7950: Laggy cutscenes?

internetlad

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Jan 23, 2011
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So kind of an odd issue I've noticed, and I just wanted to see if this was a known issue with a fix, an unknown issue, or just something you have to live with.

My specs
i5-2500k
8gb Kingston HyperX Ram (probably 1600, I can't remember)
7950 Sapphire

Everything stock clocks.

I'm fairly happy with my card thus far, had it around a month now, give or take a week, but a couple things I've noticed that are worrying.

99.9 of the time I can play a game completely free of graphical glitches, but on DOTA 2, XCOM and a couple time on Far Cry 3 I've had a funky line flash across my screen, like a texture stretching out for a split second to another point on the map. this happens maybe once in every 4 hours. The most reliable way I found to recreate this is on the XCOM bunker screen, if you move your mouse quickly from the center, over near to the bottom left, it tends to happen fairly consistently. Is this a driver bug, a software glitch, or is my card defective? I haven't OC'd it, so everything is still stock and fully warrantiable.

Second issue is that during gameplay in XCOM and Sleeping Dogs (hd texture pack) I can play completely maxed out, but as soon as a cutscene hits, noticeable and considerable slowdown. Game runs at maybe 15-20 FPS

Again with XCOM, In the cutscene with Bradford, Vahlen an Shen talking about the outsider crystal I had captured, the screen was slowly panning away from one character and over to another, and there was noticeable choppiness througout. As soon as it goes back to the screen with the little globe and the hologram Skyranger flying back to base, buttery smooth. Back to the cutscene with the Skyranger landing, noticeable choppiness.

What's the deal with that? Are the cutscenes simply FMV's created for the 360 that only run at ~20-30 fps because they figure 360 owners don't care, and my GPU isn't doing any heavy lifting at all? Do cutscenes render differently than regular gameplay and it's taxing my GPU?

Thanks for the help up front, look forward to hearing from you guys!
 
I always have Vsync enabled because screen tearing drives me bonkers.

I used the Catalyst uninstall and installed the (then?) latest drivers when I swapped my 4870 for my 7950. I'm not sure if more recent drivers have been released in the last 3 weeks.
 
Bit of an update on this. The problem seemed slightly alleviated when I forced Vsync in the CCC. Not sure if it's all in my head or what.

I tried to put a light overclock on the card, but if I even push it from 925 to 950 (most people cite than they can get up to 1400 on stock voltage) furmark falls on it's ass and starts to choke hard. It'll stutter badly every second. (run smooth for maybe 700 ms, then a 200ms or so freeze, repeating more frequently the hotter the card gets, up to 60c

Did I basically score a card that is incapable of OCing, or am I doing it wrong? I tried the OC with CCC but also have Kombustor installed, so I could try that as well. Don't see why it would make a difference though.

UPDATE: Tried running the Unigene Heaven benchmark at both stock and moderate overclock settings (1100/1400 up from 925/1250)

Weird thing is, even though with the overclock it was 3FPS "faster" it was noticably choppier with occasional rubberbanding. For example when it does the pass by the airship, the fins and propeller are very close to the camera. At stock they're smooth, but with the OC you can see them move frame by frame. Maybe i'm reading into it to much, but that doesn't seem to add up.
FYI i'm using the latest stable drivers, but I could shoot for the beta if we think it will help.