7970 Windows '2D' performance

[BrightCandle]

A little while ago I reported I had microstuttering problems in Windows itself. I was horrified that performance was so poor and it seemed to be driver related. However I have been seeing warnings in the performance log from Windows that the graphics display is struggling(!) to keep up even with the older drivers and it still stutters occasionally. Suspecting maybe AMD had underclocked the card a little too heavily I went looking for a way to reduce the idle clock speeds.

So I created a custom profile and edited it by hand to have the cards running at full speed, 925 /1375. The difference in performance in Windows is unbelievable. The machine finally feels like its meant to, a super fast desktop rather than a horridly slow lumbering piece of junk.

I found this out from the 120Hz people who have a vsync issues because the memory speed is low. My guess for why I suffer is the 5760x1200 resolution I am running is more than 150Mhz of memory can render reasonably. I suspect I don't need the full on performance of the card, just a little bit more to avoid it performing poorly.

Thought peeps might like to know that yet again AMD has screwed up with its low power modes. My 5970 ran a custom set of clocks for years because the defaults were too low and here I am 2.5 years later fixing the same thing in the same way.

 

[Tempered81]

Yup sounds about right. AMD engineers live in their own little world

 

[moriz]

That's odd. The 7970 should use 500/1375 when you are running more than one monitor.

 

[Barfo]

Yup sounds about right. AMD engineers live in their own little world

You would too if you were paid $7 an hour.

 

[Elfear]

You would too if you were paid $7 an hour.

Probably more true of their marketing folks though as their hardware is very good.

 

[nenforcer]

ATI / AMD has always had good 2D visual quality, in fact some people prefer it over nVidia's, but it is those software / driver quirks which always scared me away.

I assume you are running the latest Catalyst drivers? I'm a little more forgiving for bleeding edge hardware but this is one of the reasons why I don't usually purchase brand new tech.

 

[OCGuy]

My only complaint is the coil whine/squeal while browsing. Not a biggie though.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I had issues with my 5870 that was very similar. I found it amusing because the box advertised power saving, eyefinity, and overclockability.. however doing two out of three would cause quirks and doing three out of three would cause serious issues with windows performance.

I bought Nvidia next round. Any thread asking about AMD issues I mention it plus my brother's grey screen nightmare from his 5770.. am called an nvidiot..

It is too bad that they can manage to engineer such a nice card but their driver and BIOS teams cannot support them correctly.