Dumb question on ATI CAPs

[enoy21]

Are this strictly for Xfire users ? Do they provide any benefit for single card losers like myself ?

And why is there a Bannana give the Jailhouse Welcoming Party to the Lemon on the right side of this box ?

[JonasBeckman]

Now and then there's profiles for more general usage but the majority of things are Crossfire related as you mentioned though unless they cause issues in some specific game I recommend having them installed and keeping them updated.
(Latest versions now correctly prompts for a restart also, unsure if it's still needed to remove the previously installed one or if it's replaced - earlier this caused a rather large list of CAP entries in the add/remove feature under the Windows control panel, haha.)

[kn00tcn]

people still asking about CAPs, it's getting old

the benefit for single cards is when for example things like AA get disabled if forcing it causes a problem

edit: wow is that jbeckman from nfoh

[JonasBeckman]

I'm not that active on forums and other communities any longer actually though a few years back I was on Tweakguides until that closed, I'm getting more and more inactive though due to lack of time and in general nowadays I prefer just reading the various sites and forums I browse around on.

Anyway there will always be people new to these sorts of things so it's understandable there's questions like this, would be neat if ATI had a better FAQ or other guide or general overview but these are fairly basic if I understood them correctly, just a few profiles packed in this sort of registry "blob" overwriting the main driver files, as it does not restart the GPU (WDDM via Vista, Windows 7) it does however require a restart to properly apply.

Ideally I'd have wished it to a more open structure not entirely unlike the advanced profile views in Nvidia's NVCP settings though even those are not entirely unlocked without third party utilities and there's a few rather good utilities for ATI as well for this sort of work.
(I am not entirely certain just how much these profiles do or actually contain compared to the driver level code but I assume it works as a sort of quick fix while the driver monthly cycle progresses, then again I have a few complaints on other ATI stuff as well, updating the .Net framework of the CCC to v.4 for example to really get memory usage and start up times trimmed down and of course responsiveness, then there's the reported well known bugs and oversights like not having a D3D tripple buffering option, questionable VSync driver support and how options can be a bit locked on some hardware like Catalyst AI being impossible to disable via normal means on newer GPU models for example, then there's the OpenGL issues and probably much more but both vendors and likely Intel's integrated stuff have their own shares of flaws and issues of course.)

(I prefer stability over shortsighted optimizations and hacks as well so to me fixing the drivers and utilities like CCC and the others are more important than just speed improvements, of course it should never impact visual quality either unless the user chooses to enable more aggressive optimizations like say scaling down the new tessellation slider, more control with Catalyst AI would be great for this, of course there's other problems also like fixing Crossfire up and better support for newer games and applications but we'll see what happens in the next few years I guess.)

Anyway perhaps a bit much but I suppose there's things to consider like time available for different tasks and of course budget possibilities and to be fair the drivers work pretty well by now but they can always improve.
(It's constant work though not surprisingly with new releases and newer hardware being introduced, it's easy to guess, speculate and point out things but I believe they're pretty well aware of most of these more obvious things already and if things were so easy to fix it would have been attempted but these monthly gradual improvements slowly but surely get things fixed, ha ha.)

Hope the question has been answered somewhat though, other people can likely give more specific and detailed answers as well.
(Also good job with the profile list on your website Kn00tcn, it's quite handy.)

[Rich_Guy]

The CAPS are only for Xfire users.

[Rich_Guy]

The CAPs are only for Xfire users.

[JonasBeckman]

Mostly but not entirely.
http://www.rage3d.com/cap/profiles/10-9_readme.txt
(Updated profiles, not just for Crossfire.)

http://www.rage3d.com/cap/profiles/1...AP2_readme.txt
(One of the few that adds AA support for a game, hah.)

http://www.rage3d.com/cap/profiles/11-3_CAP3_readme.txt
(Improves image quality but also disables Crossfire in one game.)

http://www.rage3d.com/cap/profiles/11-5_CAP5_readme.txt
(Bugfix for Witcher 2.)

http://www.rage3d.com/cap/profiles/11-6_CAP3_readme.txt
(Another one that disabled Crossfire profiles for these two titles.)

http://www.rage3d.com/cap/profiles/11-6_CAP3_readme.txt
(Incompatibility fix for Fear 3.)

[perosmct]

CAPs are for both cfx and single card users...

next user that will tell different should ban his brain with a title "mega noob, i am dangerous to tell my opinion"...

it changes 2 basic files from the driver database, it is not something extra...

[alphaproxima]

Originally Posted by kn00tcn

people still asking about CAPs, it's getting old

the benefit for single cards is when for example things like AA get disabled if forcing it causes a problem

edit: wow is that jbeckman from nfoh

What this guy said. And be careful there are many trolls in these forums

[Rich_Guy]

I always thought they were both, as when they first started doing the CAPs, they were for both single and Xfire, but CatCreator said on his Twitter a couple of months ago, that they were only for Xfire users, so id just assumed they had changed them.

EDIT: found this from CatCreator later on :-

To clarify :-) CAP's mostly benefit CF configs - single GPU CAP updates are only to stop AA from being forced on in CCC

Thats pointless, as if i don't want AA on in the CCC (if the game already has AA settings), then i just select Use Application Settings for the AA in the CCC, ive never needed a CAP to do that, unless in some games, the AA is forced on still, whichever setting you use in the CCC.

[enoy21]

So.....

Since I have a single care and really don't set anything in the drivers , I don't use CCC but use ATI Tray Tools and set everything to application preference so I can set it different in the games depending on needs.

Should I be installing these caps ?



Second thought , would I be better off performance wise to force it system wide and NOT through the application ? ( AA and AF )


Third thought, I've seen people suggest setting Catalyst AI to advanced , but in ATI Tray Tools I don't have an advanced option. I have performance/quality/highquality. It's currently set on default of Quality.

[Rich_Guy]

Theres no harm in installing them

[perosmct]

or enabling AA such old days on StarCraft2 and DarkSiders...

don't do anything AMD says...catalystcreator knows as much as catalystmaker...(he didn't know what stuttering is...)

so...

like we install latest drivers, i don't see any harm to install 2 latest files

[enoy21]

Do the latest caps supersede the previous ones ? As in they still contain all of the previous fixes ?

[stone-eye]

Yes.

[enoy21]

I assume that the caps are included in the next release of the driver as well. So Version 11.8 should contain all of the caps from 11.7.

I'm just looking for anything that may help with Bad Company 2 performance at this point.

[asder00]

Originally Posted by enoy21

I assume that the caps are included in the next release of the driver as well. So Version 11.8 should contain all of the caps from 11.7.

Nope.

[enoy21]

So..... If what you are saying is correct. Lets play out this example.


Driver 11.4 released
Cap 11.4 vs 3 contains BFBC2 profile for removing screen tearing

Driver 11.5 released




You lose the 11.4 cap you installed and the performance increase that came with it ? That doesn't make much sense to me.

Or am I totally misunderstanding how the caps work since I've never used them ?

[adrock311]

Has anyone with a single card ever noticed any performance DECREASE after installing CAPs? I haven't, just wondering (since they are written primarily with crossfire in mind ).

[perosmct]

Originally Posted by adrock311

Has anyone with a single card ever noticed any performance DECREASE after installing CAPs? I haven't, just wondering (since they are written primarily with crossfire in mind ).

never that is gonna happen...the only decrease may happen to CFX users but on single gpu only good/wellness they offer...there will never be negative scaling...

[kn00tcn]

unless the cap is telling to use another profile (let's say to fix some rare bug), it's POSSIBLE but highly unlikely that single card will get worse

as for CAPs coming with the drivers, yes there is a cap file that comes with all the drivers, but it's an awkward version that's sometimes in between 2 CAP releases if you look at the date & filesize, so just get the latest CAP

here's an example of what could happen

september 1 - driver compiled & sent to MS for whql
september 5 - new cap released
september 15 - whql driver released, but it doesnt contain the latest cap

disabling forced AA is not pointless of course, lots of people might be sitting there with forced AA all the time, then they launch some game that has a problem with that option, either the people wont know what's going on or they have to open CCC again

[Yadda]

Originally Posted by enoy21

So..... If what you are saying is correct. Lets play out this example.


Driver 11.4 released
Cap 11.4 vs 3 contains BFBC2 profile for removing screen tearing

Driver 11.5 released




You lose the 11.4 cap you installed and the performance increase that came with it ? That doesn't make much sense to me.

Or am I totally misunderstanding how the caps work since I've never used them ?

My understanding is the same as yours. When CAPs first appeared, I remember reading that their purpose was to allow ATI to quickly and easily provide optimisations for new games in between driver releases (so we, the users, don't have to wait so long), and that these optimisations would still be built into the next driver release (as they were in the days before CAPs).

Having said that, when a new driver is released, I see many people installing the last driver release's CAP alongside it (eg, cat 11.8 with 11.7 CAP3) so God knows!

Edit:

Just had a quick look around and found this in Rage3d's CAP FAQ which seems to confirm it:

Q: Are new profiles cumulative and inclusive (newer profiles contain all the fixes from prior profiles) or are older profile 'fixes' included with each driver new release?
A: Yes. You only need the most current CAP. Fixes are moved into the next driver releases, too.

Link to source.

Now, I'm puzzled - why do people sometimes use a CAP that is older than their driver?

[kn00tcn]

cuz some caps change something in the game they want to play, or the CF profile changes, so they want to stay on what it used to be, simple

an example was shift2, they disabled cf in a cap due to flickering, then the game got a patch, but the cap took a while to reenable cf, so you had to use an older cap or rename the game exe

[Yadda]

Originally Posted by kn00tcn

cuz some caps change something in the game they want to play, or the CF profile changes, so they want to stay on what it used to be, simple

an example was shift2, they disabled cf in a cap due to flickering, then the game got a patch, but the cap took a while to reenable cf, so you had to use an older cap or rename the game exe

That's understandable, but doesn't explain why someone would use the last 11.7 CAP with the 11.8 driver, before the first 11.8 CAP is released. I understand it could be because of the way driver development is managed, new fixes are sometimes developed whilst the new driver is "frozen" awaiting WHQL review but wouldn't incorporating those last-minute fixes immediately into a CAP for the new driver (in this example, 11.8 CAP1) be a more logical approach?

[kn00tcn]

if the driver is frozen while it's being certified, that includes the CAP file it comes with, so if a profile is made after that time, what are they gonna call it? either wait till the driver is public & call it cap1 or just make another cap # on the current driver to release it sooner