Crossfire Profiles

Are Xfire Profiles a "must have"? I haven't been using them and things seem great, but you never know if it could run even better. Where do you download them? Do they have to be optimized for each version or could I use the same Xfire Profiles for my current 10.7 and the upcoming 10.8? If they do improve performance, by how much?

~Cheers

 

From what I can tell, the app profiles are included with each driver release. However, they're also made available separately so that you can update the profiles without updating the driver at the same time.

You can download the latest profiles from here.

 

So I already have the profiles? Where in the CCC are they?

Also, what about the other questions? Can it harm my performance?

 

I found a FAQ over at Rage3D that explains more about the profiles.

It sounds like they override the default behaviour of the ATi drivers, in order to work around issues that occur in games. The profiles don't need as much testing or the WHQL process, so they're easier to update than drivers. They're also a lot smaller, saving bandwidth for ATi.

 

"Also, what about the other questions? Can it harm my performance?"

 

Just to make sure I haven't missed anything...

I wouldn't call them a "must have". Each driver update contains settings for the games, which should take care of the worst of the problems. You should only need to install the profiles if you have graphical issues with a game, and won't/can't install the latest drivers.

You can also try using a tool like RadeonPro to create your own game profiles.

See my first post.

As far as I can gather from the FAQ, the profiles can be overidden by a newer driver. Therefore, if you have the 10.3 profiles and install the 10.5 driver,

It depends from game to game. Some games may see no improvement at all. Other may have an improvement to graphics quality, or a reduction in glitches, but no change in frame rate. A handful of games may see framerate improvements or a reduction in level load times.

It's possible, and depends on what changes the profiles make to the drivers. There's no way of knowing unless you install them. However, the intention of the profiles is to make games better, so it's unlikely (but not impossible) that you'll see nasty performance drops.

If you do end up with performance decreases, you can simply remove the profiles. This will simply give you the driver default settings for each game.

 

Thanks a bunch nzgeek. You've always been extraordinarily resourceful. I've installed the profiles and actually it seems to make everything even smoother. Thank you very much for your help and for providing me with the link to the profiles. I searched around a bit for information on them, but for some reason a lot of sites were less than helpful.

One question though: is there any way to see the different settings that the application profiles utilize? I can't find the application profiles anywhere in the CCC.

 

To be honest, I don't know if there's any way to see the profiles. I think you're just meant to be safe in the knowledge that they're there.

You could give RadeonPro a try. Because it's able to create and edit profiles, it will probably pick up on the ones that have been installed by ATi. I'm still a few days away from receiving my Alien so I can't give you a better indication until then.