ATI Driver Problem?

[Cygnus]

Hi everyone, long time no speak hehe,

Firstly just a heads up on the great job I think you guys did, have had the PC since October/November time I think and it has worked pretty much flawlessly, with just a few minor issues (either by fault of my own or some software), so thanks!

Now the issue I have, which is quite minor (I'm hoping), but still one of those annoying little things that bug you and you just want sorted for peace of mind. I recently installed the new ATI 10.12 catalyst control centre + video drivers + everything else, having (supposedly) completely uninstalled the previous drivers with the ATI install manager, and am now having a few issues.

I suppose before going into detail it's important to mention that my graphics card is an HD 5970.

The first issue is that sometimes when I start a game, but not very often, one GPU will go upto the clock speeds it uses for watching videos/films, which I think is 400/900MHz, but the other GPU will stay at 2D clocks which are 157/300. Some other times one GPU will go all the way to 3D clocks (725/1000 I think), whilst the other stays at 2D clocks. The majority of the time, probably 70%, both GPU's will go upto 3D clocks first time, but when they don't it is very annoying.

The second thing I noticed is that when I go into GPU-Z, one GPU says that Crossfire is 'Enabled (2 GPU's)', but the other GPU says that crossfire is 'Disabled'. This is one of the niggly things that I wish would go away, as I know they both used to say Enabled.

The third thing is that when I leave a game, the clocks will not go back to 2D for quite a long time and both GPU's will read 100% activity - maybe half an hour at the most, which is annoying as it creates uneccesary heat and power consumption.

One other thing is that in Catalyst Control Centre, the option for enabling/disabling Catalyst AI has disappeared. Now I was just wondering if this is the normal thing for v10.12, or whether I'm the only person with this issue.

After looking at all these things I would say that it is a driver issue, but I have already tried the whole, use the ATI uninstaller, boot safe mode and use driver sweeper, remove two 'ATI technologies' registry entries, and deleting all ATI folders I can find in My Programs. I then re-intalled the whole package and the issues were still here.

EDIT: Just thought I'd mention that I did a 3DMark Vantage test earlier and the card scored around 25,000 which I think is great, with the system scoring in at about 20,000 overall, so I'm fairly sure the 5970 is not broken in any way.

So, sorry for the frankly ENORMOUS thread

Thanks
Ben.

 

[NilSatis]

It sounds as though it might be a driver problem if it was something that occurred after the driver was installed. Were there any problems displayed when the driver was installed? Looking at the ATI website, im assuming you have made a typo on the driver you have downloaded as the newest driver is actually 11.3 (today) or 11.2 (recent)?

The latest drivers still should work fine. I have not had any experience with crossfire cards, but is it this driver you have downloaded: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_win7-64.aspx and have you downloaded the correct version; i.e. win 64 version for windows 7?

Do you have 2 5970's or one? Wasnt entirely sure from your thread as it is a dual gpu card......sounds like you have 2 from the 3d vantage score you gave...but you seem to only mention the one card. According to this review just for an examplehttp://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h2152.htm 2 5970 cards connnected in crossfirex scored 29000 on 3dvantage on a powerful pc; and you didnt specify what resolution you ran the test at (or your pcs hardware) so it sounds about right potentially.....if you had two cards connected in crossfire.....a monster set up indeed! If you have one, for those scores you must be running it on very low resolution or have a very healthy card.

The latest driver is this one: Catalyst Software Suite with APP removed (64 bit) English Only 85.6 MB 11.3 Released: 3/29/2011 If you are not misspelling the one you have installed; I would delete and reinstall the 11.2 drivers or the 11.3 drivers that have just been released. Disabling Catalyst AI is a big no no; and although (if you have one 5970) you cannot make it run in crossfire or not; disabling catalyst ai will make one of the cards not work at all; so you really need this option to be there and checked I believe. If you have one of the older sets of drivers deleting these drivers using ATIs method of uninstalling and reinstalling the latest ones will be a good bet. For the record my Catalyst AI setting is under gaming/3d application settings on the menu; you have to scroll right down to see it. You want it on the middle or highest settings for your card/s.

Need to be careful with driver sweeper too; as it can delete bits of the registry etc you don't want deleting. If nothing has gone wrong with the use of it, then it is a good way of ensuring no ATI driver bits and pieces remain although new drivers should really just install right over the top of what is left after using the ATI method of uninstalling. Something has definitely gone awry if the gpus are showing 100% load all of the time for that length of time. Can you give us anymore details of your spec and exactly when it went wrong? And reconfirm what drivers you are using.....

 

[Cygnus]

Regarding the 3DMark score, yes that is a low res as it's only the free version, running stock clocks. Sorry about forgetting to mention that. So that's 25,000 on the performance preset; all I could find to compare with on the internet was an XFX HD 5970 Black Edition and that came in at 29,000 on the performance preset, so 25,000 obviously isn't as high, but certainly not low enough to suggest a hardware fault.

And yes, sorry, I did make a typo, I changed the drivers two days ago I think to the 11.12, I'm not one to continually check for new drivers over and over so I hadn't seen the 11.13's as they only came out today.

I'm also fairly sure that for me, since I have one 5970, that disabling cat AI isn't a big no no, due to the fact that you have to disable it for some games anyway otherwise they do not perform correctly. I have to (when I was able to) disable it when playing Empire: Total War, other wise the HUD starts dissapearing after a while and the game ends up being unplayable. I disabled it for that game and re-enabled it to play others on many occassions without trouble. Anyway, that isn't really an issue now since my 'disable' button has completely dissapeared.

I'm assuming that because I only used driver sweeper in safe mode, that the chances of it doing something truly awful were limited, but I certainly don't know for sure.

The other thing that, not so much as interests me but annoys me, is the fact that GPU-Z is listing one GPU as having Crossfire 'Disabled'. I'm not sure if you overlooked that point or didn't see it as important, I'm hoping it's the first and that someone has some idea of why it says that.

I must mention that something similar was happening around January time, and after exhausting everything I had to backup the most important files and do a clean install of windows. This clearly isn't something I want to repeat over and over.

I think I will go through the steps I used to swap drivers, to see if someone can call me up on something, although I know it should be a fairly simple ordeal as I even watched the instruction video on the ATI website on how to do it.... So, for the simple method that is supposed to work I begin by uninstalling everything using the install manager in Programs and Features. I then restart the PC (having downloaded the drivers beforehand) and install everything from the new package (excluding the communications opt-in), restart the PC after it has all finished, and that should be that.

Regarding your first paragraph, no there were no issues reported by the ATI installer. And your second paragraph: Yes I installed the correct (win 7 64bit) driver, but not the one in the link that you posted as I have 11.12, as stated above, not 11.13.

I am using:

A Powercolor HD5970 (think it's powercolor)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
AMD Phenom II 965
4 gig Kingston Hyper X RAM

Hope that is enough information this time around.

Thanks for the reply
Ben

 

[NilSatis]

Ah...no worries re the 3dmark score, thats a good score; nothing wrong there......

The only thing I can think of that isnt driver related is that the card isnt seated properly ; and therefore this would explain the intermittent problem you are having with the loads on the cards and the fact that GPU-z isnt registering the two independent gpus. Depending on your case and fan positioning, sometimes these cards are a little difficult to get seated correctly as they are so large; and it may have dislodged itself if it wasnt fully seated.

As for the catalyst ai, I do believe you want this enabled at least to the minimum level to get the most out of ATI drivers on the 5970; and I also would have thought that increasing AI on a card like this would have performance increases in most games; there will be some older games that it will not work for as well of course; and the difference it makes can be a lot on some and not much on others.
It is much like Nvidias texture optimization options, but better since it does not have the same IQ penalties in games where it works. Set it to standard for a fast and efficient algorithm. Advanced is a more complex analysis which requires more calculations, on slower pc's this will result in a performance penalty. Disable it for games where it has bugs, some games actually run better without it i.e possibly your empire total war; although the disappearing hud sounds odd.

For a dual gpu card like the 5970 I have read and understood from reviews that you want it at the very least enabled. Im sure it wont have disappeared from your ccc. Go to gaming/3d application settings and scroll down; it is at the bottom. If it has disappeared then you definitely need to reinstall the driver or ccc. I have read a few times that when you have this set to disabled you will only see one card working in gpu-z. But a way to test is to game, then alt-tab out of it, and check gpu-z in the middle of playing. See what it says. Then get the cat ai changed to normal or advanced and check again. If the one core is still disabled then i would definitely look to reseat the card; but the score you are getting suggests it is working ok; so it must be something to do with the latest installation of drivers; a new problem with the card, or the option of catalyst not being selected. Cant really guess what else it might be. Are you able to see if you can reseat the card and test again? I would do this first if you are happy to do it.

As for the new driver procedure, sounds like you are doing it fine; you just need to go into it again after uninstalling to make sure it doesnt pick up anything else....look on the ATI website for their guide if it helps. Cant think of anything else for now, so if you are still not happy then i would read up a bit on other peoples experiences or just phone pcs who I am sure will help you or even rma the card if need be; good luck

Here are some threads that might help:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3754457#post3754457
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=127671

 

[Cygnus]

Hi again, have just re-seated the card and that, unfortunately, has had no effect whatsoever.

Regarding the 'Catalyst AI' section of my CCC, I can confirm that the button for enabling/disabling it has dissapeared. I have a Cat AI section in the CCC but all that contains is a slider for texture filter quality (performance, quality or high quality) and a tick box called 'Enable Surface Format Optimization'. There is no longer a button to disable it or a simple slider for 'Standard' or 'Advanced', as I used to have. The last thing on my 3D application settings is the OpenGL settings.

On the subject of catalyst AI, yes usually having it on at least the minimum is the best option, but turning it off should not damage or change anything, and turning it off is something that you have to do for either really old games or really new games, such as F1 2010, which when it first came out suffered from negative crossfire scaling, which is something I'm sure the you have heard of. Don't get me wrong, I usually had it on all the time unless I was playing a specific game that worked better with it off, but turning it off on these occasions should not do any harm at all.

As for what GPU-Z and the CCC are reading, I have taken two screenies in the hope of making a more clear explanation of what I can see on my screen. I hope they work:





As you can see (hopefully) the first picture showing GPU-Z shows that it has the secondary GPU as having crossfire 'Disabled'.

The second picture, of CCC, was taken immediately after booting the PC and shows that the second GPU is showing no activity, no temperatures and no values for the clock speeds. It only seems to 'come back to life' when I either open GPU-Z or a game/movie, so something that relies on the GPU actually doing some work.

Excuse the non-stock 750/1050 speeds on GPU-Z, I increased those a few minutes ago in CCC to make sure both GPU's passed the test, which they did.

Anyway, hope this helps explain some more...

Thanks for the replies
Ben

 

[NilSatis]

Sorry to hear your problems remain mate....

After some research and looking at mine now; the new catalyst Ai panel has been changed as you state by the latest drivers; it does not get rid of the option but it is displayed differently; this slider as mentioned under gaming in ccc is now the equivalent to on or off, performance being low/disabled and high quality being high use of catalyst ai.

As for the 0% activity; this is quite normal in idle state for this card I believe; the clocks will increase when there is a 3d application running that requires the use of the 2nd card aswell. ATI power management tries to save power when the 2nd card is not needed. Please test this by running a game and in the middle of playing while it is using the card alt tab out and check the useage then. If it is still not working then either you have a driver problem and you should revert back to the drivers that worked for you or try updating to the later ones that are just out end of this month, or possibly you have another problem on the card; I have read some threads about people having to alter the clocks on this card to get it to work correctly, but imo you shouldnt have to do this.

The fact that it stays on 100% useage after you exit a game is not right; and to me is strange; and indicates a problem. Either a glitch with ccc or a driver issue. What temperatures are you getting on the card after a gaming session?

As for some people on some cards drivers (especially ATI ones but to a certain extent Nvidia too) have individual problems/compatibility can you roll back to the previous driver that was (I assume) working ok? Or have you tried this and the problem now remains? Or maybe you never realised it was doing this at first on the older drivers?

One more thing; you have never delved into the registry and disabled "ULPS" have you? Just in case this may be an issue.

The one other thing I can say is that if you dont get lock ups in games or on the desktop before/whilst/after playing 3d intensive games there is nothing seriously wrong with the card in most probability and the issue is most likely a driver related one. Have you got any games such as Metro 2033 or Crysis Warhead/Crysis/Arma 2? These will test the card a lot more than F1 2010 which it should eat up and chew out without a problem. Playing something a little more intensive will possibly cause a crash if there is a major problem.
Just some other things to think about....please ring tech support at pcs if in doubt of the card working properly however as they potentially know a lot more about your machine and with fault finding than I can help with here