The AMD Driver Thread

[LtMatt]

Updated the opening posts with the latest 15.4.1 Beta drivers.

 

[LtMatt]

Am I right in saying the new beta doesn't include a fix for the appalling pcars performance Matt?
I wasn't on the pcars beta but have heard old amd drivers worked fine,if so I can't understand after a week why a fix hasn't been possible?

Correct. However we're working on improving our performance on this title tony, so stay tuned!

I was just reading the Release Notes for the AMD Beta drivers.
I notice they refer to a game called "Mortal Combat X".
Is this an actual game or is AMD just so down with the gamers that they haven't learnt the title of one of the biggest fighting games franchises after 10 iterations?

I blame the yanks.

 

[LtMatt]

We have an important update for you about Catalyst Driver support for Project CARS and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Source
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/The-Witcher3.aspx

 

[LtMatt]

BTW what is wrong with Witcher 3? As i've seen in the benches, the 290X is on par with the 970/780Ti

EDIT: ok i see now the hairworks stuff.

Exactly the reason that slider was introduced, to stop things from being needlessly over tessellated in order to cripple performance. This includes things on and off screen.

The link below is worth a read.

Natively HairWorks actually operates at an extremely intensive tessellation factor of 64x which is why the game setting is so demanding even on Nvidia GPUs. Lowering it to 16x and 8x would yield a very marginal reduction in quality and a massive boost to performance. In fact we reckon that while playing The Witcher 3 you will be hard pressed to notice any differences between Tessellation x64, x16 or x8.

Source
http://wccftech.com/amd-announces-w...driver-coming-boost-tessellation-performance/

 

[LtMatt]

So are we getting a witcher 3 crossfire profile soon? If not I'm just going to sell up.

I'm gonna guess that since matt avoided that question above, it's a no.

We always aim to have the latest Crossfire optimisations for launching titles in our latest Catalyst driver.

 

[LtMatt]

So AMD paid EA/dice to use Mantle then?

Nope, that was to bundle their game (Battlefield 4) with our 290X graphics cards when we launched Hawaii back in October 2013.

Can you tell us how much they paid for you to use Mantle?

They wouldn't have to pay us anything to use it, I've been pitching these ideas to any vendor for years

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7437/tim-sweeney-johan-andersson-john-carmack-nv-montreal-live-blog

We listened, we created Mantle.

 

[LtMatt]

Still stutter on gtav xfire 290x's.

Just tried changing pretty much every setting in ccc on them and still stutter.

I've tested GTA V on the following and found all to be extremely smooth with zero microstutter.

7990
R7 260X
R9 285
R9 295x2
R9 295x2 QuadFire
R9 290X 8GB QuadFire

What settings are you using passey?

 

[LtMatt]

I don't know If you accidently missed my post Matt or just skipped it because you can't update me on it?

No further update I'm afraid. Rockstar and AMD are continuing to investigate the issue, it will be fixed either by a future game patch or AMD Catalyst Driver.

 

[LtMatt]

So there is no point in RMAing the card? Ran it on MSI kombustor for 5 hours with no artifacts or tearing.

Basically can you confirm it's definitely a software fault?

Wait for an update.

 

[LtMatt]

Lolive tried pretty much everything.

All settings on high / medium no aa. Vsync off getting 140fps at 4k.

In ccc tried with all the different crossfire settings
Triple buffering on and off
Frame rate on and off
Vsync on and off
Ulps off

Even tried dropping res to 1440p still does it.

Gpu usage will drop to 0% on a card eveynow and then and it stutters.
Happens to card 1 and 2.
Temps are 60c. Vrms 60c.

Disablecrossfire for gtav and theres no stutter at all.

Which 290X 8GB cards are you using?

Can you take a look at this thread and setup gpu overlays? It would be useful if you can take some screenshots when performance drops and stutter occurs so we can see what's happening.

 

[LtMatt]

Ocuk sapphire 8gb reference ones.

Also tried disabling pagefile and ncreing it to 15gb

I have the exact same cards. I've tried Crossfire and Quad and it's perfectly smooth on my system. If you can try what i suggested above that would help, thanks.

I'd recommend leaving the pagefile on Auto, no need to mess with that.

Which OS are you using?

 

[LtMatt]

Last graph is a bit small but the gpu usgae at the end you can see on both cards usage is dropping to 0% at random times

Spoiler

Thanks. Any chance of making the last graph more readable?

Your settings look fine aside from that, so not sure why performance is bad. Does Vsync on or off make any difference?

 

[LtMatt]

Have you tried running the game without you-z running in the background?

Are you clocks static while you play the game?

 

[LtMatt]

Thats it.

GPU-Z. no stutter at all. obv cant check gpu usage but it seemed smooth as butter.

What did you work out was best settings for crossfire 290x's then to stay at 60fps @ 4K?

Enjoy.

Will share my settings tomorrow on my phone at the moment.

 

[LtMatt]

I understand your opinion on the matter but i don't agree, i think Matt needs to be more vocal during times like this as it would reassure us that AMD still care. It's obvious AMD keep Matt on a very short leash which is sad, i'm sure he has every intention of helping us but directing our dissatisfaction at him will hopefully wake up AMD into allowing him to at least be a bit more vocal with us.

Providing reassurances to all those who are unhappy with current state of affairs, you would think that having an AMD rep on this forum would allow him to share some inside info with us. Even if that means what is currently going on with driver development, i'm sure they'll have a target date for getting the new drivers out but probably aren't willing to share it with us.

We definitely do care Benny and rest assured plenty of work is going on behind the scenes, despite various obstacles we have to overcome. As for an update, I have nothing further to add that is not mentioned in the KB we produced last week. Of course, as soon as that changes I'll update here, as i usually do when we release drivers.

 

[LtMatt]

I know you do care Matt. I am happy we have an AMD rep on this forum, i apologise if anything i did say seemed personal. That was never my intention. Just expressing that i'm not happy with the current driver support.

Don't worry i have thick skin, I've been a member here eight years after all.

 

[LtMatt]

Do you have the Witcher 3?

I do, but personally speaking I was not that impressed with the graphics so have not spent much time playing it. It did run fine on a single gpu when i tried it though.

I'm completely hooked on GTA V at the moment so everything else is on the back burner.

 

[LtMatt]

Any discussion with Obsidian to add CF support on Armored Warfare?
Is using the CryEngine after all....

Has the game officially been released, or is it in Beta? If it's Cryengine then I'd recommend trying an existing profile, such as Crysis 3, Ryse Son Of Rome etc.

 

[LtMatt]

Yep working amazing now TBF - insane frame rates using the above suggested settings

May even up the advanced settings see what happens

Glad to hear it.

I keep most advanced settings off, but you can experiment with Long Shadows and Extended Shadow Distance without too much impact on performance. Aside from those though, I'd recommend leaving them off.

These settings work flawlessly for me at 1440P.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

I run the same settings as above at 4K but with AA disabled.

 

[LtMatt]

AMD Catalyst 15.5 Beta Driver for Windows OS out now

Hello everyone,

Click here (www.amd.com/beta) to download the driver.

Highlights:

Crossfire Profiles updates for:
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Performance Improvements for the following:
• The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt: Up to 10% performance increase on single GPU Radeon R9 and R7 Series graphics products
• Project Cars - Up to 17% performance increase on Radeon R9 and R7 Series graphics products

Known Issues:
• The Witcher 3 - Wild Hunt: Crossfire users may experience poor performance or random flickering. As a workaround we suggest disabling Anti-Aliasing from the game’s video - post processing settings. If the issues persist further, we suggest disabling Crossfire while we continue to work with CD Projekt Red to resolve this issue.
• Project CARS: Corruption may be observed if Anti-Aliasing is set to DS2M. As a workaround we suggest using a different Anti-Aliasing setting.


Please refer to the Release Notes for more information.


For instructions on how to uninstall or install the AMD Catalyst Software Suite, you may refer to the following support resources:

• How-To Uninstall AMD Catalyst™ Drivers From A Windows® Based System
• How-To Install AMD Catalyst™ Drivers For A Windows® Based System

Please make sure to read the Known Issues sections to learn more about this version of the driver and use the Issue Reporting Form to report any bugs – Thank you!

Optimizing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Performance on AMD Radeon™ Graphics

Further to installing Catalyst 15.5 Beta, there are additional manual steps AMD Radeon™ customers can take to improve the performance of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Please refer to the following KB support page in order to ensure you get the best possible experience in The Witcher 3.