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**THE AMD DRIVERS THREAD**
- Thread starter pgi947
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I went from CF 7950s with noticeable micro stutter to CF290s with almost zero micro stutter apart from in Far Cry 3.
Although I did move to a 120hz screen at the same time but don't think that would eliminate micro stutter... maybe someone knows?
The 290s are simply smoother.
Associate
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How is that?
Associate
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Yeah how is that ?
Tbh Ive never really experienced micro stutter, so i dont know exactly what it looks like
Soldato
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Do you think that's because the frame pacing drivers just got it spot on as HardOcp now think Amd 290x cf/tf/qf is the smoothest experience you can get. For years they thought Sli was much better and even when the frame pacing drivers came along Sli was still better. When the 290x arrived there tune changed so that would have me believe it was the new tech and not the drivers.
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I think it is down to the drivers
There was a big change when the framepacing drivers arrived on my 7970s in cf.
It is not a game but the best example I have seen of them working is going round the Heaven 4 bench on the 7970s with and without the framepacing drivers.
With 3 cards (290s) it can run better than CF but again I don't think it is the drivers, with the GPU grunt available it means you can run max settings which keeps the min and max fps close to the average (it is a bit like using Mantle).
With 4 cards it can work like I have described above for 3 cards but even better or it can be quite bad where the drivers cause problems Tomb Raider is very bad with loads of microstutter (remedy turn off a card).
As to comparing to NVidia I don't find there is any difference using 1, 2 or 3 cards both them and AMD perform very similar and I would be surprised if most people could tell the difference. With 4 cards NVidia is better but again I think a lot of this is a hardware thing, @4K the 6gb memory they have give them a huge advantage as in most situations they don't get close to using it all. I suspect that if you could get four 8gb 290Xs on the same mobo it would be the same.
One thing that is a big no no with more than 2 cards and review sites do it a lot is to run with the same settings they would use for a single card, this means you get huge swings between min and max fps where the CPU can't cope (whatever oc you use) and it looks crap as a result. Far better to use max settings and run your CPU @4.0ghz and in most cases things look better.
Soldato
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So basically you would say that Vram is just about the only differential these days if it's a factor. It means both companies are doing pretty well support wise, where as AMD were lagging behind for a while. Did you notice stutter a lot more before frame pacing and was it that bad you would not game on you AMD system?
I am not that sensitive to stuttering unless it is very obvious.
With 1, 2 or 3 cards I don't find any difference between NVidia and AMD
With 4 cards NVidia are a bit better with the drivers but AMD have caught up a lot with support for a lot more games and benches.
The other problem with 4 cards is it is difficult to tell even if the drivers have support for that many cards unless you are using 1600p or better still 4K to remove the CPU bottleneck, quite often the support has been there in the past but the review site have used a 1080p based system to review on.
after a lot of testing it seems it's the memory on the card. if i underclock just the memory on the card to 1150mhz it doesn't seem to crash to a black screen when the gpu core temp got over 70c. I've had a game running for about 30 minutes without crashing so far and the gpu core temp was at 81c. So maybe there's something wrong with the memory chips on the cards or the memory chips are having trouble handling 1350mhz at high temps (on these powercolor 290x pcs+ cards
anyway Bailey has offered to do a straight replacement on it for me meaning no testing. which i think thats very nice of him to do that...
i just hope not all powercolor 290x pcs+ cards have this issue
Soldato
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I've been using Profiles to switch between 4 separate screens, and 3x1 merged and a separate, for ages on Windows 7 without issues. I've changed to Windows 8.1 this weekend, and once I'd set up CCC and my profiles, it's working flawlessly on that too. What issues are you having mate?
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I am running profiles in 8.1 with 3 screens and it seems ok atm
Does anyone disable ULPS when running in crossfire? I have had a couple of blue screens on the windows desktop since I put in the second card. I think it relates to the low power mode it puts the second card in. I have now disabled ULPS and fingers crossed not had one since.
Soldato
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I've always run with ULPS enabled (currently 2 x 290's, previously 2 x 7970's) and never had an issue except some monitoring tools not showing stats for the second GPU because they were opened when it was asleep.
I know LtMatt swears by disabling ULPS as the first thing any crossfirer should do, and it has been known to cure all manner of weird and wonderful issues, but personally it's never caused me any hassle and I like the idea of the second GPU turning off when idle, so I leave it on.
I know LtMatt swears by disabling ULPS as the first thing any crossfirer should do, and it has been known to cure all manner of weird and wonderful issues, but personally it's never caused me any hassle and I like the idea of the second GPU turning off when idle, so I leave it on.
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