UVD - AMDs Dirty secret.

[Pitty]

Is it true that the GPU clock is still governed by the UVD clock on the 7xxx series ?

i.e watching a YouTube video and playing a game will downclock the GPU to the frequency of the UVD ?

I'm sure some people will say "But who games and watches youtube?" Well in this day and age of multitasking and multimedia i say "Lots of people!"

It's a really bad design decision the way AMD have done this, it's a dirty secret they don't want you to know about.

No i'm not a Nvidia fanboy, i have 2x5870.

Solutions have also been posted to disable harware acceleration in flash videos.

This was fine for flash, but how about Media Center DVB-T ? my solution was to install avivo drivers and set WMC to use "ATI Mpeg decoder" forcing it through MCDU(media center decoder utility)

Flash and WMC aren't the only programs to force the UVD clockrate, there are many out there, anything that uses Direct X video decoding will force the UVD clock.

Again it's a dirty secret AMD keeps, because it's unfixable for them, it's been around since god knows when, it's on my 5870, and apparently the 7970 which is 2 generations later.

My 7970 hasn't even arrived yet and i'm already regretting i didn't go with 680.

Don't even get me started on crossfire in windowed mode..

[Pestul]

I know this is kind of silly to say, but the people who use these multitasking features as you propose are often intelligent enough to also find the workarounds that you did (advanced users). I know it doesn't change the fact that it is something that should be worked on, but just saying.

[Hippo]

I've had the opposite problem, overclocking my 5850 with Afterburner and then trying to watch a youtube video would crash the driver because the UVD cant run past like 800mhz.

[The Mac]

Originally Posted by Hippo

I've had the opposite problem, overclocking my 5850 with Afterburner and then trying to watch a youtube video would crash the driver because the UVD cant run past like 800mhz.

This is only the case if you have forced the drivers to run at a certain clock speed all the time.

UVD required fixed clocks, and will downclock/upclock to its specific frequencys.

If youve disabled powerplay, UVD cant clock to what it needs, so it crashes.

[caveman-jim]

IIRC the AMD External Event utility service is needed for powerplay etc. clocks to operate correctly; if you've got it disabled stuff might be screwy.


AFAIK the UVD is seperately clocks from the GPU cores. I'll have to check.

[The Mac]

unfortunately, this is not the case which is why if you leave an accelorated video playing or on pause, and jump into a game, the clocks dont move. It hijacks all the clocks.

If you open RBE, you can see the freq it requires for your model.

[caveman-jim]

Like I said, I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they do.

[The Mac]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Like I said, I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they do.

Deffinitely check, as if this is not the case, something very serious is wrong.

Ive tested it across two models (6950, 7970)

RBE clearly shows a fixed clock for UVD, and anytime accelorated video is used, the Core/Memory clocks change to those clocks indicated in RBE for UVD, regardless of the current state and do not budge until UVD is finished.

I watch them change on my g19.

[spyre]

UVD has a fixed clockrate. Turn off video acceleration if you are planning to play a game.

[Final8ty]

Its not dirty and neither is it a secrete
You can send the 7970 back when it arrives and get the 680.

[Pitty]

Originally Posted by Final8ty

Its not dirty and neither is it a secrete
You can send the 7970 back when it arrives and get the 680.

Umm it is dirty!! The thing is supposed to be a multimedia card, that should be able to multitask.

Another dirty thing is selling a 7970 with only 2 Mini Display ports, causing tearing in eyefinity setups, which i've only just found out.

Coming from a Eyefinity 6 5870 card i never had this problem, and it seems it cannot be fixed, even with 2 active adapters.

[Pitty]

Originally Posted by spyre

UVD has a fixed clockrate. Turn off video acceleration if you are planning to play a game.

That's the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard.

And it's a flaw that hasn't been addressed in 4 generations of AMD/ATI cards.

[spyre]

Big deal, it isn't like you need GPU video acceleration with the speed of todays CPUs.

[The Mac]

Originally Posted by Pitty

That's the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard.

And it's a flaw that hasn't been addressed in 4 generations of AMD/ATI cards.

It is not a flaw, it is by design. Period.

Perhaps a poor design choice, but a design choice none the less.

[koralis]

Originally Posted by The Mac

It is not a flaw, it is by design. Period.

Perhaps a poor design choice, but a design choice none the less.

A design flaw is still a flaw. I can't think of any good reason but laziness that they'd need the GPU to be running at a fixed speed when they could regulate the frames/sec themselves even if they needed an external heart-beat pulse to synchronize to.

Basically they did something to get a marketting tick, and don't want to bother improving it since people can just turn it off. In that case, they should just remove the feature if CPUs do it better anyway so that even the unknowlegable get the benefit of not having the GPU do this work.

[The Mac]

Originally Posted by koralis

A design flaw is still a flaw. I can't think of any good reason but laziness that they'd need the GPU to be running at a fixed speed when they could regulate the frames/sec themselves even if they needed an external heart-beat pulse to synchronize to.

Basically they did something to get a marketting tick, and don't want to bother improving it since people can just turn it off. In that case, they should just remove the feature if CPUs do it better anyway so that even the unknowlegable get the benefit of not having the GPU do this work.

I repeat again: It is not a FLAW it was a design choice.

Just because you dont like it, doesnt make it a flaw.

It is functioning as AMD intended, therefore no flaw.

[Blín D'ñero]

To me it is a logical choice, based on technical decisions. I prefer optimal performance per task, above "multitasking", and i get that. The original post suggests Lots of people want to consume games and youtube simultaneously i bet they also want a hamburger stuffed in their mouth and their ass wiped with it at the same time.

[noko]

If the UVD can do all the decoding at a slower speed then that is a power saving choice. I can see for notebooks, laptops etc. improving battery life dramatically. Possible solution is have driver option to turn off UVD when a 3d application is consuming greater then 75% gpu power or something like that and maybe option to have auto/application settingoff.

Now if some one really wants to watch a video on a separate monitor and game then having a cheap extra card driving that monitor is an option while being full screen on the other monitor gaming. Turning off UVD on a 8 core bulldozer has zero effect for games I've found out since games rarely use more then 4 cores to begin with leaving 1/2 of the cpu not used or more.

[SantiagoDraco]

Originally Posted by The Mac

I repeat again: It is not a FLAW it was a design choice.

Just because you dont like it, doesnt make it a flaw.

It is functioning as AMD intended, therefore no flaw.

The attitudes people take, like yours, are just mind boggling. Please go take your forum policing elsewhere so the rest of us can discuss the topic at hand.

The topic being how flawed this implementation is.

I'd definitely consider myself a power user and I never realized this was the cause of underclocks while gaming. And I've been seeing it for years. It's unbelievable that this still exists in these cards...

And to those that imply this isn't a serious issue... there's LOTS of posts all over the place of people complaining about ATI cards not running at rated clock speed and few people understand that this is the issue and ATI has never spoken up and clarified the issue. That to me is pretty damning.

[Pitty]

Originally Posted by noko

Now if some one really wants to watch a video on a separate monitor and game then having a cheap extra card driving that monitor is an option while being full screen on the other monitor gaming.

Its not about watching a video either, you only have to have a web browser open in the background that uses a flash based ad for the card to downclock.

Yes sure you can turn off flash based harware acceleration, but there's probably 100 other programs where you can't turn off hardware acceleration, that will downclock the card.

Anyway the UVD issue isn't the worst one for me, my worst issue is the tearing with reference cards in eyefinity.

[cryz]

The scenario that happened to me was that I pressed Alt-Tab at the end of a BF3 round, watched a video, paused it and switched back to the game. So if this isn't a design flaw then it is a bad design decision.

[bittermann]

Originally Posted by cryz

The scenario that happened to me was that I pressed Alt-Tab at the end of a BF3 round, watched a video, paused it and switched back to the game. So if this isn't a design flaw then it is a bad design decision.

I'm not one to generally troll but this just screams "first world" problem.

[The Mac]

Originally Posted by cryz

The scenario that happened to me was that I pressed Alt-Tab at the end of a BF3 round, watched a video, paused it and switched back to the game. So if this isn't a design flaw then it is a bad design decision.

Because you paused it, not closed it, technically UVD is still active. Blame Adobe for that one.

[The Mac]

Originally Posted by bittermann

I'm not one to generally troll but this just screams "first world" problem.

agreed

[Final8ty]

Originally Posted by Pitty

Umm it is dirty!! The thing is supposed to be a multimedia card, that should be able to multitask.

Another dirty thing is selling a 7970 with only 2 Mini Display ports, causing tearing in eyefinity setups, which i've only just found out.

Coming from a Eyefinity 6 5870 card i never had this problem, and it seems it cannot be fixed, even with 2 active adapters.

1)Multimedia does not mean multitask.

2)How UVD locks the clocks has been know for yolks.

3)Mixed interface that can cause tearing is also a known issue.

Do your homework in future.

[CurrentlyPissed]

I've noticed in tera it uses videos for cut scenes. So the clocks drop to 300, and I get a pretty crappy expierence during the video playback. It can be pretty choppy sometimes. I think because it's kinda a hybrid between video, and game. It's kinda weird actually. Because it shows your character, but it also looks more movie like. And drops the clocks. But it also looks like in game quality.

[muzz]

Originally Posted by Final8ty

1)
3)Mixed interface that can cause tearing is also a known issue.

That's right, which means it should have been FIXED by now.

"Let's Hype eyefinity, which will cost those folks big bux, and give them tools that are unfinished"

That one is plain stupid, and no there shouldn't need to be a hub.

[Final8ty]

Originally Posted by muzz

That's right, which means it should have been FIXED by now.

"Let's Hype eyefinity, which will cost those folks big bux, and give them tools that are unfinished"

That one is plain stupid, and no there shouldn't need to be a hub.

No they can not fix the timing issue difference between the interface of the monitor, if a monitor has more lag between its different interfaces then its down to the manufacture, i have no problem mixing my NEC DVI and DP.

[muzz]

Originally Posted by Final8ty

No they can not fix the timing issue difference between the interface of the monitor, if a monitor has more lag between its different interfaces then its down to the manufacture, i have no problem mixing my NEC DVI and DP.

Why not have 3 DP's instead of 2 and a dvi or 2?

[Final8ty]

Originally Posted by muzz

Why not have 3 DP's instead of 2 and a dvi or 2?

That's a different question and DVI is still the most common interface so out side of EyEfinity most would need a converter instead of most not needing and only the EyEfinity needing it..