AMD Catalyst 14.12 Omega WHQL (14.501.1003.0 November 20)

I won't jump on this hate train against AMD because of a delayed driver release, not even after 3 months of waiting, and not even for being informed on short notice only. This is just cheap behaviour.

But I really want to know something here.

The CPU overhead problem so many people are addressing ... is it the cause for the CPU spikes I am getting when I play BF4 with Mantle enabled? Or is that another thing.
Because this problem is haunting me for a very long time now and I tried everything you could possibly think of (reinstall windows, use many different catalyst versions, disable/enable crossfire, vsync on/off, all possible combinations of graphic settings, fullscreen/borderless, etc.) I run ZERO background programs and somehow I do get these CPU spikes in BF4 every 1-5 minutes. Sometimes they last 1 second, sometimes they last 10 seconds and they always go with FPS drop to below 20-30. With original FPS @100-150.

Please do tell me that this is an issue AMD is aware of, and as I was informed by people on the Battlefield forums that AMD is wanting to fix exactly this CPU stutter with this upcoming patch.

Is this true?

Thanks!
vase

 

These drivers being late is the last straw for me.

I would go back to nVidia but they murdered my beloved gigantic CRT with their stupid monitor wizard back in like 2005 by setting its factory contrast to -1000 and making the screen permanently black. Also, their cards always die on me or have overheating problems. RIP 6800GT, 7800GS, 8800GT <-(Last nV I ever bought)

So since AMD has betrayed me now by being late on a driver, I will not be using either brand.

I will be clearing out my PCI-E slots and using my mind tools to power my games from now on!

:Edit: Ok I tried for 10 minutes and was getting nowhere. I guess I'll just stick with AMD..

 

Switch to Intel maybe?

 

So, the cf profile have to be made by assetto developer?

 

I'm not certain on the process; but I don't really see any reason why CF for any specific game needs AMD-involvement for the most part.

I imagine there's a standard way (or at the very least, good ways) of handling multiple GPUs, considering the tech has existed for years now. The only reason I can see AMD or NVIDIA needing to get involved with how a game implements CF/SLI is if that game somehow uses some less-than-ideal but promising method, or if it's a popular game and the developers don't care enough on their own to implement CF/SLI on their own and the vendors don't want to receive unwarranted flak (aka people blaming the driver for a game developer fault).

That's just speculation though; but I have yet to see anything claiming otherwise as a definite fact.

 

Matrox for that 2D quality.

 

Yeah, but the fact, that game engine and drivers have to go hand in hand is nothing new.
If you want to make money with selling multiple GPUs to one customer you have to support game developers and engine creators to implement proper mgpu support.
That´s also nothing new.

New is, that there isn´t any support in the last months. not a single game optimized.

And if the excuse is "Ubisoft/EA/Activision/Techland/blabla is sooo bad, we are waiting for game patches of actual games, to develop a profile":
What is the driver team doing in the meantime?? Are they working on better CFX-support of older Blockbusters? Are they working on CFX-support of one of the much successful non-blockbuster-steam games? NO, it seems they are waiting and doing absolutely nothing concerning mgpu.
In the last days i heard, that those older games, and none AAA-blockbusters don´t need CFX, "cause they are not demanding enough". REALLY? In times of 4k-gaming/multimonitor systems and downsampling, performance is NOT NEEDED??


To be honest i start to think, AMD was working on freesync and next GPU-gen support the last months and nothing else.

And one more thing: Who do you think will buy that new 700€+ AMD-GPUs?
Housewives, playing "match jewelly a**holes" on facebook?
No, the clients would be enthusiasts, that propably have one of those mGPU-setups now.

You get the point?

 

i think so

 

Are you, like, serious?

A lawsuit for neckbeard tears over no new drivers to play with? Their driver support is not exactly stellar lately, but the Omegas are really fine, and apart from some Crossfire profiles everything works completely ok with new releases.

Exaggerate much?

 

are you basically saying amd is not giving mgpu setups much love
to boost their next gen single gpu sales?

what a :devil: ish behaviour.

 

He would be lying if he wasn't expecting the driver to be out too.

 

Although I wouldn´t be very surprised, what I wanted to say, was, that I just don´t believe much enthusiasts, that own CFx-setups now, and see, how they are treated at the moment, will give AMD a sportsbag of money again. So who will go for their 390x then?
It´s also nonsense economically...

 

the thing is...
i believe that if amd would really invest more time in driver programming and mantle optimization Crossfire setups with 260 270 280 290 cards would really be very performant. but i also think that amd doesnt want this to be because they want to sell new products.

i just hope directx12 and or vulkan will deal with this appropriately...
but still there is a chance where directx and amd and nvidia could come to an agreement to only have directx12 feature of treating all GPU resources as one
available to the next gen GPUs (-> MORE MONEY for AMD & NVIDIA, they pay M$ for that)
as well as the feature of letting the games directly "talk" to the hardware also only for next gen GPUs (where it makes most sense to revive older cards and restore some performance there!!)

but we will see about that.

fact for me is. if dx12 will restrict those core features of making the system faster to new GPUs only then i have lost my faith completely in all of the big players on the IT consumer market...AMD, MS, NVIDIA, INTEL

i mean on the outside it seems there is such a big rivalry between nvidia and amd... but i would bet that the management board of both companies are having coffee meetings about how they **** up their consumers and other marketing arrangements...
in the end both companies profit from the split customerbase.
-> on both sides you have malcontent customers -> consequence... they switch to the other side (but there are only 2 sides)
so basically they switch back and forth... and are never happy...
one GPU gen is good @amd, next gen nvidia is better and so forth...
but support of older models.. and by old i mean 1-2 years old... is TOTALLY crappy

AMD and NVIDIA want you to buy the new models, thats why they put it stuff like freesynch , gsynch, which is absolutely a nice to have gimmick. but it wont make your FPS go up.
and thats also why they dont optimize games for crossfire...
because if they would you could have 200-300 FPS in BF4 with ultra settings and wouldnt need a new GPU for the next 7 years!!!

 

Has any developers actually claimed to want to use DX12? Last I heard, Valve, Blizzard, and even DICE were backing Vulkan. And considering Vulkan is a more "open" API; I don't think blatant vendor tricks like that will be too acceptable. But who knows.

 

I hate AMD as company but Nvidia better drivers??? mehh no way.

Go to Nvidia forum and see people mad with nvidia drivers.

Nvidia is better in support drivers, better site and more regular drivers

I come from Nvidia I can tell you Nvidia drivers is more problematic and instable drivers.

AMD drivers is better trust me.

 

In case you missed it. Multi-GPU is hard:
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-what-are-your-opinions-on-dx12vulkanmantle/#entry5215019
(Not as justification, but simply a good read.)

ZOMG 2x 270!
Setups like 2x5770, 2x GTX460 used to be quite common, but these things are becoming rarity today.
Luckily I say

 

Had 5 nvidia-GPUs since the gforce 2 ti.
Had 3 AMD-Gpus since the radeon 9600.
Had a Matrox g400 max.
People were always complaining.

But honestly, i was always satisfied, small flaws, but nothing dramatic unless you picked a broken card.

I never experienced such BS from the first day. I´m hardly playing anything at the moment, because I´m waiting for THE DRIVER 2015...

And I know multiGPU-setups as i built 2-3 per week in the job i had 2007-2014. they were always bitchy but never that useless.

 

For real??

I won't make claims about DX12 use and adoption; that's a bit tricky.

OTOH...I love OpenGL games, and nothing would make me more happier gamer than having all my games in Vulkan, but...
Vulkan will be just as popular as OpenGL,
only less so because no backward compatibility, no those 1-2 Carmack/Id games per 4 years, slightly offset by Steam Machines.
They still don't have specs written down.
It's Khronos remember? Snail pace.. . .. ...

 

I think devs will at least want to include new features that optimize CPU and GPU usage. That shouldn't be too hard I guess.

 

No broken card my old card is GTX560 Ti

Go nvidia forum and see Fermi era

TDR, BSOD´S and Freezes

I had problems with graphics cards from Nvidia twice, the first time been almost six months process to solve the problems and then freezes and the second time is eight months to solve the same problems again.