Far Cry 2 Dissected: Massive Amounts of Performance Data
by Derek Wilson on November 21, 2008 5:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
AMD Driver Caveats and Major Open Issues
The issues with AMD's driver and hotfix for Far Cry 2 have been fairly public. The 8.10 driver didn't really deliver on some performance points while the first hotfix had some rendering issues. The next couple hotfixes fixed some things and broke others, and we still don't have a driver from AMD that gives us the results we want. The 8.11 driver only incorporates the final hotfix changes, but we will have to wait until a newer hotfix is released or 8.12 for any hope of a better experience on Far Cry 2 with most AMD hardware.
While people have been talking about the issues, we've spent quite a bit of time looking at this problem (and the AMD driver issues are one of the major reasons this article is as delayed as it is). And we'll lead off with the bottom line: the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the only AMD card not in some way afflicted, and it also happens to be the card we would recommend for the best single GPU experience on Far Cry 2 at any setting except 2560x1600 with 4xAA. But that is not an excuse for the kind of horrific experience we've had with every single other AMD solution when playing this game.
The stuttering issue people have pointed out with AMD hardware is not an issue with the 1GB part in our experience. The rest of the line up suffers greatly from random hitches that aren't so much stuttering in our tests as they are temporary slow downs. We were also unable to test CrossFire, as CrossFire only works with 4xAA enabled. Even then CrossFire performance is erratic and stutters more than single card solutions (except for with the 4870 X2 or two 1GB 4870 cards that is). We aren't quite sure what the CrossFire issue is, but it seems clear that there is some graphics memory issue somewhere, and not only because of the huge discrepancy between the performance of the 4870 512MB part an the 1GB part.
In our tests, we initially wanted to take the 3 run average for each test. This was not something we could do with AMD hardware as even our benchmark sessions were marred with ridiculous stuttering and slow downs. We would have performance range from 25 to 55 frames per second on any given test. Rather than take the average, we decided to take the highest performance run for NVIDIA and AMD. It is worth noting that most of the performance results for NVIDIA were within less than a frame per second difference, so average versus max performance run isn't that different.
This does mean that our tests paint AMD hardware in a better light than the actual experience will be, at this point in time, with every card except the 4870 1GB. The average FPS data was just not usable as our line graphs looked more like sine waves than anything logical; nothing made any sense at all. Our choice to publish this article now is based on the fact that we absolutely expect AMD to fix their performance issues in Far Cry 2 as soon as possible. Far Cry 2 is a major title and AMD is a major GPU maker: there is simply no excuse for this sort of problem.
So the trade off for going forward with best-case scenario numbers is this page explaining the problems and a plea to AMD to change their approach to driver development for the good of the consumer.
Maintaining a monthly driver release schedule is detrimental to AMD's ability to release quality drivers. This is not the first or only issue we've seen that could have been solved (or at least noticed) by expanded testing that isn't possible with such tight release deadlines. Yes, consistent and frequent driver releases to improve compatibility and performance are a necessity, but doing anything to excess is a very bad idea. Moderation is key and AMD severely needs a better balance here.
We've been mentioning this as an issue in passing when it pops up and causes us problems, but this is starting to get ridiculous. It is one thing when previous fixes are broken or when older games fall off the grid and are neglected. But when a major title like Far Cry 2 is released to incredibly poor driver support, it is time to wake up and realize that something is wrong. This is not the first time we've seen issues with a newly released game, but the problems we've had with AMD drivers and Far Cry 2 are some of the worst we've ever experienced.
And this time it isn't just us. This isn't prerelease hardware or a beta software package. This isn't a quick fix "oops I forgot something" kind of bug. Though we tend to see problems a lot more frequently than end users, we do see a lot more issues with AMD drivers than NVIDIA. Even though not all those issues are things that we need to bother end users with, the probability of hitting a bug that will affect end users is much higher when you've got a higher number of bugs to worry about in general.
Now don't get me wrong, AMD drivers are still much better than they were before Catalyst. Back during the transition to Vista, ATI drivers were hands and feet above NVIDIA drivers for a long time (and they didn't hang XP out to dry either). AMD has maintained a unified driver model where NVIDIA had to break up their driver for different hardware generations for a while.
And now it is time for AMD to learn from their mistakes and change over to a more manageable and sensible driver release policy. Double the time between driver releases, do much much more testing across hardware platforms and games, and maybe even regularly release partly QA'd beta drivers in between WHQL drivers if there's something that needs a quick fix.
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kr7400 - Tuesday, December 2, 2008 - link
Can you please fucking die? Preferably by getting crushed to death in a garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped out of their sockets. *beep* bitch
I would love to kick you hard in the face, breaking it. Then I'd cut your stomach open with a chainsaw, exposing your intestines. Then I'd cut your windpipe in two with a boxcutter. Then I'd tie you to the back of a pickup truck, and drag you, until your useless *beep* corpse was torn to a million *beep* useless, bloody, and gory pieces.
Hopefully you'll get what's coming to you. *beep* bitch
I really hope that you get curb-stomped. It'd be hilarious to see you begging for help, and then someone stomps on the back of your head, leaving you to die in horrible, agonizing pain. *beep*
Shut the *beep* up f aggot, before you get your face bashed in and cut to ribbons, and your throat slit.
You're dead if I ever meet you in real life, f ucker. I'll f ucking kill you.
I would love to f ucking send your f ucking useless ass to the hospital in intensive care, fighting for your worthless life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0j4ONZRGY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0j4ONZRGY
I wish you a truly painful, bloody, gory, and agonizing death, *beep*
helldrell666 - Monday, November 24, 2008 - link
Hey, if you don't own an ATI card then don't talk.I run this game at 1920x1280 res. with all the setts set to ultra high + 8x/16x aa/af and my 4870 1G toxic plays the game pretty well with very good frame rates.SiliconDoc - Saturday, November 29, 2008 - link
Well at least we know a Toxic (Sapphire) works, but on what motherboard (and perhaps ram though less needed as a clue) we still don't know.I guess after this I'll search your profile for your "rig" - and if that comes up empty I won't buy a 4870 1G Toxic because I don't know what motherboard/chipset the drivers are working on.
Nvidia says to you "Thanks for all the help".
JonnyDough - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
"It is worth noting that this is the kind of issue that really damages AMD's credibility with respect to going single card CrossFire on the high end. We absolutely support their strategy, but they have simply got to execute."LOL! "Simply got to execute?" You can't even execute properly English!
JonnyDough - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
"This type of a fumble is simply unacceptable." - the last sentence of that paragraph. ROFL.GTVic - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
You can't complain about debatable ATI driver problems when you have the other graphics company paying money for the developer to fully test and optimize the game against their drivers.Also, as a general comment, why is it always the graphics card designer's problem when a game has problems. I don't have to upgrade my printer drivers every time I install a new application that has printing capabilities. There is something off about the PC gaming graphics card and the PC gaming industries.
Genx87 - Monday, November 24, 2008 - link
1. There doesnt appear to be anything to debate. They see the problems and continue to see the problems.2. The Nvidia program only helps with code optimizations. Provided ATI is staying within DX10 specifications it shouldnt have a problem running the code. In fact in the past ATI cards have run very well and sometimes even beat Nvidia cards in games within this program.
3. When printer drivers are doing the workload and function of a graphics driver let us know. Until then it is pretty silly to compare a printer driver with a graphics driver.
sbuckler - Monday, November 24, 2008 - link
All I want a game that runs on my graphics card, I don't really care how that was achieved.I don't think Nvidia do *pay* the games company to make the game run better. They do however invest time and effort with that company to make the game run well on their cards, which costs Nvidia.
Ati users shouldn't be complaining about TWIMTBP, they should be asking why Ati aren't doing the same thing because it works.
SiliconDoc - Friday, November 28, 2008 - link
Good comment, and corrrect, the problem is of course those without the problem for whatever reason chime in as if it doesn't exist for anyone else.Last time I checked the videocards are sold under more than one manufacturer/brand name, and Derek pointed out ATI needs to test under a wider variety of hardware configurations.
So good job on the printer driver comment, and you hit the nail on the head - for some reason ATI is blwoing their driver releases.
No doubt it is very complex and difficult to achieve a good driver with stability across many games and platforms, and for whatever reason ATI just can't handle it right now.
It's too bad people can't admit that.
I think it would be quite wonderful, considerate, and INTELLIGENT, if the people chiming in that their ATI 4870 or whatever ran fine - that they had the sense - especially here- to post the brand and the rest of their setup so others looking to buy and looking at this review and having or not having problems can make a logical, reasonable, helpful analysis - and choose the right brand or combo setup.
Sad, though, I haven't seen that - just a sort of dissing (Mine works fine! What the xxx xxx xx xx )- that isn't helpful at all - and if ATI techs are reading, they get no clue from all of it either - what brand and board and setup is doing what well.
It's not very bright, it's quite selfish.
Oh well, the worst of it is - it will help things to stay in a bad way for too many ATI users - and then without some miracles from the driver dev team - rinse and repeat is coming along - over and over again.
atakiii - Sunday, November 23, 2008 - link
I'm not entirely sure whether Mr. Wilson fully understands the AMD/ATI driver release cycle."Maintaining a monthly driver release schedule is detrimental to AMD's ability to release quality drivers. This is not the first or only issue we've seen that could have been solved (or at least noticed) by expanded testing that isn't possible with such tight release deadlines."
This passage implies that all the development and testing for a particular release occurs in the month prior to release. This is highly unlikely, and this (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...">http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&... article from Phoronix shows that each driver is in development and testing for about 11 weeks.
Obviously, hotfixes won't follow this release cycle and newer games won't be properly optimised until the driver release with a development phase corresponding to the game's release.