# AMD to Fix GCN Latency Issues with Driver Updates



## btarunr (Jan 3, 2013)

Last month, an investigative report by _The TechReport_ found out that despite being faster, AMD's Radeon HD 7950 graphics card isn't "smoother" than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti, in that shows signs of higher frame-delivery latency, a theory proven by high-speed camera recordings. Over the holiday, AMD's David Baumann responded in discussions around the web talking about the issue, in which he put AMD's stand.

Apparently, AMD Catalyst drivers still have refinement left in working perfectly with GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture. Baumann explained that GCN, and AMD's older Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architectures feature fundamentally different memory management, and drivers that make the most of it are still a work in progress. Baumann stated "Over the early part of the year you'll see a few driver updates help this across a variety of games."



He continued "Additionally, when we switched from the old VLIW architecture to the GCN core there was a significant updates to all parts of the driver was needed - although not really spoken about the entire memory management on GCN is different to prior GPU's and the initial software management for that was primarily driven by schedule and in the meantime we've been rewriting it again and we have discovered that the new version has also improved frame latency in a number of cases so we are accelerating the QA and implementation of that."

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## Nordic (Jan 3, 2013)

Good. YAY! 

So it was just a memory problem with old code being used? I'll wait until I see a benchmark showing the results of the new drivers. Happy to see my 7970 continually getting better.


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## buggalugs (Jan 3, 2013)

Interesting, this issue has been around for a long time on AMD cards so it will be good if they can fix it. It makes me wonder why it took so long to address it. Dont they test this kind of thing during development?

 Hmmm this could answer the question:

"8) If what we ultimately care about is smooth gameplay, gamers should be demanding frame latency measurements instead of throughput from all benchmarking sites. "

 I guess we all judge cards based on FPS, maybe its time for a new benchmark. It shouldnt be either/or though why cant we have both? FPS and latency?


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## wiak (Jan 3, 2013)

their code monkeys where just monkeying around


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## Jstn7477 (Jan 3, 2013)

I hope they fix all the other issues like desktop flickering and fans cycling on/off every 10 seconds when the monitor is off. Still waiting for Newegg to ship my freakin Accelero Xtreme 7970 that I ordered 4 days ago, as my stock cooler doesn't have busted fans but somehow lost cooling capacity recently. Hitting 90c at stock clocks sucks.


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## SK-1 (Jan 3, 2013)

Well kudos to The TechReport for getting AMD off their butts.


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## RejZoR (Jan 3, 2013)

I just hope these fixes won't incluide just few specific modern games and that would be it. I want a fix that works across all titles and not just cherry picked ones.


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## sergionography (Jan 3, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> I hope they fix all the other issues like desktop flickering and fans cycling on/off every 10 seconds when the monitor is off. Still waiting for Newegg to ship my freakin Accelero Xtreme 7970 that I ordered 4 days ago, as my stock cooler doesn't have busted fans but somehow lost cooling capacity recently. Hitting 90c at stock clocks sucks.



if your hitting 90c then there must be a problem, check the air flow in your case or something


on another note i wonder it all has to do with memory or the shaders
because when the gtx660ti was compared to the 7950 there is one thing that make them a bit different, and thats in the way amd and nvidia made them weaker than the top end parts, nvidia limited memory bandwidth, amd deactivated some of the shaders, meaning nvidias shaders are most likely working at ease because they are capable of rendering more than that they are fed from memory hence the lower latency, while amds shaders have all the bandwidth they need with the shaders maxing out hence the stalls.
i might be totally off on this as im trying to use imagination here lol, but if anyone has any background knowledge on the issue i would love to learn a thing or two


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## Jstn7477 (Jan 3, 2013)

Took my side panel off, no difference. Replaced TIM, no difference. The XFX DD cooler is crap. The 6950 I had before only hit 75c max in the same case and fans.


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## Zubasa (Jan 3, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Took my side panel off, no difference. Replaced TIM, no difference. The XFX DD cooler is crap. The 6950 I had before only hit 75c max in the same case and fans.


The fact that the 7970 has a higher TDP than the 6950 means it requires more cooling.
So the it is normal for the 7970 to run warmer when given the same amount of cooling as the 6950.

In fact a 7970Ghz edition has about 25% higher TDP than the 6950.
The temperature of the 7970 actually corresponds nicely to the increased TDP.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jan 3, 2013)

This won't be a simple or fast process. Half the fixes will need to be per game, the other half will take rewriting fundamental parts of the driver. It could be a year before they make thorough progress. I hope more sites switch to this latency testing focus so that they keep feeling the pressure to fix it.


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## Jack1n (Jan 3, 2013)

Well AMD thanks for remmbering to fix your 7xxx cards with 8xxx around the corner.


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## Deadlyraver (Jan 3, 2013)

I am surprised that AMD hasn't addressed these issues sooner.


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## Ferrum Master (Jan 3, 2013)

Well I also hate the artifacting that is still present in many games... I hope they fix that also soon...


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## sergionography (Jan 3, 2013)

Zubasa said:


> The fact that the 7970 has a higher TDP than the 6950 means it requires more cooling.
> So the it is normal for the 7970 to run warmer when given the same amount of cooling as the 6950.
> 
> In fact a 7970Ghz edition has about 25% higher TDP than the 6950.
> The temperature of the 7970 actually corresponds nicely to the increased TDP.



higher tdp doesnt mean its ok to run hot, it just means it requires more cooling
but yea ive heard about xfx having horrible cooling and fan profiles, so to set it up manualy is usually not a bad idea because anything above 75-80c is way too hot



Jack1n said:


> Well AMD thanks for remmbering to fix your 7xxx cards with 8xxx around the corner.



this isnt about 7000 its about gcn, a totally new architecture since vliw which amd used since the hd 2000 series. in other words every bit of work they put in now will carry on to the next gen parts, however for those complaining IDK what youre complaining about, those who bought the cards knew what they were buying and the performance they expect, and ever since their cards are only getting faster with every driver update, that is free performance so hardly anything to complain about, yes the latency is higher than 660ti, but the games are still pretty darn playable unless your eyes can detect 240hz


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## RejZoR (Jan 3, 2013)

Ferrum Master said:


> Well I also hate the artifacting that is still present in many games... I hope they fix that also soon...



I se that quite often in TES Skyrim. Random flashing triangles.


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## blibba (Jan 3, 2013)

It shouldn't take a Techreport review to make AMD to a decent job with their drivers, but I'm glad they're working on it. Hopefully other sites will drop the misleading FPS benchmarks in the future.


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## Prima.Vera (Jan 3, 2013)

They should do this with older generation also starting with 3xxx series...


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## Ferrum Master (Jan 3, 2013)

RejZoR said:


> I se that quite often in TES Skyrim. Random flashing triangles.



YES exactly, I am just playing Skyrim again too I got the itching feel and worry - maybe my card is bad and so on... but naaah... Mostly DX9 games are plagued... DX11 has it way rarer but has still, for example Farcry3...

There for I don't really know how to OC the card , leaving it stock as I cannot understand where is the safe limit :shadedshu

But Skyrim with all HD textures and AA8 etc mods... man it looks good, and it eats up all 3GB of vram easly even on my 1680*1050 rez...


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## Zubasa (Jan 3, 2013)

sergionography said:


> higher tdp doesnt mean its ok to run hot, it just means it requires more cooling
> but yea ive heard about xfx having horrible cooling and fan profiles, so to set it up manualy is usually not a bad idea because anything above 75-80c is way too hot


90C is actually still within normal operating temperature for a 7970.
There is a difference when the fan profile is optimized for cooling or for noise, and in this case XFX have chosen to reduced noise.
I never said it is OK to run hot, but what I meant was the case's cooling have to be tweaked with the extra TDP as well.
The cooler just moves the heat off the card, but the case need to move the heat outside at an adequate rate as well.


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## Widjaja (Jan 3, 2013)

RejZoR said:


> I se that quite often in TES Skyrim. Random flashing triangles.



One of a handful of people I have seen who have reported this on TPU.
It definitely is there and would have been the cause of any an RMA.

The BETAs have ironed them out for me but seems to have been more reports with people using 79xx series now rather than the 78xx series.
Also noticed the performance issue I was having in NFSMW 2012 and SR3 have been resolved significantly so there have been noticeable improvements since the 12.8 drivers I had been using.

Although I have been noticing more Z-Fighting in the BETAs when it comes to Far Cry 3.


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## SetsunaFZero (Jan 3, 2013)

Zubasa said:


> 90C is actually still within normal operating temperature for a 7970.


this is imo still kind to high



Zubasa said:


> There is a difference when the fan profile is optimized for cooling or for noise, and in this case XFX have chosen to reduced noise.


i can double this, xfx cooling isn't topnosh. My old xfx 6950(dualfan with big heatsink) on PLimit 20% was slightly nosier and with OC to 920MHz i needed to set a custom fan profile or the card would overheat soon under full-load. Temps where around ~72°C

my new asus 7950 directCu2 with triple slot cooler has stable Temps around 65°C with OC at 1200/1400 PLimt 20


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## Jstn7477 (Jan 3, 2013)

Zubasa said:


> 90C is actually still within normal operating temperature for a 7970.
> There is a difference when the fan profile is optimized for cooling or for noise, and in this case XFX have chosen to reduced noise.
> I never said it is OK to run hot, but what I meant was the case's cooling have to be tweaked with the extra TDP as well.
> The cooler just moves the heat off the card, but the case need to move the heat outside at an adequate rate as well.



90c at 3000 RPM is far from quiet, unfortunately.


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## Zubasa (Jan 3, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> 90c at 3000 RPM is far from quiet, unfortunately.


I guess there is something seriously wrong with that card you have 
Have you tried contacting XFX and ask whats the deal?


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## Jstn7477 (Jan 3, 2013)

Zubasa said:


> I guess there is something seriously wrong with that card you have



Yeah, I can't even overclock it anymore now after repasting it because it will suddenly shoot up to 95c if I add a little voltage without clock increase and the PC blanks out. Idle temp is around 40c and BOINC still runs it at 55-60c but fire up Far Cry 3 and the card practically reaches meltdown after a minute or two.


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## Zubasa (Jan 3, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Yeah, I can't even overclock it anymore now after repasting it because it will suddenly shoot up to 95c if I add a little voltage without clock increase and the PC blanks out. Idle temp is around 40c and BOINC still runs it at 55-60c but fire up Far Cry 3 and the card practically reaches meltdown after a minute or two.


What is interesting is I just tested my card with Unigine Heaven turned all the way up, and I am getting 90C @3000RPM as well, but my card isn't crashing at all.
I wonder what actually is the problem that causes your XFX to crash. I have all the cases fans turned down at the moment.

Edit: @1050/1500 it gets up to 96C and the card is still going


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## amdftw (Jan 3, 2013)

I have no latency issues with my 7970.
But i will happy if any performance boost come again.
GTX680 ass kicked for a while, with new driver NV again fall deeper and deeper...


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## TRWOV (Jan 3, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Yeah, I can't even overclock it anymore now after repasting it because it will suddenly shoot up to 95c if I add a little voltage without clock increase and the PC blanks out. Idle temp is around 40c and BOINC still runs it at 55-60c but fire up Far Cry 3 and the card practically reaches meltdown after a minute or two.



Have you tried to change the screws? I've had to change some on my own because the standard screws were longer than needed and the die had poor contact with the heatsink. Even 1/10 of a mm can make a difference in cooling performance.


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## qubit (Jan 3, 2013)

So, the GCN cards have been out for over a year and AMD is only _now_ just starting to get a grip on the drivers?  That's rubbish. The drivers should be pretty much optimised on the day of release, with only a few bugs here and there to fix. They're certainly not getting my money, that's for sure.

I remember when I compared my then current HD 4870 512MB with an old GTX 8800 I got used three years ago, how much smoother and more responsive the nvidia card generally felt even though performance was lower. I see that nothing's changed and I'm sticking to nvidia.


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## Ravenas (Jan 3, 2013)

They need to fix the overdrive features... Occasionally, its gets buggy and you have to uninstall the drivers. On top of that use driver sweeper. Reinstall the driver suite. It works again. AMD needs to fix this.


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## Tonim89 (Jan 3, 2013)

Am I the only Radeon user who never noticed any kind of sttutering?


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## Ferrum Master (Jan 3, 2013)

Ravenas said:


> They need to fix the overdrive features... Occasionally, its gets buggy and you have to uninstall the drivers. On top of that use driver sweeper. Reinstall the driver suite. It works again. AMD needs to fix this.



They haven't fixed it since I owned Radeon 8500/9200 oh pardon... 2600XT?, oh 3850?, oh 4850? nope... was it ever been working like it should?


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## cadaveca (Jan 3, 2013)

SK-1 said:


> Well kudos to The TechReport for getting AMD off their butts.



I doubt it was TechReport alone. the 12.11 betas with big performance boosts say hello, nice to meet you, do you like my memory management?


That's why, I think, this beta is so long in approval...they have to test literally EVERYTHING, since such a change can drastically affect how well things run.


If it's not...well...maybe it WAS them. Funny though, since Microstutter has been complained about for years now, and AMD has finally admitted to it?

That is literally what microstutter is, large variations in render times, which many said they could not detect, so AMD ignored it.

What Tech Report did very well was present this in a way that was very understandable, and with benchmarks. That deserves a pat on the back, for sure.


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## Widjaja (Jan 3, 2013)

qubit said:


> So, the GCN cards have been out for over a year and AMD is only _now_ just starting to get a grip on the drivers?  That's rubbish. The drivers should be pretty much optimised on the day of release, with only a few bugs here and there to fix. They're certainly not getting my money, that's for sure.
> 
> I remember when I compared my then current HD 4870 512MB with an old GTX 8800 I got used three years ago, how much smoother and more responsive the nvidia card generally felt even though performance was lower. I see that nothing's changed and I'm sticking to nvidia.



I agree, regardless of new architecture the drivers should be at an optimal performance without compromises such as noticeable image corruption which has lead to pointless RMAs for some people.

Since I am noticing large improvements since the 12.8s I'm sticking to AMD.
Was pretty close to going to nVidia though near the end of 2012 despite my last nVidia card was a POS.


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## m1dg3t (Jan 3, 2013)

With all the driver problems? ATi has/had at least they never put out a self destruct driver. 

Good job to the people who presented the issue and good job to ATi for stepping up. GCN looks like it's only gonna get much better in the future


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## Nordic (Jan 3, 2013)

qubit said:


> So, the GCN cards have been out for over a year and AMD is only _now_ just starting to get a grip on the drivers?  That's rubbish. The drivers should be pretty much optimised on the day of release, with only a few bugs here and there to fix.



Since when is anything pretty much optimized on release. I will only use games for example. How many patches on average do AAA titles have in their first month of release. Skyrim had 3.


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## Eagleye (Jan 4, 2013)

From TR`s own benches, the 7970 GE is faster and smoother (99% sites confirm this including TR). The 7870 and 7850, 7770 or 7750 is not affected. The only card TR stating is effected is the stock speed 7950 @ 925mhz (overclocked ones have not shown to have problems). The 660TI was the highest clocked card tested against. The games tested were few and BF3 and other major games have not been shown to have any problems but 2 games which are BL and Skyrim (Skyrim doesn’t count since it was run without VSync which breaks the game), so we can assume AMD is faster and smoother apart from the few cherry picked benches TR have shown until otherwise proven or shown. What people forget is; nvidia were not smoother in all the few games tested 

On TR`s site, Amd 6 series were smoother than the nvidia 5 series according to the benches they have, yet we had people saying the nvidia cards were smoother? So which is it? I think it’s all in the head, or people imagining stuff.


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 4, 2013)

Eagleye said:


> From TR`s own benches, the 7970 GE is faster and smoother (99% sites confirm this including TR). The 7870 and 7850, 7770 or 7750 is not affected. The only card TR stating is effected is the stock speed 7950 @ 925mhz (overclocked ones have not shown to have problems). The 660TI was the highest clocked card tested against. The games tested were few and BF3 and other major games have not been shown to have any problems but 2 games which are BL and Skyrim (Skyrim doesn’t count since it was run without VSync which breaks the game), so we can assume AMD is faster and smoother apart from the few cherry picked benches TR have shown until otherwise proven or shown. What people forget is; nvidia were not smoother in all the few games tested
> 
> On TR`s site, Amd 6 series were smoother than the nvidia 5 series according to the benches they have, yet we had people saying the nvidia cards were smoother? So which is it? I think it’s all in the head, or people imagining stuff.



thing is not everyone experienced microstutter, but from sounds the driver probably just needs to be built from the ground up and a separate set be made for GCN and VLIW


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## Prima.Vera (Jan 4, 2013)

I only noticed big stutter on crossfire configs with my 5870/5850. Even if I was running 60+ fps I can feel sometime that is getting sluggish for a fraction of a sec, like the movement is choking, Really annoying especially on car games.


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## qubit (Jan 4, 2013)

Eagleye said:


> So which is it? I think it’s all in the head, or people imagining stuff.



How can it all be in people's heads when AMD's David Baumann confessed to this problem himself, saying it was due to driver issues with GCN?


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## EarlZ (Jan 4, 2013)

At least they are admitting that they have terrible drivers, though this issue has been around for the longest of time. This is actually good news if they can fix this, gives nvidia more reason to lower their card prices


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## Jadawin (Jan 4, 2013)

Now, I don't care about AMD vs. Nvidia or AMD vs. Intel or any of that crap... but if I need a high-speed camera to detect latencies I can't notice on my own and which therefore didn't bother me at all, wouldn't a fix for this "problem" be just as undetectable for me without a high-speed camera? An undetectable fix for a undetectable problems (for most people)?


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## EarlZ (Jan 4, 2013)

Maybe what they ment is that its easily detectable by a high speed camera that AMD's rendering interval is pretty bad. at 60fps with a dual 7950 I can easily feel/notice micro-stuttering even on a single 7950.


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## Fluffmeister (Jan 4, 2013)

qubit said:


> How can it all be in people's heads when AMD's David Baumann confessed to this problem himself, saying it was due to driver issues with GCN?



Denial and brand loyalty is a powerful thing.

Even linking to original article induced rage.


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## Jadawin (Jan 4, 2013)

EarlZ said:


> I can easily feel/notice micro-stuttering even on a single 7950.



Well, THEN it is a real problem for you, no doubt about that. I just wondered because if it would be a huge big problem for everybody, it would have been noticed earlier and would be headlines everywhere. So it's a real problem for people with real good perception.


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## Calin Banc (Jan 4, 2013)

Eagleye said:


> Skyrim (Skyrim doesn’t count since it was run without VSync which breaks the game)



Skyrim was stuttering on my 6970 when the load on the card dropped into some scenes due to v-sync and I think the same issue I'm having with 7950, but a little bit less annoying. 

My last two nVIDIA cards were a couple of GTX470 (not in SLI). I believe that in most of the games that I've put them through, there was some amount of stutter if PhysX or other Cuda functions (JC 2 for instance) were ON. With 5850 + GT240 for PhysX it was smooth as butter, so I suppose it was a problem regarding resource allocation or something like that. BFBC 2 run with less stutter on my 5850 than on GTX470 although the last one gave higher FPS, especially with AA.
Other "weird" experiences were thanks to Ambient Occlusion, in some games with that option activated, it started to lag or stutter like it was a 20-25FPS or worse even though the actual FPS hit 33-35FPS or more, in others, there was no problem. A powerful card/GPU, in the exact same game, gave a better experience where others lag although the difference shouldn't be that high.

Right now with a 7950@1170/1600MHz I feel some lag or stutter in Sleeping Dogs with Extreme AA, The Witcher 2 with US, Skyrim at times, BF 3 under certain settings/maps (6970 was unplayable on Ultra despite it's 40-45FPS), GTA 4, MP 3 with MSAA, Far Cry 3 under 60FPS, Hitman Absolution with high AA levels etc. I think the problem hangs on AMD/nVIDIA heads but also on the game developers hands and how well they optimize the code. It's not that big of a tragedy as long as the stutter can be avoided by turning of a graphic or other kind of option. 

BTW, nVIDIA also had a "stutter problem" with gtx670 and adaptive v-sync I think.

Thankfully AMD is working on a solution for it.


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## Tonim89 (Jan 4, 2013)

Jadawin said:


> Well, THEN it is a real problem for you, no doubt about that. I just wondered because if it would be a huge big problem for everybody, it would have been noticed earlier and would be headlines everywhere. So it's a real problem for people with real good perception.



I keep saying this all time. If it's a big deal, why would it come to discussion only 7 or 8 months after the card was released?

Of course the 7950 had bigger latencies, it was stuck at 850/925 MHz, while the 660 Ti can boost to almost 1100 MHz. The card with higher fps will have the lower latencies...

How can the fps count be higher if the frames comes delayed to the screen? OC Both cards and measure the timings again.


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## Calin Banc (Jan 4, 2013)

Well, you can have 30FPS with 33,3ms needed for render every frame or 45FPS with render time from 5ms all the way to 50ms and so on. MHz/MHz performance is not equal between AMD and nVIDIA, so it's not that the problem. It MAY be, if the core/architecture needs X MHz in order to give constant frame times rate and the card was clocked lower than that to begin with.


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## 3870x2 (Jan 4, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> I only noticed big stutter on crossfire configs with my 5870/5850. Even if I was running 60+ fps I can feel sometime that is getting sluggish for a fraction of a sec, like the movement is choking, Really annoying especially on car games.



I know exactly what you mean, where it kinda slows down (like rubber banding or something) then speeds right back up.  This is not limited to ATI, I first noticed it on Need for Speed games on my x1300 then 7900GS.  This is probably an example of coding being the culprit.


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## Widjaja (Jan 4, 2013)

3870x2 said:


> I know exactly what you mean, where it kinda slows down (like rubber banding or something) then speeds right back up.  This is not limited to ATI, I first noticed it on Need for Speed games on my x1300 then 7900GS.  This is probably an example of coding being the culprit.



I had this with the 12.8 drivers and my current card in NFSMW 2012 and to a degree in Saints Row The Third.
Disappeared in 12.11 BETA 11.


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## xenocide (Jan 4, 2013)

I'm very pleased AMD is finally addressing their Graphics Drivers.  I went with a Kepler GPU because after 2 AMD cards and constant driver issues I wanted something that _just worked_ and Nvidia offered that. :/


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## Eagleye (Jan 5, 2013)

Most will have a different experience by just changing one component between two exact same systems; some people have problems and some don’t with exact same hardware. I can tell you I had a terrible experience with nvidia 670, it was a stuttering mess I tell you. EVGA mass called shipments back because of this (Google it), but that dont mean the same experience for all (as above). Just have a look at the forums below and realize that both are having problems.

Nvidia 600 series
https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/34/geforce-600-series/ 

AMD 7 series
http://forums.amd.com/game/categorie...454&entercat=y


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## qubit (Jan 5, 2013)

Eagleye said:


> I can tell you I had a terrible experience with nvidia 670, it was a stuttering mess I tell you. EVGA mass called shipments back because of this



If EVGA recalled the cards then it sounds like the stutters are due to faulty cards ie bad hardware rather than inherently bad GPUs or drivers.


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 5, 2013)

3870x2 said:


> I know exactly what you mean, where it kinda slows down (like rubber banding or something) then speeds right back up.  This is not limited to ATI, I first noticed it on Need for Speed games on my x1300 then 7900GS.  This is probably an example of coding being the culprit.



Goes back to NFSU and U2, certain points in race event maps they would stutter at the same point all the time


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## erocker (Jan 5, 2013)

I can confirm this issue... Though I found playing Guild Wars 2 to be smooth, here are my results which almost mirror TechReports findings.







Granted I get higher framerates with a 7970 oc'd. You can use FRAFS bench viewer to make these graphs using frametimes from FRAPS. 

Also, the graph doesn't lie however my experience with this card and any game have been a good one and I don't find "smoothness" to be any different from using a Nvidia card.


Get FRAFS bench viewer here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/frafsbenchview/


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## lopane (Jan 5, 2013)

*AMD is not for justin bieber(Love AMD)*

No problem with my 7970 IceQ His, it never heats and yet I also amd fx 8350 and at all as I overclock to 4.6 ghz without any problems and does not heat up that much even with the fan original, the only problem AMD chips currently have drivers ...


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## ...PACMAN... (Jan 5, 2013)

Nice utility erocker, thanks.


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## Widjaja (Jan 5, 2013)

Wondered where this read out came from.

I looked at the youtube latency thing and saw nothing that I can discern as micro stutter.
If so both cards had it and none of them seemed to be worse than the other.
Plus Skyrim does have a micro stutter on Windows 7 even when I use an HD4850 if I don't use windowed mode with SWB mod.

Either way AMD see it to be a serious enough issue and enough to work on it.
Maybe this will resolve the more significant DX9c issue which some people are plagued with still.

Maybe it's certain monitors which bring out the problem more than others?


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## cadaveca (Jan 5, 2013)

Not monitors.

It's due to VGA memory management. It's even worse in crossfire, because the effect doubles, leaving what appears to be worse performance than a single card, even though the actual frame rate is higher.


And frankly, this problem is present in ANY high-end card from AMD, since 2900XT. I can't comment on anything other than high-end cards, because that's all that I have used.

What is even funnier, is that I can run 5760x1200(6912000 pixels) far easier than 2560x1600 (4096000 pixels). This was the key indicator that memory management, to me, was at fault, but since I've brought up this issue for years now, and none have seemed to care, I haven't reported this fact to anyone but a few users here.


How is it possible, that rendering 50% more pixels in Eyefinity performs better than 50% less pixels on a single monitor?





There's more to this than anyone wants to admit, unfortunately. 

Truly, I dunno know WTF is the problem, really, but there HUGE issues here. I almost bought a GTX690, because I'm sick of AMD and their issues as well, but I feel I need I need GTX690 performance because of problems with performance on AMD cards.


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 6, 2013)

Widjaja said:


> Wondered where this read out came from.
> 
> I looked at the youtube latency thing and saw nothing that I can discern as micro stutter.
> If so both cards had it and none of them seemed to be worse than the other.
> ...



Q is why the piss are we still on DX9?


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## qubit (Jan 6, 2013)

eidairaman1 said:


> *Q* is why the piss are we still on DX9?



Hey wut, someone summoned me?


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## Widjaja (Jan 6, 2013)

qubit said:


> Hey wut, someone summoned me?



I thought the Q stood for question.


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## Prima.Vera (Jan 6, 2013)

Guys, just a recommendation. This stuttering issue is more common to Intel processors with Hyperthreading. Try to find a tool that enable parked cores in Windows, this was a big fix for everyone.


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## eidairaman1 (Jan 6, 2013)

qubit said:


> Hey wut, someone summoned me?



nah sorry i was a lil sleepy at time, I meant The QUestion is why are we still on direct X 9C when 11 has been out for 2 years now?



Prima.Vera said:


> Guys, just a recommendation. This stuttering issue is more common to Intel processors with Hyperthreading. Try to find a tool that enable parked cores in Windows, this was a big fix for everyone.



that or just turn off hyper threading


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## Frick (Jan 6, 2013)

Widjaja said:


> I thought the Q stood for question.



Qubit has a big ego.


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## TRWOV (Jan 6, 2013)

eidairaman1 said:


> nah sorry i was a lil sleepy at time, I meant The QUestion is why are we still on direct X 9C when 11 has been out for 2 years now?




This is why:


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## qubit (Jan 6, 2013)

Widjaja said:


> I thought the Q stood for question.





eidairaman1 said:


> nah sorry i was a lil sleepy at time, I meant The QUestion is why are we still on direct X 9C when 11 has been out for 2 years now?



I wuz just messin'! <facepalm>  This qubit kinda wakes up when people stick Q in their sentences, lol.



Frick said:


> Qubit has a big ego.



This ^^


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## SK-1 (Jan 6, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Guys, just a recommendation. This stuttering issue is more common to Intel processors with Hyperthreading. Try to find a tool that enable parked cores in Windows, this was a big fix for everyone.



Looking into this....


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## cadaveca (Jan 6, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Guys, just a recommendation. This stuttering issue is more common to Intel processors with Hyperthreading. Try to find a tool that enable parked cores in Windows, this was a big fix for everyone.



Except me. I even bought a 3570k, a chip with no HT by default, just so I could check into that, and it didn't fix a thing. I tried the same with P55, too bought i5 760 and then i7 870.

What's more interesting is that system memory speed seems to smooth things out a wee bit for me. Like 2400 MHz on IVB and then some.


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## erocker (Jan 6, 2013)

Prima.Vera said:


> Guys, just a recommendation. This stuttering issue is more common to Intel processors with Hyperthreading. Try to find a tool that enable parked cores in Windows, this was a big fix for everyone.



While HT can cause stuttering in some games/applications, it isn't the case here. I've tried testing with HT both on and off and the same results. Granted, I haven't once noticed stuttering and am going by what the frametimes/FRAFS viewer say .


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## qubit (Jan 6, 2013)

erocker said:


> Granted, I haven't once noticed stuttering and am going by what the frametimes/FRAFS viewer say .



It looks to me that if the delay isn't long enough to cause the graphics card to skip a frame then you won't see it?


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## erocker (Jan 6, 2013)

qubit said:


> It looks to me that if the delay isn't long enough to cause the graphics card to skip a frame then you won't see it?



Correct. Generally, one will notice it if it is above 80ms and if a few happen at around the same time. Guild Wars 2 is one of those games that has a large issue with latency, however it still seems rather smooth.


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## qubit (Jan 6, 2013)

erocker said:


> Correct. Generally, one will notice it if it is above 80ms and if a few happen at around the same time. Guild Wars 2 is one of those games that has a large issue with latency, however it still seems rather smooth.



So the problem can be mitigated by throwing lots of horsepower at it, making the overall processing time shorter, thus reducing the "really big" delays, which would tend to show up as little hitches in the movement.

That's not so bad then and helps to explain why AMD didn't bother fixing it for a year. Still naughty of them though, tsk.


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## Calin Banc (Jan 6, 2013)

Not really, it depends. In Skyrim, at least with v-sync ON, more power (meaning less/low GPU usage for 60FPS) usually means more stutter. In some games that works, more power, less lag or stuttering.


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## erocker (Jan 6, 2013)

qubit said:


> So the problem can be mitigated by throwing lots of horsepower at it, making the overall processing time shorter, thus reducing the "really big" delays, which would tend to show up as little hitches in the movement.
> 
> That's not so bad then and helps to explain why AMD didn't bother fixing it for a year. Still naughty of them though, tsk.





Calin Banc said:


> Not really, it depends. In Skyrim, at least with v-sync ON, more power (meaning less/low GPU usage for 60FPS) usually means more stutter. In some games that works, more power, less lag or stuttering.



Calin gives a good answer. I'm going to run a couple "non-intensive" games and see what comes up. AMD states (and I believe them) that this issue has to do with how memory (controller I assume) is being utilized with GCN.


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## radrok (Jan 6, 2013)

Calin Banc said:


> Not really, it depends. In Skyrim, at least with v-sync ON, more power (meaning less/low GPU usage for 60FPS) usually means more stutter. In some games that works, more power, less lag or stuttering.



Yeah I've noticed that, running CFX on Skyrim increases my stuttering notably because the GPU usage on both chips is around 40%.

When running a single GPU it goes up to 80%-90% and it "seems" smooth.

Still can't figure out why quadCFX doesn't work on Skyrim but this doesn't concern this topic.


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## Calin Banc (Jan 6, 2013)

To easily detect stutter in Skyrim (or any other game, more so with v-sync on), in MSI Afterburner use the frametime also, not just the FPS counter. You'll notice how in a room, looking in a certain direction, your render time should be 16,6/7ms or so; looking a little bit to the left or right, the counter should show some odd number by 4 numbers or so, changing rapidly - in a screenshot the frametime number would appear as it was in that instance 30+ms in my case. A solution is to set a FPS limit of 58 in MSI Afterburner. A solid 17,2ms should stay for most part of the game (with some micro second burst, mostly unnoticeable). Maybe someone can test that this limit from MAB could eliminate stuttering from other games also?


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## Calin Banc (Jan 7, 2013)

It looks like limiting your FPS to 59FPS eliminates the stuttering in the games I've played, but of course, it doesn't get rid of the lag. BF 3 at a constant 59FPS and framerendering time is butter smooth. Still, HDAO gives a small amount of lag; not a problem really, it makes the game look worse - SSAO being more than enough.


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## ...PACMAN... (Jan 7, 2013)

Can the CPU used in conjunction with a particular gfx card also have a very detrimental effect with regards latency also? I remember with the same Nvidia card (560 ti) and an AMD processor (phenom II) it had all kinds of weird stutter going on in Mafia 2. With an i5 2500k setup, same HDD, same PSU, same memory it was butter smooth with PhysX enabled throughout the whole game.

Does the CPU memory bandwidth have a major effect? I know it certainly affects Crossfire and SLI setups with regards AMD.


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## Calin Banc (Jan 8, 2013)

If the CPU is slow enough, I suppose it can hinder a card's performance even on that department. As far as I know, Mafia 2 had some special optimization for PhysX to better run on the CPU. i5 being faster (perhaps on some set of special instructions need for that), it may give better results. You should also take into consideration what other programs run in the background.


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## BigMack70 (Jan 17, 2013)

AMD has made good on their promise


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## blibba (Jan 17, 2013)

BigMack70 said:


> AMD has made good on their promise



Skyrim was released 14 months ago, and they've now (somewhat) fixed frame latency issues for one architecture in that game. I'm still not impressed.


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## qubit (Jan 17, 2013)

blibba said:


> Skyrim was released 14 months ago, and they've now (somewhat) fixed frame latency issues for one architecture in that game. I'm still not impressed.



Agreed. If they can get on top of problems like this and then stay on top of them, _then_ I'll be impressed.


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## BigMack70 (Jan 17, 2013)

Well, it doesn't sound like they were even caring to look at these sort of metrics, so I don't know that I blame them for bad performance in them.

Nvidia definitely beat them to the punch on this one (as often seems to be the case with anything driver-related), but it's good to see them "fixing" it so quickly.


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## qubit (Jan 17, 2013)

I don't really like the test methodology that the tech report uses.

Manual playthroughs, even when averaged over several runs are not as consistent as scripted tests, as TR admits. Variations in frame rendering times like we see are exactly the kind of thing you'll get from this way of testing. Still, the result doesn't seem a million miles off.

Must be a pita to manually play the same bit of game over and over, lol.


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## blibba (Jan 17, 2013)

qubit said:


> I don't really like the test methodology that the tech report uses.
> 
> Manual playthroughs, even when averaged over several runs are not as consistent as scripted tests, as TR admits. Variations in frame rendering times like we see are exactly the kind of thing you'll get from this way of testing. Still, the result doesn't seem a million miles off.
> 
> Must be a pita to manually play the same bit of game over and over, lol.



Manual playthroughs vs. automated tests have their advantages and disadvantages, and I think arguments can be made for either.

However, I am entirely sold on frame time testing rather than FPS. I've always considered FPS a misleading metric, and I'm delighted that someone is actually measuring something more meaningful. I no longer need to bother with FPS-based reviews, which is ideal.


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## 3870x2 (Jan 17, 2013)

blibba said:


> Manual playthroughs vs. automated tests have their advantages and disadvantages, and I think arguments can be made for either.
> 
> However, I am entirely sold on frame time testing rather than FPS. I've always considered FPS a misleading metric, and I'm delighted that someone is actually measuring something more meaningful. I no longer need to bother with FPS-based reviews, which is ideal.



It is not more meaningful.  FPS along with frame latency is useful, frame latency on its own is almost useless.

Edit:  In that test, it shows the 660 getting a higher FPS, I thought the 7950 had a higher FPS originally.  it was actually originally less.

This is a very interesting discrepancy:

Tech report:






TechPowerUp!:





How did they get a higher FPS?


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## qubit (Jan 17, 2013)

3870x2 said:


> How did they get a higher FPS?



Running at a lower resolution and/or quality settings perhaps? TPU tests at 1920x1200 and I'll bet TR tested at 1080.


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## blibba (Jan 17, 2013)

Just different in game environments could easily make that difference.

I disagree that frame latency on its own is useless.

Say (plausibly enough) all I'm interested in is whether the game is stuttery to play

If there are no frames that take more than 30ms to render, I know that the game is not stuttery. I don't need any more information.

If, on the other hand, the minimum FPS is 30 but I have no latency metrics, I have no guarantee either way.


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## 3870x2 (Jan 17, 2013)

qubit said:


> Running at a lower resolution and/or quality settings perhaps? TPU tests at 1920x1200 and I'll bet TR tested at 1080.





blibba said:


> Just different in game environments could easily make that difference.
> 
> I disagree that frame latency on its own is useless.
> 
> ...



That is quite a bit of a difference for different environments.  There is too little difference between 1080p and 1200p to make for such a discrepancy.

Also fame latency is great, but what if you have excellent frame latency but only 15 FPS?

I do agree however that frame latency is a great thing to add to FPS benchmarks.


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## blibba (Jan 17, 2013)

3870x2 said:


> Also fame latency is great, but if you have excellent frame latency but only 15 FPS?



That's impossible. If I'm only getting 15FPS, I can't be getting a minimum frame latency lower than 66.6 (1000/15), which is much too high. 

On the other hand, say I render 1 frame in the first minute, and 23,999 frames in the second minute. That's 200FPS across a two minute benchmark. An extreme example, but just to illustrate my point.

Regarding different environments, in a game like Skyrim the load varies hugely from rolling plains to animation-intensive combat to lighting-intensive indoor areas.


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## 3870x2 (Jan 17, 2013)

blibba said:


> That's impossible. If I'm only getting 15FPS, I can't be getting a minimum frame latency lower than 66.6 (1000/15), which is much too high.
> 
> On the other hand, say I render 1 frame in the first minute, and 23,999 frames in the second minute. That's 200FPS across a two minute benchmark. An extreme example, but just to illustrate my point.
> 
> Regarding different environments, in a game like Skyrim the load varies hugely from rolling plains to animation-intensive combat to lighting-intensive indoor areas.



Did TR say specifically why they do free roam rather than a benchmark?  A benchmark would bring these numbers closer together with other benchmarks.


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## blibba (Jan 17, 2013)

3870x2 said:


> Did TR say specifically why they do free roam rather than a benchmark?  A benchmark would bring these numbers closer together with other benchmarks.



The trouble with benchmarks imo is the risk of drivers being optimised for them. I don't know what TR's specific justification is - ask them 



3870x2 said:


> A benchmark would bring these numbers closer together with other benchmarks.



I don't see that this is necessarily a good thing.


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## Calin Banc (Jan 17, 2013)

Skyrim, with some mods. Going from Riverwood to Whiterun, looking around, talking with some people, inventory management and level up, and also some messing around in Dragonsreach. I don't know from where those spikes came up, the game is smooth capped at 59FPS to bypass the silly in-game v-sync. Going under that, to 40+FPS in more heavy scenes, of course it will loose some of the fluency, but that is true for every game out there. Oh, and this is with the old beta driver, 1680x1050, 7950@1170/1600, 2500k@4,5GHz

PS: That site I think it tested the game at 2560x1600 or somth.


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## blibba (Jan 17, 2013)

I suspect a lot of those spikes are from things like opening your menus.


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## jihadjoe (Jan 27, 2013)

I have to agree with blibba here.

Frame latency, even by itself gives you everything you need to know. Aside from the obvious laggy frame, you can easily compute your FPS from the frame time.

For instance, if all frames are rendered within 16ms, then you know that there's no stutter, and you also know that the minimum frame rate is 60fps. If the frame time is 8ms, then you also know the minimum frame rate is 120fps.

Frame time just simply a much more comprehensive measure of performance than FPS. TR is doing something right.


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