AMD R9 290X GPU and Freelancer Discovery

[Blodo]

Recently installed AMD 15.4 beta drivers. Here is the result on some ships when I play Discovery:

http://i.imgur.com/Og8ndf3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/rE7AaHQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VqVAs01.jpg

Anyone else has this problem on these drivers? I need to know whether it's on my end or not.

EDIT: Try here for solution: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread...pid1669465

[Miaou]

That's an old issue. No one I know has figured out how to fix it.

[Blodo]

Old issue, and yet I've not had it on 14.* drivers. Hence asking.

[RmJ]

Have you tried turning it off and back on again? *Scratches face*

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[HuggieSunrise]

same thing happened with that series of drivers and second life. the meshes wont display or are textureless.

[Rebirth]

I've had the same issue with a Nvidia GTX 3 months ago, I was wondering why my Nyx was grey all the way and though 'oh blodo, what have u done. (sarcastically ofc (: )'. I've solved this the most simple way. Reinstalled the OS, it was necessary anyways due to other reasons.

However, it looks like a directX rendering issue to me. I don't know but, probably run dxdiag and look up device manager for suspicious activities? I guess, you've done that already anyways...

[Blodo]

Well, I've noticed that it's an issue relating to mipmaps that seems to be specific to my GPU model. Tried a bunch of things, including tweaking various settings in CCC and Radeon Pro, installing ENB Series injector (because it injects dx9 functions into the renderer) and nothing helped so far.

One way of solving this would be if I can somehow figure out how to make Freelancer use onboard graphics only, but I'm not sure if that will be possible.

[Blodo]

Well after hours of searching in regards to this, I'm fairly convinced it's a GPU design problem with the R9 290X. Different drivers don't help, nothing really helps except using onboard GPU. I have a potential solution for this, though it might not be a perfect one. See below.

There's a software called Virtu MVP (http://lucidlogix.com/support/download/d...virtu-mvp/) which is a GPU virtualisation platform. It essentially creates a virtual GPU that pools system resources from both the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU (most modern computers have both) to deliver a performance boost, and also has a few other things included that theoretically boost your FPS. If you download the application from the website it will be a trial version, but if you have an R9 290X, you should already have an unlocked version on your driver CD anyway.

Anyway this application allows games to run both GPUs to deliver (hopefully) a higher FPS. But crucially, it also allows you to pick a GPU which will run a particular game profile. You can run either in d-mode (discrete, which you actually want for games) or i-mode (integrated, for power saving but in this case to avoid display issues). So it's simple, just make sure that Freelancer is set to run on i-mode and your mipmap issue should be fixed (by what is essentially avoiding the problem). Freelancer is old enough that your integrated GPU should have no problems with it.

The caveat is that when I tested it first like a year ago, some other games tended to run unstable randomly. Sometimes I'd get BSODs, sometimes crashes. It all went away when I disabled Virtu, which was the reason I didn't keep it back then and only remembered about it now. So basically results may vary, you may be able to tweak settings on it however to disable the virtualisation for some games, or just disable it manually before playing a game that goes unstable on you.

Another caveat is that while I have an Asrock Z77 motherboard which supports Virtu, others might not. If your motherboard has a chipset newer or equal to Z77, you should be fine though. If you're running crossfire or SLI, you might have problems.

I'm going to try and test it again soon and report on results. You can read more about Virtu here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/z77-expres...415-2.html

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EDIT: Virtu MVP seems to work. If you want to try it, use the following steps:

Go to http://lucidlogix.com/support/download/d...virtu-mvp/ and download the newest version of Virtu from there. 2.1 version should work for you, newer ones (3.0 etc.) are trial versions and so will pester you after 30 days. Install, reboot, etc.
Once you have rebooted, you will see a new icon in your system tray.

Right click it and go to the control panel.
Once the control panel opens, click on the Applications tab and you'll see a screen roughly like this.

Now you want to add Freelancer to this list, so click Add and browse to any freelancer.exe

Make sure that it is set to I-mode (integrated graphics), then click OK. Now make any other tweaks you'd like and exit the control panel, changes are automatically applied.

It's probably a good idea to disable HyperFormance and Virtual V-Sync btw. These two things are known to be kinda unstable and not really that useful, and the only thing you really need this software for is a GPU passthrough.

Next time you start Freelancer you should see your MIP maps displayed in full detail, because its being rendered via the integrated driver. Try it, tell me if it works for you too.

[Tahl_Skywalker]

Recently installed AMD 15.4 beta drivers. Here is the result on some ships when I play Discovery:

http://i.imgur.com/Og8ndf3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/rE7AaHQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/VqVAs01.jpg

Anyone else has this problem on these drivers? I need to know whether it's on my end or not.

EDIT: Try here for solution: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread...pid1669465

Go to the Radeon Setting and under gaming add Freelancer exe. This will allow you to edit the game graphics. Make sure you get the Freelancer exe in the discovery folder. I recommend editing your card profile to compensate for the graphics as well.

[Findarato Veneanar]

I'd be surprised if he still has this problem over half a year later.

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