AMD's real biggest issue, The DX9 Artifacts

[cadaveca]

http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times

Yes, and if you READ it, it says what I did. Memory fix is not there, and those fixes were per-app. I could post the quotes here, but I already did that in the thread about that article when it hit the front page here. I'll do it anyway though, screw it.

Basically the fix was different per application (for the DX9 applications) – each fix involved tweaking various driver parameters. In the case of Borderlands 2, yes it did involve tweaking the buffer size.

So what we have in Cat 13.2 is a series of targeted tweaks that appear to work quite well for the games in question.

The driver does not yet contain the new video memory manager. Our intention is release a new driver in a few weeks, which does include the new Video memory manager, which will help resolve latency issues for DX11/DX10 applications.

Okay?

 

[EarthDog]

You guys post 8 fucking million news articles a day.. not looking for it.. I trust you though.

 

[Widjaja]

The flickering which is shown in the 560Ti example is a universal issue to varying degrees.
Not 100% sure if it gets better or worse depending on the driver version but it is something which I have encountered with both nVidia and AMD.

This issue which people are or were getting is image corruption which resembles flickering of shapes on the screen.

I had this problem really bad in Skyrim with the 12.10 drivers and all of the 12.11 betas besides 12.11 beta 11 which reported to have resolved the issue.

Here are screenshots of a couple of frames I took in sequence in Skyrim when the image corruption was very bad running 12.10 drivers with an HD7870.
This also appeared in Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2 but not as severe.

No corruption

Corruption

Corruption

12.11beta11 with CAP 2 resolved the image corruption for me for the most part and I can not replicate the above corruption since.
I have not seen corruption in Skyrim since, have seen it on rare occasion in Tribes: Ascend and Planetside 2 and the corruption was minimal.

13.1 with CAP 2 I have not noticed any corruption as of yet in any games.
Just the flicker which I have seen in the past with various other cards.
More obvious depending on the game.
All Bethesda games using the gamebryo engine including Skyrim and Far Cry 3 come to mind.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah ok...definitely do not get that shit in Skyrim. No issues in any games yet on my 7950. The system I am using formerly had NV drives installed too, just for the record.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Yeah ok...definitely do not get that shit in Skyrim. No issues in any games yet on my 7950. The system I am using formerly had NV drives installed too, just for the record.

Um yeah.....DaFaq?!

 

[cadaveca]

Yeah ok...definitely do not get that shit in Skyrim. No issues in any games yet on my 7950. The system I am using formerly had NV drives installed too, just for the record.

I played about 6 hours or so of Skyrim only so far, and that was on TriFire 6950s. Worked fine. Tried a bit with 7950's, no problems either. Most games do work fine, so although AMD has some issues, they really aren't all that bad.

I believe this DX9 flickering has nothing to do with Nvidia or AMD, more likely Microsoft.

Erocker brings up a good point...there more here than just Nvidia or AMD.

Corruption is one thing. Flickering textures is another. Microstutter..oh yeah, another.

There's the game itself...who is to say that it's not the fault of crappy game programming?

The unfortunate truth is that there's just far too many factors involved, but at the heart of it all, truly, is the hardware. That hardware..it needs drivers to run. Drivers that come out months after a game launches.. aren't the same drivers the developers used to program the game. Managing all of that...it just takes time. Having new hardware released every 12 months doesn't help that, either.

I hate to say it, but I've been banking on companies like Valve to pull up their pants, take the power they have in the industry, and make a difference. I don't think it's realistic to expect AMD to be able to do anything even remotely comparable to what Valve does with software, simply due to a lack of bodies in cubicles.

NVidia said long ago that they were a software company, not a hardware company...today, it's obvious why.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Yes, and if you READ it, it says what I did. Memory fix is not there, and those fixes were per-app. I could post the quotes here, but I already did that in the thread about that article when it hit the front page here. I'll do it anyway though, screw it.








Okay?

Hi dave ,I read that initial quote and techreports page, and I have meagre xfired 5870s(well 5850 too shh) and I don't doubt it but 3dmark plays through smoother and differently and isn't on their list either , I watched that bench a billion times and I know that during it, it now looks to be lower max fps but comes out higher scoreing each time, farcry 3 is marginally better to me

OP and OT, I only get that in games when on the edge Oc with memory due to the ECC memory system Amd uses now its easy to think it will clock higher then you really should have it at and memory clocks at the top end effect gpu stability more then most people realise, also I initially could run my 5870 at 1050 core 1200mem on everything but later games like bf3, farcry3 and some others that aren't comeing to mind forced me to lower my oc due to instability, allways had a waterblock on and my gpus haven't seen 65C ever despite 24/7 folding for 2 years so it wasn't the heat

 

[Widjaja]

What I experienced was directly an AMD issue.
I did not have this issue with my previous AMD card on the same games.

This is definitely was not a small issue since it lead to a number of pointless RMAs where people ended up experiencing the same issue with a brand new card or simply had their old card sent back to them.
Probably due to the retailers doing a basic stress test on the card which turned out OK.

Not something I would play down.

Now the problem is since there had been many reports and videos on the issue, people are getting confused with what is image corruption/flickering and the typical flickering which both nVidia and AMD experience in each game.

I know there are still reports of the problem at Guru3D and few with in game footage.
Why it is still happening to them on a large enough scale to report maybe down to not just the card but potentially software and or hardware compatibility.
only speculation as to why they are still experiencing what I did.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I'm on a Sapphire 7970 OC at stock clocks. Strangely enough the only game I currently have such problems with is the low resource Dishonored. I don't have many games installed currently though. Just AC3, BO2, FC3, Absolution, Warfighter, NFS MW 2012, Payday The Heist, Sleeping Dogs, and TWD. What I'm seeing in Dishonored similar to part of what is shown in the 2nd video linked to in the first post above. Specifically where you see slivers of black radiating from the cursor briefly. I have done file edit tweaks though, so I'll have to play the game stock to make sure it's not any of my modifications, then I'll report back.

 

[Kaynar]

I've only had few popping white artifacts in Witcher 2 with high overclocks. Everything else runs pretty well on my 7970. Flickering: not even once in a year, frame lag: rare spiky moments I had in FarCry3 and single frametime spikes very very rarely...

The only certain thing is that AMD has a serious issue with the consistency of their product overall. There are too many users complaining and showing problems with videos and many issues are not easily reproducible on another computer with the same GPU...

Overall, I am happy with my single semi-custom 7970 but I dare not purchase a 2nd for Xfire while I also stay miles away from Catalyst CCC and CAP since those always cause issues instead of resolving them... Pure driver + MSI AB has always worked like a charm for me since the begining of the 5870

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Well after playing Dishonored some more, stock this time, I still get subtle slivers of shadowy looking flickers. Doesn't seem as prominent stock. Probably because one of the main tweaks I use is 4096 vs 800 max shadow res. These textures appear to be flickers of shadows that don't get rendered properly, so my shadow tweak may merely be making them more obvious vs causing them.

I also notice a very slight edge quivering in this game, as if it's trying to run in borderless window mode. I wonder if a borderless window mod, similar to SBW for Skyrim, would even make it run better. Another odd thing is the game hitches severely when a map is first loaded, and sometimes when an area is first entered. I don't know if the hitching is an AMD exclusive problem, but I've seen it mentioned a lot, and I don't recall it happening with my GTS 250.

Then again, it could be specific to the hardware I'm running. The 13.2 beta driver's notes says if fixes problems with X58 chipsets (which I have) in some games. Dishonored isn't one of them, but who knows, maybe they missed some games that have such problems.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

I believe this DX9 flickering has nothing to do with Nvidia or AMD, more likely Microsoft.

Thats now what AMD seems to think.

Indeed the flickering seen in games like BF3 when viewing stuff at a great distance seems to be caused by different layers overlapping as a result of an insufficient depth in the rendering resolution.

Atleast thats what it looks like to me

Exactly, thats an entirely different issue.

 

[Peter1986C]

In the thread you link to, they mention Metro 2033 having issues with some cards if D3D 9 is used. Unless someone uses WinXP this seems to be an unlikely scenario since that game supports D3D 10 and 11 as well (the issue it is limited to D3D 9 in combination with HD 7xxx and/or certain nVidia cards, right?).

 

[AsRock]

Yep here is an example of mine with a 560TI

OOh, i remember that going back to my 7\800GT playing Armed Assault \ Arma even seen it in Arma 2. Same difference long range scoped zoomed.

Not to me, I don't think AMD cards have any more issues than Nvidia cards. People can testify all they want.

Cards were Evga. I've also had a GTS 450, a GTX 260 and a GTX 280 all die from hardware failure... Doesn't matter though, I stick to what works for me now.

I believe this DX9 flickering has nothing to do with Nvidia or AMD, more likely Microsoft.

Yeah, maybe to some point the game it self..

 

[cadaveca]

OOh, i remember that going back to my 7\800GT playing Armed Assault \ Arma even seen it in Arma 2. Same difference long range scoped zoomed.

That's a texture loading problem with the game itself.

 

[AsRock]

That's a texture loading problem with the game itself.

But yet only happens on some systems even slower ones i have known not to do it were as a faster machine has. So what to say that video is not the same thing.

 

[cadaveca]

But yet only happens on some systems even slower ones i have known not to do it were as a faster machine has. So what to say that video is not the same thing.

The difference in systems is the settings used. I have this on every machine, from using the IVB iGPU, to using dual 7950's...

It's about the draw distance. Things that have textures that are both in and out of the draw distance limit, they flicker. Slower machines use lower settings, with a shorter draw distance. It's obvious with using scoped weapons, since the scope modifies the draw distance limit.

 

[P-40E]

I know this is a old thread, But it makes me angry people playing this problem off like it's with Nvidia too, or it's not AMD it's Microsoft, BS! It is AMD's drivers, It has always been the drivers! Example, I got a brand new HIS R9 270, ( I love The Card Best $179 I ever Spent ) However Driver 14.4 stable is perfect in all my games , I tried 14.6 beta and got horrible artifacts in Mafia 2 and stutter in other games, I reinstall 14.4 stable, Absolutely perfect again. So yes it is the drivers. And almost 2 years now and still not 100% solved! That should make any AMD user angry enough to tell AMD and finally get this solved , Instead fanboys and worshipers get defensive, And it never gets solved.

 

[Toothless]

I would think this thread would be dead and gone, considering the drivers are different, and (kinda, not completely) different.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Example ive had amd gfx a while and NEVER had this problem go figure.

 

[Peter1986C]

I know this is a old thread, But it makes me angry people playing this problem off like it's with Nvidia too, or it's not AMD it's Microsoft, BS! It is AMD's drivers, It has always been the drivers! Example, I got a brand new HIS R9 270, ( I love The Card Best $179 I ever Spent ) However Driver 14.4 stable is perfect in all my games , I tried 14.6 beta and got horrible artifacts in Mafia 2 and stutter in other games, I reinstall 14.4 stable, Absolutely perfect again. So yes it is the drivers. And almost 2 years now and still not 100% solved! That should make any AMD user angry enough to tell AMD and finally get this solved , Instead fanboys and worshipers get defensive, And it never gets solved.

"Beta" is the word of the day here. It means "unfinished software".

Know what you are downloading, know what you are installing.

 

[THE_EGG]

"Beta" is the word of the day here. It means "unfinished software".

Know what you are downloading, know what you are installing.

Exactly. Also if you are happy with the performance then there shouldn't be a need to update the drivers (as I learned the hard way with the gtx 580 I used to have - the dreaded lockups happened to me after updating past the rock solid 314.22 driver).

Both AMD and Nvidia have their fair share of problems. From my point of view and experience, I believe Nvidia to be the slightly ( when I say slightly, I really mean slightly) more stable of the 2 when it comes to drivers but there will be people saying opposite which is fine too. Everyone has different experiences. I had flickering issues when I had 2 r9 280x cards in crossfire, I think the worst offenders were Titanfall and BF4, and also I had epic lag spikes with CoD: Ghosts.

 

[RejZoR]

Never had any issues like that with my 7950. And i mostly play older games that are usually D3D9...

 

[Toothless]

I was running the 335 driver on my 660, tried out the beta 337 driver and FPS dropped by 10-40 fps per game. Switched back to the 335 driver and everything went smoothly again.

Re-upgraded to the 337 driver after it came out of beta, and it works like a charm.

There is a reason it's called "Beta"

(Thank you Chevalr1c for making it the word of the day.)

 

[erocker]

This issue was corrected some time ago.