Radeon 7970 digital glitches on desktop

[SolMiester]

As the year went on it did become apparent that AMD had a lot more driver issues and needed more releases than NVidia. They both have problems obviously, no software is bug free but the outstanding list of confirmed bugs I maintain for both shows a much more severe list for AMD, game breaking priority 1 issues whereas the NVidia's never get above a P3 which means there is a workaround.

So for a lot of last year there was this discussion that there was nothing wrong with AMDs drivers, they had improved massively and I was sat there with these 7970's have severe problems, I was hitting multiple severe problems every day praying for the next driver release. That went on for 6 months until I ditched them for the 680's and then I hit one bug, when I installed Windows 8 last month. Its been totally carefree in comparison to the 7970's, I haven't had to switch off SLI once nor mess with profiles to get a game to work at all, its a totally different level of behavior. A lot less performance bugs in general. My experience might not be typical but I see the same bugs have come up a lot in these forums, I am/was not the only one suffering them.

My impression of the last year is that AMDs drivers have had a lot of problems and a lot of regression problems and new games have need new drivers to perform well. Its constant updates. My opinion is that AMDs drivers are still bad, have always been bad and they continue to have really big problems with the quality of their solution. Its a shame because the hardware is clearly superior and priced very well, but its rare you see more than a few percentage points of actual additional performance despite the fact it should be dramatically quicker (30% from a hardware perspective). NVidia seems to get more done with less hardware more reliably. It makes them more profitable and they charge you more for the privilege of having less hassle. If AMD ever gets the card to live to its potential it will be a great day, but its been a year and a lot of the problems remain. We just found out crossfire is effectively worthless with vsync off, I mean totally useless all the extra frames don't appear to the user. I mean seriously what QA does AMD even do on their drivers to ship that not just once but for an entire year and not notice? Speaks volumes to the quality of their driver releases.

Reasonable post, Ill say it again, AMD hardware, especially the 7xxx is very powerful, its just a shame they haven't got NVs software team....

Anyone remember the 5 or was it the 6 series where they released the monthly drivers....Even Anand had to comment about how 1 month such and such game was fine, but broken the next month as they used alternative game bundles to optimise the drivers....

 

[Final8ty]

Reasonable post, Ill say it again, AMD hardware, especially the 7xxx is very powerful, its just a shame they haven't got NVs software team....

Anyone remember the 5 or was it the 6 series where they released the monthly drivers....Even Anand had to comment about how 1 month such and such game was fine, but broken the next month as they used alternative game bundles to optimise the drivers....

The same happens on NV cards, lots of rolling back to previous drivers because of things broken and same for game performance, even the Vsync stutter has returned for some.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/33/geforce-drivers/

 

[merk]

I haven't noticed any flicker issues, but maybe I'll check which bios is on the card anyhow and see what issues, if any, a new bios might fix

 

[24601]

This has been a known and admitted by ATi driver-based issue for quite a while.

It was also completely fixed in the 13.2 betas. If you haven't downloaded them yet you should.

I have only used the 13.2 beta 5 and beta 6.

I installed windows and then installed beta 5 (built my current rig).

I installed beta 6 when it came out.

Do I have to reinstall goddamn windows each driver or something?

To elaborate on my ranting at Radeon Pro vs Nvidia Inspector.

With Nvidia Inspector you can make MSAA work on just about any game released ever as long as you can find a similar engined compatible game to it and use it's MSAA compatibility settings.

Can't do that with Radeon Pro.

 

[SolMiester]

The same happens on NV cards, lots of rolling back to previous drivers because of things broken and same for game performance, even the Vsync stutter has returned for some.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/board/33/geforce-drivers/

Didnt say they were perfect, but NV doesnt have half the issues, and usually not game breakers

 

[Firestorm007]

Didnt say they were perfect, but NV doesnt have half the issues, and usually not game breakers

Apparently you haven't visited the Nvidia forums in a while, because last time I checked, it was ripe with driver issues. Yet, you keep bashing on the AMD driver drum; even though you don't own one. I have both vendors cards, so let me assure you, they both have issues. However, I don't run with what's hip at the moment, like bashing AMD drivers every chance I get. But, by all means carry on...

 

[Final8ty]

Didnt say they were perfect, but NV doesnt have half the issues, and usually not game breakers

NV seem to have twice as much.

I go around forums and with AMD i see the issues see are DX9 flickering, HDMI audio not working, glitches on desktop, not waking from sleep, CF not working in a particular game.

I see a far broader range of issues on the NV forum, driver 306.97 still seems to be the most popular and rolled back to most often.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I can't really comment on AMD's drivers on a personal level, but as a consumer it's currently the biggest roadblock in my desire to get a 7950.

 

[Xarick]

I have a 5850 and it wasn't until this year did I finally get what I considered to be a trouble free set of drivers. But right now they work great.

 

[NatePo717]

13.2 Beta 6 gets a thumbs up for the fix from me. No issues thus far.

My fps is rather bad in GW2 though. I thought 13.2 was supposed to have performance changes for GW2. LA is the worst offender. Between 22-36 FPS @ 2560x1440 since crossfire doesn't work in windowed fullscreen. Otherwise it depends on zone. I can see anywhere from 40fps to 60 as I have vsync on. I get horrid tearing if I don't have it on.

 

[pauldun170]

Historically I haven't had many issue with Nvidia or AMD drivers.
However, I have spent more time dealing with driver related issues on my HD7770 then I have had to on my GTX570\HD4830 combined.

Right now its ok but I'm not updating drivers anytime soon. I'm going to stick with what works for now.

 

[merk]

FWIW, with the 460 i just upgraded from, i had no issues with it. It's been many years since I've had an amd graphics card. But from my previous experience, i seem to remember the amd being a little flakey which is why i switched to nvidia and have stuck with them until just this week.

So far I haven't had any crashes or show stopping bugs. But I've also only tried the card just with my desktop and with crysis 3 and a little bit with skyrim. The flash glitch is annoying but livable. It's just a little worrisome that something that is so commonly used by the average pc user is so glitchy.

I haven't used the 7970 enough yet to really give it a fair assessment. But if i could just snap my fingers and get the 670 instead, i'd probably do it. I'd definitely do it if not for the free games. I'm actually considering listing it on craigslist and picking up the 670.

 

[absolutezero]

FWIW, with the 460 i just upgraded from, i had no issues with it. It's been many years since I've had an amd graphics card. But from my previous experience, i seem to remember the amd being a little flakey which is why i switched to nvidia and have stuck with them until just this week.

So far I haven't had any crashes or show stopping bugs. But I've also only tried the card just with my desktop and with crysis 3 and a little bit with skyrim. The flash glitch is annoying but livable. It's just a little worrisome that something that is so commonly used by the average pc user is so glitchy.

I haven't used the 7970 enough yet to really give it a fair assessment. But if i could just snap my fingers and get the 670 instead, i'd probably do it. I'd definitely do it if not for the free games. I'm actually considering listing it on craigslist and picking up the 670.

Well? did you use driver sweeper to clean the entire nivida driver out? Somethings old driver leftover can "collide" with newer driver. Causing the problems.

 

[merk]

No, did not use driver sweeper - i uninstalled all the nvidia related stuff on my PC. Plus from what others have said on here, these are not issues unique to me. So I don't think the previous drivers have anything to do with it, even if there is some remnant left over. I'll try driver sweeper later when I am home anyhow though just to see if it finds anything to be sure.

 

[tHa ShIzNiT]

I was getting desktop flickering while playing games for a little while with my 7970 and 13.1 drivers, but now running 13.2 beta 6 and the problem (as well as all artifacting whatsover) is gone. I may never switch drivers again!

 

[merk]

Do the beta drivers also take car of the issue's with flash? If so I'll try installing them when i get home later.

 

[Mothraman]

Thought I would chime in. I have a HIS HD7970 GHz Edition, and I also had the flickering on my card but only on the 2nd monitor hooked to the display port. My main monitor (30" IPS panel) never has had an issue, only the 2nd one (24" IPS). I did some research and found out that the meme clock settings were staying at 300 and I set the defaults and it went up to 1500 and I have had no more flickering.its been 2 days now and all is good. I only game on the 30" monitor but I use the 2nd monitor for banking, spreadsheets, taxes etc. I was beginning to think it was the active display port to DVI connector, but I have 2 of them (I, at one time, was gaming on 3 monitors) and it did it on both of them. It would seem from the posts here and in other forums there are many reasons that cause the flickering. Good luck to everyone!