AMD 21.2.2
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-21-2-2
I always wonder what this specifically means⌠Does it mean AMD disabled the use of Smart Access Memory dynamically when the drivers identify Youngblood as the game being played? Or does it mean that they actually spent the time needed to identify what causes the performance loss and fixed it, so the game now experienced a performance boost instead with SAM, as users would expect?
To the best of my knowledge itâs something in the driver code and a blacklisting profile of sorts.
AMD uses Re-sizeable BAR support and a standard of WDDM 2.0 through PCI Express 3.0 and higher but also utilize a driver interface or API in this case called SAM / Smart Access Memory.
Not sure what NVIDIA will utilize for I think itâs still planned as a driver update in March to also enable this feature fully but I expect itâll be something similar possibly also utilizing the same bios features that need to be set to enable this.
CSM in particular somehow causing issues, I stopped using that nearly a decade ago with my prior system but MBR partitions seemingly remain a strong part of users disk drivers (Instead of GPT.) somehow and enabling this and lacking UEFI support makes for a unbootable system though tools now allow for converting MBR into GPT at least.
For what AMDâs doing with this then I believe itâs allowing D3D11+ and Vulkan games to not only see the full address range up to the entire VRAM limit which is what you get from just enabling Above 4G Decoding and ReBAR as itâs shortened.
But through the driver code also utilize this through the display driver software rather than the 256 MB limited section though optimization and coding has done a lot for not making this as big of a limit as during the initial 32 bit and lower memory days.
Iâm not sure exactly as to what they are doing though more in-depth or how to say though tests do show it have itâs gains but after AC Valhalla being whatever it is and seeing ridiculous gains it then normalizes a bit more.
So thereâs a couple of titles that benefit more than the average but itâs not much yet it can still be a free 3 - 5% with a few outliers but also as seen thereâs cases for where enabling this actually regresses performance instead so itâs not just gains.
(And itâs a bios setting too once those are all set this is active with no other way to toggle it.)
Old Blood wasnât tested here though and I donât believe the performance penalty was that severe either nor is it just a Vulkan API issue as was also speculated with some other VLK API titles also showing losses.
Canât find it now but I do remember AMD saying the driver can use a profile system for titles such as a blacklist in fact they have quite a few in the driver already although the older profile system is much less now without Crossfire profiles so I can only see a few things from converting it to a XML and the core driver .dll code for this is not accessible for what I can check out.
Whenever hardware GPU scheduling is reworked and supported better for AMD and NVIDIA and combined with this though thatâs a nice 3 - 6% additional performance with limited and eventually no major issues and possible further improvements.
Depends I guess, presumably whatever the Anvil Next engine in Valhalla is doing is now overcoming a bottleneck of some sorts not a result of coding specifically for taking advantage of ReBAR so itâs not something to expect every game to be able to just hit gains like that.
Also not sure if this can tie into NVME 1.4+ and for Autumn(?) meaning Window 10 21H2 and whenever games actually utilize it Microsoft Smart Access for SSD caching of sorts fully pushing bigger chunks of memory to and from these blocks so RAM, SSD, GPU/VRAM or if thatâs a separate API and doesnât need some of the bios settings for the PCI Express bus and such.
Hmm, Iâm looking at the Steam forums and the old SK builds for Skyrim from GitHub are dead. Is anyone using SK for Skyrim? I tried 11_50 and 12_31 and all is well except the main imgui window is floating to the left on itâs own.
Uh� The only builds for Skyrim are from 2016, the only thing they do is achievement unlock sound / popup.
Use one of the builds on Discord in #releases , part of that self-moving window problem is a compiler bug.
Alright, well, I joined that so I can get the latest builds and stop posting about outdated stuff.
NVIDIA 461.72
Game Ready -
Outriders
Nioh 2 - DLSS
Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord
Rainbow Six Siege - NVIDIA Flex.
Support -
GeForce RTX 3060
CMP 40HX
CMP 30HX
Fixed issues:
Open issues:
Are there any ways to edit the achievement look further? Or is the default version in SpecialK the only way?
Grr, they still havenât fixed this. Iâm still suck on a fairly old driver at this point because of this issue. Youâd think with a game with as many players, not to mention being one of their RTX Titles, that theyâd would have had it fixed by now. Either they donât care, or it is something difficult to pin down. Also doesnât happen under Linux using Wine+DXVK which is curious.
The achievements look is made using skinnable CEGUI (http://cegui.org.uk/). Thereâs an editor on that page that can be pointed to Documents\My Mods\SpecialK\CEGUI (or possibly a subfolder) to modify the theme.
It can be confusing, but it is possible. If I havenât mistakenly removed it, there should be a more barebone variant that I created a year or so ago â somewhereâŚ
Anyway, CEGUI is sorta unofficially deprecated in SK. It doesnât work in D3D12 so long-term plan is to replace it with something else; possibly an achievement skinned and disabled using CEF/Electron with web based technologies such as HTML/CSS. Though for now thereâs no estimation of when that feature will arrive.
461.81 NVIDA âHotfixâ
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5168?linkId=100000034928969
Hmm⌠seems like a minor hotfix not worth installing.
Hey guys, I want to buy a gaming laptop because Iâm going to move around a lot in the near future and I really donât wanna miss HDR and especially SKâs ability to retrofit it into games. I found two models that I like, the Aero 15 and the Asus ROG Strix Scar. One definitely supports HDR but Iâm not sure of the other one. It only says that it supports 100% sRGB. Is SK able to retrofit HDR if a screen supports 100% sRGB or does that have nothing to do with HDR. Sorry, if that sounds stupid af but Iâm not familar with all that stuff.
sRGB doesnât have anything to do with HDR. It is basically just trying to say it can accurately represent colors, in the sRGB Colorspace. HDR is more about luminance levels (brightness), while a lot of HDR content is actually Wide Color Gamut as well (whether that is to their benefit or not is a different story), it doesnât necessarily have anything to do with HDR. sRGB is like the standard though, not really WCG.
NVIDIA 461.92 is out.
Overwatch Reflex support.
NVIDIA forums.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/439469/geforce-46192-game-ready-driver-feedback-thread-re/
PDF.
Fixed issues:
Open issues.
Still with the WoW issue. Itâs been a while now. Youâd think Blizzard would be working with them to figure that out considering most of their playerbase is likely using an Nvidia GPU. Itâs a really annoying issue, even possibly seizure inducing depending on the area because it flickers so fast. The weird thing is, in Linux when playing through Wine and VKD3D it doesnât exhibit the same problem even with the same driver version. Good thing too, since the next major version, the 470 series I believe, is supposed to finally bring the proprietary driver in line to fully supporting Wayland and XWayland. Iâve been dying to be able to use Wayland as it has FAR better support for DPI scaling, especially fractional scaling and even different scales per screen, although I donât need that particular part anymore. The other major thing is support for multiple refresh rates. Under Xorg, while you can technically run multiple monitors with different refresh rates, the content will sync to the slower screen by necessity.
465.89 NVIDIA
PDF.
466.11 NVIDIA.
Not yet up on their website.
So this was via Guru3D.