[Kolgena]

11.7 should be ATI's latest attempt at the Mjolnir performance drivers right? I think I've read on Guru3D that the OpenGl performance on them isn't so great. Interestingly, I'm on the 10.8 preview with a 3650 HD mobility and have no slow downs to speak of, at least judging by my usual benchmarking method of using the ship lab. And I definitely don't have long mission load times.

@KyadCK: Are you just getting bad framerates, or super long mission load times as well? Did you remember that the newer builds run FXAA?

[KyadCK]

Well I rolled back to 11.1 (the only other driver on my system at the time) and I have good news and bad news...

Good news: The rollback seems to have fixed all issues I had, I'm back to peak performance! This means that the nightlys are not the source of my problem.

Bad news: This puts the blame squarely on ATI's 11.7 drivers.

May I suggest a rollback to a last known good driver for those using 11.7? It seems to have worked for me and it's no more then an hour and 4 restarts at the worst to see if it works and put it back if it doesn't.

11.7 should be ATI's latest attempt at the Mjolnir performance drivers right? I think I've read on Guru3D that the OpenGl performance on them isn't so great. Interestingly, I'm on the 10.8 preview with a 3650 HD mobility and have no slow downs to speak of, at least judging by my usual benchmarking method of using the ship lab. And I definitely don't have long mission load times.

@KyadCK: Are you just getting bad framerates, or super long mission load times as well? Did you remember that the newer builds run FXAA?

Just bad and weird framerates on 11.7. I know the nightlys have been useing FXAA for a while now, but I don't use it as I just don't see much difference in-game except perhaps a slight fps drop (perhaps I don't know what i am looking for to compare?). Regardless, the driver rollback worked and I'm seeing my usual fps ranges on my benchmark, so I'm going to write it off as the drivers and do more research before I go jumping on the new driver bandwagon in the future.

[Kolgena]

Good to hear your issues got fixed.

FXAA is supposed to help with aliased edges and normal map shimmering in freespace. This comes at the cost of a blurrier image though.

[Raiden]

I haven't actually ever updated my drivers through ATi, I've gone through the drivers on the Dell website which are updated with far less regularity (I hear a lot of *****ing about ATi's drivers whenever they update so I was a bit nervous of rocking the boat). However I'm not getting all of CKid's issues, the tech room and everything loads fine, missions may load slightly longer but I haven't noticed anything dramatic. It's just basically an obvious reduction in frame rate in game. I saw another oddity whilst playing Vassago's Dirge with the nightles also, the Fenris in the very first mission somehow transformed into a retail Fenris. Was quite strange. I'll have to start properly taking care of my card's drivers.

[Kolgena]

Loading the wrong asset (Fenris) is very very unlikely to be a driver problem.

This is weird. When I have time, I'll dl a pre-july 5 build and compare it to the july 5th build to see if there's a difference in framerates in my end as well.

[mjn.mixael]

 

Are you sure you didn't just witness the Fenris switch to a lower LOD and get stuck there? I'd think it highly unlikely that a model would just switch to a retail model mid-game.

[Kolgena]

Wait, did he mean transformed as in "I switched builds, and now the Fenris is retail" or "I looked away and back again in the same mission session, and now it's retail"?

Because the 2nd would be really really really bad, relative to the first.

[mjn.mixael]

Um.. well he said "whilst playing" .... "it transformed"..

[CKid]

I downgraded to a earlier driver, but unfortunately I still get the same problem with post July 5 builds. Pre 05 builds still work fine. It has to be the new nightly's causing the slow down for me. Will go back to 11.7 drivers in the mean time.

[Raiden]

Are you sure you didn't just witness the Fenris switch to a lower LOD and get stuck there? I'd think it highly unlikely that a model would just switch to a retail model mid-game.

That sounds more plausible, it's still behaviour I haven't encountered before. Like CKid the problems appear to start with July 5 builds and onwards, haven't done a proper framerate check though.

EDIT: I just realised something, am I just being totally blind and not realising something obvious here, are these new builds running with FXAA on as default? I don't have the box checked in the launcher but if it would cause a drop in fps maybe that's the thing...

[Zacam]

FXAA is not on if the box for it is not checked. The only default FXAA has is a preset value if you don't specify one. Plus you also have to have post-processing on for FXAA to work at all.

The issue, despite the co-incidence, is NOT FXAA related.

[chief1983]

Also, while earlier FXAA is blurry, the shaders are still in development and have gotten better, so I wouldn't take it as a given that they'll always make things noticeably blurry.

[Raiden]

OK, that makes sense. Hope I can resolve this problem, I really don't wanna be left behind when 3.6.14 releases...

[CKid]

Yes, I know what you mean. I have tried eveything that I can think of settings wise to solve the problem but so far, nothing. I will keep getting the new nightlys, cross my fingers and hope that the issue will be resolved sometime in the future.

[Raiden]

CKid, check the latest nightly. Seems to be running back at full speed, WiH intro running butter smooth again.

[CKid]

No luck, load time when on for 1:30 plus and ingame lag has not changed. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUU!

[Raiden]

Sorry to get your hopes up, man