Q&A to ATI's Dave Baumann and SunSp*t

[Abram]

I just hope all these 5xxx sales will mean you ATI folks don't take so much time releasing future drivers. It's been my only gripe with ATI over the years.

But it's great that you and...wuzhisname are addressing so many question and issues in this thread. Makes me very comfortable in buying my 5870. (my first ATI card in three builds, btw)

[StingingVelvet]

But it's great that you and...wuzhisname are addressing so many question and issues in this thread. Makes me very comfortable in buying my 5870. (my first ATI card in three builds, btw)

Indeed, I am planning to go ATI for the first time since Doom 3 came out and this thread, the eyefinity and their appearence here in general, is the main reason why.

[Dave Baumann]

I just hope all these 5xxx sales will mean you ATI folks don't take so much time releasing future drivers. It's been my only gripe with ATI over the years.

For those that are not familiar with AMD graphics, we have a monthly driver release schedule - the Catalyst driver releases are number according to the month, i.e. Catalyst 9.12 relates to the 12 release of the year, in December 2009; sometimes there is a "bonus" 13'th release in a year, dependant on how the driver schedules are looking. Occasionally we'll have "hotfix" drivers inbetween the planned, monthly WHQL releases that are designed to address specific things quickly.

[StingingVelvet]

[quote]I just hope all these 5xxx sales will mean you ATI folks don't take so much time releasing future drivers. It's been my only gripe with ATI over the years.

For those that are not familiar with AMD graphics, we have a monthly driver release schedule - the Catalyst driver releases are number according to the month, i.e. Catalyst 9.12 relates to the 12 release of the year, in December 2009; sometimes there is a "bonus" 13'th release in a year, dependant on how the driver schedules are looking. Occasionally we'll have "hotfix" drivers inbetween the planned, monthly WHQL releases that are designed to address specific things quickly.

The frequency of updates doesn't bother me, I skip half of nVidia's driver releases because of issues anyway. My main concern is the "breaking" of old games and while nVidia does this too frequently (Fallout 3 a recent example) I have been told ATI does it even more. Not having had an ATI card since 2003 I can't really comment but I know that is the reputation, earned or not. I know I spend a lot of time on the Steam forums helping people with tech issues and a lot of the time it seems ATI driver updates cause problems in older games, but this could just be a perception issue.

As I prepare to go ATI for the first time in years and years I know things I see like the complete lack of ability to play The Saboteur worry me. It just seems like when people have issues I see a lot of responses like "ATI drivers blah blah" when I see that said for nVidia much less often.

I am just being frank here, no hostility intended. I view it as likely being a perception problem as I said... PC gaming in general has a perception problem, lol.

[Abram]

Yes, Iv'e clearly been out of the driver loop for a wheil. Back when i had ATI cards, it was every month. Then there seemed to be a lull, and i upgraded to Nvidia. Then when i got a widescreen, the ATI drivers ahdn't yet done proper aspect scaling, so i stuck with Nvidia. Bu tya, now I'm back to ATI. Shoudl arrive any day now. Yay.


But OT, now I'm thinking of getting 3x 24 or 26 inch screens instead of a big TV. :/ Way to mess with my plans, ATI.

[Anprionsa]

To be honest, I have had Nvidia for the past 4 years, and I just had trouble with the drivers for the longest time... guess it just depends.

[StingingVelvet]

To be honest, I have had Nvidia for the past 4 years, and I just had trouble with the drivers for the longest time... guess it just depends.

nVidia drivers lately have been crap, honestly. It's one of the reasons I am thinking this is all perception and am going ATI next time.

[DaFox]

To be honest, I have had Nvidia for the past 4 years, and I just had trouble with the drivers for the longest time... guess it just depends.

When anyone complains about a certian venders drivers, I just say that both suck... And that is honestly the truth in my opinion.

[Anprionsa]

[quote]To be honest, I have had Nvidia for the past 4 years, and I just had trouble with the drivers for the longest time... guess it just depends.

When anyone complains about a certian venders drivers, I just say that both suck... And that is honestly the truth in my opinion.

haha, I like how you said that...

"the truth in my opinion"

either its true or its not, opinions are not facts.

[Tamlin]

Lets stop the Nvidia vs. ATI driver discussion here please. :)

Dave, does ATI look into this issue? I made thread here, so not to derail this thread:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=17782

[McKie]

I have searched the net and there seems to be no defendant answer to this question. the Question is this. Do you need 2 crossfire bridges in a 2 card situation , or is only 1 crossfire bridge needed.

The general consensus is that you can run with one bridge. and there is no need for a second one unless you use 3- or 4-way.

You can use two but you will see no performance gains.

[Dave Baumann]

For dual card operation only one connector is required - this was software change was instigated when we introduced HD 3870 X2. You'll see that some of the partner designs for the 5700 series are already only coming with one connector.

[McKie]

Thanks for the clarification. Appreciated. :D

[Sideeffect]

Are there any plans to improve the configuration options of hydraGrid to better utilise an eyefinity setup?

Some options I could like to see are

*Grid Names/Numbers so applications can bind to them
*Theme/Menu integration similar to multimon so you can 1 click an application to each grid
*Hotkey support
*Video player support so you can maximise a video inside a grid
*Windowed game support
*Application memory so when you start a program it always opens in the same grid.

Thanks for reading :)

[Dick Hard]

Hi,

I am having trouble running 5970's in Quad crossfire +Eyefinity. Performance is bad in qcf. Have you guys at ATI actually tested a setup like this? When i disable qcf and run 2 gpu's everything is ok.When i run 1 monitor,with qcf enabeled,things are gooooood! That is seriously fast.I would love to be able to use all that raw power on 3 monitors!!
Will this be solved in the near future??

Thanx

Edit: I've found that using everest has been my problem!! Looks like monitoring the 5970 takes up recources,or is corrupt with drivers.

Another breakthrough, i used msi afterburner to set a custom fancurve, THAT polls your gpu temperature, and every time it polls, framerate drops!!!

[Clayman]

So here's the burning question that I've seen posted in several forums that has yet to be answered. With the latest hotfix that enabled crossfire to work with eyefinity, this got many to thinking (including myself). Would it be possible to use the DVI output on the 2nd card instead of the DP on the first card for the 3rd monitor? I'm not sure if this is even physically possible with the current cards or perhaps something that we might see further down the road with software.

[Enuo]

I read through the previous questions and didnt see this posted, but i know theres several posts complaining about the vsync tearing issues with eyefinity both in and out of games. http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=17663 for example

Is ati aware of, or actively working to resolve this vsync issue when eyefinity is enabled?

Some people call it the "line" issue. Where in and even out of games theres a horizontal line desync across 2 out of the 3 monitors when things move across it. Doesnt matter if I change layout or cables or even switch which cable goes to which monitor, the middle and left monitors have the vsync off style line in games about an inch and a half from the bottom of the left/middle screens. I force vsync on through programs, borderlands, steam engine games, batman, and in ati ccc and even ati tray tools. I had this issue with borderlands at 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 until i forced 60hz refresh rate.
Ill mention the middle/left monitors are native 1920x1080 BUT If i play games without eyefinity enabled, at the eyefinity "level" of resolution 1680x1050 non native resolution on any single monitor, vsync works great no tearing. Ive read lots of posts about this, and see it in youtube eyefinity videos like these http://www.youtube.com/user/rmshro0 you can see tearing on middle left monitors, but not far right monitor. He even comments on it in one of the videos assuming its a vsync issue.

[lowdog]

Hi Dave.

Realy hope you pick up on this post, this is the situation;

Check over at Extremesystems Forums for a start and you'll see quite a few people watercooling their 5970's....but there is a problem! The card seems to have some sort of temp bug when it's under any sort of cooling other than the stock heatsink, it seems to have issues with throtteling/volts/temps when watercooled and starts getting desktop artifacts in 2D, driver recovering errors and system lockups, and 3D crashing when CFX is called upon by an app or game after the card has been idle or the second core has been initiated after low power state.

Not realy sure how accurate my explenation of the issue is but one thing most who are trying to watercool this card are certain of is this, we need a revised bios for the 5970 that can eliminate these issues, a bios that can enable us to run the cores at lower temps, have no fan controll issues or presets and no throtteling problems due to temps and or low power state.

Can you arrange a bios update for the 5970, would be much appreciated by many.

Thanks.

[Dick Hard]

Hi Dave,
Is it possible to change the bios so that the fan actually prevents the 5970 from overheating? I run them Quadcf, and because of the location of the PCI slots they are next to eachother. When i set fanspeed to 80% temps stay nice, but when i leave speed at auto, the fan of the upper card kicks in way too late.When using Afterburner to set a custom fancurve, i get a performance drop every 4 to 5 secs.This only occurs when 4 gpu's are active.I would rather have the card to ramp up the fan by itself.
Hope you can solve this, because watercooling seems to have its own troubles.
Thanx!

[ChainSOV]

So here's the burning question that I've seen posted in several forums that has yet to be answered. With the latest hotfix that enabled crossfire to work with eyefinity, this got many to thinking (including myself). Would it be possible to use the DVI output on the 2nd card instead of the DP on the first card for the 3rd monitor? I'm not sure if this is even physically possible with the current cards or perhaps something that we might see further down the road with software.

This question has been answered on these forums and the answer is no, its too hard to synchronize the outputs over pci-e without some special chips.