Assassin's Creed III: Major 7970m Performance Issues

With the release of the 12.11 beta and 12.11 performance drivers, I thought my problems with under-utilization were over. I've played dozens of games with no problems, and overall performance has drastically increased with the new drivers. That is, until buying AC3 today. This game runs just as badly on 12.11 beta and 12.11P as if it were on stock drivers. It's DX11 so I wasn't expecting any problems, but whenever you're in an open area in the game (98% of the time lol) utilization drops into the 30% range and framerates tank into an unplayable mess. I've tried lowering settings, but utilization only drops further, just like open world games pre-12.11. In-game cutscenes and indoor areas stay at a steady 60fps with v-sync, but other than that it's sub 30 fps, even on the lowest settings. I'm really disappointed; I've been looking forward to this game for a year and passed on the 360 and PS3 versions so I could get the full PC treatment. I sincerely hope AMD releases a fix in further driver updates. Oh well, back to Hitman Absolution.

Just wanted to warn any EM owners who were planning on picking Assassin's Creed up this holiday season. I would pass on it unless AMD provides a fix.

Edit: It appears people with both Nvidia and AMD cards are experiencing issues with the game. I shouldn't have been so quick to blame AMD; it seems the blame may fall on Ubisoft.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/124076-13-assassin-creed

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/727710-Assasin-Creed-3-in-ATI-LOW-FPS

 

After a bit of searching on Google, you can find other people also having similar issues. Non 7970M users. This points to the game engine itself having problems. Maybe we need a fix/patch from Ubisoft + AMD.

 

I hope that's the case. I tried googling, but didn't see much about it. The problem just fits so well with the pre-12.11 underutilization that I figured it had to be the cause. I hope it gets fixed soon, or I wasted 50 bucks.

Edit: Sorry, I should have searched more. There are a couple links on the second page of my google search where nvidia and amd owners are both having issues with low framerates and utilization once they hit Boston. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

well people should realize that the 12.11 was nothing more than super tweaked driver for certain mainstream games and benchmark application , the driver is a big fat lie that people believed , it never did anything about the steaming pile of enduro is , 7970m is the biggest scam ive ever been victim to.

 

That remains to be seen. Though it wouldn't surprise me that the problem with Assasins Creed 3 for example, arise from the fact that it is a crappy console port (and badly optimized for PC in general).

 

lol cry more

 

lol u retard who was crying in the first place about 7970 and ac3 , way to contradict yourself in the first page of the thread , i guess your brain is the one that got major performance issue XD

 

bawwwwwwww

 

a "derp derp" should have been sufficient to deliver the message to you with your non-existent mental capacity lol

 

I have the HD 6870, and when playing AC3, the gpu usage is 20-25%. So fps will go from 60+ all the way down to 15 in certain places. Is this a problem with the game or AMD drivers? Cause in games like Crysis, my gpu usage is cranked up to 99% and it shows stable fps.

 

I also suspect the game engine crapping all over our systems. As for the AMD drivers, well its AMD and needs to be optimized i guess... I heard Nvida users, as always having more luck!

CFX and SLI are having issues as well, I disabled Crossfire on my 6970m's (m18x R1, 2720qm, 2x 6970m cfx) and with my 12.11 beta with CAP 1 installed I get a very stable 40 fps with all settings high (disabled Vsync and no AA) in open area's even in Boston...

 

Problems like this aren't rare with a new release of a console port. Ubisoft will have to look into problems on their end and AMD will have to look into making an optimized driver.

 

check the links in my original post. people with amd and nvidia gpus are experiencing issues. there's a thread in the gaming section posted by a guy with a 680m who is also complaining of under-utlization and low performance. It may be partially a driver problem, but I'm guessing it's mostly an issue with the game. I'm hoping it gets patched soon.

lol bvtthurt much?

 

"bvtthurt" your terrible spelling of a simple word show how severe your stupidity condition is , anyway it is very impressive how someone as retarded as you is capable of using such a advanced piece of technology , maybe just maybe in the future you will be able to construct a semi meaningful sentence , keep practicing kid

 

Bashes spelling then goes on to make a ton of grammatical errors. Classic.

 

lol whatever grammar nazi

 

Why not just PM each other? The rest of us are not interested in reading these immature posts from either of you (I hope). You can argue privately as much as you like.

 

"b*tthurt" is censored on this forum. I had to substitute a letter so it didn't get deleted. Great insult though; I'm obviously the one who is really upset here. lulz

hypocrisy at its finest lol

ily2 montage

 

I have a lot of freezing issue with the Performance drivers on my 7970m, I haven't been to the city yet so I'm not experiencing the fps drop atm.

 

The game kept freezing at the very beginning for me too. It stops once you get past the tutorial. Then things are fine for a while until you get to Boston, when everything screws up again. It's really bad.

 

Interesting comments.

I am on a 6990m and getting a stable 50 fps+ with amd 12.8 drivers everything max just reached town of Boston and have gone into shop to buy sword and gun.
Not sure why the 7970m owners are getting low fps issues and even 680m owners for that matter..

That's major weirdness....
The graphics are an absolute joy to watch..probably the best I have seen for a looong time...
Lovely game too enjoying it..

 

I'm playing it on my 7970M with the stock sager drivers on a 50" TV @ 1920x1080 everything max except AA (on the 2nd highest) and i get no lag at all.

 

what about freeze at the beginning ?
stock drivers will works better than the performance and 11.8 with AS3 ? that's so ironic

 

I can't comment about the freeze at the beginning cause I was playing on my desktop for the beginning (up until a tad after Boston, about 7% in~) Then I transferred my save to my laptop to play at my girlfriends.

 

I haven't noticed any freezing. It's more or less smooth mainly.. just drops down to 25 FPS now & then. (That sounds contradictory, I mean it's smooth for 75-80% of the time & for 20-25% of the time I get bad frames.)

 

I once got freeze and crash after 2-3 minutes ingame on Performance and beta 8 driver, on Windows 8, even if I did a fresh reinstallation. It seemed that the game has a conflict with the file atidxx32.dll in these drivers. So yesterday I reinstalled Window 7 with stock driver and the freeze is gone, however the FPS drops sill happens. You should give it a try.

 

I tried again with a fresh installed of windows 8 + performance drivers , a lot of freeze issue almost every 30 sec and fps is around 50 + AS3 has stopped working error
yea I also found out the atixxx32.dll was in cause :

I don't feel like unstalling the stock to play just a game, far cry 3 is coming out soon and I'm also playing borderlands 2 and planetside 2 I feel like it's gonna be worst with the stock.
Oh well I'll wait a bit and catch up on As3 later...

 

Im working like hectic at the moment, so please forgive me if the answer to my question already exists. Bought myself a clevo 7970m. Hitman Absolution (highest settings) is running sub 20fps... Here are my steps so far:
- installed latest drivers ..... same sub 20 fps
- installed 14/11/2012 enduro driver.... same sub 20fps - updated intel graphics drivers and same outcome
- unistalled enduro and installed the 16/11/2012 beta driver... same fricking result
What is going on? Hitman Abs should be 40+ fps. playe sleeping dogs also and got around 20fps.
Could someone direct me to a step-by-step guide to solve this, please? should i return the setup?

 

Are you running 8xMSAA and FXAA? Try turning off FXAA and only running 2xMSAA if so. Anti aliasing really eats up framerates. From my experience the 12.11 enduro driver is the best for Absolution, so you're good there.

 

Are you running on max performance?
Check windows is on max power mode.
Hmmmm 20 fps that is not a good result.
I just got my 7970m today very excited... will be upgrading in the next day or so.
Let the power of 7970m rox U!!! heheehh

 

I have everything on max. i thought this gpu could handle it. On youtube pple have have everything on max and get 40-50fps... or did i get it wrong?

 

Could be a setting problem ..
I get between 40-50 fps but I don't have enduro. Everything max except anti-aliasing one notch before max. Try this setting..

 

any updates? i really want to play this game (over FC3) and to see how it looks on my 7970m

 

Nothing yet unfortunately. I downloaded AC3 again a few days ago to see if there were any patches, but it still plays like crap. Utilization stays at 30-50%, and there are frequent crashes. Normally running games in windowed mode stops atidxx32.dll crashes, but I don't think I tried that. I just got frustrated and uninstalled it. I would suggest playing FC3 for now, it runs well on the 7970m and it's a really fun game. The only issue is a shadow glitch that causes these weird gray boxes to appear in certain areas. Happens with all Enduro cards afaik. Hopefully Ubi or AMD will fix the AC3 problems soon. I've been wanting to play it for weeks.

 

seems to be a really hit and miss issue. the general report i've read from other forums is poor utilization. so the game hogs more of the CPU rather than GPU.
there seems to be a patch in the works but i don't see anything regarding PC or FPS issues.
News: Major Assassin's Creed 3 patch detailed - ComputerAndVideoGames.com

 

That's cause Ubisoft doesn't care about PC.

 

Just wondering why the 6990M is doing better than 7970M.

 

Two completely different architecture, might as well be two cards made by two different companies. And again, this is something Ubisoft should be all over working with AMD. It's not an Enduro issue if that was what you were thinking. This issue is affecting all GCN cores, but it seems Ubisoft doesn't give a crud to work with AMD to resolve it.

 

Thanks for clearing that up :thumbsup:

 

Tr00f. Nvidia has had problems with utilization too, but not nearly to the extent of AMD. Ubi really needs to get their crap together. Almost every one of their games that I've played has had technical issues.

 

anyone fix the issue with crashing after the first movie?

 

Try running in Windows XP SP3 mode.

 

still nothing.. ruuning as admin, too
disabling cloud saves on uplay and running it in offline mode and launching AC3 in safe mode still crashes after the first movie

 

It's the atidxx32.dll crash. Only way I know of stopping them is running in windowed mode, but the crashing is rare for me. I still don't play since performance is garbage.

 

Something tells me this is going to take aggges to fix seeing as Ubisoft still have not acknowledged the problem.

 

sigh. no choice but to wait. won't be buying any Ubi games until they are 75% off
afaik, there is no windowed mode supported. maybe ac3mp.exe can support it, but not ac3sp.exe

 

You're right, I was trying to figure it out earlier tonight

If you have any other games that are crashing on you, I found a great utility that changes games to borderless window mode even if they don't have that option in their menu. It'll stop any atidxx32.dll issues. Here's the thread on Steam if you're interested http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2675769

 

unfortunately it's just AC3 acting up on me so far otherwise my 7970m is kicking butt, which is too bad as i was kind of hyped to play it. sucks how its performance is so random across the board

 

well, got it working as per this thread:
Game Crashes on Single Player Start :: Assassin

ridiculous. horrible PC porting on top of crap Uplay.
im a bit into Boston now and am experiencing the low FPS in that city...at least the game is playable now.

 

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