AMD Unlikely to fix recent drivers that broke DX9 games

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon Drivers Section' started by Romulus_ut3, Jan 1, 2018.

  1. Pyrage

    Pyrage Master Guru

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    More people wanting their decade old system and games to work ok..

    I really feel no sympathy for winXP systems trying to run some old shitty game, and thankfully AMD doesn't care either. There are so many issues about modern stuff to care about, I really don't want them to focus on stuff like this.
     
  2. warlord

    warlord Guest

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    Trolling much? You dare saying old shitty game something like "The Witcher 1" one of the best games ever that changed much the scenery back there with it's great story and hyped next series? OK. Sell you trunk PC now. Do it fanboy.
     
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  3. user1

    user1 Ancient Guru

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    this doesn't effect winxp users actually, this effects many games developed using dx 9 , of which many modern games still use , some users are reporting CS GO is effected on specific gpus btw. I don't see how fixing dx9 would be of detriment to amd especially if it effects some of the most popular games on pc.

    Have a feeling this is simply a side effect of amd dumping legacy r600 era code, it will improve almost certainly, that rep was definitely going above his pay grade lol
     
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  4. Romulus_ut3

    Romulus_ut3 Master Guru

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    Crysis, at it's core is DX9. If "WinXP" games are stopped from being supported, we'll be missing out on some of the greatest games ever created, visual and gameplay wise, at least on AMD cards. The good thing is that the gaming world doesn't revolve around AMD and their stupid decisions, assuming not fixing DX9 game issues from here on is their official stance on the matter.

    Imagine the amount of thrashing you'll be getting from the men in green, if AMD does decide not to continue support for older games.

    "Can it run Crysis?"

    "No, it can't."
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2018
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  5. Maddness

    Maddness Ancient Guru

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    That last line is gold.
     
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  6. WareTernal

    WareTernal Master Guru

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    Considering the issue is limited to a few old games, and the vast majority of games(even much older than those with issues) still work fine, I would have to agree that it is a game issue.

    Except that it can, just like most other dx9 titles.

    I got Witcher $0.99 on Steam. I found that it didn't run on my machine, and I had to use the 3rd party patching tool refered to in this thread from 2013 titled "Fix for constant crashing on Windows 7, 8 (or 8.1) and 10". It's not like this game wasn't showing it's age already. If CD Projekt Red is content to just let it die, then I don't expect AMD to spend time supporting such an old title for such a small group of people.

    I wish we didn't have issues like this and I hope that it can be fixed, but I can accept AMD's position and I understand if it can't be fixed. It's not the end of the world, and I can go back to a driver that does work if I have this issue. I would be nice of them to acknowledge the incompatibility, and list it as a "known issue".
     
  7. Romulus_ut3

    Romulus_ut3 Master Guru

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    I did clearly say "if" in the unlikely event of AMD decides to abandon DX9 game support, (which some people in the thread are saying that they should) it could lead to such issues in the future.

    Not the same issue. A game crashing at a fixed part due to memory/OS incompatibility on a range of software/hardware combination, and games based on a certain API refusing to execute due to a driver update are two different things.

    There will always be issues like these and opinions on the matter will differ.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2018
  8. MerolaC

    MerolaC Ancient Guru

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  9. Truder

    Truder Ancient Guru

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  10. THEAST

    THEAST Guest

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    After all the backlash, this is far from surprising.
     
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  11. LocoDiceGR

    LocoDiceGR Ancient Guru

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    Last edited: Jan 2, 2018
  12. OnnA

    OnnA Ancient Guru

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    Terry Makedon‏ @CatalystMaker
    "Happy 2018 everyone!! I am seeing some stories pop up about AMD not supporting some old games. That is absolutely not true, we are identifying the bug and working on a fix asap. C&C, Witcher, BfME, etc will be working again."

    Besides, my all Old Games (including old DX wrapper EMUs) working OK.
    Today i've played some Rygar /Argus no senshi , and Bomb Jack + some Amiga stuff like Shadow of the beast & HoMM III/IV & V TotE....

    I have bigger problems with compatibility with my Diamonds :D
    The 1440p 16:9 10Bit monitor /& 5.1 Setup
    lol
    not the Mighty Fiji w/Adrenaline drivers...


    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2018
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  13. Romulus_ut3

    Romulus_ut3 Master Guru

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    Well, that was fun while it lasted. It did however show the true colors of some people who thought that DirectX 9 is irrelevant.
     
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  14. Maddness

    Maddness Ancient Guru

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  15. Mike Z

    Mike Z Guest

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    Their drivers were always weak. I remember for a year or so they didn't have color saturation available. I remember years ago they had no VSYNC controls or they didn't work.

    Not caring about their customers being able to play DX9 games is an insult. So, what? I couldn't play GTA IV on an AMD GPU??
     

  16. Agonist

    Agonist Ancient Guru

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    Ok Nvidia user.
     
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  17. Romulus_ut3

    Romulus_ut3 Master Guru

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    Blockchain Pioneer spotted.
     
  18. S3r1ous

    S3r1ous Member Guru

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    Heres something strange i immideatly noticed after switching to AMD after being a long time NVIDIA user..
    with AMD the thing(settings) will either work or not, usually no issues, but hard to tell a difference unless testing extensively
    with NVIDIA its the opposite, everything will work, but you get visual glitches galore, so you need to get compatibility bits right

    hmm
     
  19. HK-1

    HK-1 Master Guru

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    @ S3r1ous realy sometimes I have nostalgia of voodoo times :rolleyes:
     
  20. Romulus_ut3

    Romulus_ut3 Master Guru

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    I wouldn't exactly call it that. AMD Reps have this habit of giving out stupid responses. You might be thinking I am saying this without any proof to back this up. So let's have a look at a more recent response from ray_m.

    Our very own @z8373767 decided to inquire at AMD's official community whether it was possible for the R9 Fury line up of cards to receive the HBCC feature. Note, you can read this long ass wall of text of a post without clicking any spoilers, but the images within the spoilers are used as a safeguard in this particular case as I have had the nasty experience of getting booted out of forums due to people (representatives of popular manufacturers.. cough..) simply editing their previous statements, and leaving one such as me with no proof to back my claims up. Here is the reply he received:

    [​IMG]

    For those of you who are too lazy to click spoilers, I'll quote him here:

    Source: Here.​

    Is it just me or the wording used by ray_m sounds kind of like the R9 Fury could "potentially" have the HBCC feature, but it won't be added just because it's old? Now some of you might say that "HBCC" is a VEGA hardware thing. I am sure, it probably is. But instead of saying so, why did he have to say it like that? It isn't too far off from the response he gave regarding the DX9 game issues, and a point to be made, the thread got locked in a similar fashion.

    Some of the more devoted AMD fans in this section of the forum might think I am getting ahead of myself with this. Then let's take a trip down memory lane.

    On the 5th December, 2015, AMD released their first major yearly driver overhaul, known as the AMD Catalyst Omega. It came with a number of bug fixes and some added features, one of them was VSR aka Virtual Super Resolution. I'll quote exactly what AMD says at their Site in Catalyst Omega's release notes:

    Virtual Super Resolution (VSR):

    Render games at higher resolution and display them at lower resolution. Up to 4k quality gaming on 1080p HD displays

    • Smoother textures and edges
    • Game and Engine agnostic solution
    • Simulates Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) for games that don't support it
    • Enabled through AMD Catalyst™ Control Center
    • Select higher resolution in-game settings
    • Available on AMD Radeon™ R9 290 series, and AMD Radeon R9 285 GPUs
    [​IMG]
    The first thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the fact that the R9 290/R9 290X cards do not have 4K VSR support, whereas the much inferior R9 285 (and theoretically the R7 260X) has it. AMD says that it's due to some hardware limitations. And as you may have noticed, that the HD 7000 cards are completely absent at the time. Some of the more devoted AMD fans argued that the HD 7000 series of cards simply don't possess the horsepower to drive past 1080p resolution, which isn't wrong for DX11 games, but then the question that comes to one's mind: why was the R9 285 with 2GB VRAM, given the ability to VSR up to 4K?

    Now let's fast forward to March 21,2015, after a blackout of three months from Catalyst Omega, finally the " AMD Catalyst 15.3 Beta Driver for Windows OS" was released. Here is a what an AMD rep had to say about VSR support on HD 7000 series of cards in the discussion thread of the aforementioned drivers:

    [​IMG]

    Again, for those of you who are not really wanting to click Spoilers, or find the cropped image blurry, unreadable..

    To which a user from this very forum responded:

    Clearly @Michalko is overreacting, correct? He has no notion of the technical limitations that are involved.

    As it was explained later:

    [​IMG]

    Again, for those of you who are not really wanting to click Spoilers, or find the cropped image blurry, unreadable.. here's the quote:

    Okay.. seems legit. And but there's more where that came from:

    [​IMG]

    Again, for those of you who are not really wanting to click Spoilers, or find the cropped image blurry, unreadable.. here's the quote:

    So at this point, it is pretty evident from what that:
    • VSR support won't be coming to the HD 7000 series
    • The R9 270/270X/280/280X cards will have VSR support through "additional methods"
    • The R9 270/270X/280/280X cards have board and BIOS level differences compared to their HD 7000 counterparts
    • The HD 7970 (and supposedly the HD 7950, HD 7870, and HD 7700) are incapable of VSR as the scaler it has isn't capable.
    That was all fine and dandy, till the 24th of March, 2015, exactly 3 days after the release of Catalyst 15.3, this happened:

    A modified driver allowed 4K VSR on R9 290 cards, and brought VSR and other features to HD 7000 cards, which seemingly was not possible, and initially declared won't be supported by an AMD rep.

    A couple of months later, on the 8th of July, with the release of AMD Catalyst 15.7, AMD brought VSR support to it's HD 7000 series and the rest of the R7/R9 200 lineup, with still the (artificial?!) limitation on 4K resolution for R9 290/290X cards and the others.

    [​IMG]

    If it wasn't for that modded driver that allowed VSR on HD 7000 series of cards, there is a good chance that these cards, despite being perfectly capable, wouldn't have gotten VSR due to AMD's incompetence. As the modded driver proved, these magical scalers aren't needed for cards to do VSR, and with the same tweaks, even older cards like the HD 5000 and the HD 6000 could do it too, and to this date, the R9 290/290X cards aren't allowed to VSR up to 4K. The same is applicable to AMD's R9 390/R9 390X. I wonder why AMD decided to rebadge the Hawaii chips with slightly better yields with 8GB of VRAM buffer if they had no plans to give it 4K VSR capabilities? GeDoSaTo is a 3rd party app that has to inject code into an executable, and it always doesn't work as intended. I can't get it to work with Assassin's Creed II despite Durante claiming it works for him. Had AMD provided 4K VSR support, I wouldn't be needing to plug a nvidia card into my system just to enjoy an old classic at unprecedented visuals, for example. Carelessness is how AMD loses consumers, and the attitude from their "devoted" fan base doesn't help consumers either.

    It is safe to assume, that ray_m's response could've been AMD's official stance on the matter, had the user who created the topic didn't bring it to light on Reddit. I knew that the bugs are going to get fixed, and I knew that the response from ray_m was simply wrong, but it only got AMD's attention faster after the Tech Press jumped in on reporting the issue. Even during this, there were tons of consumers who doesn't care about anything but their own selfish needs started to deem DX9 game support as irrelevant, going as far as to blame the game developers for it and not AMD.. for an issue that only reared it's head only after the Adrenalin Drivers were released, not before that. There are almost three times the number of games that're running on DX9 out there compared to DX11, and this whole ordeal only shows how Dysfunctional AMD's official community is, as far as communicating with different segments of it's own team goes. The green team in recent times, only got caught with it's pants down with the GTX 970 that shipped with 3.5 GB+0.5 GB of VRAM configuration, which the consumers weren't aware of at launch. They did offer people refunds, and the amount of people who refunded their cards were too far, and too few. AMD cashed in on the situation with a promotion called "4GB means 4GB" but had forgotten the wide number of consumers who returned their R9 290/290X cards due to the sleep bug that AMD couldn't get their head around in the first 7 odd months after these cards were released, and ended up returning it.

    I can go on about how VEGA Frontier Edition, being dubbed as the Scientific card initially is now being touted as the Blockchain Pioneer, bait and switch pricing of VEGA cards, the R9 Fury X being referred as the overclocker's dream(!?) as far as PR BS'ing goes. Not to mention the $30 Million Settlement with investors. Though the RX 560 thing isn't entirely AMD's fault.

    One last quote to round it all off:
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2018

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