AMD Video Card Driver Update

[Condor]

I have an AMD HD 6950 with Driver 8.961.0.0 from 2012. It struggles playing AH3 and I probably need to update the driver. I see from the AMD website that I have a choice of 15.7.1 or Crimson Edition 16.2.1 Beta. Any AMD experts out there with a recommendation?

I've never done this before but have done some internet research. Is it OK to just uninstall the current driver in control panel or device manger or should I use something like Driver Sweeper or Display Driver Uninstaller?

Thanks

[Pudgie]

I have an AMD HD 6950 with Driver 8.961.0.0 from 2012. It struggles playing AH3 and I probably need to update the driver. I see from the AMD website that I have a choice of 15.7.1 or Crimson Edition 16.2.1 Beta. Any AMD experts out there with a recommendation?

I've never done this before but have done some internet research. Is it OK to just uninstall the current driver in control panel or device manger or should I use something like Driver Sweeper or Display Driver Uninstaller?

Thanks

Not an expert but since I'm using 1 I will attempt to help you out.

Use DDU for sure to fully clean the driver fragments out after you remove the driver initially thru Add\Remove Programs in control panel.

Now I hope I'm wrong here but since you're using a AMD HD 6950 vid card & if you're looking to use the AMD Crimson drivers series don't get your hopes up as these drivers are really targeted for the floor of the AMD HD 7000 series vid cards & up to make use of most of the goodies that AMD is coding into them so the Crimson 16.2.1 beta driver listed for your vid card series will be mostly the same base AMD driver stack as was used in the AMD Catalyst 15.7.1 drivers. A look up on the AMD web site will show you this.

If you really want to use the Crimson series drivers to the fullest then I would recommend to upgrade to the AMD "R" series vid cards and in particular the R9 series vid cards and up as its this series that AMD is putting the most effort into w\ these Crimson drivers IMHO.

That choice is yours to make in the end.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[Condor]

Not an expert but since I'm using 1 I will attempt to help you out.

Use DDU for sure to fully clean the driver fragments out after you remove the driver initially thru Add\Remove Programs in control panel.

Now I hope I'm wrong here but since you're using a AMD HD 6950 vid card & if you're looking to use the AMD Crimson drivers series don't get your hopes up as these drivers are really targeted for the floor of the AMD HD 7000 series vid cards & up to make use of most of the goodies that AMD is coding into them so the Crimson 16.2.1 beta driver listed for your vid card series will be mostly the same base AMD driver stack as was used in the AMD Catalyst 15.7.1 drivers. A look up on the AMD web site will show you this.

If you really want to use the Crimson series drivers to the fullest then I would recommend to upgrade to the AMD "R" series vid cards and in particular the R9 series vid cards and up as its this series that AMD is putting the most effort into w\ these Crimson drivers IMHO.

That choice is yours to make in the end.

Hope this helps you out.

 

More expert than Me. I have no great desire to use crimson drivers and it appears that the plain vanilla 15.71.1 driver should be fine. I will use DDU.

Thanks for the help

 

[Condor]

I updated from the AMD 8.961.0.0 Video driver to the current 15.7.1 driver which actually shows as 15.200.1062.1004. Thought at first I had the wrong driver but it is the designation they use for the 15.7.1. I'm seeing slightly lower FPS in AH3. The update included the AMD Evolved Gaming App. It appeared I could have done a custom install without that app but I chose to install it. Has anyone had experience with this? I did set a restore point but when I looked at system restore it said the AMD driver may not work right after restore and have to be reinstalled. It's rather disappointing and I'm not sure where to go from here.

[TequilaChaser]

I updated from the AMD 8.961.0.0 Video driver to the current 15.7.1 driver which actually shows as 15.200.1062.1004. Thought at first I had the wrong driver but it is the designation they use for the 15.7.1. I'm seeing slightly lower FPS in AH3. The update included the AMD Evolved Gaming App. It appeared I could have done a custom install without that app but I chose to install it. Has anyone had experience with this? I did set a restore point but when I looked at system restore it said the AMD driver may not work right after restore and have to be reinstalled. It's rather disappointing and I'm not sure where to go from here.

some people like to use the AMD/ATI Video Control Panel full install.....

I recommend you just use the minimal install of the Display Driver only, and forget about all the bells and whistles

you can go back in to Control Panel\Programs and Features and click on the AMD Install Manager and remove everything VC related except the display driver...this might help you gain some FPS

 ( leave the other things like chipset drivers, etc especially if you are using an AMD CPU ( but I think you have an Intel )

edit: alot of people like MSI Afterburner, I've never bothered with it, but others on here use it alot

hope this helps
TC

[Condor]

some people like to use the AMD/ATI Video Control Panel full install.....

I recommend you just use the minimal install of the Display Driver only, and forget about all the bells and whistles

you can go back in to Control Panel\Programs and Features and click on the AMD Install Manager and remove everything VC related except the display driver...this might help you gain some FPS

 ( leave the other things like chipset drivers, etc especially if you are using an AMD CPU ( but I think you have an Intel )

edit: alot of people like MSI Afterburner, I've never bothered with it, but others on here use it alot

hope this helps
TC

Two programs called Raptr and Playit were installed with the Catalyst control center. They showed up as independent programs and I uninstalled them. In the AMD install manager I uninstalled an HDMI audio driver and AMD drag and drop (both of which appear to have nothing to do with graphics) I kept the display driver and catalyst control.

I tried AH3 again with no improvement in FPS. Also the trees looked more realistic with the old driver. Now as I approach them in a tank they look less 3D and more like paintings. It seems I was better off with the old driver.

I noticed that the AMD driver install program also installed:
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable - x86 9.0.30729.17
Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x64 Redistributable - 10.1.40219
Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x64)-11.0.50727
Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x86) 11.0.50727

I already had and still have installed:
3 copies of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable  (all with different version numbers)
2 copies Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x64) (with different version numbers)
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable -x64 9.0.30729.6161
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable -x86 9.0.21022
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable -x86 9.0.30729.6161
Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x86 Redistributable - 1.0.40219

Do you , or anyone, know if having all these Visual C++ is a problem?

I also see I have NVIDIA PhysX. I don't understand why. My son built this computer but it never had an NVIDIA card in it.

I was better off before the driver update. I may have ti try system restore to the point before I updated the driver and hope I end up with the old driver. It was better.

Any advice/suggestions will be appreciated.

[Skuzzy]

Do not trust system restore. 

Changing video card drivers is not a simple task in Windows.  You really need to clean out old drivers before updating drivers.  The reason being are the registry entries for one driver may actually conflict with another driver.

[TequilaChaser]

Condor,

I have an XFX HD6950 2GB VC in one of my other PC's....... I need to clear out one of my pc's hooked in to my 4 way kvm switch and hook it up to see what drivers are loaded, but I'm thinking they were 13.4 or 13.6? and possibly 4 different versions of MS Visual C++ loaded...... I took it off line to test some other PC's with the beta back around AH3 Beta Patch 2 or so......

I'll try to find time and get back to you...... the only other AMD cards I have right now running are the one in my intel ( R9 270x 4 GB on Crimson Drivers) and a 12 yr old ASUS HD3870
512MB on an AMD rig using Driver12.4

Do not trust system restore. 

Changing video card drivers is not a simple task in Windows.  You really need to clean out old drivers before updating drivers.  The reason being are the registry entries for one driver may actually conflict with another driver.

Absolutely Agree

TC

[Condor]

Do not trust system restore. 

Changing video card drivers is not a simple task in Windows.  You really need to clean out old drivers before updating drivers.  The reason being are the registry entries for one driver may actually conflict with another driver.

I uninstalled the driver in control panel and then used the AMD utility that supposedly removes all traces of the old driver in safe mode. After that installed the new driver. What did I do wrong?

I don't trust system restore but I'm not sure what else to do.

Condor,

I have an XFX HD6950 2GB VC in one of my other PC's....... I need to clear out one of my pc's hooked in to my 4 way kvm switch and hook it up to see what drivers are loaded, but I'm thinking they were 13.4 or 13.6? and possibly 4 different versions of MS Visual C++ loaded...... I took it off line to test some other PC's with the beta back around AH3 Beta Patch 2 or so......

I'll try to find time and get back to you...... the only other AMD cards I have right now running are the one in my intel ( R9 270x 4 GB on Crimson Drivers) and a 12 yr old ASUS HD3870
512MB on an AMD rig using Driver12.4

Absolutely Agree

TC

I did some research on line and apparently it is normal to have multiple versions of Visual C++. Apparently different software vendors distribute versions specific for their products and on top of that they sometimes appear as Microsoft updates. From what read they should be left alone.

[Bizman]

Condor, DDU would do a better job especially since you're going back to an older driver version. http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

[Condor]

Condor, DDU would do a better job especially since you're going back to an older driver version. http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

I should have used DDU the first time. I uninstalled the new driver and programs associated with it in control panel and then ran DDU in safe mode. I then installed the new driver again but using the custom install so I only got the basic driver and catalyst control. The new driver is now much better than it was the first time around. The comparison with the old driver is puzzling.

With the old driver if I tried the default settings I got a black screen. The first time out with the new driver I got FPS 34-38 at default settings with a Panzer in open country and trees. I expected much better FPS, therefore, at lower graphics settings than I saw with the old driver. Not so.

Under similar conditions, panzer driving through fields and forest; old driver  70-80FPS; new driver65-78. I don't see the difference as significant but was surprised that I didn't see much better results with new driver since it will run defaults.

So it seems the new driver is an improvement but I'm not sure by how much.  So I guess I'll keep the new driver. It obviously has more potential.

[Pudgie]

I should have used DDU the first time. I uninstalled the new driver and programs associated with it in control panel and then ran DDU in safe mode. I then installed the new driver again but using the custom install so I only got the basic driver and catalyst control. The new driver is now much better than it was the first time around. The comparison with the old driver is puzzling.

With the old driver if I tried the default settings I got a black screen. The first time out with the new driver I got FPS 34-38 at default settings with a Panzer in open country and trees. I expected much better FPS, therefore, at lower graphics settings than I saw with the old driver. Not so.

Under similar conditions, panzer driving through fields and forest; old driver  70-80FPS; new driver65-78. I don't see the difference as significant but was surprised that I didn't see much better results with new driver since it will run defaults.

So it seems the new driver is an improvement but I'm not sure by how much.  So I guess I'll keep the new driver. It obviously has more potential.

Hi Condor,

Now you see why I typed in my 1st post to not get your hopes up when upgrading vid card drivers on the series of AMD vid card that you're currently using.

Now if you have either CCC or Radeon Settings loaded there are some minor setting changes that can be made in the default drivers that can help a little w\ FPS:

Texture Filtering Quality: This is set to Standard at default. The vid card driver will apply this mid-level of filtering detail (bilinear filtering on most objects w\ some trilinear filtering applied to specific objects at specific areas to increase sharpness and not greatly impact performance) regardless of what level the game calls for. You can set this setting to Performance so the driver will instruct the GPU to use the very minimum amount of texture filtering (I believe bilinear texture filtering to all objects & transparencies) to the graphics scenes and may get you a few more FPS in the process. This setting change should get you the best FPS out of your vid card's GPU.

Surface Format Optimizations: Make sure that this is enabled....it should be by default but if it isn't then enable it. This setting is an AMD "hack" back in the day to use older FP11 graphics code instead of new at that time FP16 graphics code that would enhance a graphics frame to appear as it was filtered using trilinear filtering quality (sharper & cleaner graphics) when it was actually bilinear filtering quality being used to achieve higher performance than the Nvidia vid cards at that time. Your vid card series should benefit from this if you like good clean graphics w\o the performance hit. With the later AMD R series (especially the R9 series) this setting doesn't do much anymore as these series GPU's are much more powerful and can mostly handle the graphics load regardless, but it also won't hurt them either if this is left enabled.

As far as the rest of the default driver settings I would recommend to leave them as set.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[Condor]

Hi Condor,

Now you see why I typed in my 1st post to not get your hopes up when upgrading vid card drivers on the series of AMD vid card that you're currently using.

Now if you have either CCC or Radeon Settings loaded there are some minor setting changes that can be made in the default drivers that can help a little w\ FPS:

Texture Filtering Quality: This is set to Standard at default. The vid card driver will apply this mid-level of filtering detail (bilinear filtering on most objects w\ some trilinear filtering applied to specific objects at specific areas to increase sharpness and not greatly impact performance) regardless of what level the game calls for. You can set this setting to Performance so the driver will instruct the GPU to use the very minimum amount of texture filtering (I believe bilinear texture filtering to all objects & transparencies) to the graphics scenes and may get you a few more FPS in the process. This setting change should get you the best FPS out of your vid card's GPU.

Surface Format Optimizations: Make sure that this is enabled....it should be by default but if it isn't then enable it. This setting is an AMD "hack" back in the day to use older FP11 graphics code instead of new at that time FP16 graphics code that would enhance a graphics frame to appear as it was filtered using trilinear filtering quality (sharper & cleaner graphics) when it was actually bilinear filtering quality being used to achieve higher performance than the Nvidia vid cards at that time. Your vid card series should benefit from this if you like good clean graphics w\o the performance hit. With the later AMD R series (especially the R9 series) this setting doesn't do much anymore as these series GPU's are much more powerful and can mostly handle the graphics load regardless, but it also won't hurt them either if this is left enabled.

As far as the rest of the default driver settings I would recommend to leave them as set.

Hope this helps you out.

 

Surface Format Optimizations was enabled.  I changed Texture Filtering Quality to performance and it gives about a 10% increase in FPS. It may allow me to enable another graphics feature. I've been running with the env. slider at none and only details, bump mapping, and ground clutter enabled.

All the other settings are at the defaults.
Anti-aliasing mode and samples: Application settings
Anti-aliasing filter: Standard
Anti-aliasing method: multisampling
Morphological filtering: off
Anisotropic mode and level: Application settings
Texture Filtering Quality: Performance (per your recommendations)
Surface format optimization: on
wait for vert. refresh: off, unless application specifies
Open GL triple buffering:off
Tessellation mode: AMD optimized
Max. Tessellation level: AMD optimized

Do they look right?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Pudgie]

Surface Format Optimizations was enabled.  I changed Texture Filtering Quality to performance and it gives about a 10% increase in FPS. It may allow me to enable another graphics feature. I've been running with the env. slider at none and only details, bump mapping, and ground clutter enabled.

All the other settings are at the defaults.
Anti-aliasing mode and samples: Application settings
Anti-aliasing filter: Standard
Anti-aliasing method: multisampling
Morphological filtering: off
Anisotropic mode and level: Application settings
Texture Filtering Quality: Performance (per your recommendations)
Surface format optimization: on
wait for vert. refresh: off, unless application specifies
Open GL triple buffering:off
Tessellation mode: AMD optimized
Max. Tessellation level: AMD optimized

Do they look right?

Thanks for your help.

 

Yes, your good to go Condor.

As a side note, your HD 6950 series AMD vid card can't do tessellation at the GPU hardware level and so those 2 tessellation settings ain't doing anything for you and so don't worry about them. That will come into play only w\ the AMD GPU equipped vid cards that have tessellation embedded in the GPU hardware as the driver will check the GPU for this capability before enabling this when set to the default setting of AMD Optimized.

All else is par the course.

Just thought I'd let you know bout that now.

The Texture Filtering Quality setting is an often overlooked setting in the driver stack that can eat up some GPU cycles if not understood that the driver will ADD this level of texture filtering in addition to the level of texture filtering calls from the game software (note there isn't a setting choice for "use application setting"). Since HTC has really done a very good job of working this Beta code for quality as well as performance a user can set this in the driver (this works for Nvidia cards as well as the drivers do the exact same thing) to the lowest quality texture setting at the driver level then make it up w\ the game's coding to achieve better looking graphics w\ a lower GPU performance penalty than the default setting will give you.

On the in game setting of ground clutter, I would also check the "disable ground clutter when in flight" checkbox as well. When you're in a ground vehicle the game will call for ground clutter rendering calls to be processed but when you're in a plane the game will suspend these calls when this box is checked to save you some GPU cycles from being used to render ground clutter when you really can't see it too well from alt so those GPU cycles can be used more efficiently while you're flying\fighting.

FYI.........................

Enjoy!

 

 

[Hungry]

Is this a good time to ask if the NVidia custom clean install is any better or is a driver cleaner still better?