Yea, like I said, it does eventually go away. Edit: I was seeing it pretty much every time I transition to a new area (fast travel). I first noticed it yesterday when they were having server problems as well, but I dont see how that would cause this effect. In response to the other poster who responded, I have only a HD7770, so 1gb of vram. I have 8 gb of system ram, and the game uses more than most I have seen, but only up to maybe 60% ram usage, so I dont think I am running out of system ram, vram could be a problem though for sure. All in all, I expected Frostbyte to be more optimized, but I guess it is better than most of the ubisoft recent releases. I also cant get mantle to work with my card. The options screen says only DX11 is available. Dont think I downloaded the latest beta drivers though.
I have an OC'ed i7 920 with 6Gb of system ram, and 680 SLI with 2Gb of VRAM. I've had what you experience 2 or 3 times so far, up to level 14.
Are you using Mantle or DX11? I wonder if one has a bigger issue or not. It may also just be a memory leak on the GPU side.
Mantle if greyed out, says I have to run DX11.
If you want to use Mantle on Radeon cards, you need to be running the Catalyst 14.11.2 Beta drivers. It won't show under the 14.9 WHQLs.
Is this driver stable? I am reluctant to use beta drivers.
Its been stable for me. I only use Beta drivers when specifically required to, and it does increase performance a bit under DAI. Mantle, with my i5 4670, actually downgrades performance though. Depends what CPU you have, I think, whether you'll see any benefit from Mantle.
I just tried it. Seems to decrease the cpu usage a bit in the game, but is really buggy. Sometimes game wont load, sometimes wont close out and I have to do it manyally with taskmaster.
Mantle is a CPU crutch. If you are lucky enough to have FX use it. For a modern i5/i7 you don't need it.
Have you got it installed on a HDD? I've got mine hard linked to my SSD so loading times are soo much quicker. Don't think I could bear playing it on a HDD. That would at least explain the black screens.
No surprises really as that's been the case for 2+ years now.
3+ months old themes continue:
- Kepler performance is falling off (280X/7970Ghz > 680/770, 290/290X > 780 and 780Ti is barely up there with a 290X). Considering how expensive 770/780/780Ti were vs. 280X/290/290X, this underlines how paying extra for those NV cards ended up providing no tangible performance in modern games coming out now. That's why I keep advocating buying a card with 80-85% of the top-end and just upgrading more often as the extra 15-20% performance at the top amounts to little in 1-2 years.
- 980 continues to perform at the top but given its $550 price vs. $300 for 290X and $250 for an after-market 290, the performance advantage is honestly very underwhelming (the only bright spot is the low power usage of the 980). 980 is one of the most overpriced NV cards in years on the price/performance metric, far worse than 480 was vs. 5870, 580 was vs. 6970 or 780Ti was vs. 290X. 780Ti was 7-15% faster for $150 more, but 980 is $250 more for 20% more and with some after-market 980's priced at $580-600, you are asked to pay nearly double for 20% more performance. 980 SLI performance in multi-monitor and 4K is also not convincingly better for nearly double the price. D: If 980 was an AMD card, it would be reaped apart to shreds. Reminds me of all those "7970 undelivered threads" 3 years ago but 7970 vs. 580 really puts 980 in a very bad light against the 290X, minus the same backlash of course....figures.
- 980's lead over 970 is very consistent in the latest games, suggesting 970 is clearly TMU and/or shader performance bottlenecked (both of those are cut by 20% from the 980).
It's really shocking to see that in the last 3 months Kepler performance took a major dive, probably because the driver team is now focused on optimizing for GM204 but given how few people out of the overall market own GM204 vs 2+ year old Kepler cards, this seems short-sighted on NV's part to stop focusing on Kepler this early. There is no way we should have a 780TI performing similar to 290X but that's exactly what's happening. Not only that but 780TI is having trouble outperforming the 970 and 780 is often barely keeping up or beating a 280X/7970Ghz.
Overall we have 280X/290/290X performing very well vs. NV's MUCH more expensive cards in 9 big games this quarter: DAI, CIV BE, FC4, The Evil Within, COD : AW, Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Alien Isolation, Ryse Son of Rome and Shadow of Mordor. The only notable stand-outs for NV are Lords of the Fallen and Unity.
It's possible the rumours of Fiji 380X competing with 980 and Bermuda XT R9 390/390X going against GM200 parts might be true because 980's lead over 290X in newer games is decreasing.
i game on a 750M at 768p which was pretty fine till that last batch of games : ACU, FC4 and DA:I
Now it hurts.
Those 720p numbers on the cpu test wow, i game at 768p and if a 980 is barely pulling 82fps with a i7 2600k which is nearly as fast as my 3770 then i fear what my 770 is gonna be doing.
Are they using some major form of AA that is tanking frame rates?
I don't think you understand the point of that test. That test is not to see what your GPU can do. That test is not about the 980. They drop the resolution so that the GPU is not under load, and the CPU is the limiting factor. You likely won't see a bit of difference at 768p and the 770 may do the exact same, though it is hard to say, as it wasn't tested on a 770 at that res.