Build 118 and AMD Graphics Question

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Marc Collins, Oct 21, 2012.

  1. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    Finally decided to look at fps on my system to see what I am getting. Keep in mind everything appears smooth to me, though occasionally I do notice a minor stutter, but not much. Graphic settings are almost all maxed out both in game and in CCC. Screen resolution is 5200 x 1050.

    I ran the 2012 F2 at VLM's Sebring track as that track I am most comfortable looking away from where I am going on occasion :) I was running private practice with no ghost so no other vehicles around. My frame rates stayed pretty steady around 37.5 with the exception of a little slowdown around the pit straight.

    Going to have a bit of a play in a bit to see what I can get out of it when I turn stuff down like AA and AF.
     
  2. jubuttib

    jubuttib Registered

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    I have to say that while most people here say HDR is a big graphics hit, I get absolutely 0 difference in FPS whether it's on or off. Nada. Zilch. And the FXAA too is a very small niggle, if that. In single player I can run everything maxed out without problems, even Monaco stays above 60 at all times, but I have to wonder how the AI cars can be such a humongous hit to performance. 14 AI cars is enough to bring minimum FPS on starting line from 70 fps to 30 fps.
     
  3. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    I find it amusing that people are quoting fps numbers and settings, but not telling us what their resolution is set to. My monitor native is 1920x1200, so yes, it's more difficult to get high frame rates than a lower resolution screen.

    And for those suggesting synching--what's the point if the frame rate is below the refresh rate of the monitor? Can someone explain exactly what the different synch options are/do?
     
  4. Nand Gate

    Nand Gate Banned

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    Yes, I have been doing this for years now.
     
  5. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    Interesting that you would talk about turning off CCC to gain memory and performance. My own system shows that CCC uses 4Mb of ram and doesn't use any noticeable processor time at all. I have to say I can't see where you would gain much if any performance by shutting it down.

    I did do some testing though to see what sort of performance gain I could achieve with my setup by changing different settings and a few items surprised me. First off, I thought HDR would have a fairly large hit to performance, but turning it off only net me about 3 fps and the graphics in game looked a lot worse. I turned off AA and AF in the CCC and gained about 10 fps. I turned off AA and AF in game and gained about another 10. I also turned shadows from high to low and gained about 2 fps.

    All told I could get up to 60 fps with my setup max and 45 min fps after doing those changes as well as changing the settings for raindrop, road reflection and wind and crowd to off. The rest of the settings on the left side are maxed still as I don't want to suffer from lousy looking graphics if I don't have to. I also turned HDR back on.

    To give an idea on the performance, In Race 07 I am able to keep fairly steady at around 70 fps on VLM's Sebring track running the IFM cars, though in Race I have the helmet on where I don't in rF2's 2012 F2's.

    These tests were done in both cases in private practice with no other cars on the track and the cars are similar in speed. Obviously VLM probably did things a little different with the Race 07 version of Sebring as opposed to the rF2 version. All fps measurements were done with MSI Afterburner.

    At least now I have a good base for testing the New Beta drivers tomorrow to see if there is any performance gain what so ever.
     
  6. TIG_green

    TIG_green Registered

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    So how do I utilize my APU properly? Different sync settings does not seem to work. Here is some information on hardware I have:

    http://www.game-debate.com/hardware/index.php?pid=987&cpu=APU A10-5700
    http://www.game-debate.com/hardware/index.php?gid=1079&graphics=Radeon HD 7660D

    Also, I have not clocked my APU (do not how to do this) :p Task manager (?) showed that I use 33% of my CPU. Why did you say that my HD 7660D has only 512 MB memory in it? I assume it should use a lot more?
     
  7. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    @TIG_green: If I understand correctly, you have both a 4350 graphics card and the APU's graphics running on the system right? What happens if you pull out the 4350 card?

    I should also ask if there is another way to connect a monitor other than through the 4350.

    Done some more research and it seems that the 4350 is not compatible with the A10 APU when trying to setup Dual Graphics in CCC. This might be why you are having issues with that setup. It is recommended that you either use an HD 6XXXG or G2 or 7XXXM GPU along with the APU in order for things to work properly.

    EDIT: Oh btw, the 512Mb of memory would be what the 4350 has on board, the APU uses system ram for it's memory.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 26, 2012
  8. WheelNut

    WheelNut Banned

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    i'm getting 60fps and runs very smooth looks not to bad never drops below the 60 with 20 30 cars depends on mod single ati 6970
    changes made to catalyst
    Anti-Aliasing
    filter edge detect
    Catalyst A.I.
    High quality
    vertical sync
    always on
    anti_aliasing Mode
    quality superAA
    openGL settings
    triple buffering Ticked

    in rfactor2
    circuit detail full
    player detail full
    opponent detail medium
    texture detail full
    texture filter 8x
    special effects full
    the rest is on fov's 80
    res 1920x1080 60hz
    anti aliasing level 1
    fxaa on hdr on

    system
    i7 2600k@4.5ghz
    ga ati 6970@ gpu935mhz memory 1455mhz fan 95%
    16gb ram@ 1600mhz
     
  9. TIG_green

    TIG_green Registered

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    I am so confused right now. As far as I know, I do not have other graphic card than HD 7660D. I do not understand where did you get that I have some 4350? Furthermore, I understood that HD 7660D were supposed to use system RAM as its memory (which I have total of 8 gb DDR3). My performance information says that I have total of 4073 Mt graphic memory to be used. Reserved graphic memory is 512 Mt and divided memory is rest of it. Please explain to dummy, do I need to get better graphics card? Is my HD 7660D useless? :p
     
  10. hoser70

    hoser70 Registered

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    Someone posted here that we shouldn't expect the same crisp graphics as we get in other "games" because this is a "sim."

    Well that's a crock of shat right there! We should be able to enjoy good looking graphics as any other "game" or "sim" whichever you want to call it.

    The usual excuse you hear around here is that there's so much more going on with rFactor2 (environment, active track, etc). Well phooey on you! I can easily ride around any track and get 80 FPS no problem with the track rubbering in and the clouds whizzing by while the track dries (with no other vehicles on the track).

    But, put me on a starting grid with more than 10 cars and frames go to shat and it becomes a slide show (opponents at medium setting).

    So tell me. How is it that all of the behind the scenes processing for our cool looking waving flags, dancing air-man, track rubbering and drying still give me 80 frames, but put a few cars in sight and it's almost unplayable?

    I can have 43 cars out my window and in my mirror at iRacing and still enjoy a smooth race.

    To me, the problem is in the vehicle optimization at the moment. They need to find a way to not have vehicles cause such a huge hit on frames.
     
  11. jtbo

    jtbo Registered

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    I suspect that you are getting performance of this card only:
    Of course first I did not notice you had APU too :eek:

    Have you installed MSI Afterburner?
    From it's settings, you can choose gpu and from monitoring page choose GPU usage, so you can see is your APU used or not. Also if you so desire, you can overclock with that same tool.

    MSI Afterburner is more or less Riva Tuner with added goodies, works with any card and it is free without hidden spyware or any other modern era annoyance.
    http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

    I don't think you need to overclock, testing if APU is used with Afterburner probably reveals how things are, Gearjammer's suggestion are great also, he surely knows lot more about those than I do as I just recently learned there are such things as APUs, so much happened in over 5 years :eek:

    Anyway if you do decide to overclock, first look around if you can find overclocking results for your hardware so you know what to except, then when overclocking do it in small increments, no more than 20Mhz and don't overclock core and ram at the same time, either one or another, when you find point that there starts to be issues in long stressing (I use Heaven v3.0 benchmark to load gpu for stability testing) reduce 20Mhz or even 40Mhz and then start with memory overclocking, and do the same.

    I can get around 600 score in heaven benchmark with my hardware 1920x1080 full screen with default settings of benchmark, it is not very much, lowest fps 16-18fps, which is what I get in rF2 if I max out everything, but leaving AA to none and AF to 2, resolution I have always 1920x1080, my hardware is very old (also when I bought I aimed for most bang for the buck), so having more recent stuff should easily be able to outperform my setup.

    If getting less, I think there must be some issue that needs troubleshooting.
     
  12. jtbo

    jtbo Registered

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    Sometimes things can be confusing.

    You can also download this very small tool and see what gpus it shows:
    http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

    As your system specs do list 512MB card and "now with also" your APU that leads us to believe you still have two cards, or maybe not? I don't see how performance from your APU would be so poor otherwise, it really should give you lot better performance in my opinion.
     
  13. John.Persson

    John.Persson Registered

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    Everything maxed out except shadows and no HDR over 70-100 fps at croft no problem with some AI's.

    Turn on HDR and Shadows 40-60 fps, really needs to get some tweaks into it.

    Resolution: 2560x1440
    i5 2500k @4ghz
    Radeon 6950 2 gb slight overclock inside catalyst.
     
  14. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    I read your system information in your profile and it said you had an HD 4350 card and further down it said that you also had the APU. If you don't have the 4350, then ignore the part about pulling out the card :)

    Now that I know that you only have the APU, let's start from there. The 7660D Graphics in the APU is not as powerful as the Discreet HD7XXX cards on the market. Benchmarking shows that at 1920 X 1080 the performance is horrible in modern games. You would have to have most things turned way down to get any kind of performance from the APU. It is suggested that the APU is capable of decent performance if you turn the resolution down to 1280 X 768.

    Another thing that is an issue is that with the graphics in the APU, the system memory becomes a critical factor in performance. Unfortunately your system information doesn't tell us what brand of ram you have nor what timing is set for it in the bios or what speed it is capable of. Actually your system information doesn't tell us a whole lot to be honest, heheh.

    Now. my suggestion for improving your performance in gaming would be to add a second graphics card, one of the ones I listed above so that you can choose dual graphics in the CCC and get some decent gaming at full HD resolutions. Your CPU clocks are already high enough to perform well with all of the game titles out right now, it is just the graphics is weak in APU's.
     
  15. TIG_green

    TIG_green Registered

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    Sorry, I forgot I had the information of my old computer there also :p Not so confused anymore :D

    But some information: Memory is DDR3 (8Gb), core clock 760MHz, memory clock 667 MHz, memory broadbandwidth 21,3gt/sec.

    I use 1280X1024 (32bit) resolution at the moment. I have hdr and both reflections off, anti-aliasing level 2, fxaa on, shadows low (blur fast), player and opponent detail full, others high and on (texture filtering trilinear). No sync and refresh rate is 60.

    This all leads to 50-75 fps at the moment. So it is not bad, but I just expected more. My intention was to buy a computer that can run rf2 all maxed, but apparently it did not work with my knowledge about pc hardware :D

    Thanks for help :)
     
  16. mel1c

    mel1c Registered

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    I gave this a try with positive results. I use Game Booster to shut down processes for rF and I included CCC. My performance baseline is 1960s @ Spa, and with the latest build FPS were in the 30s to 50s during a lap. Disabling CCC seems to have improved that to the 30s to 60s, but mostly in the 40s to 50s. At race start with 16 cars I get 24 FPS, which is also a slight improvement. This is more like my performance with Build 85.
     
  17. MJP

    MJP Registered

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    Not sure what the confusion is, TIG_green appears to have 2 systems listed in his profile, an X2@2.7 with an HD4350 (too slow really to run rF2 properly) and a A10 Trinity with integrated graphics which will run rF2 but don't expect to be able to turn the settings up too much.
     
  18. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    The performance you are getting sounds about right for what you have. As mentioned earlier though, if you wish to get better performance, then buy one of the ATI cards I mentioned so you will be able to use both the APU and the GPU together. This will allow you to run HD with pretty much everything turned up.
     
  19. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    It is the way he had his profile worded that lead to the confusion.
     
  20. jtbo

    jtbo Registered

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    Also it does not help how GPU makers label their products, can get very confusing, very fast.

    But I did read review about A10 and it should be something like 1.6-1.8 times faster than my setup.

    One thing is that using system ram should be lot slower than using dedicated ram afaik. Thus staying below 512MB memory usage should in theory boost fps a bit. That is, imo also reason why bigger resolutions are not working too well with the card.

    There really is something odd here still, why using such low resolution is still not enough to keep fps above 60, maybe his gpu memory usage goes above 512 and it causes big hit?

    I see there fxaa + aa, isn't it so that you should use only one or another, not both? It might be something causing impact on fps but delivering little back?

    fps rates are not much better from what I get at 1920x1080, so I would imagine it should be better for him?
     

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