New AMD Drivers Coming July 31st

i am surprised hardocp has not taken up this issue as multiple gpu's are our bread and butter
 
magoo said:
This release does nothing for Eyefinity resolutions.
I am once again sitting here scratching my head.
The very thing crossfire was made for
Oh well....Ill wait....some more.
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this is stage 1 stage 2 of the roll out they fix the remaining issues
 
magoo said:
This release does nothing for Eyefinity resolutions.
I am once again sitting here scratching my head.
The very thing crossfire was made for
Oh well....Ill wait....some more.
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Ummm, they said quite a while ago that this driver wouldn't address the Eyefinity issues, that's a whole separate problem that needs addressing. Don't give them grief for not fixing something they specifically said these drivers were not designed to fix.
 
So basically, not quite as smooth as Nvidia's setup just yet. Nor does it support all games or setups (multimonitor isn't supported yet) but a solid experience changer. Hopefully the next generation comes with hardware frame metering like I've mentioned before. Also - the Anandtech article shows that the Radeon HD-6990 has some good frame variance... ??
 
Brent_Justice said:
'course NV's been doing it for years...... /devils advocate
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But have also been charging more for performance that is about the same (discounting the smoothness related to frame times)

Hopefully with this sorted out on AMD's side, we will see more fierce price competition given equal levels of performance.
 
On the topic of the framepacing drivers, I just read through the HWC one and I'm glad to hear things came out really well. I'm now significantly more interested in the upcoming R-9xxx cards and would seriously consider buying a pair, whereas before I would have continued avoiding them like the plague. Applause to AMD for the good work, yes it is rather late (and I've given them plenty of bashing for that in the past) but it should be consistent from here onward and that's going to only be a good thing for them as time marches on.
 
Yeah, AMD definitely should be given credit where it's due. Even if it is late, they're still working their asses off to improve things. Bring on the hardware frame metering!
 
Considering these improvements are just software based, this improvement is certainly dramatic. IF they do implement some kind of hardware modifications to also address this, I think AMD could deliver an excellent experience. I have not been too sensitive to this issue in the first place, but I will always take improvements that lead to greater smoothness. Hoping for nice gains for my tri-fire setup in that area.
 
jackstar7 said:
Considering these improvements are just software based, this improvement is certainly dramatic. IF they do implement some kind of hardware modifications to also address this, I think AMD could deliver an excellent experience. I have not been too sensitive to this issue in the first place, but I will always take improvements that lead to greater smoothness. Hoping for nice gains for my tri-fire setup in that area.
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Agree completely. I think that this could be considered a "shake-up" of sorts for AMD. Once they retool their engineering for things like this, they could offer an awesome product. Not that they don't already. Considering a Radeon HD-7870 for the main system myself.
 
Well, after playing a while, I can say that yes, 2560x1600 is smooth. Super Smooth. In a blind test, I wouldn't be able to tell that it's two GPU's.
 
well I tried 7950 crossfire with the new 13.8 drivers

bf3 was butter smooth, no shudders .Impressed. (1080p, 8x msaa, max game settings)

Now I have to put this other 7950 back in the other computer before a certain someone discovers I harvested their graphics card for tests.
 
ebduncan said:
well I tried 7950 crossfire with the new 13.8 drivers

bf3 was butter smooth, no shudders .Impressed. (1080p, 8x msaa, max game settings)

Now I have to put this other 7950 back in the other computer before a certain someone discovers I harvested their graphics card for tests.
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lol.
 
time to do some blind test to see if magic fairy beings can spot the difference between 10 ms and 20 ms lag :rolleyes: or just spot the pc with frame meetering active which would be too easy.
 
Sufu said:
Where's the support for 4k and other extreme resolutions? Bit disappointing since Eyefinity seems to work so much better than Surround.
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Hard to see how that works out, given that SLI works better than Crossfire :cool:.

On the other had, I'm waiting for TR to pound these drivers to death. AMD has the price/performance advantage, and I'm looking forward to 4k.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
Reviews are starting to be published now. Here is PCPER:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-Catalyst-138-Brings-Frame-Pacing-AMD-Radeon
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I hope they fix it for DirectX 9 titles because the large number of console ports (namely from the 360) are DX9-based such as Skyrim and most likely Mass Effect, plus a few other titles.

For games that either have a DirectX 10/11 option or are exclusively DirectX 10/11 will benefit from this a lot.

As for Eyefinity, that may take AMD longer to get to fixing, but given they fixed this, hope they fix it too.

sushiwarrior said:
This fix is based around standard CDMA crossfire which involves the crossfire band, once you hit a high enough resolution the bandwidth of the crossfire strap is exceeded, forcing the cards to use software compositing, which is glitchy and causes visual errors (but not necessarily microstutter).
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If this is primarily a bandwidth issue, it makes me wish AMD didn't drop the sideport feature of the GPUs. It was planned to be some kind of high-bandwidth interface.

However, I wonder why they haven't adopted an on-die support for HyperTransport as a replacement for CrossfireX and dual GPU cards. It is used for their multi-processor Opteron CPUs. It has at maximum 25.6 GB/s bandwidth in each direction as of version 3.1. That's higher than the 15.75 GB/s bandwidth of PCI Express 3.0 (16-lanes) per direction. And, it can be used exclusively for inter-GPU communication since it doesn't have to share it with other components of the computer such as other PCI-Express lanes and other motherboard components. Combine that with the upcoming HSA memory sharing feature of Kaveri APUs which SHOULD be added to future AMD GPUs, it "might" help with the framerate performance issues of these cards or future cards.
 
octoberasian said:
I hope they fix it for DirectX 9 titles because the large number of console ports (namely from the 360) are DX9-based such as Skyrim and most likely Mass Effect, plus a few other titles.
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TBH though, any game like Skyrim should be playing at extremely high FPS on any decent crossfire setup, and at 120+FPS even with runt frames it's still quite smooth...

octoberasian said:
If this is primarily a bandwidth issue, it makes me wish AMD didn't drop the sideport feature of the GPUs. It was planned to be some kind of high-bandwidth interface.

However, I wonder why they haven't adopted an on-die support for HyperTransport as a replacement for CrossfireX and dual GPU cards. It is used for their multi-processor Opteron CPUs. It has at maximum 25.6 GB/s bandwidth in each direction as of version 3.1. That's higher than the 15.75 GB/s bandwidth of PCI Express 3.0 (16-lanes) per direction. And, it can be used exclusive for inter-GPU communication since it doesn't have to share it with other components of the computer such as other PCI-Express lanes and other motherboard components. Combine that with the upcoming HSA memory sharing feature of Kaveri APUs which SHOULD be added to future AMD GPUs, it "might" help with the framerate performance issues of these cards or future cards.
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XDMA will use PCI-E, no more need for crossfire straps.
 
octoberasian said:
What's XDMA?

Googling it brings up something about a network protocol:
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/XDMA
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I got the 'DMA' - 'direct memory access' part of it. Assume 'XDMA' means 'cross-DMA', such that memory pools on different PCIe devices can be accessed remotely, like other GPUs or by the CPU. Would be useful for Xeon PHI devices as well, and would probably cause a resurgence of PCIe hubs that increase inter-slot bandwidth.
 
octoberasian said:
What's XDMA?

Googling it brings up something about a network protocol:
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/XDMA
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New crossfire tech which may be showing up with Hawaii, was almost released with Bonaire but the tech isn't quite there yet. Uses some kind of PCI-E transfer, without additional hardware I think (considering Bonaire supports it), can transfer extremely large frames (4k etc.) without using software compositing. CDMA strap was becoming a bottleneck for frame transfers, soon no more need for xfire fingers/straps, just plug in 2 cards and go. With less issues too, hopefully.
 
sushiwarrior said:
New crossfire tech which may be showing up with Hawaii, was almost released with Bonaire but the tech isn't quite there yet. Uses some kind of PCI-E transfer, without additional hardware I think (considering Bonaire supports it), can transfer extremely large frames (4k etc.) without using software compositing. CDMA strap was becoming a bottleneck for frame transfers, soon no more need for xfire fingers/straps, just plug in 2 cards and go. With less issues too, hopefully.
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Well you don't actually need the finger now it just ofloads that would otherwise go over the pci-e slot over your chipset to the other card.

Hawai I got my eyes on you the question to me remains how does it compare to Titan and how much headroom is there.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Hard to see how that works out, given that SLI works better than Crossfire :cool:.

On the other had, I'm waiting for TR to pound these drivers to death. AMD has the price/performance advantage, and I'm looking forward to 4k.
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At least eyefinity works, whereas surround does -not- work at all.
4huD86vl.jpg

:rolleyes:
 
maxius said:
i am surprised hardocp has not taken up this issue as multiple gpu's are our bread and butter
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Well, we have been pointing this out literally for years. FCAT was developed by NVIDIA because of HardOCP pointing out actual gameplay issues. That all said, we have not seen much value in the FCAT except to point out what we already knew about the SLI / CF comparison. It still all comes down to the gameplay experience.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Good points. I agree, as I said, he brought it to the forefront for sure.



I wasn't, bub. I was pointing out that it has been a focus of a lot of people over the years, and as I said I was hardly the first guy to talk about it. It had nothing to do with "patting myself on the back" like you put it :rolleyes:. What exactly was the point of your post again?
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Can I pat your back?
 
sushiwarrior said:
FC3 may still have the same issues as single cards, with "spikes" in frametimes (from normal frametimes to ~100ms for example)... That's what I was noticing when testing the driver.
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Seeing the same problem in Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and really badly in Skyrim. Single HD 6970 still has periodic spikes in frametimes (even while standing still). And this is after putting the HD 6970 in me secondary PC (which only has a single 1920x1200 monitor, rather than a 5760x1200 eyefinity setup). There's no excuse for it to STILL be stuttering...

So... these drivers still haven't fixed one of THE most annoying issues I have with the card... an issue that has made me put off finishing Skyrim until now. Only solution I've found is to use a frame limiter, but that's known to cause Skyrim to glitch, so it's not really a viable option for REALLY playing the game.

GTX 780 that replaced the HD 6970 in my main machine is playing all of the above games perfectly smoothly at 5760x1200. Enjoying Skyrim now. Really disappointed in AMD...


Edit: And frame pacing doesn't work for Eyefinity setups at all... brilliant. Even if frame pacing did help my 6970 it wouldn't work on my primary setup. These drivers are a pretty massive flop for me, considering all the hype :(
 
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Unknown-One said:
Seeing the same problem in Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and really badly in Skyrim. Single HD 6970 still has periodic spikes in frametimes (even while standing still). And this is after putting the HD 6970 in me secondary PC (which only has a single 1920x1200 monitor, rather than a 5760x1200 eyefinity setup). There's no excuse for it to STILL be stuttering...

So... these drivers still haven't fixed one of THE most annoying issues I have with the card... an issue that has made me put off finishing Skyrim until now. Only solution I've found is to use a frame limiter, but that's known to cause Skyrim to glitch, so it's not really a viable option for REALLY playing the game.

GTX 780 that replaced the HD 6970 in my main machine is playing all of the above games perfectly smoothly at 5760x1200. Enjoying Skyrim now. Really disappointed in AMD...
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Did you turn it on in CCC?
Not meant to offend you but I just had some guy over at OCN not even being able to run Driver sweeper then complaining about it messing up.
 
Phase 1 drivers are a hit at my place. Digging them so far. Can't wait for the phase 2 drivers for some eyefinity action.

Now I may contemplate 7950's for 7980's
 
My bf3 seems to tear a lot with the new ones.... Wow runs super smooth with them.... Bl2 seems smooth as well.... Installing tomb raider now to check it out
 
jackstar7 said:
I meant model. I thought that was clear... based on his example of what wasn't working.

I know nothing does mixed-rez from either camp.
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I actually don't know what's wrong with his setup- I'm expecting him to come back and tell us what's wrong.

I'm fairly sure there's a mismatch regarding outputs between a GTX690 and three 4MP panels. My only other point is that it's an awful idea- the card is ill-equipped for that setup, as one GTX690 is barely enough for a single 2560x1600 monitor, and the card only has 2GB per GPU.
 
Now I can use both of my hd7950s in crossfire for gaming. Hope these drivers work for me.
 
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Unknown-One said:
Seeing the same problem in Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and really badly in Skyrim. Single HD 6970 still has periodic spikes in frametimes (even while standing still). And this is after putting the HD 6970 in me secondary PC (which only has a single 1920x1200 monitor, rather than a 5760x1200 eyefinity setup). There's no excuse for it to STILL be stuttering...

So... these drivers still haven't fixed one of THE most annoying issues I have with the card... an issue that has made me put off finishing Skyrim until now. Only solution I've found is to use a frame limiter, but that's known to cause Skyrim to glitch, so it's not really a viable option for REALLY playing the game.

GTX 780 that replaced the HD 6970 in my main machine is playing all of the above games perfectly smoothly at 5760x1200. Enjoying Skyrim now. Really disappointed in AMD...


Edit: And frame pacing doesn't work for Eyefinity setups at all... brilliant. Even if frame pacing did help my 6970 it wouldn't work on my primary setup. These drivers are a pretty massive flop for me, considering all the hype :(
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No improvements for DX9 or eyefinity, try RadeonPro
 
its in the release notes, no dx9, and no eyefinity.

they will be added with the next releases.
 
And frame pacing doesn't work for Eyefinity setups at all... brilliant. Even if frame pacing did help my 6970 it wouldn't work on my primary setup.
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yeah, you have a single 6970. The drivers are for crossfired cards. It's all in the release notes.
 
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