Re: Mantle graphical corruption in DA:I

I did a fresh install of 16.7.3 and tested Mantle in this game. I also got some shading issues, especially noticeable in the inventory menu. The 16.9.1 driver is a new driver. It's not in beta, but it's a non-WHQL driver. I uninstalled that one because I had an issue with another game.

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@Iceni2103 wrote:

When you say 'Mantle is not being properly supported', do you mean by AMD in general or specifically for DA:I? either one is annoying, I just want to know which you mean. 

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I mean specifically for this game, though I haven't tested Mantle in any other game since I started getting these issues.

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@Iceni2103 wrote:

Further, under DirectX there was horrible pop-in of not just textures but whole structures.  Loading into skyhold's throne room under directX, for example, would reliably have nothing outside the door loaded, and the NPCs and furnature would be missing initially. 

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I do notice some asset pop-in in Skyhold with DX11, but that's limited to keep customizations. Missing NPCs was an issue I had when I first played the game on an R9 270X, even with Mantle, but that issue disappeared completely when I installed the game on an SSD.

I just finished a clean install of 16.7.3.   Uninstalled, restarted, re-installed fresh, restarted.  same problem.

'The 16.9.1 driver is a new driver. It's not in beta, but it's a non-WHQL driver. I uninstalled that one because I had an issue with another game.'

I guess that is why I didn't see it.   I had come to rely on AMD settings and the 'AMD Gaming evolved' thing to tell me when new drivers were available (mainly because they usually notified me before I even knew there was a new one out).  Looks like they aren't seeing any of the non-WHQL ones, and AMD started releasing a lot more non-WHQL since the last time i had to manually go looking for drivers.   I might try 16.9.1 (or the previous version) as a test.  Probably check the release notes first.  

As to my open ticket with EA: so far, nothing substantial.  The T1 guy directed me to an old thread for Nvidia drivers crashing and hogging resources (one that was opened shortly after the games release and is still open but basically dead).   they also suggested a clean install, rolling back my driers (but the previous version was crashing to desktop on the loading screen with no error message and no eventlog entry), and repairing the game install. Tried the clean driver install (no dice) and the game repair (also no dice).    Only thing left to test is either the non-WHQL drivers or rolling back to 15.x.x.  

Ok.   I think it seems to be fixed in 16.9.1.   

While i was looking through the release notes of the various hotfixes, I spotted this 'known issue'

     "Shader Cache may remain be enabled when set to "off" in Radeon Settings on some Hybrid Graphics configurations."

for all drivers between 16.7.3 and 16.9.1 hotfix.  16.9.1 itself *didn't* list this, either as a 'known issue' are that it was fixing it.

Since the graphics problem seemed to be a shader issue of some kind,  I tried turning the shader settings off in AMD settings.  no effect, but since it was a 'known issue' for the later hotfixes, i assumed it was probably a problem with 16.7.3 as well.   I tried upgrading to 16.9.1 to test switching the setting on and off (and to the default 'AMD Optimized') and the problem didn't come back.  So I guess 16.9.1 fixes it? Odd that it doesn't say anything about the fix (that I can tell) but maybe it was incidentally fixed with some other issue. 

Either way, i'm not complaining.   Thanks for that help, Fred_vdp.  And graahf, hopefully this also works for you. 

EDIT: wrong version number.

TL;DR:

Recommended steps (from my perspective):

download both 16.7.3 and the 16.9.1 hotfix here.  http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+7+-+64

uninstall old drivers

restart

clean install of 16.7.3,

restart,

then install 16.9.1 hotfix

restart

run DA:I.  enjoy (hopefully)