HD 4850 crossfire and STALKER: Clear Sky

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pontifex

pontifex

Lifer
Dec 5, 2000
43,804
46
91
Anyone else running 2 HD4850s in crossfire and playing Clear Sky? Are you having any issues? Sometimes it runs fine and other times the screen will go black, usually when loading a new area. the game is still runing because I can hear the sound and if I alt tab out, i see a message that my video driver stopped working but has recovered. usually restarting the game will make it work again.

Any ideas?
 
M

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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My 8800gts 320mb has some issues when the area reloaded, the sky would be all glitched up, didn't happen very often though. Reloading a savegame would do the trick ... How's performance with 2 HD4850's anyways? Running full dynamic lighting dx10, with god rays, volumetric smoke etc? AA ? Resolution ?
 
pontifex

pontifex

Lifer
Dec 5, 2000
43,804
46
91
Originally posted by: MarcVenice
My 8800gts 320mb has some issues when the area reloaded, the sky would be all glitched up, didn't happen very often though. Reloading a savegame would do the trick ... How's performance with 2 HD4850's anyways? Running full dynamic lighting dx10, with god rays, volumetric smoke etc? AA ? Resolution ?
Click to expand...

got it running with all settings set to MAX, everything turned on, etc @1680x1050 and it runs between 30 and 40 FPS generally. it can go lower (haven't seen below 28 yet) or higher (i think 73 is the highest I've seen).
 
apoppin

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
1
0
alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: pontifex
Anyone else running 2 HD4850s in crossfire and playing Clear Sky? Are you having any issues? Sometimes it runs fine and other times the screen will go black, usually when loading a new area. the game is still runing because I can hear the sound and if I alt tab out, i see a message that my video driver stopped working but has recovered. usually restarting the game will make it work again.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

yes

Physically remove or [probably instead] disable one of your cards so that you are not running CF
[but even disabling one did not work for me with CF-X3]

evidently Xray engine and the newer Cats have big issues with CrossfireX

i did most everything including uninstalls and reinstalls of CS and Stalker, restore, multiple driver installations of Cats .. but only one thing worked reliably .. finally to make Clear Sky [and Stalker] run at all, i simply removed a 4870 and now it runs fine with a single 4870x2

so i guess that finishes my X3 testing .. =)
- of course, now that i have nice screen shots of CS at 19x12 with maxed filtering and details, i will probably go back and reinstall my 4870 just to see if i can get a bench or two - or if Xray will just refuse to run.
rose.gif


oh, 'wet surfaces' are disabled for me :(
- i guess i could edit the configuration .. maybe later



 
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BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
67
91
Running full dynamic lighting dx10, with god rays, volumetric smoke etc? AA ? Resolution ?
Click to expand...

AA isn't working on ATi boards with everything cranked atm. You can enable it, it just won't do anything. nV boards the in game AA doesn't work either, but you can force it through the CP which will override the in game settings(CCC doesn't work atm). IIRC it is just an issue with full dynamic lighting and AA, also, without a 1GB card you really aren't going to want to use those settings. A 1GB 9600GT will throttle a 512MB 9800GT using those settings(not that either is terribly playable, but you get what I'm saying). Link.
 
apoppin

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
1
0
alienbabeltech.com
it runs really well on a X2 with everything fully maxed in the expanded DX10 mode
.. i got the wet surfaces :p

i really don't think i really noticed the lack of AA ... and i took some nice screens of it too
rose.gif


but X3 has a problem with even loading xray engine -- stalker and CS behave badly :(

edit:

actually i got stalker to work reliably with X3 again. But Clear Sky refuses to play nice with it
- stalker gets a decent increase in FPS in CF-X3 over 4870X2 .. i.e. 191 FPS to 236 average in Stalker's "Building" demo by adding a 4870/512 to the 2nd [16x] PCIe slot with X2.
- not bad
 
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BubbaJudge

Member
Jul 9, 2002
74
0
0
Wow, glad to hear it's not just me having trouble with Clear Sky and 4850s.

I cannot run crossfire for CS using Win XP and any of the recent Catalysts. I get great FPS for awhile then will slow down to a slideshow. rinse and repeat. I have tried -noprefetch, the affinity mod, turning down suns rays, forcing vertical sync, and reinstalling of everything, even the OS and nothing helps. Add in that even when I run a single 4850, I get your symptoms of Black Screen followed by the VPU recovery 'Send Error Report' popup. I get VPU recovery every 10-15 minutes of play time. I know its not temps.

So, last night I set up a new partition and installed Vista Ultimate 64 in an attempt to get playability and now I am able to run crossfire for a little longer before the slideshow begins, but overall the game plays and loads much faster so I am happy except for one thing. As soon as I try to eneable DX10 mode and reboot the game to make the changes, the game goes to infinite black screen.

frustrated. I sense that this is a 4850/Catalyst issue but if anyone has a solution it would be much appreciated.
 
MichaelD

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
31,528
3
76
I wonder what difference the PC sees b/t a dual-GPU card like the 4870X2 and two separate GPUs like two 4870 cards in XFire? :confused:

I have a 4870X2 and my system is software current as of last month. Running Clear Sky with the latest patch and it's perfect. 19x12, AF maxxed and AA at 50%, everything else at default and I get anywhere from 100+FPS (indoors) to 55-ish FPS (outdoors).

A dual-GPU card is XFire...sort of. What differences are there? PCI-E bus timings/synchronization, maybe?
 
T

Tempered81

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2007
6,374
1
81
Some guesses:
Catalyst A.I., Clear sky patches/updates, OS updates, Latest drivers, Beta drivers, physical crossfire bridge connector.
 
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BubbaJudge

Member
Jul 9, 2002
74
0
0
Thanks for the ideas guys, I tried some of them, but it turns out it is the Catalyst HDMI sound drivers. Once you disable the High Definition Audio Devices under Sound in the DEvice Manager, the game runs fine, no more bogging down, no more crashing, and I was finally able to run DX10 with settings maxxed except for medium sun settings.

I must credit the guys over at HardOCP for finding this, and their Crysis/Clear Sky Crossfire/SLi article, here

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...wxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Unfortunately I already finished the game, so it sucks that I could have played the game lag and glitch free, if someone at ATI had bothered to read crash reports.
 
M

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
5,664
0
0
When I get dual HD4850's or something similar, I WILL be replaying CS. I like the game a lot, and the graphics are so nice. I'd be replaying it right now, if it weren't for time constraints ...
 
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