AMD Catalyst 12.4 WHQL

[Final8ty]

Originally Posted by Besty

Call it what you will, I don't mind if single card users have priority but the situation at present is not sustainable - 5 months and counting for a decent driver which works well for 7970 crossfire owners in all the top games.

What we have at the moment is a situation where 7970 multi-gpu users lack decent, solid functionality in a host of titles which have been out for over six months.

The HardOCP 3 GPU 7970 vs 680 review (written less than two weeks ago) needed to use the RC11 driver as Eyefinity is broken.

Apart from the crash on stand-by bug, my single 7970 GPU experience is completely different to multi-gpu, no issues at all.

As a 7970 quad-fire owner, I am growing concerned that we may not actually see a decent driver for systems running more than a single 7970 GPU, in the life time of the product.

The Anandtech review of the GTX690 summaries it as follows:

"Unfortunately we’re going to have to put AMD out of the running here; as we’ve seen in games like Crysis and Metro the 7970 in Crossfire has a great deal of potential, but as it stands Crossfire is simply too broken overall to recommend."

So, are AMD ditching 7970 Multi-GPU? They don't seem to be testing their drivers in these configurations and if they are testing them, they are not fixing problems very quickly. As they have been stated as being "out of the running" by one of, if not THE biggest, review site, are they going to be back in the running again and if so when?

If the 7970 was just a continuation of the cards that came before then im sure things would be allot better by now because when its comes to learning new things the time it takes varies.

[Mangler]

I've tried everything now, I can't get sr3 running smoothly on my system with crossfire enabled.

I hope it's not some weird pci-e 2.0 8x issue, since I'm not switching to ivy until they bring out the "good" stepping.

[{WOR}lock]

So strangely I solved the BSODs that occured while launching games in crossfire by turning on HPET in Windows 7 with the following command;

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

While i'm glad to find a solution, I do find it a bit odd as this isn't something set automatically on a fresh install of Windows, nor is there an option to enable it outside the command line.

Either way, hope the information helps anyone experiencing the same.

[Blín D'ñero]

You had "BSODs that occured while launching games in crossfire" ???

While i'm glad for you that you found a solution to your problem, i find it strange that you had this problem to begin with.

I have not enabled it.

No BSODths here at all in any game.
Except: when i raise the OC on my 7970's from 1100 to the max in CCC (=1125) i get a BSOD (016e) after about 20 minutes playing Crysis2 DX11 Ultra; i guess that's just an overclock/too low volts issue. I don't care, at 1100 core everything is perfect.

[Blín D'ñero]

I just experienced what some of the complainers did.

Their problem was mysterious.

On my 5870 crossfire system (a recent fresh Windows 7 x64 install), i had 12.1a Preview.

So i downloaded 12.4 and installed ontop.

Strangely, AMD Overdrive page started behaving erroneously: as soon as i clicked "Accept", the Overdrive option disappeared alltogether.

I uninstalled all ATI software, removed all left ATI folders, in safe mode uninstalled the cards incl drivers, rebooted in normal mode and re-installed 12.4.

Then i clicked "Information > Software Update".
It said my current version was 11.5!!! How is that even possible, as my current Windows 7 installation is only 2 months old, it never saw 11.5!
It did see a beta though: 12.1a preview.

Nevertheless, i chose to update and let it download the newest driver (which i already had of course), and install, as that was the way to make it work out right. And it IS allright now, Overdrive page and everything else seem to work normally.

[NWR_Midnight]

Originally Posted by Blín D'ñero

I just experienced what some of the complainers did.

Their problem was mysterious.

On my 5870 crossfire system (a recent fresh Windows 7 x64 install), i had 12.1a Preview.

So i downloaded 12.4 and installed ontop.

Strangely, AMD Overdrive page started behaving erroneously: as soon as i clicked "Accept", the Overdrive option disappeared alltogether.

I uninstalled all ATI software, removed all left ATI folders, in safe mode uninstalled the cards incl drivers, rebooted in normal mode and re-installed 12.4.

Then i clicked "Information > Software Update".
It said my current version was 11.5!!! How is that even possible, as my current Windows 7 installation is only 2 months old, it never saw 11.5!
It did see a beta though: 12.1a preview.

Nevertheless, i chose to update and let it download the newest driver (which i already had of course), and install, as that was the way to make it work out right. And it IS allright now, Overdrive page and everything else seem to work normally.

here is a perfect example of the issues that is present. Everyone wants to blame AMD for all the problems with games and other software. Yet, they do not take in consideration that it could be the game developers poor coding for AMD hardware. It could very well be a windows 7 aka Microsoft problem, as the above pretty much shows.

Thursday night I sold my HD 5970 to my buddy to replace the geforce gts250. I removed all nvidia drivers and software, thenI installed the hd 5970 for him. I then downloaded and installed the 12.4 drivers. rebooted, and windows 7 popped up and said there was an upgrade available. Showing that 12.1 was installed (never installed by myself or my friend) and I could upgrade to 12.4. I then re installed the 12.4 drivers rebooted again, and they took.


My point, this is not an AMD issue, but a windows 7 issue, as the above also shows. It appears windows 7 is updating and installing the WRONG drivers on it's own. How else can you explain driver versions that have never been installed on machines appearing.

[SteelWill]

Originally Posted by {WOR}lock

So strangely I solved the BSODs that occured while launching games in crossfire by turning on HPET in Windows 7 with the following command;



While i'm glad to find a solution, I do find it a bit odd as this isn't something set automatically on a fresh install of Windows, nor is there an option to enable it outside the command line.

Either way, hope the information helps anyone experiencing the same.

Wow, that's relevant for everyone. Thanks for posting it. There's a lot of detailed info here under "HPET Tweak!":
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=19335129

[Lurk]

Originally Posted by SteelWill

Wow, that's relevant for everyone. Thanks for posting it. There's a lot of detailed info here under "HPET Tweak!":
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=19335129

yeah, interesting read there

[Blín D'ñero]

So i studied that page, especially about HPET, then went along with WinTimerTester (http://forum.notebookreview.com/7364805-post14.html), applied the command line, and redid the test and yes it worked as described.
Interesting to say the least!

[fasedw]

same with me 1125 I'll get a blue screen after playing awhile 1100 play all day fine.

Originally Posted by Blín D'ñero

You had "BSODs that occured while launching games in crossfire" ???

While i'm glad for you that you found a solution to your problem, i find it strange that you had this problem to begin with.

I have not enabled it.

No BSODths here at all in any game.
Except: when i raise the OC on my 7970's from 1100 to the max in CCC (=1125) i get a BSOD (016e) after about 20 minutes playing Crysis2 DX11 Ultra; i guess that's just an overclock/too low volts issue. I don't care, at 1100 core everything is perfect.

[Pestul]

Had a nice bluescreen while running Media Center (live TV) and facebooking. Could also be related to having just installed that Flux program that controls screen brightness linked to time of day.

[SantiagoDraco]

Originally Posted by NWR_Midnight

here is a perfect example of the issues that is present. Everyone wants to blame AMD for all the problems with games and other software. Yet, they do not take in consideration that it could be the game developers poor coding for AMD hardware. It could very well be a windows 7 aka Microsoft problem, as the above pretty much shows.

Thursday night I sold my HD 5970 to my buddy to replace the geforce gts250. I removed all nvidia drivers and software, thenI installed the hd 5970 for him. I then downloaded and installed the 12.4 drivers. rebooted, and windows 7 popped up and said there was an upgrade available. Showing that 12.1 was installed (never installed by myself or my friend) and I could upgrade to 12.4. I then re installed the 12.4 drivers rebooted again, and they took.


My point, this is not an AMD issue, but a windows 7 issue, as the above also shows. It appears windows 7 is updating and installing the WRONG drivers on it's own. How else can you explain driver versions that have never been installed on machines appearing.

How exactly do you come to that conclusion? Windows doesn't "update" device drivers once they are installed unless you choose to do so. They are optional upgrades.

What is much more likely is that you don't understand the device driver installation process for new devices in Windows and you installed the ATI drivers and then told Windows to go ahead and "update" afterwards.

So to claim that "all these problems" are actually Windows somehow randomly updating drivers on it's own...

ATI drivers just suck. I've been using ATI for ever, I have only bought one Nvidia card and I sent that back, years ago.

Now I'm just waiting for a 680 card to appear on Amazon, sold by Amazon, and I'm going to pull this pos 7970 out of my system and kiss my chronic BSOD's and game lockups good bye.

ATI's about to lose another very long term customer. I've finally given up hoping the next gen will actually work trouble free.

[Lurk]

Just food for thought, although maybe a bit provocative and rhetorical: is it just me or the driver scene is becoming increasingly unexciting?

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Lurk

Just food for thought, although maybe a bit provocative and rhetorical: is it just me or the driver scene is becoming increasingly unexciting?

And broken, since i could play eve online in quad crossfire with 3 screens with older drivers, and can't do it with the 12.4 driver set and 12.4 crossfire cap package....


It's works fine under a single screen with quad crossfire enabled, but locks the system(have to reboot) with eyefinity enabled, and even then i still get a driver stops responding error when i quit the game, but it manages to recover on it's own.

[Roadhog_]

Originally Posted by shadow001

And broken, since i could play eve online in quad crossfire with 3 screens with older drivers, and can't do it with the 12.4 driver set and 12.4 crossfire cap package....


It's works fine under a single screen with quad crossfire enabled, but locks the system(have to reboot) with eyefinity enabled, and even then i still get a driver stops responding error when i quit the game, but it manages to recover on it's own.

*buys 4 cards and 3 monitors* *can only use one monitor and 3 cards*

lolfail.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Roadhog_

*buys 4 cards and 3 monitors* *can only use one monitor and 3 cards*

lolfail.

In this particular case yes, but it is a game i do play often even if it's not cutting edge on the graphics front, even though they gradually improve it as time goes on.....

[Mangler]

Has anyone had problem launching 3d apps with ulps enabled?

Ever since I did a clean install of windows, crossfire and ulps= games crashing at launch.

But with ulps disabled, everything works as it should.

I wonder if it's some odd zero core related issue.

[Higgy10]

Originally Posted by Mangler

Has anyone had problem launching 3d apps with ulps enabled?

Ever since I did a clean install of windows, crossfire and ulps= games crashing at launch.

But with ulps disabled, everything works as it should.

I wonder if it's some odd zero core related issue.

Nope no issues there and im running with ulps enabled.

[Blín D'ñero]

Originally Posted by Mangler

Has anyone had problem launching 3d apps with ulps enabled?

Ever since I did a clean install of windows, crossfire and ulps= games crashing at launch.

But with ulps disabled, everything works as it should.

I wonder if it's some odd zero core related issue.

That's discussed on Page 1, 2, 3...
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost...3&postcount=25

When running crossfire with these drivers, disable ULPS.

[muzz]

Originally Posted by Blín D'ñero

That's discussed on Page 1, 2, 3...
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost...3&postcount=25

When running crossfire with these drivers, disable ULPS.

Isn't it a registry hack?

Most folks don't even know what the registry is, and should NEVER be in there.....especially the rich guy that has ZERO clue, but buys the most expensive cards at the store, only to see all these problems and decide to return them and tell all his other clueless friends.....and what is the reason for that?

[Blín D'ñero]

You're right, it shouldn't be necessary. But still, sadly, it is. It is the one and only simple fix.

AMD's drivers are not suitable for rich buyers of their cards putting them in crossfire while having no clue themselves whatsoever about the registry and managing settings. Hopefully their butler can sort that out/.

It's a bug (as usual we are treated one each time), and there is no button to disable ULPS (i think for the mid- and high end gaming cards it should be disabled by default)... i don't know what's worse...

Well anyway, at least for the rest these 12.4 drivers seem to work very well on crossfire here, on a single screen. Sofar, that is ( i have not tested many games i must admit).

[muzz]

Hopefully they have a Butler like Albert that magically knows how to do all sorts of stuff.......

Originally Posted by Blín D'ñero

You're right, it shouldn't be necessary. But still, sadly, it is. It is the one and only simple fix.

AMD's drivers are not suitable for rich buyers of their cards putting them in crossfire while having no clue themselves whatsoever about the registry and managing settings. Hopefully their butler can sort that out/.

It's a bug (as usual we are treated one each time), and there is no button to disable ULPS (i think for the mid- and high end gaming cards it should be disabled by default)... i don't know what's worse...

Well anyway, at least for the rest these 12.4 drivers seem to work very well on crossfire here, on a single screen. Sofar, that is ( i have not tested many games i must admit).

[Besty]

Originally Posted by Blín D'ñero

You're right, it shouldn't be necessary. But still, sadly, it is. It is the one and only simple fix.

AMD's drivers are not suitable for rich buyers of their cards putting them in crossfire while having no clue themselves whatsoever about the registry and managing settings. Hopefully their butler can sort that out/.

It's a bug (as usual we are treated one each time), and there is no button to disable ULPS (i think for the mid- and high end gaming cards it should be disabled by default)... i don't know what's worse...

Well anyway, at least for the rest these 12.4 drivers seem to work very well on crossfire here, on a single screen. Sofar, that is ( i have not tested many games i must admit).

Its not all bad news, 2 card performance with the 12.5 beta is excellent, couple of scaling bugs Crysis 2/3DMark but large improvement from RC11.

Please fix three and four card scaling - come on AMD we know you can do it!

[moheban79]

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

This thing looks totally random. I have reinstalled driver again, now enabling/disabling Crossfire or ULPS does nothing. The only way to get full 3D speed now is to disable/enable Eyefinity group. I'm getting mad.

It works perfectly without disabling ULPS, but I must disable/enable Eyefinity group every time.

Hi LordJuanlo,

I just wanted to let you know that I also have experienced the same slow loss of performance in 12.4 with Trifire (3x6970) and Eyefinity. Only fix was to disable and re-enable Xfire at every boot. Unfortunately. I even tried searching for that enableulps string and disabling every instance of it but nothing changed. Though got to tell you as far as Skyrim is concerned finally got all three gpus working in a custom 'AFRMode' profile though fps sucked compared to just two card crossfire.

Never play games just try to get them to work right all the time!

D.

[KAC]

This thread is a perfect example of why I don't have the patience for CFX. Wow.

[noko]

Originally Posted by KickAssCop

This thread is a perfect example of why I don't have the patience for CFX. Wow.

What gets me are the reviews doing both SLI/CFX don't mention stuff like this at all which makes me wonder why even bother with reviews except for a brief notice to see what is out there.

[demo]

Originally Posted by noko

What gets me are the reviews doing both SLI/CFX don't mention stuff like this at all which makes me wonder why even bother with reviews except for a brief notice to see what is out there.

They do mention it, theres about 5 recent reviews saying CFX is broken and cannot be recommended.

[tamalero]

Anyone got issues with Photoshop CS4/CS5?

since 12.3.. the opengl acceleration is detected (radeon HD5870)
but not working.. (Ie, it says you do not have opengl enabled when using stuff like ROTATE)


Win7 64bit here..
using Cat 12.4

[Blín D'ñero]

I will test that right now, on my other PC with 5870 CF and PS 5.5...

RESULT: No problem at all, great performance... so you probably don't have it enabled (as the message you're getting says).

[tamalero]

Originally Posted by Blín D'ñero

I will test that right now, on my other PC with 5870 CF and PS 5.5...

RESULT: No problem at all, great performance... so you probably don't have it enabled (as the message you're getting says).

glad to see you didn't read..
it IS enabled.. everything LOOKS enabled, but everything acts like it ISNT.

this started since I installed Catalyst 12.3
12.2 worked fine... Wondered if there was a workaround, but seems I'm going back to 12.2 (and yes, I did full clean installs )

links for proof: http://imgur.com/a/T5ChA#2