Hello.
I’ve been experiencing a few persistent video problems on the video card mentioned in the topic. I took the time to narrow them down and find possible solutions to them yesterday, so I thought I’d share them if anyone has similar setup/problems. All these issues mostly presented the,selves on W7 with DX11, but since then I switched to W10 and therefore gained an ability to switch to DX12, which helped me solve a couple of the issues.
I haven’t recorded any videos due to lack of time yesterday and the fact that one of the glitches does not show up on captured video at all (only on screen.)
A word of warning: I’m far from graphics snob, so my approach to fixes may not correspond to maximalistic views of some of my gaming comrades.
1. TAA antialiasing looks grainy and with a “lingering/smearing” effect on DX11. I really need to post a video of this one to save a thousand words, but those who saw it would understand.
Reproducible anywhere.
FIX: I found that FXAA antialiasing with sharpness filter turned off gives a similar picture. The edges might look a bit more “steppy”, but it doesn’t really bother me on that high of a resolution. A side benefit of this fix would be lower GPU load.
FIX #2: Switching to DX12 fixes the look of TAA.
2. Trippy shadows on DX11. The effect looks like the ambient shadows (e.g. in the corners of the steps of a stairs) persist in time. This looks very trippy because every time you rotate your view, you can see the shadows remain in the same position on screen and then slowly (within a second) “accumulate” back in the spots that they should be present on.
Reproducible anywhere. Most apparent in indoors areas like the keep.
FIX: Switch off SSAO. Any level other than “Off” produces this effect.
FIX #2: Switch to borderless fullscreen or window. Seems like an AMD’s “bridgeless crossfire” issue since anything but fullscreen should use only one core of the GPU.
3. Jerky FPS drop in some spots of some maps and when playing with Sienna in the team. This one doesn’t show up on video. According to the FPS meter, the FPS drops exactly in half, but but presents itself on screen like an offensive jerky alternation between frames. Need to whip out my camera and record the actual screen for more accurate description.
Reliably reproducible on “Hunger in the dark” in the spot where you need to get the powder barrels into the cart when you go into the cavern on the right. Probably because it is a vista to a cave with a lot of torches lit in there.
Also reproducible when Sienna starts to burn stuff en masse.
FIX: Turn the number of lights casting shadows down to at least 2.
FIX #2: Switch to borderless fullscreen or windowed modes. Seems like a double cored GPU issue again.
FIX #3 The issue completely disappears on DX12. Although some FPS drop may still be there due to the nature of computational difficulty, there is no offending jerkiness.
That’s all for now. I don’t know if it is helpful to anyone, so I was reluctant to collect video materials. If you really want to see them - ask with a pretty please.
Overall, switching to DX12 seems to improve looks significantly and fix most of the issues. However for me it introduces FPS stuttering on lower graphical settings. I haven’t really go into this one, as there is no point for me - it runs smoothly on High and Extreme.
Also, switching out of fullscreen mode impacts overall FPS, which is expected, since it effectively turns off one of the GPU cores. That’s why I endeavoured to have fixes for fullscreen DX11 mode as well.
Cheers.