AMD Catalyst 11.1a Hot-Fix Driver 1-26-11

[badb0y]

Crysis looks....different. I don't know what I changed or whether I am just hallucinating but it definitely seems more vibrant and smoother(cleaner?) when I am playing. All the settings in game are the same I am going to check out the driver configuration and see what's different.

 

[evolucion8]

If you moved from nVidia to AMD, you will notice some difference due to AMD's more vibrant default color profile, you can tweak nVidia hardware to look the same though.

 

[arredondo]

Important question for me: for those with a 68xx card that've installed this hotfix, what are your two clock speeds while idle?

 

[arredondo]

Important question for me: for those with a 68xx card that've installed this hotfix, what are your two clock speeds while idle?

Anyone?

 

[Qbah]

Ehh... tried the leaked one and my HD5850 AGAIN downclocks to 157/300 when idle with 2 screens! Meaning very very bad screen tearing and artifacts when idling on the desktop. This is on a pretty fresh Windows 7 install (had a full reinstall a month ago and installed 10.10e as the first driver until today).

MLAA works a lot better though - I can have it enabled all the time and it won't be doing anything when I'm on the desktop (was applying itself on Firefox and other GPU-rendered things with 10.10e = unusable).

But I think I'll keep those, just for the improved MLAA. I can keep one FF4 window open with a YT clip paused all the time and it will keep my card in UVD mode - 400/900 (actually lower than "usual" idle of 400/1125).


EDIT: Actually, strike that. Seems launching any game has no influence on the card and it still sticks to 400/900 with the clip paused = bad performance, obviously. *sigh* Back to 10.10e for me...

EDIT2: Went back to 10.10e, things went back to normal. Proper clocks at idle (400/1125), no screen tearing or corruption. MLAA behaves the old way, as expected (everything's a blurry, unreadable mess on desktop). I'm starting to get a deja vu of my 7800GT days...

 

[arredondo]

I prefer the low clocks when idle since I only have one screen. I don't want my card getting hotter with the revved clocks while idle like they did before the the 10.12s. I want them to fix the XFire problems for you guys, but not by increasing speeds for me.

Thank you!

 

[Aikouka]

Hmm I hope they release some new drivers soon. I don't like having my drivers crash on me . I also hope it makes it so I can actually play a video while watching WoW. The videos get incredibly bad artifacting if I try to play them with a game open.

 

[evolucion8]

The higher clock at idle issue on multi display setups is an issue that affects both vendor, it is to reduce the flicker that may occurr if the GPU clocks are too low to move two or more displays.

 

[Qbah]

The higher clock at idle issue on multi display setups is an issue that affects both vendor, it is to reduce the flicker that may occurr if the GPU clocks are too low to move two or more displays.

No idea who you're addressing this to, but I most definitely expect higher idle clocks with 2 screens as otherwise I get screen tearing and corruption. However, since 10.11 onwards (WHQL or beta), my card downclocks to single-screen mode with 2 screens attached so I can't use the newer drivers at all. And this is on a completely clean OS install just with 10.10e installed previously (and those work fine). So yeah, "go" AMD.

 

[Daedalus685]

No idea who you're addressing this to, but I most definitely expect higher idle clocks with 2 screens as otherwise I get screen tearing and corruption. However, since 10.11 onwards (WHQL or beta), my card downclocks to single-screen mode with 2 screens attached so I can't use the newer drivers at all. And this is on a completely clean OS install just with 10.10e installed previously (and those work fine). So yeah, "go" AMD.

It will now down clock if both displays are identical. Does it actually cause the flicker/corruption for you or are you worried that it might? Unfortunately the new GDDR5 cards (both companies) flicker every time it is clocked up or down. It is not 'supposed' to corrupt if both are identical display resolutions.. but supposed to and actually doesn't are not often the same thing.

On another note, the down clocking should be disabled (at least it is less pronounced) if you over clock the cards at all (even 1mhz).

That being said, I have yet to find a solution to flash video playback which for whatever reason lovers my clocks from my OC value to stock during playback causing that GDDR5 screen flash every time I play a video file (I just leave hardware acceleration off to get around it). I'm not sure why flash acceleration has its own bios clock speed entry.

 

[zod96]

This is supposedly the final driver set for the 11.1 drivers. These are the ones that are supposed to be released weds.

http://www2.ati.com/DRIVERS/hotfix/catalyst_11.1_hotfixes/AMD_Catalyst_11.1a_Win7_Jan26.exe

 

[Qbah]

It will now down clock if both displays are identical. Does it actually cause the flicker/corruption for you or are you worried that it might? Unfortunately the new GDDR5 cards (both companies) flicker every time it is clocked up or down. It is not 'supposed' to corrupt if both are identical display resolutions.. but supposed to and actually doesn't are not often the same thing.

On another note, the down clocking should be disabled (at least it is less pronounced) if you over clock the cards at all (even 1mhz).

That being said, I have yet to find a solution to flash video playback which for whatever reason lovers my clocks from my OC value to stock during playback causing that GDDR5 screen flash every time I play a video file (I just leave hardware acceleration off to get around it). I'm not sure why flash acceleration has its own bios clock speed entry.

The desktop is in idle, nothing is happening or running. Then suddenly half of my monitor starts to flicker and tear, then it moves onto the whole screen. Then it stops for a few seconds and starts again. Sometimes it doesn't stop at all, It looks like the flicker you see for a split second when the mem frequency changes (like UVD mode or gaming), but it's happening all the time. The frequency of memory or core doesn't change though when it happens (it's at 157/300, MSI Afterburner has nice graphs for it).

My card is OCed to 860 / 1125 through MSI Afterburner. Overdrive is locked (or I loose fan control if I unlock it).

Flash acceleration doesn't have its own clock setting - UVD does. If you play movies, the card also goes into UVD mode (for me it's 400 / 900). Every video format that is supported by GPU acceleration causes the card to go into UVD mode.

I think I'll just edit the BIOS and make the card think it should be at 400/900 when idle either in single or multi-screen mode. This way watching anything on YT won't cause the split flicker and the new drivers will still only downclock to 400/900 (as this will be the value set by me for single-screen idle). RBE here I come!

 

[Daedalus685]

The desktop is in idle, nothing is happening or running. Then suddenly half of my monitor starts to flicker and tear, then it moves onto the whole screen. Then it stops for a few seconds and starts again. Sometimes it doesn't stop at all, It looks like the flicker you see for a split second when the mem frequency changes (like UVD mode or gaming), but it's happening all the time. The frequency of memory or core doesn't change though when it happens (it's at 157/300, MSI Afterburner has nice graphs for it).

My card is OCed to 860 / 1125 through MSI Afterburner. Overdrive is locked (or I loose fan control if I unlock it).

Flash acceleration doesn't have its own clock setting - UVD does. If you play movies, the card also goes into UVD mode (for me it's 400 / 900). Every video format that is supported by GPU acceleration causes the card to go into UVD mode.

I think I'll just edit the BIOS and make the card think it should be at 400/900 when idle either in single or multi-screen mode. This way watching anything on YT won't cause the split flicker and the new drivers will still only downclock to 400/900 (as this will be the value set by me for single-screen idle). RBE here I come!

Yes, UVD.. I guess I watch too much in the browser... at any rate, I find it irritating that it isn't at least tied in some way to the OC values as one would think that they would attempt to reduce the times the memory has to change clocks.

Anyway, my 6970 won't down clock the memory at all with two displays (except for UVD). I've been using afterburner to try and get idle a bit lower as opposed to you trying to get it higher . In my case the memory has to be clocked so high to avoid idle corruption it isn't worth even bothering as it saves 2degrees at the most. I have seen corruption even at 900Mhz.

 

[Qbah]

So I have narrowed down on the behavior. Tried the Jan26 drivers a few posts up and... same behavior. But, after I reboot, the idle clocks are 400 / 1125 (good). And they stick until I launch a game. Then the clocks go to 860 / 1125 (good). When I close the game the clocks go down to 157 / 300 (bad!). Only after I launch a game, do the idle clocks mess up... But MLAA is working so much better with those drivers... *sigh* I'll do the RBE change and report back.


EDIT: So I flashed the card a few times with several variations for clocks. Final setup:

- single screen 400 / 1125
- multi screen 400 / 1125
- UVD 400 / 1125
- 3D 860 / 1125

No matter what I do now, the memory clocks don't change (=no screen tearing), there's hardly any difference between 900 and 1125 anyway (so might as well stick to one value and remove the tearing). The card idles at ~42C with the fan at 22-24%. In the end I had to fix something myself, that should have been working fine in the first place (and probably voided my warranty...). Get your sh!t together, AMD!

EDIT2: Don't really know where to put this, but MLAA is so EPIC in Dead Space! It's on the level of Borderlands awesome. Can't wait for Dead Space 2 - it will probably have a similar result. I'm soooo glad I won't be playing it on my Xbox!

 

[Daedalus685]

So I have narrowed down on the behavior. Tried the Jan26 drivers a few posts up and... same behavior. But, after I reboot, the idle clocks are 400 / 1125 (good). And they stick until I launch a game. Then the clocks go to 860 / 1125 (good). When I close the game the clocks go down to 157 / 300 (bad!). Only after I launch a game, do the idle clocks mess up... But MLAA is working so much better with those drivers... *sigh* I'll do the RBE change and report back.


EDIT: So I flashed the card a few times with several variations for clocks. Final setup:

- single screen 400 / 1125
- multi screen 400 / 1125
- UVD 400 / 1125
- 3D 860 / 1125

No matter what I do now, the memory clocks don't change (=no screen tearing), there's hardly any difference between 900 and 1125 anyway (so might as well stick to one value and remove the tearing). The card idles at ~42C with the fan at 22-24%. In the end I had to fix something myself, that should have been working fine in the first place (and probably voided my warranty...). Get your sh!t together, AMD!

EDIT2: Don't really know where to put this, but MLAA is so EPIC in Dead Space! It's on the level of Borderlands awesome. Can't wait for Dead Space 2 - it will probably have a similar result. I'm soooo glad I won't be playing it on my Xbox!

Thats good to know. From a technical standpoint do you know why Gddr5 flashes when the clocks change? Some sort of reset have to occur? I can't recall anything like this on GDDR3 but it has been a long while since I used a card with it.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Looking forward to em!

 

[OVerLoRDI]

This is supposedly the final driver set for the 11.1 drivers. These are the ones that are supposed to be released weds.

http://www2.ati.com/DRIVERS/hotfix/catalyst_11.1_hotfixes/AMD_Catalyst_11.1a_Win7_Jan26.exe

Going to give them a try. Sick of 10.11 with my 6970s, hopefully this will fix some of my issues.

Installed: Looks like driver version 8.820.2.0. GPU-Z reports these as still being version 10.11, but it probably doesn't know what it is talking about.

*Crossfire seems to now properly enable and disable without a restart.
*CCC2 works with 6900 series cards.
*Furmark went from 95 to 100fps on crossfire 6970s.
*Fan speed control seems more constant on primary card, secondary card still seems to "spike" in Furmark.
*BSOD when unplugging active displayport adapters.

 

[Aikouka]

The posted drivers are working fine with my 6950. I haven't necessarily benchmarked the differences, but no problems yet at least!

 

[arredondo]

OK, I just installed the new Jan. 26 hotfix drivers on my 6870 and I idle at a low 300/300 just as I wanted. Life is good!

 

[zod96]

Although I don't think these are the final final drivers. When you install them Windows 7 says they are not MS certified. So I'm assuming the certified ones which come out on weds might be slightly different then these...

 

[Demo24]

I'm looking forward to their release. I haven't reinstalled my drivers since I left a crossfire system and I think some of my games aren't happy about the change.

 

[evolucion8]

Tessmark performance increase was mindblowing, scored over 2,236 at the Insane preset and never dipped below 37fps, but Unigine didn't improve that much, now I will test 3DMark11.

Update: 3DMark11 Physics increased by over 30 points, nothing else.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Where would one downloads these drivers once available?

 

[jackstar7]

The goto page: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/downloads.aspx

Once live, they should be there.

 

[Qbah]

Thats good to know. From a technical standpoint do you know why Gddr5 flashes when the clocks change? Some sort of reset have to occur? I can't recall anything like this on GDDR3 but it has been a long while since I used a card with it.

Sorry, no idea on the why. Just like you, I have noticed it happening since the first cards with GDDR5 showed up. It was assumed this was due to the memory being rather new and the memory controller being a first generation. But we're at gen3 now (HD4xxx, HD5xxx, HD6xxx) and it's still the same behavior. No idea if they ever improve it.