• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Downsampling for AMD cards is now possible

What's the point? People downsample on PCs because they've pushed the level of detail, effects etc. as far as they can and there's nothing else they can do. With a fixed hardware spec like a console, devs would scale whatever tech they've made to that hardware so there won't be any room to downsample.

That's pretty pointless for a console.

I'm not exactly sure how ROPs work, but ROPs are what take the scene and turns it into pixels. 32 ROPs is overkill for 1080p. Why not render internally at a higher resolution and then downscale for a super clean SSAA? AFAIK it would be more efficient than MLAA because the AA comes from the render pipeline and not from a post process algorithm.

Not only that, but with the advent of differed rendering, MSAA is a no go. It takes too much of a performance hit to do.

Maybe I just don't understand how ROPs work, but I don't see why they wouldn't. It doesn't take any floating operations (it shouldn't) because as I said, it takes the rendered scene, and then outputs it to pixels.
 

Shaneus

Member
You might be right... because I don't understand how ROPs work either. I just figured that if there was something extra there, use it for something other than resolution :) Could they be used for rendering pixels for a completely different stream, such as delivering video to a Vita or other a second screen? Maybe that's what they'd be used for.
 
You might be right... because I don't understand how ROPs work either. I just figured that if there was something extra there, use it for something other than resolution :) Could they be used for rendering pixels for a completely different stream, such as delivering video to a Vita or other a second screen? Maybe that's what they'd be used for.

Extra ROPs would be needed for 3D or 4k. Streaming to Vita (or for the capture card) will just use a "mirrored" (copied) output image.

ROPs can't contribute to extra frames as those frames require the FLOPs needed to create the scene. So if they can't contribute to extra frames (aka 60fps) then why not use it for SSAA?

Just my thoughts. If I'm wrong, someone correct me.
 

pestul

Member
I'm an AMD owner (even Crossfired) but next I might go Nvidia. The options seem to be so much better on that side, which irritates me to no end. I don't want to go Nvidia, so I wish AMD would get their act together.
Yeah, it really should be right in the driver. I don't think they want to have things where people could really frig up their display though.. but even if they offered an official 'advanced users' tool.
 

Irobot82

Member
You may need to just disable the unsupported resolution option. I think if the resolution shows up it will work.

that doesn't help to make it work though :/

AMD had a twitter chat the other day and I tried to get them to respond to official downsampling support. They never replied, but they did reply to my question about when the new memory controllers were being released. "Fairly soon.." was their answer. The next chat they have I'll hound them about downsampling support.
 

derFeef

Member
Oh, now I know what fucked with my Win8 installation a few days back. Just be aware that that procedure somehow screws with the UAC or general account and it makes some system settings unaccessable (like energy options, services...) I rolled back my system and all is fine now.

I will just wait for AMD to officially support it.... :-/
 

Jac_Solar

Member
I don't get this part - "Now, select the new resolution and your desktop should scale properly. You can now start a game in 2560x1440 and it will be downsampled accordingly."

Won't you be playing in 2560x1440, so it won't be downsampled? It'll just be sampled regularly? Or is this because it's not native, it's forced?
 

Shaneus

Member
I don't get this part - "Now, select the new resolution and your desktop should scale properly. You can now start a game in 2560x1440 and it will be downsampled accordingly."

Won't you be playing in 2560x1440, so it won't be downsampled? It'll just be sampled regularly? Or is this because it's not native, it's forced?
The downsampling happens because your monitor can't display that resolution, so it scales it to 1920x1080, theoretically reducing the size of any artifacts.
 

red731

Member
I didn't want to ask in the Bullshot thread, but someone found a way to downsample on AMD?
To be honest, I haven't tried the first method written here - I've tried the CRU method, but after rading more into it. It is for custom res up to NATIVE res and not for downscaling.
Tha would explein the black screen even if I had managed to get much higres to show in resolution changer...

Tips would be appreciated.
Win 7 64x; 13.3 beta 3
 

Shaneus

Member
So far, the only way to do it is to run with a fresh install of a 12.x driver, create whatever resolution using that downsampling app, run the AMD official driver sweep utility and then install the latest driver.
 

red731

Member
So far, the only way to do it is to run with a fresh install of a 12.x driver, create whatever resolution using that downsampling app, run the AMD official driver sweep utility and then install the latest driver.

Thank you and avatarquote at driver need.
ed: On other forum someone was asking AMD to their stance about downsampling and nothing..
 

Shaneus

Member
Yeah, I remember reading that on Guru3D... it'd be great to have something official from AMD, but perhaps there's a good reason why. Only thing I can think of is that maybe there's some risk of damaging monitors and they're unwilling to take that chance (or go to the lengths of creating an EULA saying they're not responsible).

Until then, the method I mentioned is the only guaranteed way. It's a bitch and a half, but thankfully it's reliable :)
 

t-ramp

Member
So 13.3 supports downsampling if updated from 12.* with custom resolutions? I think I lost my 1440p option when I added a second monitor and am missing the ability. Wanted to check before I took the time to get it back.
 
So 13.3 supports downsampling if updated from 12.* with custom resolutions? I think I lost my 1440p option when I added a second monitor and am missing the ability. Wanted to check before I took the time to get it back.

Supposedly, but I never got it to work.

I just ended up swiching to 12.11
 

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Oh, now I know what fucked with my Win8 installation a few days back. Just be aware that that procedure somehow screws with the UAC or general account and it makes some system settings unaccessable (like energy options, services...) I rolled back my system and all is fine now.

I will just wait for AMD to officially support it.... :-/


I had the same issue! But I never tried downsampling. I't was actually CCleaner! I had to refresh Windows 8, windows 8 best feature imo.
 

derFeef

Member
I had the same issue! But I never tried downsampling. I't was actually CCleaner! I had to refresh Windows 8, windows 8 best feature imo.

Yeah I thought it was one of the two, but I could recreate it with the downsample tool. And yes, the refresh/reset is really nice and fast.
 

Shaneus

Member
Possibly not the most appropriate place for it, but less likely to get lost amongst screenshots: The latest Catalyst (13.5) beta 2 contains the first (hopefully of many) steps for reducing frame lag in Crossfire setups! No idea what they've done re: downsampling resolutions or if the frame lag fix is for anything other than the 7990 (hoping so, with a 5850/5970 combo) but in 7990 benchmarking on the Guru3D site, there were some definite improvements (though nowhere near the level of what nVidia have achieved with multi-GPU configs).
 

Shaneus

Member
Someone on Guru3D they didn't. So if you've followed the steps from before to get downsampling with 13.3/13.4 (Uninstall/remove everything, install 12.8 or whatever, downsample, AMD clean utility then install 13.whatever) then you should be able to upgrade again by running the AMD clean utility, then upgrading to 13.5b2.

That's what I'll be trying, anyway (am on 13.3b3 w/ downsampling via the above method).
 

Shaneus

Member
Worst case, do this (in point form, in case my last post was confusing):

* Uninstall everything driver/graphics related
* Run AMD official driver cleaner util
* Install 12.whatever (I forget the exact number, it'll be mentioned in this thread somewhere though)
* Setup custom downsampling resolution using that util
* Run AMD official driver cleaner.
* Install latest Catalyst.

Obviously reboot in-between those steps, just to be safe.

The weird thing is, is that I think uninstalling Catalyst via Add/Remove Programs removes monitor configurations (like resolution) but the AMD cleaner util doesn't. Really odd.
 

Cassius

Member
Got the latest beta drivers up and running, along with my custom resolutions.

Thank you for the help, much appreciated.
 

Shaneus

Member
No probs! I was just reading that I don't *think* this is the driver that fixes those frame lag issues, because I just read this article and it talks about 13.5b2 and the "prototype" driver as two distinctly different things (the latter being the one that fixes the lag). And of course, it's not available yet.

But look at this:
jI0MD2o.png


Amazing. Such little frame time variance it's not funny (compared to 13.5b2, in orange).
 
Looking much better and consistently lower frame times than the 690 at least in Sleeping Dogs. I'm really glad to see them focusing on this issue.
 

Shaneus

Member
Same. And from what I can gather, the work they're doing isn't just specific to the 7000 series, as the problem's been there from the very beginning. So a fix should see improvements for almost all games across all series configurations... at least down to 5000 series, possibly even 4000 (but they'd have to wait for the quarterly driver update as they're considered legacy now).
 
Whoa that certainly is impressive :eek: It's nice to see AMD step-up their game and I might buy a AMD card again when I upgrade my PC next year! :D One question though, is the second set of latency improvement only targeted at Crossfire or will my single 6850 also benefit from it like the first time?
 

Shaneus

Member
Whoa that certainly is impressive :eek: It's nice to see AMD step-up their game and I might buy a AMD card again when I upgrade my PC next year! :D One question though, is the second set of latency improvement only targeted at Crossfire or will my single 6850 also benefit from it like the first time?
Not 100% sure on that. Was there a problem with frame latency for single GPUs? From my understanding, that specific fix was due to mistimings between cores, where one would take longer to generate a frame, meaning it was on-screen for a shorter amount of time before the other was generated on the other core.

That's what I read on the first page of that article I linked, anyway. Can't remember reading how it relates to single GPUs, if at all.

Would be nice to have those drivers available for testing, would be new thread worthy.
Too right. But from what I can gather, driver leaks are few and far between when they've been sent to sites like Guru3D and PCPer. Someone said anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months until we might see "official" beta drivers with the fix. I guess the plus we can take from it is that even in their early stages, the end result isn't as good as nVidia's behaviour... but they're in early stages of optimisation, so it could well be as good, if not better.
 
Not 100% sure on that. Was there a problem with frame latency for single GPUs? From my understanding, that specific fix was due to mistimings between cores, where one would take longer to generate a frame, meaning it was on-screen for a shorter amount of time before the other was generated on the other core.

That's what I read on the first page of that article I linked, anyway. Can't remember reading how it relates to single GPUs, if at all.

Hmm thanks for the explanation that's interesting and I'm not sure myself but I do remember that the some recent beta-drivers also had a nice effect on single-card latency already so I just wondered if these would continue to improve there.
 
Something really strange happened lol.


I was on 12.11 and BF3 was hard booting my system alot. Decided to a run a full system sweep, that included monitor drivers as well as ATI ones, fresh install of the 13.5 drivers, installed official monitor drivers and now the resolutions are back!

YAY!
 

Pro

Member
OK I have a question. I'm looking into getting a Radeon 7970. A friend of mine is willing to buy my current 6950 for $200.00 which would put the price of the 7970 around $250 for me when all is said and done. Or my friend and I could do it the other way where I get his 6950 and he gets the 7970. Which has the better performance increase? Two 6950's in crossfire or one 7970? Also, when you crossfire 6950's does the max resolution increase from the standard 2560x1600?
 

Shaneus

Member
The dual 6950s outperform the 7970, even moreso once AMD officially releases the driver update that reduces frame lag. But it won't increase your resolution at all, no. The size of VRAM in Crossfire isn't cumulative (the data has to be the same in all cards for it to do what it does) so there's no extra room to play with. You *might* be able to increase the resolution by using Eyefinity across multiple monitors using multiple cards, but I'm 99% sure you can't exceed 2560x1600 on a single one.

I know that feel, bro. 5970 + 5850 means I only have up to that maximum resolution as well :/
 

Pro

Member
The dual 6950s outperform the 7970, even moreso once AMD officially releases the driver update that reduces frame lag. But it won't increase your resolution at all, no. The size of VRAM in Crossfire isn't cumulative (the data has to be the same in all cards for it to do what it does) so there's no extra room to play with. You *might* be able to increase the resolution by using Eyefinity across multiple monitors using multiple cards, but I'm 99% sure you can't exceed 2560x1600 on a single one.

I know that feel, bro. 5970 + 5850 means I only have up to that maximum resolution as well :/

Thanks for the info. Yeah with the resolution limitation, I feel like I gotta go 7970. It will still be a big increase in performance from my single 6950 and it leaves room for a second 7970 at some point down the road. Gaf introduced me to Downsampling and I don't wanna go back.
 

Shaneus

Member
Yeah, that's the thing that REALLY sucks. I know that other than VRAM (or the resolution limitation of the 5xxx series, however you want to slice it) my setup can smash the hell out of pretty much any game around. But the moment I want to apply any AA or up the resolution, it all goes to hell.

The cheapest bang-for-buck setup at the moment would probably be to have either two 2GB 6950s or a 4GB 6990 (as in, effectively a 6990 w/ 2GB VRAM per GPU). Won't allow for the stupidly massive downsampling, but should be able to get you around 4K resolution without too much hassle.

Fake edit: Even looks like the 4GB 6990 is restricted to 2560x1600 :/ Probably would've been my next card, too! Rarely get the latest, normally wait for top of the line cards to go for cheap when the next gen comes around.
 
I've been screwing around with a utility that allows me to change my desktop resolution with a shortcut instead of going through the normal menus with the goal to make downsampling games in windowed mode more seamless. Ultimately, what I'd love to do is create a .bat file or something that changes the resolution, launches the game and then changes the resolution back to the native resolution after quitting all automatically. I doubt I'll get that far though.
 

Pro

Member
I just picked up a 7970 and using the DownSamplingGui I'm getting the Error: ADL_Display_ModeTimingOverride_Set() failed! Did a quick search of the thread and it suggested to use a previous version of Catalyst Control Center before 13.1. Can someone confirm this? Strange cause I could DownSample with my 6950 using 13.1 right before installing the 7970.
 
I just picked up a 7970 and using the DownSamplingGui I'm getting the Error: ADL_Display_ModeTimingOverride_Set() failed! Did a quick search of the thread and it suggested to use a previous version of Catalyst Control Center before 13.1. Can someone confirm this? Strange cause I could DownSample with my 6950 using 13.1 right before installing the 7970.

i may be wrong but i think that you need a pre 13.1 driver to make the custom resolutions work and then you can install the newest driver over. maybe someone else has more information.
 
OK got it. Thanks for the post again.

Uninstall your current AMD Catalyst drivers, then install the 12.11 version, after that follow the downsampling guide. Once you have it working you're ready to update to the latest Catalyst version.

If you're in W8 don't forget to disable UAC and restart in advance mode to disable the enforcement to update the monitor drivers (7).
 

Pro

Member
Uninstall your current AMD Catalyst drivers, then install the 12.11 version, after that follow the downsampling guide. Once you have it working you're ready to update to the latest Catalyst version.

If you're in W8 don't forget to disable UAC and restart in advance mode to disable the enforcement to update the monitor drivers (7).

Yep used the AMD Uninstall Utility to clean out 13.1 and everything associated, rebooted, installed 12.11, configured 2720x1700 and 2560x1600 on my system, used AMD Uninstall Utility again and rebooted, installed 13.4 back on and still have both custom resolutions.

Now next question, has anyone been successful in resolutions higher than 2720x1700 on a single monitor? Because I tried 3072x1920 which didn't work. I assume 4096x2560 wouldn't work either on a single monitor. I know the 7970 supports a max 4K resolution but this has to be done on multiple monitors right? What is the highest you can get on a single monitor?
 

belmonkey

Member
Does this work on a laptop display in any way, shape, or form? I keep getting a "display_modetimingoverride" error. I tried hooking it up to my 5 year old 720p TV and I could get past the error, but everything became blurry at any resolution beyond native resolution.
 
I left this alone. I had to reinstall my Windows 8 because the amd driver sweeper program dun goofed up Windows. I couldn't access a lot of links in the control panel and they just wouldn't respond if I clicked on them. Power settings, firewall, etc.
 

derFeef

Member
I left this alone. I had to reinstall my Windows 8 because the amd driver sweeper program dun goofed up Windows. I couldn't access a lot of links in the control panel and they just wouldn't respond if I clicked on them. Power settings, firewall, etc.

That's not the driver sweeper, that's the downsampling gui tool. I warned you guys :)

Don't use this if you are on Windows 8.
 
Top Bottom