Eyefinity Crossfire Stuttering Resolved !

[Wijkert]

It was good to hear that AMD is taking the microstuttering issue seriously. Sadly they are focusing on single display performance and not Eyefinity:

There is still the issue of Eyefinity and that problem will not be addressed by this first version of the driver. I have more analysis of that complicated discussion planned in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

[Turbomipper_NL]

Sadly they are focusing on single display performance and not Eyefinity

OMG! WHY for crying out loud?
The only people i know who XFire (verb) also have Eyfinity (mostly 3x1 landscape). And they are very sad about the stutters.

I have been a silent reader of WSGF for 8 years now. Just when i figured it all out what kind of Matrox TH2G setup i was going to buy, ATI released the multi screen revolution. After an 4870x2 i now use a 6970 (3x1 portrait with tearing issues) and am dying to give 5x1 portrait a try. But to game on 5x HD or above (and beyond...loved that scifi series in space) XFire is inevitable!

There are not manny people out there that buy a 5 screen multi card setup and who don't game enough on that rigg to notice the stuttering. I for 1 would be tearing my hair out (that last piece thats still remaining).

So please AMD (and i know AMD staff reads WSGF) please please please dont forget us!
You know we cant 5x1 on the new consoles you are delivering those fine gpu's and cpu's for.
All we ask are some bits and bytes in a driver to go with your excellent PC hardware so we finaly can use that tech to its full potential!

[Haldi]

Nice Video about Microstutter with Nvidia! 1h30mins Livestream

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/2cH_ozvn0gA[/youtube]

[Haldi]

Tried some Metro Last Light! still via Fraps can't do anything other....

Here some 1920x1080 Results.




Looks horrible in Eyefinity!



and Overclocked...





Options: Resolution: 1920 x 1080; DirectX: DirectX 11; Quality: High; Texture filtering: AF 16X; Advanced PhysX: Disabled; Tesselation: Not supported; Motion Blur: Normal; SSAA: OFF;


Before Patch:
Total Frames: 8356, Total Time: 171.2488 sec
Average Framerate: 48.83
Max. Framerate: 108.53 (Frame: 6809)
Min. Framerate: 15.30 (Frame: 7488)

After Patch:
Total Frames: 12928, Total Time: 171.2837 sec
Average Framerate: 75.51
Max. Framerate: 173.97 (Frame: 10186)
Min. Framerate: 14.03 (Frame: 2771)

Edit: And in Eyefinity 6048*1080:
Total Frames: 6842, Total Time: 171.2339 sec
Average Framerate: 39.99
Max. Framerate: 73.49 (Frame: 1177)
Min. Framerate: 11.65 (Frame: 5453)

Overclocked CPU from 4 to 4.5ghz
Total Frames: 6985, Total Time: 170.3586 sec
Average Framerate: 41.04
Max. Framerate: 98.08 (Frame: 6834)
Min. Framerate: 11.33 (Frame: 1578)

Overclocked GPU from 1000 to 1150/1800
Total Frames: 8203, Total Time: 171.2573 sec
Average Framerate: 47.93
Max. Framerate: 91.83 (Frame: 7518)
Min. Framerate: 12.86 (Frame: 2136)

[Turbomipper_NL]

Tried some Metro Last Light!

Thanks Haldi, for all your effort in this post!
These numbers are very informative, but they also scare me.
It seems that Eyefinity in crossfire is still not what we would like to see.
But can you tell me Haldi, how is the game experience?
Is it playable in your opinion or are the stutters to frustrating?

[Haldi]

Don't really notice the stuttering. Not sure if it's because i'm totally blind or everybody else is exagerating^^

BTW! FRAPS ist NOT a valid method to meassure Frametimes! It's just the closest possible way to do it without investing around 2000-3000$ in a test setup!

Here is a Gameplay (Benchmark) video of the game in Eyefinity:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/v/NANKAwEWebE[/youtube]

But it's youtube! 23FPS and quality sucks. i can Upload the original Video Filmed via Canon EOS500D, but that's still only 30FPS....

[Haldi]

32. July is the day!
https://twitter.com/AMDRadeon/status/347803712930070529

[Wijkert]

With the 13.8 beta driver a frame pacing setting is introduced. Looking forward to Haldi testing this! Can not do it myself since I don't own two 7xxx cards. Here is a vid by PCper explaining what the improvement is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bErKbmY-X5Q.

[Haldi]

Only works on Single Monitor, not in Eyefinity. Eyefinity will be patched in v2 which will release "soon" (so maybe in 3-4 months ?).

Beside testing with Fraps will result in insecure Values but i will make two or three short tests... in the next few weeks. Let it roll open air this WE

[Wijkert]

Only works on Single Monitor, not in Eyefinity. Eyefinity will be patched in v2 which will release "soon" (so maybe in 3-4 months ?)

Jeez, forgot to mention the most important thing. "Testing" might not be the best word, maybe eyeballing the difference might be useful as well. Microstuttering is a thing on single monitors as well, although it isn't as pronounced as it is in Eyefinity.

[Bifurk8]

I totally missed the announcement of Frame Pacing in the 13.8 beta and was disappointed to learn that it's just for single screen Crossfire users in its current iteration. Nonetheless, I'm glad to hear AMD is working on the issue and making progress. That's certainly better than the silence we've heard for years. HardOCP has a pretty good write-up on their experience with 13.8 beta Frame Pacing.

[Bifurk8]

13.8 Beta 2 drivers are out here. I was really hoping for Frame Pacing to come to Eyefinity resolutions with this release, but the release notes don't say anything new about Frame Pacing. From the looks of it, this one's mostly about improving performance and bug fixes in specific games.

[Wijkert]

13.8 Beta 2 drivers are out here. I was really hoping for Frame Pacing to come to Eyefinity resolutions with this release, but the release notes don't say anything new about Frame Pacing. From the looks of it, this one's mostly about improving performance and bug fixes in specific games.

I believe that a source told PC Perspective that frame-pacing probably won't be implemented for Eyefinity this year. Can't find the source though, might have been on the podcast.

[Bifurk8]

That's disappointing, if true. HardOCP's article had stated later this month, but didn't quote a source. Here's what they published:

AMD is releasing this technology in phases. The driver today, Catalyst 13.8 Beta is Phase 1. In Phase 1 Frame Pacing only works at resolutions up to 2560x1600 on a single display. That's right, Frame Pacing will not work on CrossFire in Eyefinity resolutions in Phase 1. In Phase 1 only games that are DX10 and DX11 are supported, no DX9 games will work with Frame Pacing in Phase 1.

Phase 2 of the driver will come later this month. In Phase 2 CrossFire in Eyefinity resolutions will be supported. There will also be support for DX9 and OGL games in Phase 2. So if you game in Eyefinity, or across multiple displays, or higher resolutions than 2560x1600 then Phase 2 driver is what you will have to wait for. Also, if you want support in DX9 games.

[Haldi]

ah well, we have august, this year is nearly over ^^

[Haldi]

"Which system feels better? 1 or 2 ?"

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rad ... 599-3.html

interesting read.

[Haldi]

at 29:40 ..... "Everything will be fixxed next week"
but it's not sure if it will be fixxed for current generation cards ?

Interesting part starting after 12:00
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/DxQuxlYsGzI[/youtube]

and here is the article about that topic:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-C ... igurations



Seems like we have 3 Problems in Eyefinity:

• Dropped Frames
• Interleaved Frames
• stepped tearing

I do want to note before anyone comments ask this question: no enabling Vsync in the game or the control panel does NOT fix or change these problems.

also important quote:

As a result, everything we are seeing in our 5760x1080 testing today does carry over to 4K monitors and gaming.

[simroz]

Thanks Haldi, some good news for a change

Quote from the article:

The stepped tearing issue is caused by a different but related property – AMD does not appear to have a synchronization step on each scan line but instead on each pixel. Rather than wait for each scan line to output before updating the frame buffer AMD allows the buffer to update at any point which would cause the variable height frame results we are showing you above.

I asked AMD for more information on why or how this is happening but they decided not to comment at this time. When I approached NVIDIA they said only that they have enabled “locks and syncs” for their frame copies and scan line outputs on SLI.

UPDATE: We did finally get some feedback from AMD on the subject after quite a bit of back and forth. Essentially, AMD claims the problems we are seeing are due only to synchronization issues and NOT from bandwidth limitations. Since the file copies are done over the PCIe bus, only an instance of near 100% utilization on it would cause degradation – and the only instances of that would be from heavy system memory access. However, if you are accessing main system memory with the GPUs in your PC then other performance bottlenecks are going to creep up before CrossFire scaling.

If that is the case then AMD should be able to fix the CrossFire + Eyefinity issues in the coming weeks or months. A bandwidth issue would be much harder to deal with and could mean a fix would have never arrived for HD 7000-series users.

At least now i feel like i have not wasted $1500. Maybe they will sort it by the time they release the new GPUs
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-confirm ... eek_124432

[Bifurk8]

New beta drivers released a few minutes ago. Some framepacing improvements, but still no mention of supporting framepacing in Crossfire+Eyefinity.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pa ... river.aspx

[Bifurk8]

Reliable, if somewhat vague, Eyefinity Crossfire frame pacing news from AnandTech!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7379/amd- ... ing-driver

While attending AMD’s 2014 GPU product showcase, we were able to pull aside AMD’s PR reps and get a comment on the matter.

AMD is currently targeting a mid-fall release for the phase 2 fixes, phase 2 being the frame pacing improvements for Crossfire Eyefinity. Based on what we’re hearing that would be a November release, however AMD has also made it clear that they’re trying to push these fixes through as fast as they reasonably can.