Assassin's Creed 3 Crashing: AMD 7970m Issue

Here we go! Another thread about the AMD 7970m and driver issues.

I just purchased the Assassin's Creed 3 game on a Steam sale and wanted to play it over the weekend. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to. This is because it crashed roughly every minute after it was started. No joke, I couldn't get past the "Animus check" section.

To try and resolve the issue, I reverted my driver back from the 13.2 beta 7 to 13.1 whql, but the same problem occurred. Forcing msaa to 2x in AMD Catalyst, a trick that has worked to some avail before, worked to a degree, but the game still crashes every 8 to 10 minutes.

Essentially, the game has been rendered unplayable for me, just as Far Cry 3 and Max Payne 3 were for some time. Does anyone have this game working on an AMD 7970m? If so, can you recommend your settings and current driver?

If it is any help, I have the AMD 7970m on a Sager/Clevo NP9150/P150EM which is running Windows 8 64-bit.

Thanks

 

That's one reason I don't buy ATI video cards, their drivers suck. My desktop Geforce 570 plays it fine with no crashing, at 2560 x 1600 at 60 fps.

 

There's not really anything you can do about it unfortunately. It's the atidx32.dll crash, and the only way of stopping it is to run in windowed mode or borderless window mode. AC3 doesn't support either. Wish I had better news, but unless AMD fixes it with an upcoming driver or Ubi patches it out, it's gong to keep happening. It used to happen wit a bunch of other games (Crysis 2, Hitman: Absolution, Far Cry 3, etc) but those games supported borderless windowed mode so it wasn't much of an issue. 13.1 fixed the error in most games, but it still happens in AC3.

Your only option at this point is to join the green team. Even if the crashes could be prevented, the game still runs horribly on 7xxxm GPUs.

 

Ahh yes,as usual AMD taking months to fix issues and optimize for games. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do to help. If AMD has a driver forum you should report your issues there.

 

finished it on 7970m without a single crash (knock on wood?)

 

Used 7970m crossfire to beat the game. Occasional crashes throughout, maybe once in a few hours? The ending though crashed everytime so I had to watch it on youtube. Agreed it's not a good experience but the OP should join the AC3 haters and move on instead of breaking the piggy bank to "join the green team" at this point.

 

Eh, it's a decent game. Fortunately you don't have to deal with Enduro, which is the root of the problem here. Also, I didn't tell him he should get an Nvidia card, just that it's the only option (from my experience) that he has if he wants to play AC3.

 

I agree. Don't switch to the green team just yet! Wait for the 780m!

 

well, I have 7970m, but I am always on the side of green team expensive, but totally worth it!

 

Quality and reliability is expensive. Always been like that. Not gonna change.

Waiting months for stuff to get fixed is simply unacceptable. AMD cheaps out on the driver development in order to bring down the cost. People who buy their products would deserve much better support. If they can't provide it at the price they're asking than they should raise it or get out of the business. The latter I wouldn't like because than nvidia would be even more expensive.

 

To be fair, they have improved the 7970ms a ton since last summer. It sure took them a while to get it right though lol. AC3 is the exception rather than the rule now, which is good. Examples like this were constant before 13.1 released.

You're right though, their drivers still aren't up to par with Nvidia's offerings.

 

Like I said. They always take their sweet time. lol Still,I am going to give them a shoot with the 8970m. I've read a leak suggesting it's gonna be a 1536 core chip. Clock for clock 20% faster than the 7970m. Codename: "sun". If it's garbage I'll just sell it and revert back to the 570m. I'm hoping it'll be good though. This 570m is weak for newer games.

 

That sounds like a good plan, especially since you won't have to deal with Enduro. What size PSU do you have? Could you add a 2960xm with a 100w GPU?

 

whaaaaaaat?!! really?? that would be more than 30-40% better performance!

 

Well that sucks... Thanks for the reply, guys. I guess I can only hope for the best. @TheBlackIdentity, I will definitely report this on AMD's driver forum, thanks for the advice.

 

I have the 180W psu so I'm good. Adding the 2960xm wouldn't make sense since the bios is locked. I wouldn't be able to change the multipliers in other words a waste of money. First I'll just buy the gpu and if I see under utilization I'll get a 2860qm and flash my ram with the 1866mhz bios I have for it. I doubt my 2670qm would bottleneck though but we'll see. I want to put the majority of my resources into an Alienware next year. That's why I decided on the 8970m.

It's 20% clock for clock. 1536 cores is exactly 20% more than the current 7970m. If they also up the clocks to 900mhz we'd be looking at a 20-25% upgrade in framerates. They'll need it to compete with the monster that the 780m will be.

Your welcome.

 

I love competition

 

Anyone try the 13.3 beta driver 2 yet? Has it fixed the issue? I wan't to try it sometime, but I just changed my drivers again and I'm sick of just jumping back and forth with no real changes, and I think that most 7970m owners are at this point.

 

finished it last week with no crashes on a 7970m. Though I do have the enduro disabled version of the card in a w860cu. FWIW, the drivers I used were 13.1 whql and 13.2 beta 7 (updated about half way through, no crashes with either)

 

Unfortunately, we Sager/Clevo owners can't disable enduro due to the iGPU issues. Good to know that it might be Enduro related, though.

 

13.3 betas haven't been working with enduro setups. Just tried the beta 3 and the AMD driver won't run alongside the intel.

 

Just installed the mobility version of the 13.3b3 and AC3 still crashes on my clevo with enduro.

 

This will never end, ever. I have a feeling that the 7970m will be abandoned by AMD, if it hasn't already been. They're going to hype up the new 8970m, just like they did the 5870m, 6970m and now 7970m, and it will have the same driver issues all the aforementioned cards have encountered. They'll make their money off of oblivious/misinformed folks such as myself, not support their product, and move on. With such low costs, I imagine that is how they are turning a profit on their mobile development. Well, that and the APU's.