Are AMD drivers really still terrible?

[ChadD]

I know I'm days late. As others have said both companies have their monthly list of bugs needing fixing. AMDs drivers have been solid for me... even on my 5700 XT I really didn't have the issues some people where complaining about. The black screen bug did hit me a couple times, but AMD had that one fixed in one patch cycle. I really like their windows driver, it may be a lot for people that like to install the nothing but the driver packages. But they have some really fantastic stuff like Radeon Chill that you can set per title ect. I use Chill a ton I have a couple small kids asleep not far away at night and its nice to set games to 75fps and play with next to no fan noise.
Also if your a Linux user... AMD is a open source supporting company. They directly support and provide code to the AMD kernel driver team. AMD works out of the box on any modern Linux distro running a current kernel. No non open kernel bolt on drivers ala Nvidia. They have even got the last three generations of GPUs up and running on the latest kernel packages before they launched, day one Linux support is a big deal.

 

[dave343]

It looks like chroma subsampling to me.

Not sure if it's just the recording, or it's global on your system.

Usually you want to select RGB full for the color settings (in AMD driver interface). You can also try 4:4:4, which should solve this issue if your system can handle it.

You might also need to change it on the video recording, but I haven't seen options for that, my guess is that it uses whatever is set on the desktop.

Looks like I already have that set. It's only the recordings made with AMD Relive that turn out like this. When not recording, and even during recording, the FPS counter, and Desktop text looks normal. It's only when viewing the made recordings from AMD Relive that the video has this distorted text colors.

 

[pendragon1]

Looks like I already have that set. It's only the recordings made with AMD Relive that turn out like this. When not recording, and even during recording, the FPS counter, and Desktop text looks normal. It's only when viewing the made recordings from AMD Relive that the video has this distorted text colors.

View attachment 368866

try playing with the pixel format and color depth, see if that changes it at all.

 

[travm]

Looks like I already have that set. It's only the recordings made with AMD Relive that turn out like this. When not recording, and even during recording, the FPS counter, and Desktop text looks normal. It's only when viewing the made recordings from AMD Relive that the video has this distorted text colors.

View attachment 368866

If it only affects the overlay when recorded it's likely a compression artifact. Change your recording compression settings if it bothers you

 

[dave343]

It's not just the overlay as in the picture posted it also affects all the text in the record, not just in game or overlay eg; desktop icons, folder and file text, and in game text.

 

[Nobu]

It's not just the overlay as in the picture posted it also affects all the text in the record, not just in game or overlay eg; desktop icons, folder and file text, and in game text.

Reconfigure microsoft's cleartype (or whatever it's called) text rendering. Your monitor probably uses a different pixel configuration than most monitors.

 

[dave343]

Monitor is Viewsonic Elite XG270QG 27" 165Hz nanoIPS. I don't know what adjusting cleartext would do since this ONLY shows up in recordings with Relive. Again, everyday games, desktop text is clear. It's only in the recordings made by AMD Relive. Also I've tested a RTX card in the same system and Nvidia Shadowplay does not have this text issue in it's recordings. This is specific to whatever AMD Relive is doing in it's recordings.

 

[Nobu]

Monitor is Viewsonic Elite XG270QG 27" 165Hz nanoIPS. I don't know what adjusting cleartext would do since this ONLY shows up in recordings with Relive. Again, everyday games, desktop text is clear. It's only in the recordings made by AMD Relive. Also I've tested a RTX card in the same system and Nvidia Shadowplay does not have this text issue in it's recordings.

Then, definitely,

If it only affects the overlay when recorded it's likely a compression artifact. Change your recording compression settings if it bothers you

 

[dave343]

It looks like chroma subsampling to me.

Not sure if it's just the recording, or it's global on your system.

Usually you want to select RGB full for the color settings (in AMD driver interface). You can also try 4:4:4, which should solve this issue if your system can handle it.

You might also need to change it on the video recording, but I haven't seen options for that, my guess is that it uses whatever is set on the desktop.

It's not global, this ONLY shows up in the recordings made with AMD Relive. Tested an RTX card with Nvidia Shadow play and it does not distort the colors in the text in it's recordings. As for the colors, I checked but it looks like I"m already at 4:4:4 Full RGB. Checking the recording settings I don't see anything else that could be adjusted but I'll have to tripple check.

Then, definitely,

Not sure what you mean by that... In AMD Relive, my recording settings at AVC and 30Mbs but I've also tested HVEC with same results. If I could just get this text issue resolve I'd be golden with this AMD card, it's doing everything amazing so far. Text issue aside, the recording feature works far better than OBS.

 

[travm]

Then, definitely,

Sounds like PEBKAC to me.

 

[chameleoneel]

It's not just the overlay as in the picture posted it also affects all the text in the record, not just in game or overlay eg; desktop icons, folder and file text, and in game text.

Its a problem with Navi 2 encoding. Not sure if it can be fixed.

Interestingly, AMD keeps changing their encoder. For Polaris (example card being an RX580) the encoding quality was really good. Actually comparable to Turing/Ampere NVENC. But since then, they have been making it worse.

 

[dave343]

Sounds like PEBKAC to me.

 

[travm]

Not sure what you mean by that... In AMD Relive, my recording settings at AVC and 30Mbs but I've also tested HVEC with same results. If I could just get this text issue resolve I'd be golden with this AMD card, it's doing everything amazing so far. Text issue aside, the recording feature works far better than OBS.

What is your recording resolution? Post a screenshot of this screen.... Compression artifacts generally occur (sometimes but not always) when you are compressing the file and changing the resolution. The algorithm will often average 2 or 3 pixels when creating the "new lower res pixel", this can make colours get all wonky at transitions (like with text). I would suggest you try recording at full in game resolution.

 

[travm]

View attachment 370075

Change my mind?

 

[dave343]

Its a problem with Navi 2 encoding. Not sure if it can be fixed.

Interestingly, AMD keeps changing their encoder. For Polaris (example card being an RX580) the encoding quality was really good. Actually comparable to Turing/Ampere NVENC. But since then, they have been making it worse.

From what I understand their encoder isn't as good as Nvenc but so far I've found the quality pretty decent. Playing horror games with a lot of dark scenes and fast moving action, the quality has been on-par with recordings made in the same game with an RTX card using Nvenc. I'd probably have to look extremely close to tell a difference, and I've been trying to spot quality issues with the very dark scenes in games with the AMD recordings but they are coming out pretty awesome.

 

[dave343]

What is your recording resolution? Post a screenshot of this screen.... Compression artifacts generally occur (sometimes but not always) when you are compressing the file and changing the resolution. The algorithm will often average 2 or 3 pixels when creating the "new lower res pixel", this can make colours get all wonky at transitions (like with text). I would suggest you try recording at full in game resolution.

View attachment 370076

Yeah, I never downscale, always record full screen and full resolution.

 

[Nobu]

Not sure what you mean by that... In AMD Relive, my recording settings at AVC and 30Mbs but I've also tested HVEC with same results. If I could just get this text issue resolve I'd be golden with this AMD card, it's doing everything amazing so far. Text issue aside, the recording feature works far better than OBS.

Depending on how the encoder achieves compression, it can "cheat" and fudge numbers or throw out less significant decimal places. So, even if you have a really high quality setting, you could still have compression artifacts, especially in certain edge cases (like the sharp contrast between text and a dark background).

 

[chameleoneel]

From what I understand their encoder isn't as good as Nvenc but so far I've found the quality pretty decent. Playing horror games with a lot of dark scenes and fast moving action, the quality has been on-par with recordings made in the same game with an RTX card using Nvenc. I'd probably have to look extremely close to tell a difference, and I've been trying to spot quality issues with the very dark scenes in games with the AMD recordings but they are coming out pretty awesome.

Its at lower bitrates (such as for streaming or ripping TV shows, etc) when things really start to separate. If you are making medium/high bitrate recordings, you will struggle to find differences between any of the encoders (NVENC, Quicksync, AMD's stuff, CPU X.264 very fast, faster, fast, etc). Medium bitrates with high motion will likely show some fairly easily noticed differences. But you still might have to compare frames, to really see and care about them.

its also highly game dependant. Some games which seem pretty fast paced, actually compress ok.

One of the most difficult games I have found to encode, is Soulcalibur 6.

Dark Souls 3 is also pretty tough, despite being a pretty slow paced game.

When compressing movies and TV shows, you really have to start comparing frames. The differences become much smaller.

 

[dave343]

Depending on how the encoder achieves compression, it can "cheat" and fudge numbers or throw out less significant decimal places. So, even if you have a really high quality setting, you could still have compression artifacts, especially in certain edge cases (like the sharp contrast between text and a dark background).

I'll have to plug the 6700 card back in my system later today and go over all the settings again. Appreciate the suggestions.

 

[chameleoneel]

Another tough one is the very begginning of Enderal, with all of the tall grass. "high frequency" stuff like grass, is really tough.