Best drivers for AMD 6970?

[Krusty]

What are the best drivers for a Radeon HD 6970 in single-card configuration? I don't run SLI or xfire or anything.

I started with 11.2. it seemed to work, but checked best available and that said 11.3. So I upgraded. Now it's working fine but there are little things. Odd things. The font looks a little wavy. Straight lines also. Hard to describe, but almost like the lines are ballooning out and then thinning out again. Sort of like a wavy glass pattern distorts things, or waves in a pool when you look at the bottom of it, but to a much smaller extent. Performance or FPS hasn't been hit.

I moved from 11.2 because of little blue squares and artifacts with the skin viewer and some angles of AH and other games. Not that major, but they seemed to go away with 11.3. I was able to game fine with it last night but would like to correct these oddities as I know they shouldn't exist. I tried turning off some vid card control panel stuff and trying different settings, but the same things in 11.2 worked fine. I couldn't find any one setting (FSAA, etc) that made this wavy lines go away in 11.3.


So, best drivers for this video card?


Basics:
Intel i7 960 3.6GHz
AMD 6970 2GB
6GB 3-chan 1600 MHz DDR3
Win7 64-bit

AH:
1280x1024 (native res, 1 monitor)
2048 texture size
Detail sliders maxed out, all goodies on in both 11.2 and 11.3 drivers.

[Bino]

Wow, a 6970?  Nice.  Color me jealous. 

Although you can get to the previous drivers from the ADM download page, since the 6970 is so recent, some of the older driver versions that pre-date the 6970 might not work...?

[MrRiplEy[H]]

So you invested to all that hardware and you're using some crappy legacy low resolution monitor? With that kind of resolutions your graphics card will never be fully utilized with 99.9% of games.

Your problems may also be related to the old monitor, not the card itself. Are you using analog vga to connect the monitor? If yes, try going to the monitor menu and have it autoadjust itself just to be sure.

[gyrene81]

hate to say it...but ripley may be right.

guess you're using a <something> to vga adapter to connect the card to the monitor? i don't know how true it is but i've heard the 6xxxx series is optimized for mini-display port connections.

[Spikes]

If you're using the VGA to DVI adapter or something similar you won't be getting the best picture. I'd definitely upgrade your monitor to HDMI or something.

[Skuzzy]

wavy lines are typically a result of a monitor with some EMI noise being introduced into the signal, or it could also be a power supply problem where the power is not as clean as it should be (i.e. the power supply running at 90% load instead of 75% could cause it).

[Krusty]

I can verify it's not the monitor's problem. This is the same monitor I have used for many years now. Even before I updated to 11.3 (while still on 11.2) the problem was not present. Same OS, same monitor, same cables, and problem was not present. It was the recent driver update that caused it.

Now, the dilemma is going back gets me odd little artifacts. Staying put gives me wavy lines. What's the best optimal driver?

EDIT: oh just to confirm: The monitor in question is running native DVI from a DVI port on the card. It's not a moving wave, it's just a bit of stationary distortion. I'll try to see if it's actually captured in a screenshot or what.


Ripley, I'm on a tight budget and used a tax return. I didn't get one last year so that was nice this year. This PC also has to last me probably another 4 years or so. I spent all the money for monitors on the video card    I can always upgrade the monitors 1 at a time (and this is the plan) but the overal total package was a 1 time use it or lose it shot, so I am now rocking a new vid card on old monitors. I'm happy enough for now, and will work on the monitors as I can

[Skuzzy]

The driver may have inadvertently tweaked the output levels lower than your monitor can deal with.  Would be an odd bug, but quite possible, I suppose.

A monitors power supply is subject to weakening as well.  That can manifest as stability issues in the signal as well.

[Krusty]

Well it doesn't look like a fluctuation. Just looking at the screen it looks like a static, unmoving, unwavering filter is in place.

So for example in the AH login screen there is a narrow 1-pix border around the box you enter your password in to log in and see the server list. That 1-pix line doesn't look consistent in thickness from its left edge to its right.

I'm thinking of installing driver cleaner, nuking the video drivers, and installing them fresh, but wasn't sure if the problems was specific to 11.3 or just specific to me. I'll go back to 11.2 for now. All of that will have to wait about 4-5 hours or so until I get back to that computer.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Well it doesn't look like a fluctuation. Just looking at the screen it looks like a static, unmoving, unwavering filter is in place.

So for example in the AH login screen there is a narrow 1-pix border around the box you enter your password in to log in and see the server list. That 1-pix line doesn't look consistent in thickness from its left edge to its right.

I'm thinking of installing driver cleaner, nuking the video drivers, and installing them fresh, but wasn't sure if the problems was specific to 11.3 or just specific to me. I'll go back to 11.2 for now. All of that will have to wait about 4-5 hours or so until I get back to that computer.

If the problem shows up only in AH make sure you have anisotropic filtering setting set to 'application preference'.

[Krusty]

It showed up in any full screen game.

I first tried changing different vid card screen settings with no results.

I used driver cleaner pro to remove drivers and reinstall. Read good things about 11.4 beta drivers, went with that.

Still has the problem... BUT.. big but... it didn't look that way in between when I stripped the drivers clean in safe mode.

So I figured out why I could not see the changes when I tweaked the settings.

If I start AH to bring up the login screen, and change a setting, that setting will not take place until the next time I start AH. I didn't know that or I'd just have stayed with 11.3. Oh well.

Through a series of trial and error and constantly opening up AH and closing it down I located the culprit:

Near the Anti-Aliasing settings is a check box with "Morphological filtering" -- this was causing the problem! With this feature turned off the problem goes away and all looks good again!


What the heck does "morphological filtering" do, anyway? Other than make fonts and stuff look like garbage?


Summary: Problem solved, was setting issue rather than driver.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

What the heck does "morphological filtering" do, anyway? Other than make fonts and stuff look like garbage?

The filtering makes stuff look like garbage in AH because AH does not support them. In other games they can have large beneficial effects on image quality.

[Krusty]

I noticed in one FPS shooter game it took the cross hairs and changed how they looked. Normally they were a top/down/left/right "plus sign" aiming point, with the center missing and 1 pixel wide each way. When morpho was on, each "leg" looked more like a narrow thin diamond instead of a line. Also the fonts and text in the menus and other areas of this game looked terrible as well. It apparently did not support this effect.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I noticed in one FPS shooter game it took the cross hairs and changed how they looked. Normally they were a top/down/left/right "plus sign" aiming point, with the center missing and 1 pixel wide each way. When morpho was on, each "leg" looked more like a narrow thin diamond instead of a line. Also the fonts and text in the menus and other areas of this game looked terrible as well. It apparently did not support this effect.

I'm not familiar with this type of filtering but some filters attempt to smooth curves so that a square polygon would have bent edges instead of sharp corners. It can have very nice looking effects in some places and rather unwanted effects in others.

[Skuzzy]

The filtering makes stuff look like garbage in AH because AH does not support them. In other games they can have large beneficial effects on image quality.

Actually, "morphological filtering" is a new anti-aliasing scheme from AMD/ATI which, purportedly, works with any DirectX application.  According to AMD/ATI it will not yeild any bad side effects compared to other forms of anti-aliasing which do require support of some kind, in order to have zero artifacts.