GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > GPU Megat[H]read - the cores of wrath grew heavy on the die that day

Aws: Dec 5, 2005

Anybody having issues with the 12.4 Catalyst? On my HD 5870 I've noticed two things. First, my CCC settings are completely ignored by games that previously didn't ignore them. I have 33 games installed and I tested on a fair chunk of them, and none of them have the settings applied. Second, my shadows are hosed in every game. If they're not flickering all the time then they do this.

Notice the striping. It's very visible on his face and neck. This isn't a lovely JPG; the BMP looks the same.

I've ruled out any hardware issues; everything runs as smoothly as it ever did, and I decided to Furmark while I was out for a few hours today. No issues.

# ¿ May 19, 2012 18:38

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 11:14

Aws: Dec 5, 2005

Agreed posted:

That particular example is because of the way they do shadows in TW2 iirc. Happens on my GTX 580, too.

No idea what's up with the drivers not overriding correctly, that's such an off-and-on thing with both companies' control panels that I've abandoned the control panel entirely and just use nVidiaInspector to force things at a deeper level than the control panel.

It generally worked consistently in the many years I've been running ATI/AMD cards. Some games supported them and some games didn't. It's just strange that now it doesn't work in anything. I don't think it's the TW2's rendering; I played it when it first came out and there were no issues then. It's in every single game, even ones that worked perfectly before. I've been playing Skyrim with no issues since release, and it's only with the 12.4 drivers that the shadows suddenly got hosed.

Alereon posted:

Are you setting a profile for each game? If you don't then the default profile (which may not be your global settings) will apply.

Nope. Just a single global profile.

Dotcom656 posted:

I showed this post to a friend of mine who works with Nvidia on driver development and testing, just to see what he said.
The hashing pattern on the TW2 screenshot is dithering done on the shadow map by the game to approximate soft edges. As for the shadow flickering, that could be a number of things and a short example video would be better for him to see what might be happening.

But if you get the artifacting in more than just TW2 it might be bad VRAM, since that usually results in fixed pattern artifacting.

You have some cool friends. The dithering is something that was usually fixable by setting Anti-Aliasing mode to Adaptive Multi-Sample from the default Multi-Sample in CCC. It's just that, as I said, that's completely ignored by everything now. Bad VRAM is kind of exciting though; I was putting off a 7970 because it's not financially responsible and I can't really afford it, but if my 5870 breaks, hey, it's a mandatory expense. A man's gotta have a GPU, doesn't he?

I'm going to downgrade to 12.3 to rule out bad VRAM.

# ¿ May 19, 2012 19:44

Aws: Dec 5, 2005

Downgraded to 12.3. Issue is still there. I tried the per-application profile, and it doesn't change anything.

I'm stumped. There's not a whole lot for me to do. A year ago, I started writing down changes I make to anything on my computer (because I like to gently caress with things and I learned this is a really helpful thing to do) and this time it's really not my fault.

Oh well. I guess I'll wait and see what happens.

This is so exciting. Nothing has broken for so long; it takes me back to 2002 when my trusty 9700 would overheat in my lovely case and I couldn't afford anything better, so I had to keep the case open and blow a giant floor fan into my case. Ah, nostalgia.

# ¿ May 19, 2012 21:02

Aws: Dec 5, 2005

Alereon posted:

I thought it might be interesting to post a Geforce GTX 670 trip report from the perspective of a long-time ATI and then AMD user.

As a longtime ATI/AMD user, how would you compare nvidia's control panel with AMD?

# ¿ May 19, 2012 21:06

Aws: Dec 5, 2005

It's replacing my 5870. This is totally irresponsible of me, but I waited about a week to let the impulse purchase desire pass, so it feels kind of responsible. Also, I need it for loading high res texture packs and running at 60 FPS, so it's not really optional :pcgaming:

Saving for a rainy day? What?

I'm thinking scented candles and some romantic music while I unbox and install. Any suggestions for music? What do you guys usually play when a sexy new graphics card arrives?

# ¿ May 26, 2012 07:58

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