The AMD Driver Thread

LoadsaMoney · 25 Jan 2016 at 15:55

I thought DX12 changed SLi and Xfire ?

TonyTurbo78 · 25 Jan 2016 at 16:05

borley said:
Over the years i have had many AMD cards but the nightmares people seem to have with crossfire has convinced me to never go crossfire. AMD must lose a lot of sales due to this!

I've been with AMD for a very long time, maybe 10 plus years, last Nvidia card I had was a 6800GT and from about 2012 I've been using a crossfire setup. Firstly it was 7950's, then middle of last year I went to a couple of 390's. In the past crossfire was flawless, such a good setup for the buck and on the whole trouble free. Then came the start of the problems, bad drivers, no profiles around November 2014 and for about 5 months things were particularly poor. Things did improve again but I feel these last few months have been very poor again. So much so that I've just about had it with AMD, and definitely with multi gpu setups. Next upgrade for me will more than likely be Nvidia, unless AMD do something good with DX12 and these cards that is.

The thing that seriously annoys me is the false advertising to crossfire and or sli. We get all these great motherboards that advertise crossfire and sli, we get plenty of dual gpus, we get endless spiel from the companies about great multi gpu support, yet games come along and they are nothing but unsupported POS now. If it's not one thing, it's something else, you now spend more time trying to find profiles that semi work and drivers that are working correctly than playing games. I feel I'm forever studying overlays these days scratching my head why my clocks are fluctuating, or why my 2nd card is sat at 300mhz doing naff all.

Overall it's now at a point where I'm pretty much ready to sell 2 390's with waterblocks and a Freesync screen because I'm fed up with the constant issues and faffing around.

red eye · 25 Jan 2016 at 17:45

siege2 said:
https://community.amd.com/thread/191772

Thanks, ill try looking in game profiles to see where the x fire switch is

TheRealDeal · 25 Jan 2016 at 17:50

TonyTurbo78 said:
I've been with AMD for a very long time, maybe 10 plus years, last Nvidia card I had was a 6800GT and from about 2012 I've been using a crossfire setup. Firstly it was 7950's, then middle of last year I went to a couple of 390's. In the past crossfire was flawless, such a good setup for the buck and on the whole trouble free. Then came the start of the problems, bad drivers, no profiles around November 2014 and for about 5 months things were particularly poor. Things did improve again but I feel these last few months have been very poor again. So much so that I've just about had it with AMD, and definitely with multi gpu setups. Next upgrade for me will more than likely be Nvidia, unless AMD do something good with DX12 and these cards that is.

The thing that seriously annoys me is the false advertising to crossfire and or sli. We get all these great motherboards that advertise crossfire and sli, we get plenty of dual gpus, we get endless spiel from the companies about great multi gpu support, yet games come along and they are nothing but unsupported POS now. If it's not one thing, it's something else, you now spend more time trying to find profiles that semi work and drivers that are working correctly than playing games. I feel I'm forever studying overlays these days scratching my head why my clocks are fluctuating, or why my 2nd card is sat at 300mhz doing naff all.

Overall it's now at a point where I'm pretty much ready to sell 2 390's with waterblocks and a Freesync screen because I'm fed up with the constant issues and faffing around.

Tbh i would keep what you have or drop to one card. It appears to be the games as Sli users are also having issues. If it's not the games then both companies have dropped the ball at the same time.

russ21282 · 25 Jan 2016 at 18:01

russ21282 said:
It turns out it was the drivers. I've rolled back to 15.7.1 and everything's ok again now. It became unbearable in CS:GO last night, the flickering was every couple of seconds.

It actually turns out that it wasn't the drivers after all. A couple of days ago it started black screening and flickering again with the catalyst drivers. I switched ports on the card and i've only had it happen once so far. I upgraded to the Crimson Hotfix drivers again and it's been ok so far.

After all this talk of cables, i've ordered a new DP cable to hopefully fix or rule it out.

Nexus18 · 25 Jan 2016 at 18:22

TheRealDeal said:
Tbh i would keep what you have or drop to one card. It appears to be the games as Sli users are also having issues. If it's not the games then both companies have dropped the ball at the same time.

This. Both sides are crap when it comes to 2+ GPU support

Batman arkham knight - no support at all
just cause 3 - engine doesn't support it
fallout 4 - even nvidia didn't have proper support for a few months
assassins creed syndicate - doesn't/didn't scale well with SLI

Those are nvidia gameworks sponsored titles too lol....

The list goes on.

Mauller · 25 Jan 2016 at 18:41

LoadsaMoney said:
I thought DX12 changed SLi and Xfire ?

It does, but the developer has to explicitly write MGPU support into their engine. which means choosing what type of MGPU system they will use and up to how many cards they will support.

In the end it means performance is far better than the current hacked on top of DX MGPU that we have now.

Dave2150 · 25 Jan 2016 at 18:47

TBH I really wish there was a seperate GPU forum for Crossfire/SLI.

It's very annoying when threads become cluttered with MGPU problems. Of course there are problems, less than 1% of PC gamers use MGPU. What developer in their right might will spend money to make it run properly?

Then average joe comes along and reads these threads, assumes there are widespread driver problems, hence the driver bashing begins.

AMD/NVIDIA drivers are rock solid for single cards, as they have been for many years.

GoogalyMoogaly · 25 Jan 2016 at 19:12

Dave2150 said:
TBH I really wish there was a seperate GPU forum for Crossfire/SLI.

It's very annoying when threads become cluttered with MGPU problems. Of course there are problems, less than 1% of PC gamers use MGPU. What developer in their right might will spend money to make it run properly?

Then average joe comes along and reads these threads, assumes there are widespread driver problems, hence the driver bashing begins.

AMD/NVIDIA drivers are rock solid for single cards, as they have been for many years.

Damned enthusiasts posting on an enthusiast's forum...
What is it with people with multi-GPUs and those that overclock!

kration · 25 Jan 2016 at 20:30

GoogalyMoogaly said:
Damned enthusiasts posting on an enthusiast's forum...
What is it with people with multi-GPUs and those that overclock!

I agree with the OP. The multi-GPU issues and frustrations seem to dominate the GPU driver debates.

When I've had a driver query I tend not to post on this forum as it just gets lost in the multi-gpu noise...

shankly1985 · 25 Jan 2016 at 20:50

It would be nice if the driver section had sub sections for Multi-GPU etc

Blackjack Davy · 25 Jan 2016 at 20:58

russ21282 said:
It actually turns out that it wasn't the drivers after all. A couple of days ago it started black screening and flickering again with the catalyst drivers. I switched ports on the card and i've only had it happen once so far. I upgraded to the Crimson Hotfix drivers again and it's been ok so far.

After all this talk of cables, i've ordered a new DP cable to hopefully fix or rule it out.

What card are you using and are you overclocking it? The Fury will black screen if its overclocked and/or the voltage is too low its possible if the card is factory o/c'd it needs a extra bit of voltage to make it stable.

GoogalyMoogaly · 25 Jan 2016 at 21:24

shankly1985 said:
It would be nice if the driver section had sub sections for Multi-GPU etc

Maybe we could just start separate threads for Nvidia SLI (drivers?) and AMD Crossfire (drivers?), not sure if the mods would be ok with that?

Maybe also threads for those with overclocks? Although doing overclock thread for single and multi GPU for both AMD and Nvidia might get silly.

Dave2150 · 25 Jan 2016 at 21:31

GoogalyMoogaly said:
Maybe we could just start separate threads for Nvidia SLI (drivers?) and AMD Crossfire (drivers?), not sure if the mods would be ok with that?

Maybe also threads for those with overclocks? Although doing overclock thread for single and multi GPU for both AMD and Nvidia might get silly.

Overclocks don't need their own threads, since overclocking is very much supported/problem free on AMD as well as NVIDIA.

Dave2150 · 25 Jan 2016 at 21:31

shankly1985 said:
It would be nice if the driver section had sub sections for Multi-GPU etc

Would be great tbh.

GoogalyMoogaly · 25 Jan 2016 at 21:38

Dave2150 said:
Overclocks don't need their own threads, since overclocking is very much supported/problem free on AMD as well as NVIDIA.

I'm not thinking just for problems though. Maybe some drivers are better than others for overclocking, maybe some 3rd party software is better than others. Perhaps general benchmarking. And just general overclocking talk/questions.

TonyTurbo78 · 26 Jan 2016 at 08:05

Dave2150 said:
Would be great tbh.

Where would you stop though, we would end of having sub forums for everything if we take that route. A sub forum for each different gpu because we all know issues can be different from one card to the next. Wouldn't stop there though, imagine the motherboard thread haha.

I'm joking of course.

nashathedog · 26 Jan 2016 at 11:28

UTmaniac said:
50-50, there either will be a profile, or not.

Seeing as it sounds like it's a bit like what Far cry 4 was to Far cry 3, ie: a re skinned new storyline build with only a few significant changes on basically the same base I'd gues that if there's a profile for Tomb Raider there should be for this.

KaRLiToS · 26 Jan 2016 at 14:19

People whine about no crossfire profile but they forget about optimze 1x1 and AFR Friendly. These options work 3 times out of 5.

I am on 15.6 with no crossfire profile for Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain and with optimize 1x1 it works.

TonyTurbo78 · 26 Jan 2016 at 16:24

KaRLiToS said:
People whine about no crossfire profile but they forget about optimze 1x1 and AFR Friendly. These options work 3 times out of 5.

I am on 15.6 with no crossfire profile for Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain and with optimize 1x1 it works.

but how often does it work flawlessly? not very. You either get flickering textures or really bright graphics.