Radeon HD 7970 Inbound

[Kuky]

I made a post here also:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4217867&postcount=9

 

I wonder now how long till AMD gets their driver sorted out, I don't know what I'm gonna do if DCS still can't run on this card...

[Kuky]

I connected small monitors again and tried Falcon BMS 4.32 extracting MFD's to 8" screens and framerate is still exceptionally high... mostly 60fps with little dips into high 50's Little overclock on the card, which I haven't done yet, should get it to stable 60fps I would hope

[TAIPAN_]

That's great about the 4th screen. I might find a small one to put teamspeak on.

[Cali]

Nice, maybe I'll have to get that, I run 3 screens on my computer. 2 screens with the 8800GT and another one with a USB video adapter that I extract MFD's, DED and RWR through BMS on.

[sobek]

AFAIK, display ports with version 1.2 are able to support more than one monitor (if the port is connected to a hub), so it should be possible to run more than 4 monitors.

[TAIPAN_]

AFAIK, display ports with version 1.2 are able to support more than one monitor (if the port is connected to a hub), so it should be possible to run more than 4 monitors.

 

Yes it's promising.

 

Problem is though people have been waiting for the hubs a long time. Last I heard the ETA was about June 2012.

 

I'll be sticking with Displayport monitors it's more flexible for the future and less issues than using adapters.

[sobek]

Problem is though people have been waiting for the hubs a long time. Last I heard the ETA was about June 2012.

 

Ah i see, i thought the technology wasn't brand new.

[TAIPAN_]

So did I because ATI advertise the feature as if it already exist

[CyBerkut]

The other possibility on increasing monitor count with DisplayPort 1.2 is if you have DisplayPort 1.2 monitors that accomodate daisy chaining. A single DisplayPort 1.2 connection from the card can feed up to three DisplayPort 1.2 monitors daisy chained off of it.

 

But yes, we really need to see some MST DisplayPort 1.2 hubs get on to the market, as it has been quite awhile now since the standard emerged.

[Kuky]

I installed IL-2 Cliffs of Dover and it runns quite smooth on High settings and remarkably does not crash... why the hell are DCS titles the only ones crashing?!

 

EDIT: I need to take my statement about CoD running smooth... over water is very smooth indeed but over land it's still stuttering. Framerate is not bad but it's still stuttery

Edited January 16, 2012 by Kuky

[TAIPAN_]

I've never heard someone say smooth and cliffs of Dover in the same sentence, it says something of the power of this card!

 

DCS seems to be the only game I've heard of not working too

[PeterP]

I installed IL-2 Cliffs of Dover and it runns quite smooth on High settings and remarkably does not crash... why the hell are DCS titles the only ones crashing?!

I'm watching your suffering now a week and it really makes me also very sorry that you have to go trough this...

 

But I have a Idea and this is also very vague but it might work. ....

 

My idea is to try a different render-path by using SoftTH.

 

SoftTH also works when you use only one monitor.

 

I'm curious what will happen.

 

Just give it a try: http://www.kegetys.net/forum/index.php?topic=2123.0

 

when you have problems to configure - give me your exact monitor-layout and I could write a working file for you within minutes.

 

Just a guess to bring you back into the cockpit until you have working drivers for your card.

[Kuky]

TAIPAN... I was surprised also that on all HIGH settings the game is very playable, there is still not completely stutter free over large cities (I can still notice it here and there) but overall it's much improved and now quite playable. I still have a gripe with FSAA still not working.

 

and PeterP... mate you are a genius! It actually seems to work as I was able to stay in game for 10min and there was no crash... before crash would happen to within 2-3min at most and on average it would crash within 1min.

 

Is it normal that V-sync does not work, and I notice bit of worse performance with this, I guess it's because Aero is disabled by it? At least it works now... I hope next Catalyst fixes this and everything is back to normal.

 

Also, if DCS works with SoftTH and not with regular card driver.. what does this say/mean? Why is the game crashing with regular drivers???

Edited January 14, 2012 by Kuky

[TAIPAN_]

That's great news! At least you can play now and might get better luck with drivers later.

 

I've been reading other forums trying to make the decision and I posted about DCS, someone is running it no problems and gets 40% improvement etc:

 

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038263725&posted=1#post1038263725

 

So I think I'm pretty much sold :)

 

I asked which drivers they used, waiting for response

[PeterP]

 

and PeterP... mate you are a genius! It actually seems to work as I was able to stay in game for 10min and there was no crash... before crash would happen to within 2-3min at most and on average it would crash within 1min.

 

Hey that's brilliant news!

 

So SoftTH works with your setting... (also scratching my head!)

 

Hmm...

I think you should first observe what happens after new drivers hit the road - and when this still exist :

 

you should definitely write a bugreport to ED

 

and

 

:D donate something to keyetys and ask ED/AMD to pay it back to you when they found out who fault this is..... ;)

 

Kegetys for president!

 

Serious: you should write Kegetys a PM to give him this info - he already allocated some bugs in DCS before.

>> http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=83020

 

 

If you don't mind PM me /post your setting here and I will have a look if there could be something optimized.

I will need your

- options.lua

- the default config.SoftTHconfig and also your edited one if you did

- your "Monitors-lua"

- and a exact layout of your desktop monitor layout with a small description how you want to use it in DCS.

 

...SoftTH offers many options to optimize the rendering and bypass the problem to run windowed with Helios and different sized monitors>>SoftTH NEWS

 

 

I would take his testimony with a grain of salt. Why isn't he here gloating with the extreme improvement he has with this card?

 

I'm also suspicious about this gain - only feasible if you run very high res/many view-ports.

 

DCS is a "Framed" simulation - this means the CPU has to calculate every frame before it sends the commandos 'what to render' to the GPU. - so the CPU is in the end always the bottleneck over big cities /in heavy battles. Would be nice to know in witch mission he did this tests.

Start reading here to learn more about this: Whats my bottleneck?

Edited January 14, 2012 by PeterP

[Kuky]

PeterP, here's the 3 files you've asked (see WinRAR attachment). Roughly I think without Aero I get about 2/3 the performance, I had to disable mirrors again to get playable framerate (mirrors are halving the FPS right now and didn't seem to be that much of a hit before but I would need more thorough test to get actual figures, but I won't do that yet, I still wish to wait till official Catalyst 12.1 comes out). I turned HDR off also because it's not working properly in multi-monitor configs... also I noticed black flicker again with HDR on (I think it might be sun glare again which was fixed before when I used HD5870).

 

In post 131 (link bellow) is how I have arranged monitors:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1371975&postcount=131

 

Monitor 1 - Left MFCD (800x600)

Monitor 2 - Right MFCD (800x600)

Monitor 3 - Main Screen (1920x1200)

Monitor 4 - touch screen (800x600) *not used as part of total resolution in DCS A-10C

Edited January 15, 2012 by Kuky

[Kuky]

Also I don't know if I should report a bug yet before of crashing as I am sure it's not the game that crashes but graphics driver (there is no crash log) I do hope though that someone from ED team is reading this thread and takes note of this as it might just be something on DCS end.

[Kuky]

In game settings:

 

Extra Settings:

- Increased Districts Visibility Distance to 22Km (default is 10Km) *affects CPU

- Increased Buildings Density (in Graphics.lua) to 120 (default is 60, maybe 80, not sure now) *affects CPU

- Increased LandLodDistances (in Graphics.lua) to 30Km/50Km (forgot what defaults are, maybe 24Km/40Km day and less night?) *affects GPU

- Increased Districts ground textures to 50Km (this increases districs light textures visibility) *affects GPU

- Increased Grass/Bushes density about 10x fold *affects GPU

 

 

Track was made from Sunset Siera mission, FRAPS started right after that FoV zooming out in cockpit, I took off, did left turn towards city and sun, flew till I was right in front of that large radio antena in the middle of the city and FRAPS was stopped there. I had two crashes before I could get this this point so I repeated reply untill I got to the same point every time. Total duration of the track duration just under 3min (as game would crash eventually I did not want to go for longer duration)

 

Now, here's some FRAPS numbers:

I7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 925MHz core - 1375MHz mem / Mirrors ON

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

3350, 176876 ...... 14, 34, 18.940

 

i7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 925MHz core - 1375MHz mem / Mirrors OFF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

5421, 177428 ...... 23, 53, 30.553

 

i7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 1125MHz core - 1575MHz mem / Mirrors ON

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

3523, 177265 ...... 14, 38, 19.874

 

i7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 1125MHz core - 1575MHz mem / Mirrors OFF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

5917, 177343 ...... 24, 61, 33.365

 

As you can see all in-game options were turned on (well with exception of MSAA :D as I don't see any benefit of going for very high FSAA values, maybe up tp 8x is alright but anything higher is really pointless and just reduces your framerate) and I've added bit of extra which mostly affects CPU anyway, only grass/bushes are more work for the video card but it seems HD7970 has no problems running this even when I increase density. I find Mirrors by far make the greatest performance penalty, you could decrease this performance penalty by reducing Cockpit Display Resolution but I find that to be no fun, the reflection oin the mirrors really should be done for every frame (hence the XXXX Every Frame in game options) and doesn't look as nice at 512 setings (you pay for nice graphics with FPS decrease naturally :)). I am sure most people don't use HIGH settings for Civ Traffic either so reducing this will bit more FPS (this affects CPU mostly)

 

Overclocking the video card to max what I could go to in CCC is no problem either but with mirrors on I see no benefit from it as really the simulation is very CPU limited in this case. However turning just Mirrors off and there is overal 10% better performance so not as bad... but since Min FPS is what matters most it's not as much benefit (still CPU bottleneck)

 

By the way this is Without SoftTH enabled (I just renamed the file name of "d3d9.dll" so the sim does not see it). I tried running FRAPS with SoftTH on but it would not run so I can't give numbers with SoftTH but I can say that there is definitely large performance hit... I would say roughly 1/2 of what I get above.

 

For all of you with HD6XXX series cards that I am aware have issue with flickering white dots, I can say that I have not see any such artifacts with this video card yet.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Kuky

[Kuky]

Here's nubmers if I change back from my Very_High.lua back to default High.lua visibility distance (from 22Km to 10Km)

 

i7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 925MHz core - 1375MHz mem / Mirrors OFF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

6053, 177336 ...... 24, 53, 34.133

 

I am surprised to see that my values in Very_High.lua are not affecting framerate that much at all.

 

Terminal Meltdown... no offense taken, it's not like I am the one who made this card or coded the sim ;) really, all this sim needs now is more multithreading and that's it. You need to keep in mind CPU is still primary bottleneck... also, even though the FPS numbers are not that impressive compared to other titles it's still very playable... I can't see what impact it would have running say 3x larger monitors as I run only 1x large monitor and 3x small ones.

[TAIPAN_]

It's similar to my experience with the GTX 580 with a 5Ghz CPU, what I find is the heaviest graphical options from DCS are still really difficult for the modern graphics card.

 

DCS Shadows, Water, and TSSAA are all very taxing. On my 580 I run Water and Shadows on the lowest setting.

TSSAA I have off.

HDR I have off (I use dynamic contrast on my monitor instead).

I have not done any increases to visibility in graphics.lua.

But my resolution is higher 2560x1600.

 

And my frame rates are similar to the fourth test (between 30 and 60).

 

I think the card will do ok for me when I tweak the settings (although it would be nice to finally have a card we could just set on max settings!)

[Kuky]

Back to Very_High.lua and this time turnning off Civ Traffic:

i7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 1125MHz core - 1575MHz mem / Mirrors OFF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

5931, 177480 ...... 25, 61, 33.418

I see almost no benefit from going HIGH Civ Traffic to OFF (1fps extra on MIN)

 

Turrning off also HDR, Trees Shadows and TSSAA:

i7 950 4.2GHz / HD7970 1125MHz core - 1575MHz mem / Mirrors OFF

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

6041, 177297 ...... 25, 68, 34.073

Also minimal improvement... CPU is holding it back I think

 

For me what HD7970 does is handle all my 4 monitors (no need for secondary video card), and I can turn on all graphics to on and have same pretty much the same overall framerate to what I had with HD5870 and that was about my goal. Granted the video card is quite expensive but at least now I don't have to reduce much to have playable sim ... with exception of mirrors which are still not usable.

 

Also I hope I've given good idea to you all about what this card in my system can do in DCS (rest of my PC specs is in my sig)

Edited January 15, 2012 by Kuky

[TAIPAN_]

If you use SoftTH does that reduce performance?

[Kuky]

If you use SoftTH does that reduce performance?

 

It reduces it very much, I can't get FRAPS to record FPS so I can't give numbers but it's roughly halved from values above when running Aero

[TAIPAN_]

Ahh it's because of Windows Aero?

 

I don't use Aero I turned it off since this box is games only.

 

So SoftTH should be good performance if not running Aero

[Kuky]

Because I have to run windowed mode with multiple monitors having Aero theme is good on my end as it enables V-sync and also gives better in game performance. I don't know, maybe there's some things that can be changed in SoftTH config file that can overcome this but I am not aware of it right now as I've never had the need to use it.

 

I've posted in A-10C tech support section, lets see if ED can do anything about it