Gaming on the new Mac Pro (Far Cry 4, BF H), drivers, over clocking ...

[agazoo]

I have to admit, that, after all works are finished and upgrade is complete, I am missing cMP style desktop.

nMP is a nice, portable/transportable/mobile platform that fits carry on and gold wing bags, but as stationary - tower is the king. With all external stuff attached to my nMP along with cable mess, it takes just as much space as cMP. I would rather have current nMP in tower with the real PSU & cooling, normal clocks and speeds and possibly nMP in cylinder if I need transportability and power laptops won't give.

 

[Redneck1089]

Yes, I am using Afterburner.

You most certainly can damage hardware with OC. (and) I did many years ago. Fried my Radeon (don't remember the model, was high end in 2003). In case of nMP it seems impossible to over volt and with their stock voltage config, the only real danger imho is the temp. Initially I had temps go over 100deg on one occasion with termal shutdown. After I redid thermal compound (over 10 times), it never exceeds 92-93 deg, in most games within 80-85 range. Im ok with that. I don't do a lot of gaming anyways ...

After some more testing, stable seems to be around 895~, over 900 system crashes once DD initializes. I may have a problem with the driver though, I think I never reinstalled the drivers after D500 upgrade and control center shows that I have different cards.

Speaking of cMP, does it have enough PSU to run dual GTX 980 Ti SC?

Thanks

Hi,

That's very interesting. I'm interested in giving the overclocking a shot. So, just to confirm so I can mimic what you're doing:

- You're going into MSI Afterburner and increasing the core clock on each GPU (A and B) to 900 Mhz? I know there's a drop down menu for each GPU, so I just want to make sure you're going into both GPUs' settings.


I have a custom fan curve that basically maxes the fan out when the temps get over 70 degrees. Even after gaming for long periods of time the only game that ever seems to go above 90 is BF4.



The stock PSU in the cMP should definitely be enough to power one GTX 980 Ti. If you were so inclined you could run an external PSU using the paper clip method to jump start the PSU. You could run one GTX off internal power and the other from the external PSU. You could also just buy a beefy external PSU and run both GTXs from it.

I used to run dual GPUs in my cMP so I bought an external. To this day I still power my GPU from it. I just plug the external PSU into the wall socket for power, make sure to use a paper clip to jump start it, and then run the necessary cords through the back of the Mac Pro. It's quite simple and has been a super easy thing to do (I'm not that technical). I'm happy to take photos or walk you through everything if you want more info.

Cheers.

 

[Redneck1089]

I have to admit, that, after all works are finished and upgrade is complete, I am missing cMP style desktop.

nMP is a nice, portable/transportable/mobile platform that fits carry on and gold wing bags, but as stationary - tower is the king. With all external stuff attached to my nMP along with cable mess, it takes just as much space as cMP. I would rather have current nMP in tower with the real PSU & cooling, normal clocks and speeds and possibly nMP in cylinder if I need transportability and power laptops won't give.

That's how I feel too and is why I kept my old cMP.

I'm travelling a lot between Canada and the UK, and the nMP is great for me because of it's form factor. The old cMP, however, is great in that I will continue to be able to upgrade it for a few more years whereas the nMP is pretty much stuck in its current state. The cMP still maintains its position as my main computer in my office and is filled to the max with hard drives and other internal peripherals.

 

[Redneck1089]

So I tried boosting my D700s to 900 Mhz using MSI Afterburner and everything worked fine. I get very stable game play and a few extra fps. Cool!

 

[agazoo]

Got my NEC PA322UHD today,

Under OS X everything looks fantastic & scales well

As far as gaming goes ... well it is actually quite acceptable

Valley Benchmark:
without Overclock: 16.5low 48.3 high 1211 score; feels like 28-32 fps average, Ultra
with light Overclock: 17.1low 56.1 high 1345 score; feels like 31-36 fps average, Ultra
with light Overclock: 18.9low 78.6 high 1671 score; feels like 50 fps average, High

GTA V:
ran without issues everything maxed out, no AA; (I dropped some settings to High, had black screen initially every few seconds at 60 HZ); FPS 55-65; May go down to ~48 especially when driving

Mix of normal/high/ultra results in 65-70 average;

Very smooth;

Battlefield Hardline:
ran without issues everything maxed out, no AA; Did 60 person conquest on complex map, FPS 52-70; Around 60 mostly; Goes down when heavy particles are present.

Very smooth; Feel much better then on 2560x for some reason; Picture is gorgeous;

Far Cry 4: tried with light overclock, with everything maxed, no AA and that other hungry thing, FPS under 50; With everything on HIGH or higher 51-60 FPS with occasional drop to 40 area. Thermal Shutdown 10 minutes into the game.
Texture on VERY HIGH or ULTRA: lag.

Looks ok. More playable then 2560x. No sudden drops in FPS.


Overall performs well. Oddly, lower FPS on this screen feels smoother then much higher FPS on 2560x one.

 

[agazoo]

Hi,

That's very interesting. I'm interested in giving the overclocking a shot. So, just to confirm so I can mimic what you're doing:

- You're going into MSI Afterburner and increasing the core clock on each GPU (A and B) to 900 Mhz? I know there's a drop down menu for each GPU, so I just want to make sure you're going into both GPUs' settings.


I have a custom fan curve that basically maxes the fan out when the temps get over 70 degrees. Even after gaming for long periods of time the only game that ever seems to go above 90 is BF4.



The stock PSU in the cMP should definitely be enough to power one GTX 980 Ti. If you were so inclined you could run an external PSU using the paper clip method to jump start the PSU. You could run one GTX off internal power and the other from the external PSU. You could also just buy a beefy external PSU and run both GTXs from it.

I used to run dual GPUs in my cMP so I bought an external. To this day I still power my GPU from it. I just plug the external PSU into the wall socket for power, make sure to use a paper clip to jump start it, and then run the necessary cords through the back of the Mac Pro. It's quite simple and has been a super easy thing to do (I'm not that technical). I'm happy to take photos or walk you through everything if you want more info.

Cheers.

I am thinking about going Dual 980 Ti (or dual 980 since I already have one), i'll certainly need extra PSU for that.

Could be a good gaming machine though, and I will no longer need to mess with nMP;

 

[Spacedusst]

Hey,
Does anyone know of an updated method of modding new November2015 AMD 15.11 beta drivers? The latest catalyst drivers seem to be immune to the old method, also posted on these forums.

I have the nMP with D300, with the latest bootcamp drivers 15.201 dated August2015 and everything I threw at it worked flawlessly on high/ultra settings at 1080.I got 50 fps in GTA5 with all on high/ultra even witcher 3 had 60fps with everything on ultra except nvidia hair.

I recently installed Fallout 4, and its unplayable even on low, I get 15-20fps tops and lots of stuttering. I know lots of people had this issue and I've been told to install the latest nvidia/amd drivers. There seems to be a new release of drivers that specifically fixes fallout 4 performance problems for both nvidia and amd. But as usual bootcamp compatible ones will be available some months after.

Does anybody know of a new way of modding the latest drivers? Or is there someone that did it that can upload their modded november drivers for AMD cards?

Sorry for the long post, wanted to be explicit, maybe the problem is in something else and I don't know.


TLDR: Does anyone know how to/have modded latest amd 15.11 catalyst drivers november 2015 ??

 

[agazoo]

I am planning to try it out this coming weekend

As far as Fallout 4 goes I believe it is possible to do some tweaking to bump up performance (mostly tessellation, volumetric and SLI settings) with existing driver;

It isn't running too well on my Windows rig and that is with Two way SLI GTX 980 TI on water-cooling, overclocked; On 4K 45FPS average and is lagging hard;

Fallout 4 is huge disappointment for me :-( Back to BF4 it seems ...

 

[Spacedusst]

Thanks so much for the fast reply!

I did bump pretty much everything on low and manage to get 30fps but still a lot of stuttering but people that have the latest amd/nvidia drivers report flawless performace of fallout 4.

If you succeed in modding the new amd drivers dont forget to archive the folder and upload it somewhere for all the people who can't get it working.

 

[Redneck1089]

I too am interested in figuring out how to put the latest AMD drivers on.

One thing I've heard is that you can take the DLL files of the newest drivers and dump them into the folder with the game's .exe. Here's the site: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=399547

Might be worth trying. I was going to try with The Witcher 3 last night, but the game requires a big update since I last played it and I can't be bothered to wait right now.

 

[CGmaniak]

First of all gotta give a huge creadit to mr. agazoo, this thread was uberhelpful. As far as Fallout 4 performance goes, it seems we are bound to wait for the Crimson release in two weeks or so and then hope that we will be able to mod them to work with nmp, don't feel like amd will bother pushing a decent update earlier, considering a huge one is coming with Crimson.

 

[Spacedusst]

indeed it has been quite helpful

LE:

... One thing I've heard is that you can take the DLL files of the newest drivers and dump them into the folder with the game's .exe. Here's the site: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=399547 ...

^^This worked flawlessly, I get 50-60fps with ultra settings on 1080p!!

Thanks a lot Redneck1089 I've been trying to figure out a way to get those drivers to install for about 2 days now, you saved me!

 

[CGmaniak]

indeed it has been quite helpful



LE:



^^This worked flawlessly, I get 50-60fps with ultra settings on 1080p!!

Thanks a lot Redneck1089 I've been trying to figure out a way to get those drivers to install for about 2 days now, you saved me!

woot?

You pluged 15.11 DLLs from dx10-11 repository to the games' root and you got 60 fps in f4 ? Crossfire forced ?

 

[Spacedusst]

woot?

You pluged 15.11 DLLs from dx10-11 repository to the games' root and you got 60 fps in f4 ? Crossfire forced ?

Yes, I was surprised as well but it is more unstable and crashes more often but it is playable. I will remove the dll's from the game's folder as soon as I can get the new modded drivers as it seems to be a hack job

Let us know agazoo if you manage to mod the latest beta drivers.

You rule!

 

[CGmaniak]

Well, I gave it a shot and as far as single overclocked gpu performance goes it helps, though in some indoor areas fps drops quite low, which is strange... Crossfire is still very much broken, forcing it with CCC makes the game very laggish, overall uplayable. Shame.

 

[Spacedusst]

I know its not perfect, but it's playable for me, with some minor tweaks and this tool http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/102/?

let's hope agazoo manages modding the new drivers and we can install those, hopefully to more succes

also, I'm pretty sure there's some patches on our way from bethesda, this game has serious issues with amd cards regardless of them being in a mac or pc.. (like many games this year)

 

[CGmaniak]

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 15.11.1 Beta Windows Driver

Performance Optimizations

Includes quality and performance optimizations for the following titles:

• • • Star Wars™: Battlefront
    • Fallout 4
    • Assassin's Creed® Syndicate
    • Call of Duty® : Black Ops III

 

[Mattstrete]

I've been running Fallout 4 for the last few days without any problems. My suggestions:

- run ENBoost: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/332/?
- set "iPresentInterval" to "0" in all three Fallout 4 .ini files;
- activate vsync and the frame rate limiter in the ENB .ini file (as described in the mod description on nexusmods.com) or use another frame rate limiter such as DXTory (I've always found this to be important with the game's engine as employed e.g. in Skyrim);
- disable crossfire;
- set "godrays" to low and shadow quality and shadow distance to medium via the fallout 4 launcher or with the config utility which has been linked to above. (be sure to re-set "iPresentInterval" to "0" in the .ini files after changing any settings via the launcher).

I've also overclocked my D500 to 975 mhz core / 1500 mhz memory clocks.

I've yet to try the 15.11.1 beta dlls. The method to which I referred Redneck1089 (see above) should work in this regard, but at the moment I'm getting a good solid 60FPS at 1080p with the current drivers while walking around Boston (downtown area), in Diamond City and in interiors. I've even moved up to 2560x1440 but have yet to go outside with that resolution ...

 

[CGmaniak]

I've been running Fallout 4 for the last few days without any problems. My suggestions:

- run ENBoost: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/332/?
- set "iPresentInterval" to "0" in all three Fallout 4 .ini files;
- activate vsync and the frame rate limiter in the ENB .ini file (as described in the mod description on nexusmods.com) or use another frame rate limiter such as DXTory (I've always found this to be important with the game's engine as employed e.g. in Skyrim);
- disable crossfire;
- set "godrays" to low and shadow quality and shadow distance to medium via the fallout 4 launcher or with the config utility which has been linked to above. (be sure to re-set "iPresentInterval" to "0" in the .ini files after changing any settings via the launcher).

I've also overclocked my D500 to 975 mhz core / 1500 mhz memory clocks.

I've yet to try the 15.11.1 beta dlls. The method to which I referred Redneck1089 (see above) should work in this regard, but at the moment I'm getting a good solid 60FPS at 1080p with the current drivers while walking around Boston (downtown area), in Diamond City and in interiors. I've even moved up to 2560x1440 but have yet to go outside with that resolution ...

It's not about the ability to run the game overall, it's the fact that we can't use our 5k$ machines to their best and get buttery smooth, full ultra settings gaming expirience. On my 2560x1440 I have to sacrifice bunch of features, like AO, etc to run it on single GPU, even with OC and all tools you have mentioned, if drivers were optimized and CFX profile was availiable there would be a hell of a different picture on my screen. So I really hope some way smarter guys than me will pull up a modding tutorial for the latest drivers and CFX would start working correctly.

 

[agazoo]

Well, I can't run it well on my PC rig as well (overclocked water-cooled skylake with pair of 980 Ti s);
I spent some time tweaking it up but graphics suffers to much and it isn't stable, it does run acceptably on 2560x but still there are numerous problems;

As I understood latest drivers do not address SLI and performance in general of F4 so I gave up on it. The game is boring too ... I received a money back from Steam already.

I did not try to run it on my nMp either ... if at 2560x overclocked D300 wouldn't run smooth with visuals maxed out ... there is no point to try 4K, even with D700 until at-least they fix SLI.

On the other hand Star wars Battlefield is out, that might be fun ...

(On the other hand, nMP runs almost anything I do for work (mostly 2D) so much better then skylake rig)

 

[Spacedusst]

just booted into windows to play some fallout4, and I get this beautiful message, installing it now, lets hope it has the latest 15.11.1 drivers and catalyst

also, agazoo, the latest drivers DO have optimization for f4 and battlefront , as CGmaniak mentioned

Highlights of AMD Catalyst™ 15.11.1 Beta Windows Driver

Performance Optimizations

Includes quality and performance optimizations for the following titles:

• • • Star Wars™: Battlefront
    • Fallout 4
    • Assassin's Creed® Syndicate
    • Call of Duty® : Black Ops III

 

[agazoo]

Not by much ... according to feedback
Hows update going? Any news?
In the mean time, googling Fallout 4 isometric - found this: https://www.gog.com/game/stasis, runs well on any hardware! lol

 

[Spacedusst]

I did the update for bootcamp and it didn't do anything. It probably fixes just the 5k scaling on the new iMac, I'm still stuck with the same drivers, I keep refreshing the amd page to see if they put any new standalone driver there, either way, with enough tweaks I made the game playable at around 50-60fps on my d300 with high settings, its more than enough for me and as long as in Mac OSX I get stellar drivers and graphics updated thoroughly, even with the base nMP model I can't complain .

Agazoo, did you manage to mod the new 15.11 drivers? or are you running the official bootcamp 15.201 dated August2015?

 

[samflorin]

I did the update for bootcamp and it didn't do anything. It probably fixes just the 5k scaling on the new iMac, I'm still stuck with the same drivers, I keep refreshing the amd page to see if they put any new standalone driver there, either way, with enough tweaks I made the game playable at around 50-60fps on my d300 with high settings, its more than enough for me and as long as in Mac OSX I get stellar drivers and graphics updated thoroughly, even with the base nMP model I can't complain .

Agazoo, did you manage to mod the new 15.11 drivers? or are you running the official bootcamp 15.201 dated August2015?

I know this may be a bit late but check this out: http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2015/09/21/update-amd-display-driver-under-bootcamp/?mobile=0

The drivers are modded and digitally signed so you don't have to go in test mode to load them. Just download 15.12, unpack and overwrite the files with the ones from the blog.

EDIT: do yourself a favor and cleanup first. Use amd driver cleanup utility to wipe clean the previous software, don't reboot, use DDU to cleanup whatever is left, reboot and then install the modded driver. Without doing as above and simply upgrading i got flicker in most games i was playing.

 

[Redneck1089]

I know this may be a bit late but check this out: http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/2015/09/21/update-amd-display-driver-under-bootcamp/?mobile=0

The drivers are modded and digitally signed so you don't have to go in test mode to load them. Just download 15.12, unpack and overwrite the files with the ones from the blog.

EDIT: do yourself a favor and cleanup first. Use amd driver cleanup utility to wipe clean the previous software, don't reboot, use DDU to cleanup whatever is left, reboot and then install the modded driver. Without doing as above and simply upgrading i got flicker in most games i was playing.

I'm a little flustered with the instructions in the blog. Is it possible to download the modded files, unpack them, and install them and have 15.2? Or, do I need to follow the blog's instructions to a T?

Even with the downloaded files I can't find what I need to install.