Ongoing alt + tab + gaming + windows performance problem, AMD series

[SonicTron]

So this has happened across two cards and multiple reformats (radeon 68xx series)

I have eyefinity x 3 (note: this also happens on only two monitors)

When I play games in 3D, full screen OR windowed full screen mode, it causes very noticeable slowdowns when I alt tab in everything else I do that requires any sort of graphical processing.

ex: flash video, flash programs, java, messenger programs, pretty much anything that runs in the taskbar. When I drag around windows, there is extreme lag that causes the window to ghost, stutter, act like it's running at like 1 fps. It even makes scrolling on webpages with flash virtually impossible.

While a game is running and is the focused window, everything runs fine.

I've tried using CCC and MSI Afterburner to force 2D clocks at the same as 3D clocks but it makes no difference. I still get horrible lag. CCC and GPUz report that the card is running at full speed.

This does not happen at all when I use an nvidia card, even a slow as all hell 9600GSO

edit: importantly, the slowdowns only happen when there is another full-screen window covering the game window, or when the game is alt tabbed and minimized.

If I have a non-full screened window over the game as it plays in the background, there is no lag. As soon as I full screen that window and not part of the 3D game is visible, the system grinds to molasses speed.

 

[SonicTron]

anyone have a solution for this?

 

[oldmanbal]

when you alt tab the crossfire engine stops running does that help?

 

[Solomutt]

The card may be powering down, but still trying to run the desktop plus app. I do not get this issue, so perhaps it is an issue with amount of RAM on card.

 

[Jorona]

I had to edit the bios on my 4850 to get it to properly run dual monitors. What was happening for me was it was downclocking and undervolting in a desktop situation, and that would lock up my card with horizontal artifacts across my screen. I edited the bios so that all performance states were the same and the same voltage, it cleaned up. I also needed to adjust the overdrive limits so it wouldn't mess with my bios OC. I'd have to do it every new set of drivers though. Thus why I jumped ship.

 

[K1tty]

I was experiencing this with my 6870, never found a solution for it

 

[SonicTron]

I dont understand whats going on, can nobody else reproduce this except a couple of us, and is there really no fix

 

[Shadohh]

I experience this all the time on my 6950 SLI and now my 6950 single card. ( selling off for kepler)

It happens ALOT in world of warcraft when I alt tab.

I just dont care, crappy AMD drivers. I miss my 460SLI , it was flawless

 

[Revdarian]

Turn off flash acceleration by hardware.

There was a bug that made 2d accelerated video (same as flash) to have higher priority than 3d power state, that is what causes the slowdowns.

You can indeed create a CCC profile with all 3 power states forcing 3d speeds if you want to use hardware accelerated whatever while playing. Activated overdrive, create the profile by clicking "add preset", then go to users\your account\app data\local\ati\profiles right click your profile, edit it, set all 3 wants to the same as want_2 both in clocks, and in core voltage.

You have to load the profile by double clicking it from CCC, you can check that it loaded properly on the overdrive page(clocks should be 3d clocks), i do not recommendthe use of hotkeys as i discovered that certain hotkeys are set aside for internal win7 functions, like for example ctrl+alt = it is saved for the alt-gr key, so if you use that hotkey, windows will change alt-gr into a normal alt.

 

[Shadohh]

A flash related problem. Why am I not surprised? lol


I wish it would just die already. Flash sucked, then Apple crusaded against it when the iphone first came out.....then it got better.....now it went down hill again.


Wouldnt it still be a driver issue if AMD has the problem and Nvidia does not?

 

[sirmonkey1985]

A flash related problem. Why am I not surprised? lol


I wish it would just die already. Flash sucked, then Apple crusaded against it when the iphone first came out.....then it got better.....now it went down hill again.


Wouldnt it still be a driver issue if AMD has the problem and Nvidia does not?

its not flashes fault, its how windows and the drivers prioritize certain things and 2D acceration gets priority over everything pretty much. the difference between AMD and Nvidia is AMD attempted to make their cards more power efficient, only problem is by doing that it introduced another issue of windows prioritizing. nvidia on the other hand, load something with hardware acceleration you get instant 3D clocks. because you know i really need full 3D clocks to watch a 1080p movie../sarcasm

if anything blame it on all these companies forcing their programs to use hardware acceleration instead of just leaving it to the cpu to do the work.

 

[K1tty]

Thanks for the info, definitely helpful.
I knew it had to be power saving/driver related. With the 6870 I got the alt-tab issue, then with a 7950 it was fine. However, there was a monitor sleep issue which thankfully new drivers seemed to fix.

So far I've been using a 560ti 448 and no issues at all. I've been on the AMD side since the 3000 series, although I used to only run nVidia cards. From what I've experienced it seems nVidia has one-upped AMD in the driver department.

 

[SonicTron]

Turn off flash acceleration by hardware.

There was a bug that made 2d accelerated video (same as flash) to have higher priority than 3d power state, that is what causes the slowdowns.

You can indeed create a CCC profile with all 3 power states forcing 3d speeds if you want to use hardware accelerated whatever while playing. Activated overdrive, create the profile by clicking "add preset", then go to users\your account\app data\local\ati\profiles right click your profile, edit it, set all 3 wants to the same as want_2 both in clocks, and in core voltage.

You have to load the profile by double clicking it from CCC, you can check that it loaded properly on the overdrive page(clocks should be 3d clocks), i do not recommendthe use of hotkeys as i discovered that certain hotkeys are set aside for internal win7 functions, like for example ctrl+alt = it is saved for the alt-gr key, so if you use that hotkey, windows will change alt-gr into a normal alt.

It's not a flash problem though, it's just that especially with flash it is worst of all. Happens with any program or window that's running after I alt tab. I'm gonna try a couple of the fixes listed in the thread though and hope for the best.

edit: looks like this workaround fixed the problem! For mine, want_0 was set to 100MHz clockrate (I assume this is the 2D clock, because want_1 and want_2 were set appropriately).