2x6950 (unlocked) + Borderlands = choppy?

L

lowteckh

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 23, 2008
Messages
5,073
Specifically with Dynamic Shadows turned on.

10.12
i7 940 @ stock
Sandforce SSD
12GB ram
2560*1600 monitor
Clean as hell-ish OS reinstall

Turning it off does freakin' wonders for smoothness, but turning it on completely kills it esp. at night. Looks like shit w/o dynamic shadows though. 2x6950s @ unlocked shaders can't handle this?

Ideas?
 
Are you playing the main game or one of the DLCs? Anyway, with my single hd6970 and borderlands with maxed out settings, i was able to play fine at 1920x1200. playing either general knoxx's armory or the clap-trap robolution, caused framerates to dip down to the 30s.
still, the main game was alright BUT! it wasn't that much faster than when i had two h4870s in cfx. i suspect it is borderlands and the shitty unreal 3 engine.

edit: when i had the hd4870s i have awesome performance in borderlands even with the dynamic shadows on and still running at 1920x1200. i suspect that it's the drivers (10.12 and the 10.12a hotfix). my hd4870s ran borderlands the best when i was using catalysts 10.5 although that probably isn't an option with these new hd69xx cards.
 
Just the main game, first time playing Borderlands so never had a chance to compare performance.

If it's drivers.... sounds just like ATI to screw something up.
 
I have no problems playing Borderlands @ 2560x1600 with a single 6970. Dips down into the 40s sometimes, but certainly more than playable..
 
lowteckh said:
Specifically with Dynamic Shadows turned on.

10.12
i7 940 @ stock
Sandforce SSD
12GB ram
2560*1600 monitor
Clean as hell-ish OS reinstall

Turning it off does freakin' wonders for smoothness, but turning it on completely kills it esp. at night. Looks like shit w/o dynamic shadows though. 2x6950s @ unlocked shaders can't handle this?

Ideas?
Click to expand...

isn't that a little overkill for borderlands?
 
WorldExclusive said:
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst1012ahotfix.aspx
Click to expand...
I'll try that, thx.

Hulk said:
isn't that a little overkill for borderlands?
Click to expand...
Assuming I only play 1 game, probably...
but
asdasdmk.jpg
 
i am still suspecting that the issue(s) that is causing Borderlands to run poorly is driver related. Nevertheless, nobody is using Borderlands as a benchmark and it definitely should run much much better on the OP's hardware or mine.
I have also been playing Stalker: Call of Pripyat which is regarded as much more demanding game, yet it runs fantastically well in dx11 mode at 1920x1200 with maximum settings save for anti-aliasing (off).
Anyway, I'm not worried. The hd69xx just came out and the 10.12a driver is actually the first official driver meant for this card so I'm sure ATI/AMD will iron this out with newer drivers.
 
Using the drivers from the link (10.12a, 8.79blahblahblah, shows up as 10.11 on CCC, 12/16 date) but dynamic shadows still causes the perceived ridonkulous frames/smoothness drop.

Blah.
 
I have the same problem and it appears to be a CPU bottleneck for me.

800x600 http://i.imgur.com/NNjEs.png (Usage http://i.imgur.com/h7WSF.png )
1920x1200 http://i.imgur.com/xeAbu.jpg (Usage http://i.imgur.com/hjjK1.png )
1920x1080 http://i.imgur.com/crTzI.jpg (CPU usage bottom-left, GPU usage bottom-right)

For clarification, 800x600 is showing a fairly constant 49% CPU usage, and 30% GPU usage, so I assume the game only uses two threads.

Do your own testing and watch your usages.
If you see similar results, run up your i7 and you should be golden.
 
Last edited:
The problem is Borderlands, not the drivers or card. Nothing you can do will truly fix the issue AFAIK.
 
322 hours played in Borderlands with 3 computers at home over LAN. Main computer: Tri-Fire 5970+5870 @1000/1200. 2 other computers with 2X 4870 in Crossfire. Not a single crash/bug/freeze/stutter. No problems. 3 ATI systems. 1 year without a single crash in over 75 games in my Steam folder.

The problem is YOUR system or installation. Stop blaming the manufacturer drivers. I know it's ''in'' or ''hot'' to blame the drivers to be ''in the gang''. But it's PEBKAC. Nothing else. :)
 
UtopiA said:
I have the same problem and it appears to be a CPU bottleneck for me.

800x600 http://i.imgur.com/NNjEs.png (Usage http://i.imgur.com/h7WSF.png )
1920x1200 http://i.imgur.com/xeAbu.jpg (Usage http://i.imgur.com/hjjK1.png )
1920x1080 http://i.imgur.com/crTzI.jpg (CPU usage bottom-left, GPU usage bottom-right)

For clarification, 800x600 is showing a fairly constant 49% CPU usage, and 30% GPU usage, so I assume the game only uses two threads.

Do your own testing and watch your usages.
If you see similar results, run up your i7 and you should be golden.
Click to expand...


your correct the game only uses 2 threads and is horribly optimized. especially the more DLC's you get the worse the performance seems to get. the base borderlands i can do 40+ fps on my pos gfx card but some of the newer DLC's im lucky if i even get mid 20's on the same settings with less going on around me.
 
Yes, i see your result and i did some testing of my own. my cpu usage wavered between 40 and 60 percent. my gpu usage averaged around the 50s.
 
I play Borderlands on 2 480's in SLI in Surround Portrait mode and have not had any issues. My brother-in-law could never get Borderlands to run stable on a 5970. He is still using 10.4 drivers because those are the ones that he can play borderlands without crashes. Now if he disables CFX he can play fine on the newer drivers. Thats on a 5970
 
borderlands runs fine on my pc but dips below 50s a lot with two 6950s in crossfire. i checked my gpu usage and its hovering around the 60s.
 
5870 on 10.10e, 900/5000MHz clocks

Performance is hitting the 62fps game cap a lot in the normal areas. In knoxx/claptrap DLC it can drop as low as 20 at times... seems to trigger due to the open areas there I guess, or the DLC areas aren't as well optimized.

Also, alt-tabbing can halve the frame rate, another point I noticed for me.
 
Borderlands is coded to only run on geforces, so you'll struggle getting good performance from a radeon. An HD6970 will compare roughly to a 768MB GTX460 in the game now that the drivers have been optimised AMD-side. The game also did not support crossfire for at least the first year, don't know if it does now.
 
Yeah I noticed alot of dirty Nvidia tricks in Borderlands since getting a 570. I see alot more details in kill animations, tracer fire, explosions stuff like that. Definetly a Nvidia game.
 
Is AA turned on? Turn it off. Borderlands hates AA. Unless you go make a custom profile for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top