPU utilization? For example, if I run 5760x1200 (3x landscape) with the 170 degree FOV (or whatever it is) how does that compare to say 3600x1920 (3x portrait) with the 80 degree FOV (or whatever it is)?
 
Very cool, now I'm suddenly looking at 5870 prices again and feeling the itch for xfire. Do you guys plan on (or are already in the process of...) doing eyefinity xfire benches?

I have a nagging thought regarding bezel management. Since it's rendering the world in a slightly tweaked aspect ratio, for games where I specify the FOV in order to get it working properly with eyefinity, would I need to tweak the FOV further to match the new slightly different aspect ratio?
 
I will soon be a very happy ATI camper...

Now if MW2 would stop being updated and breaking Widescreenfixer :mad:

10.3 will be a good birthday gift from ATI :p (March birthday here)
 
so the ati 10.2 will be released Today? also what does this XML mean? what does it specifically do?
 
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