RadeonPro - How To Remove Micro stutter & Improve Frame Latency

LtMatt · 25 Mar 2013 at 16:06

waspy88 said:
Cheers for taking the time to set this up mate.
Much appreciated

Happy to help GCN brothers throughout the world.

borley said:
Very nice guide Matt will give it a go later

Atta boy.

PaulyD said:
Excellent, thanks for the clarification

I really noticed it in BC2 on my old 570. I used Nvidia Inspector (I think that is what it is called - RadeonPro for NV basically) with a similar setup and this removed all input lag but still kept it silky smooth with no tearing.

Have since done this setup for every game I play with no issues

Yes i used to just use afterburner to limit fps but this way is more effective.

Locky said:
hmmm bf3 doesn't even load if I use radeon pro.

Are you using msi afterburner? RadeonPro will not load BF3 if you have afterburner running. Shut down afterburner, load bf3, as its loading in the taskbar start up afterburner again. Now you can use afterburner with its overlay and radeonpro. Its something to do with the overlay+ afterburner. You might find this in other games so watch out for it. So far only BF3 has had this problem for me. The same applies for fraps, teamspeak etc.

up2nogooduk · 25 Mar 2013 at 19:13

I Was hoping this would work on rfactor 2

but makes it worse, gives me more micro stutters, and in rf1.. strange!! so I have to use just Dynamic with 60hz refresh rate! but when it goes below 55 I get tearing..

LtMatt · 25 Mar 2013 at 19:15

up2nogooduk said:
I Was hoping this would work on rfactor 2 but makes it worse, gives me more micro stutters, and in rf1.. strange!! so I have to use just Dynamic with 60hz refresh rate! but when it goes below 55 I get tearing..

Do you have crossfire and what's rfactor?

up2nogooduk · 25 Mar 2013 at 19:37

LtMatt said:
Do you have crossfire and what's rfactor?

rFACTOR 1 and 2 are sim car racers

I just worked out that if I have dynamic frame rate control set to 59 58, I get micro stutters, also the same if I tick flip que size and change it to 1.

So i have to untick flip que size, and set dynamic frame rate control set to 60 and refresh at 60. hope this stops the tearing when frame rate goes lower!

I used to use just dynamic with 60hz, that I get tearing when frames go down.

Shall I try different number on the que size

I have a single 7970!

Thanks.

ICDP · 25 Mar 2013 at 19:44

The flip queue size setting in RadeonPro no longer has any effect. The latest AMD drivers lock flip queue size to 3.

Dynamic Vsync automatically enables triple buffering, so don't use it if you can't stand input lag.

up2nogooduk · 25 Mar 2013 at 19:52

ICDP said:
The flip queue size setting in RadeonPro no longer has any effect. The latest AMD drivers lock flip queue size to 3.

Dynamic Vsync automatically enables triple buffering, so don't use it if you can't stand input lag.

What is input lag in your view ?
I tried flip queue size on 5, and was ok.. on 5 or off seems the same to me.
What I hate in the game, is when a lot goes on at once, everything slows and stutters!!

LtMatt · 25 Mar 2013 at 20:59

ICDP said:
The flip queue size setting in RadeonPro no longer has any effect. The latest AMD drivers lock flip queue size to 3.

Do you have any more info about this ICDP? Its just im able to change the flip queue size in farcry 3 and it has a noticeable effect, same with battlefield 3 and the perfoverlayvisible command which shows lots of frame buffering with a high flip queue size such as 3+ etc.

Kmodo · 25 Mar 2013 at 21:06

Do you have to set this up only once? or is there messing about after every driver change?

LtMatt · 25 Mar 2013 at 21:09

Kmodo said:
Do you have to set this up only once? or is there messing about after every driver change?

RadeonPro is separate from the drivers so it should be a once only thing unless you need to make changes.

ICDP · 25 Mar 2013 at 21:30

LtMatt said:
Do you have any more info about this ICDP? Its just im able to change the flip queue size in farcry 3 and it has a noticeable effect, same with battlefield 3 and the perfoverlayvisible command which shows lots of frame buffering with a high flip queue size such as 3+ etc.

I have tested flip queue size using the latest AMD drivers and the preview version of RadeonPro. Flip queue size always made a dramatic effect on most games for me. I recently tested the following two games with all flip queue sizes and saw no difference in frametimes.

Skyrim
Hitman Absolution

Previously I could make both games stuttery messes by setting flip queue anything higher than 1. Now no matter what setting I choose the games show no change.

The loss of the ability to change flip queue occurred for me when I switched to 13.3 beta drivers.

LtMatt · 25 Mar 2013 at 21:32

ICDP said:
I have tested flip queue size using the latest AMD drivers and the preview version of RadeonPro. Flip queue size always made a dramatic effect on most games for me. I recently tested the following two games with all flip queue sizes and saw no difference in frametimes.

Skyrim
Hitman Absolution

Previously I could make both games stuttery messes by setting flip queue anything higher than 1. Now no matter what setting I choose the games show no change.

The change occured for me when I switched to 13.3 beta drivers.

Thanks for the info mate i will look into this and ask Thracks if he can find anything out about it.

What was the last driver revision flip queue worked on?

skyjawa · 25 Mar 2013 at 21:36

I don't have any problems firing up BF3 with Radeon Pro when AB is running - however I don't use AB overlay.......

LtMatt · 25 Mar 2013 at 21:56

skyjawa said:
I don't have any problems firing up BF3 with Radeon Pro when AB is running - however I don't use AB overlay.......

That's most likely why then. I think as soon as you tick it you have problems.

L0rdMike · 25 Mar 2013 at 23:09

Just done exactly what LtMatt posted in the first post and here are the results. from my 5870 XFire.
Standard Crossfire with default settings on TombRaider

Here with all the tweaks

Deffo worth a go if you are using XFire.

tommybhoy · 26 Mar 2013 at 00:54

7950 CrossFire@1200/1500:

Frame times:

7950 CrossFire@1200/1500: RadeonPro Settings:

Any suggestions matt?

LtMatt · 26 Mar 2013 at 07:49

What exact settings did you use tommy in radeonpro?

IRLeetly · 26 Mar 2013 at 15:11

Another great guide LT, will need to finally get those latest beta drivers installed and give the radeon pro fine tuning a go later.

theone8181 · 27 Mar 2013 at 19:36

LtMatt said:
If you're suffering from micro stutter or poor frame latency you can use RadeonPro to improve things, dramatically in some cases. This applies to multi gpu mainly but can also improve performance for single card users as well.

Here are my frame time results for playing battlefield 3.

When i start using RadeonPro though im seeing much more consistent results.

If i can improve single card latency that much with only using one gpu, then you can be sure it will have twice the effect for crossfire.

How To Set It Up

Disable vsync and triple buffering in game. If there is no option to disable triple buffering then assume that having vsync off will automatically disable it.

1. Add the game exe to the RadeonPro profile list.
2. Change Vsync to always on.
3. Tick Triple Buffering. (Crossfire users DO NOT TICK triple buffering - The extra frame buffer will only add latency that will be twice as noticeable on a multi gpu setup)
4. Tick dynamic frame rate control.
5 Put in 1-2 fps below your monitors refresh rate. - Don't forget to put in your monitors refresh rate in the box above, 60 or 120hz.

If you're unable to maintain this fps please use your average, or just below your average fps. Do not go any lower than 45. For best results id recommend a minimum of 50. 58-59 is ideal for 60hz monitors providing you can maintain that fps. 120hz - 60fps or higher depending on the amount of frames you can produce. Multi gpu setups can most likely use a higher fps because they have more grunt.

6. Under advanced tick flip que size and change it to 1.

If you don't wish to use Vsync or don't mind screen tearing then simply untick triple buffering and change vsync to 'Driver Default' in RadeonPro.

If you want to use a Dynamic vsync which will use vsync but the second fps drops below 60 vsync will be auto disabled then select Dynamic from the drop down box.

Other overlays can interfere with RadeonPro and make games crash if you have them running when starting a game. So make sure you shut down afterburner, fraps, team speak etc before you load the game with RadeonPro running. Once the game is loaded you can alt tab out and start up afterburner safely.

I apologise if this has been asked before, but what software do you use to record the framerates?

Cheers

tommybhoy · 29 Mar 2013 at 10:13

^

Fraps, however, that testing methology has been busted wide open, but if your using it to help smooth frame rates:

Use the benchmark function within Fraps:

http://www.fraps.com/download.php

Get FRAFS Bench Viewer to view the results:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/frafsbenchview/

Open FRAFS and drag the Fraps frametimes results from C:\Fraps\Benchmarks directly onto FRAFS.

mcdermotx · 29 Mar 2013 at 12:35

I find RadeonPro useful in some cases, but at times its more trouble than its worth.......can never get Far Cry 3 to start, let alone run acceptable, with RP loaded up.
Excellent for Crysis 3 though.