New gfx AMD HD7870 2GB, fps drops and idle clock rate?

[MadGabZ]

Hi all,
I'm an oldschool q3/ql'er, and my old 8800GTS went bust, so i got a new gfx card (see topic) and a new SSD, (Crucial M4), to speed up things a bit

So, after installing card plus SSD, new win7, Catalyst latest and QLPrism, and finding my old cfg from 9 months ago, im starting to play QL again...
For the love of allthingsneat, why does catalyst keep my gfx card running at idle speed (300/150 mhz clock GPU/MEM) when in QL? I get fps drops constantly and stuttering too! It's driving me mad!
I've searched allover, read a few fps drop threads here, but cant seem to find a real solution whatsoever. Tried all sorts of QL gfx tweaks - sigh, again, forgot how it has been these past 15 years of quaking - but, to no avail

I'll do a pastebin of my cfg if u want!

Please, help! I havent had an AMD/ATI card for ages (not since 9800 pro), so I'm back to basics here driver wise!

Thanks in Advance,
MadGabZ

[Adderall]

Hi all,
I'm an oldschool q3/ql'er, and my old 8800GTS went bust, so i got a new gfx card (see topic) and a new SSD, (Crucial M4), to speed up things a bit

So, after installing card plus SSD, new win7, Catalyst latest and QLPrism, and finding my old cfg from 9 months ago, im starting to play QL again...
For the love of allthingsneat, why does catalyst keep my gfx card running at idle speed (300/150 mhz clock GPU/MEM) when in QL? I get fps drops constantly and stuttering too! It's driving me mad!
I've searched allover, read a few fps drop threads here, but cant seem to find a real solution whatsoever. Tried all sorts of QL gfx tweaks - sigh, again, forgot how it has been these past 15 years of quaking - but, to no avail

I'll do a pastebin of my cfg if u want!

Please, help! I havent had an AMD/ATI card for ages (not since 9800 pro), so I'm back to basics here driver wise!

Thanks in Advance,
MadGabZ

MadGabz its downclocking because its a power saving feature built in CCC (powerplay) I believe the 7k series can disable it in CCC so its always at full power. If you dont have that option this program is pretty nice for ati cards -> http://www.radeonpro.info/en-US/

Avoid 13.1 ccc its flawed driver which can cause input lag. 13.beta is your best choice

http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalytst-13-2-beta-3
http://benchmark3d.com/microstutter-...-diving-deeper
http://benchmark3d.com/microstutter-...im-***-edition

[c3]

Hi all,
I'm an oldschool q3/ql'er, and my old 8800GTS went bust, so i got a new gfx card (see topic) and a new SSD, (Crucial M4), to speed up things a bit

So, after installing card plus SSD, new win7, Catalyst latest and QLPrism, and finding my old cfg from 9 months ago, im starting to play QL again...
For the love of allthingsneat, why does catalyst keep my gfx card running at idle speed (300/150 mhz clock GPU/MEM) when in QL? I get fps drops constantly and stuttering too! It's driving me mad!
I've searched allover, read a few fps drop threads here, but cant seem to find a real solution whatsoever. Tried all sorts of QL gfx tweaks - sigh, again, forgot how it has been these past 15 years of quaking - but, to no avail

I'll do a pastebin of my cfg if u want!

Please, help! I havent had an AMD/ATI card for ages (not since 9800 pro), so I'm back to basics here driver wise!

Thanks in Advance,
MadGabZ

Going off of what Adderall said...

For one, roll back to one of the modded drivers on www.benchmark3d.com. Try this one, worked well for me:

http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-12-10-whql-7900-mod

Choose the driver that states ULPS OFF so your card isn't being throttled.

As for Radeonpro, this is a probably the best ATI tweak tool out there for new generation video cards such as the 7k series. W/ this tool, try changing your flip queue from 3 to 1 or 0. Test both, hopefully one of those will resolve your 'stuttering' issue.

Your issues could also be 'operating system' related. I recommend checking out this tweak guide (Best windows 7 performance gaming tweak guide out there, IMO) and tweaking your system so it's optimal for gaming. This tweakguide resolved many of my issues.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1315790

Also, check out this quakelive thread that talks about system tweaks (many input lag and dpc latency) type tweaks that can help you out as well.

http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showt...-7850-GFX-Help

Unfortunately, your issue can be the cause of several culprits, and window's 7 (out of the box) is a horrible gaming platform and needs to be tweaked to avoid lag spikes, fps drops, stuttering, etc.

[MadGabZ]

Thanks, to both of you, for such competent answers/help links!
Nice to hear im not the only one in that boat!
I already was using Process Lasso, billiant app, btw. So, after trying a lot of those mentioned win7 tweaks, i resorted to roll back to 12.10 whql, and am now testing.
Win7 tweaks deffo left the system much more responsive, again thanks ffor the wealth of info there! This should be a sticky, imho!
So far so good... testing by just jumping in games for spec, and 12.10 definitely helped, but fps still jitters ever so slightly, not 125-ROCKFKINSOLID..yet! That modded driver, isnt that for the 7900-range cards only, or do you think its safe to test on my 7870 ?

[MadGabZ]

Alright, after a bit of testing online, i am still getting fps drops -- frops? - all the way to 70ish, especially on maps like Quarantine, Canned Heat and Asylum. sheesh...
I'm now on the 12.10 7900MODded-driver, using Process Lasso in Game Mode, and the neat Timer Resolution app to adjust OS timing resolution to maximum, still the same thing.
I'm getting bald....quickly!
Now, either its the damned CFG again...which i thought i eliminated by starting over, or could it be the darn Razer Synapse driver for my old Deathadder 1800 dpi mouse? Whose on-the-fly sensitivity bar i just cannot get to be shown in-game, and only sporadically in windows....
When it seems to be somehow map related, what in the world could cause map-related frops in a map?
EDIT: Forgot to mention, how does ULPS works? Its still clocking at 300/150.... idle mode still on!

[pikaluva13]

Alright, after a bit of testing online, i am still getting fps drops -- frops? - all the way to 70ish, especially on maps like Quarantine, Canned Heat and Asylum. sheesh...
I'm now on the 12.10 7900MODded-driver, using Process Lasso in Game Mode, and the neat Timer Resolution app to adjust OS timing resolution to maximum, still the same thing.
I'm getting bald....quickly!
Now, either its the damned CFG again...which i thought i eliminated by starting over, or could it be the darn Razer Synapse driver for my old Deathadder 1800 dpi mouse? Whose on-the-fly sensitivity bar i just cannot get to be shown in-game, and only sporadically in windows....
When it seems to be somehow map related, what in the world could cause map-related frops in a map?
EDIT: Forgot to mention, how does ULPS works? Its still clocking at 300/150.... idle mode still on!

Quarantine and Asylum have been known to cause fps drops for quite a while. Siberia (and possibly Cold War) has/have the same issue.

There used to be what seemed like a fix by using a command, but it turns out it was a false positive placebo effect. (I was one of the first people that 'discovered' it and it *did* work somehow, even though there was nothing that the command actually did)

Unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it (Other than by lowering settings)

[MadGabZ]

Quarantine and Asylum have been known to cause fps drops for quite a while. Siberia (and possibly Cold War) has/have the same issue.

There used to be what seemed like a fix by using a command, but it turns out it was a false positive placebo effect. (I was one of the first people that 'discovered' it and it *did* work somehow, even though there was nothing that the command actually did)

Unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it (Other than by lowering settings)

hmmm.. im already playing in 1024*768@100hz..... thanks for the heads up, Pika! But...having a map induce frops...? r_speeds or something? Those maps are very nice to play, should be fixed....
OK, ill try picmip 20 or something... how much does r_gamma really means in QL to fps/gfx processing?

[pikaluva13]

hmmm.. im already playing in 1024*768@100hz..... thanks for the heads up, Pika! But...having a map induce frops...? r_speeds or something? Those maps are very nice to play, should be fixed....
OK, ill try picmip 20 or something... how much does r_gamma really means in QL to fps/gfx processing?

picmip doesn't actually have much of an effect on performance. The max picmip is only 10, but 20 would also work if you just liked the number more :P

I'm not entirely sure if r_gamma does much for performance; I've never actually taken a look at it before.
I've pretty much just accepted that I need a bind to switch between com_maxfps 60 and 125 for some maps.

[INCubus]

Hey MadGabz.

I use a 7870 as well, beast of a card due to its insane OC potential, but I digress. This sounds like a cfg issue more than anything else. I see absolutely no frames drops with this GPU, but granted I use a pretty "ugly" graphical config.

For comparison purposes: I'm using Catalyst 13.1 at the moment, with the 13.1 crossfire application profile from AMD (You don't need two cards to enjoy performance benefits from CAPs).

My suggestions: Make sure to back up your current profile (/writeconfig backup) and use the QL config preset "performance". Can be found within the in-game GUI by hitting escape, bottom right corner.

Test the problematic maps, if you don't see any improvements in Frames Per Second, you can at-least cancel out "config issue" off the troubleshooting list.

You mentioned the card is going back to power saving state even when QL is running. Are you running QL Full screen? If it's using power saving state clocks, that right there would explain the fps drops.

If you install Afterburner, theres a checkbox to disable "powerplay" which will disable the downclocking in 2d/3d. Looking at the 13.1 CCC, there's no option to do this, so it requires a third party application like a afterburner or Trixxx.

Let me know how it goes, I'll try and help further but I felt this post was getting quite long. Best of luck.

[MadGabZ]

Hey MadGabz.

If you install Afterburner, theres a checkbox to disable "powerplay" which will disable the downclocking in 2d/3d. Looking at the 13.1 CCC, there's no option to do this, so it requires a third party application like a afterburner or Trixxx.

Let me know how it goes, I'll try and help further but I felt this post was getting quite long. Best of luck.

Thanks a LOT for the info, incubus! I've dropped back to drivers 12.10, but its now even worse! I can't seem to find the 'disable powerplay', guide me please? 12-10 drivers are the ULPS where power states should have been disabled, but i still get 300/150 mhz clocks...gggrrr....

I'll try reinstall drivers from 13.1 then test your CFG suggestions!