AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta Driver Fixes CrossFire Frame Pacing

[N.Broekhuijsen]

AMD has released its new Catalyst 13.8 beta graphics drivers, the main highlight of which is the fix for the frame-latency problems experienced on older drivers.

AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta Driver Fixes CrossFire Frame Pacing : Read more

 

[Parsian]

sweet been waiting for this for a while.

 

[BringMeAnother]

One less thing to sully AMD's driver reputation. Now, changing the public perception is going to take a long long time.

 

[WithoutWeakness]

It's the first step that we've all waited for AMD to take to address this issue but it certainly isn't fixed. This driver revision only introduces Frame Pacing for single-screen setups in DX10 and DX11 titles. Any DX9 or OpenGL titles will still experience issues and any users running Eyefinity setups will not have their issues resolved.

Can't wait to see more developments on this in the future but it's important to keep in mind that the issue isn't totally fixed.

 

[ubercake]

It doesn't fix everything. Won't fix micro-stutter with Eyefinity setups. They are still working on it.

It's good, but they still have a ways to go. Kudos for the bit of progress though. There's a light at the end of this tunnel?

 

[theclouds]

There is always progress to be made. AMD has taken steps in the right direction, it may not have resolved Eyefinity setups but it does help those with one screen, which is the vast majority of users. Although this update doesn't benefit me, since I'm in the other camp (Eyefinity), I'm glad they kept their promise back in April for the July update even if a little late.

 

[Pherule]

So... when is the next stable? Or are we going to be stuck on 13.4 forever?

 

[bryonhowley]

Well these drivers seem OK. But I had not had any stutter problems with either of my Eyefinity Crossfire rigs anyway. I have a FX-8120 with a Crossfire Sapphire HD 7950 and a FX-8350 with a Crossfire Sapphire HD 7970 both rigs with 3 Asus 27" monitors in Eyefinity. These drivers seem OK but I have not seen any real performance increase although that is not bad since I did not have any problems with them at all to begin with. Both of those rigs run games just as good as my i5 3570K SLI Gigabyte GTX 670(Winforce 2) setup.

 

[k1114]

I wonder why tom's just posted it when the driver came out 5 days ago.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

I certainly wouldn't call the problem 'fixed', but the 13.8 beta driver does a lot to help mitigate AMD's frame pacing issues. Anandtech has a review of the new beta drivers:

http://anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing-explorer-cat138

 

[mouse24]

PCper has a good article on this if anyone wants to read more.

 

[vmem]

first big step forward for AMD in mitigating this issue. however, while I understand the complexities involved in fixing this for eye-finity, I am still disappointed that it took them this long, and there's no fix for eyefinity yet. Afterall, a significant portion of the market running cross-fire setups use it for eyefinity. not to mention their own flagship, the 7990, is arguably overpowered for anything besides eyefinity (you still use eyefinity to drive a 4k monitor at 60hz through displayport 😛). so this is definately something they need to fix quickly, and release a stable version of the drivers.

 

[BranFlake5]

This had me very excited at first, but looking into it more, it isn't a complete solution to micro-stutter. I want AMD back in the game to stir up competition. Micro-stutter has given them a bad image. It's progress, maybe AMD can come out on top.

 

[BoredErica]

This has been fixed for dx9 games on single GPU/monitor setups?

 

[dragonsqrrl]

This has been fixed for dx9 games on single GPU/monitor setups?

No, AMD's still working on support for DX9, OpenGL, and Eyefinity.

Edit: wait, single GPU? I wasn't aware of any issue with single GPU DX9. What do you mean?

 

[WithoutWeakness]

This has been fixed for dx9 games on single GPU/monitor setups?

This Beta driver only introduces Frame Pacing for single monitor setups in DX10 and DX11, so DX9 games may still have issues. Single-GPU setups should not have issues with microstutter however. If you have a single-GPU setup there isn't much point to this beta driver as frame pacing isn't an issue for those setups. This change should only affect multi-GPU users.

 

[gsxrme]

My sli 4way GTX295 microshuttering was complete crap. My Sli 2way gtx680 has been flawless since launch. Lets hope the AMD HD9000 series won't release with this bug and screw buyers for years before fix. But grats on you AMD users.

 

[loops]

Tom's...your killing me. This is old news and it is news you all should be on before other sites do a full bench on em.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_summary/amd_framepacing_review_with_catalyst_13_8_fcat.html

 

[loops]

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_framepacing_review_with_catalyst_13_8_fcat,1.html

 

[m32]

I've been using it for a couple of days now. I'm getting better performance (eye test though).

 

[Tanquen]

It don't work and the mouse pointer issue is not fixed and the adds desktop mouse lag. Stay away.

 

[17seconds]

This fiasco has been a real black eye, but AMD fans seem to be surprisingly optimistic and perpetually forgiving.

Surprisingly, microstuttering on single cards does exist. That's actually part of what started this whole storm. Check out the Anandtech article dragonsqrrl listed, and then go to the Tech Report for their "7950 versus GTX 660 Ti Revisited" article. The problem has been mostly fixed, but only for specific games. There is supposed to be a universal fix on the way, but there's no sign of that yet. That one's even more overdue than the Crossfire Frame Pacing driver was.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This fiasco has been a real black eye, but AMD fans seem to be surprisingly optimistic and perpetually forgiving.

Surprisingly, microstuttering on single cards does exist. That's actually part of what started this whole storm. Check out the Anandtech article dragonsqrrl listed, and then go to the Tech Report for their "7950 versus GTX 660 Ti Revisited" article. The problem has been mostly fixed, but only for specific games. There is supposed to be a universal fix on the way, but there's no sign of that yet. That one's even more overdue than the Crossfire Frame Pacing driver was.

The other dayI had a couple of herberts refuse to believe that article existed even though I had linked to it! :lol:

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Was that a press release or an article ? Some objective and detailed reviews below:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing-explorer-cat138
http://hardocp.com/article/2013/08/01/amd_catalyst_138_beta_frame_pacing_crossfire_driver/#.Ufsxbm0piX8
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_summary/amd_framepacing_review_with_catalyst_13_8_fcat.html

AMD to be complimented for making up a lot of ground .... but still a good bit to go.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

It's the first step that we've all waited for AMD to take to address this issue but it certainly isn't fixed. This driver revision only introduces Frame Pacing for single-screen setups in DX10 and DX11 titles. Any DX9 or OpenGL titles will still experience issues and any users running Eyefinity setups will not have their issues resolved.

Can't wait to see more developments on this in the future but it's important to keep in mind that the issue isn't totally fixed.

it will never be fixed 100% with a driver alone. from what i understand, nvidia's frame-pacing is done in hardware, not just with the driver. this is what AMD need to do in their next gen cards to avoid cpu overhead and the performance hit that happens when enabling this driver feature.