Drivers & Software

[johnhardyiv]

Hello, I had to recently replace my AMD R390 card and decided to go w/ a new PowerColor Red Dragon RX5600XT.

Using the Radeon Adrenaline 20.2.2 drivers I am seeing graphic corruption in Links 2003 as shown in the attachment. The checkerbox corruption effect occurs on the foreground 3D player and additional corruption happens elsewhere onscreen, and the ball does not show on the overhead sub-view when hit.

Normally on this old game I have to override the anti-aliasing and choose 8XEQ and Supersampling to get the most detail out of it.

Unfortunately no combo of options works.

Links 2003 is using the last .exe patch from this location:

Links Country Club - Official Site for the Links 2003 Golf Game and Links 2003 Courses - Golf Games ... 

--
Visual Pinball X (I'll create a new thread for this: [Bug] Graphic corruption/artifacts in Visual Pinball X (5600XT 20.2.2) )
Am also seeing graphic drop outs with Visual Pinball X when you load a table into the editor and hit F6 to adjust the table's height and viewing angle. The table is completely missing. If you load it up with F5 to *play* it though it is there. Very odd. 

Notice also in the picture a few replies below that the anti-aliasing creates the weird 'blocks' on a pinball table too, on the flippers and launch lane.

Anyhow, these are two datapoints for this new card and new drivers. The R390 doesn't have these issues w/ the 20.2.1 drivers of course.

I submitted a bug report at https://www.amdsurveys.com/se/5A1E27D23A3DE966.

Is there another place I should submit to get AMD's attention? Thanks!

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[Update 3/2/2020]

I saw in another thread https://community.amd.com/message/2960733?commentID=2960733#comment-2960733 that this may be related to older DX9 games not taking AA or AF (maybe more) overrides, which these two are, I believe.

[mstfbsrn980]

https://www.amd.com/en/support/contact-email-form 

Creating and changing game profiles on the driver panel can cause similar problems. You need to delete the game profile on the driver panel and try again. Also, such graphic issues should be reported to AMD with the link.

[johnhardyiv]

Thank you for weighing in, these issues arise even with no profiles for the games present unfortunately.

I've also submitted a ticket to the form you referenced.  Will keep crossing my fingers for the next build.  Seems like this generation of 5XXX drivers are quite an concern.

[ultraradon222]

this is simply unbearable!!!!!!!!!

[johnhardyiv]

Dang, continues to happen with today's 20.2.2.

Visual Pinball graphic corruption with these little squares on the tables are also present.  Something to do with anti-aliasing?

This is after full uninstall with DDU and the AMD Cleanup utility.  No game profiles created.  Standard global profile (non-gaming, non-egaming).  Didn't have this issue w/ an older R390 with these drivers.  Wonder what card generation I could move to that wouldn't have these.  Maybe the Vega 64?

[mstfbsrn980]

nVidia (RTX) has not this issue.

[johnhardyiv]

Thanks, good to know if it gets to the point I switch teams to NVIDIA.  My prior AMD card the R9 390 worked fine too.  I've got another week to return this 5600XT, thinking upon it.  

I'm inclined to stay in the AMD camp as I'll eventually get a Freesync monitor for playing emulated games via MAME at their original frequencies.

www.mameui.info

[pokester]

FYI FreeSync is actually supported by both camps. So don't let that issue alone be a decision maker. 

[johnhardyiv]

Just to be sure, I uninstalled the Adrenaline package and did a device manager install of just the drivers from the install directory to take the Adrenaline UI etc. out of the mix. 

Unfortunately I have the same problems, graphic corruption on 3D objects in the foreground which were probably trying to be anti-aliased.

[mstfbsrn980]

This seems to be a driver issue. So it has nothing to do with stability issues for you. You may try changing screen resolution settings to a 4:3 format for this game because the game that supports the old and 4: 3 format. And the new Radeon driver, I think, creates incorrect graphics due to this format.

[johnhardyiv]

Thanks, I did go back to 4:3 and tried full-screen and windowed modes but the graphic corruption remains.

While my old R390 (circa 2015) works, I wonder if I could go with a Vega 64 or something like the 590 and get working results from the driver.

[mstfbsrn980]

nVidia GSYNC works with FreeSync monitors. The common name of this technology is adaptive sync according to Vesa. Intel's new GPUs will also support this technology. In short, this is no longer an advantage for AMD.

If I had a chance to try this game with an AMD GPU, I would share it but I have not...

[Matt_AMD]

I've filed a ticket for the graphics corruption in Links2K3, however the screenshot for the pinball game is not very clear to me what the issue is. 

Please can you provide a short video or a better screenshot clearly explaining what the issue is. If you could provide two screenshots, one showing the issue and one showing what it normally looks like (if possible) that would help so i can provide an accurate description of the issue. 

[johnhardyiv]

I'll see if I can do that shortly.  The issue with Visual Pinball X is similar to that in Links 2003.  Note the cut out square blocks/artifacts/corruption on the golfer.  If you look close on the flippers in the pinball table and other circled areas they are also cut out blocks instead of smooth edges (the flippers bottoms are chewed up looking, should be solid).  Those pixels would look to be the lines that are supposed to be anti-aliased but aren't.

Here's how it's supposed to look, note the smoothness on the flippers and the launch lane and the left and right bumpers on the bottom.

[johnhardyiv]

Just out of curiosity I re-installed my R9 390 and used it with the 20.2.2 drivers and all these issues are gone.  It's fine.

So the driver does have the ability to work properly on older cards.  Got a few more days to decide what to do with this 5600XT.

[mstfbsrn980]

D9VK GitHub site releases patches that turns DirectX API games into Vulkan API. For some games, this patch is very successful and works fine for AMD GPUs. All you have to do is paste the D9VK dll files into the exe folder of the game according to (32-64)-bit.

[johnhardyiv]

Thanks, does this work on Win10 x64? It reads like a WINE on Linux program?

Also should you use the 32 or 64 bit based on the underlying OS or the program?  Links2K is a 32bit app.  I'm running Win10 x64.  Thanks -

[mstfbsrn980]

You need to extract the release with a program like 7-Zip. It works on Windows 10. Unix kernel is not required. Maybe running the game with Vulkan API will solve your problem.

[johnhardyiv]

Thanks, tried both 32 and 64 bit dlls placed in the Links2k3 directory and launching the .exe doesn't seem to be kicking off anything Vulcan related, the problem continues w/ the corruption.

Does the game have to be directly supported/tweaked by DXVD?

[mstfbsrn980]

I tried the game again. The game does not use DX9-DX10-DX11. So D9VK doesn't work with this game. It probably has a very old DirectPlay. I think it would not be right to choose a GPU considering this game. Also, as I mentioned earlier, FreeSync is no longer an advantage for AMD.

The answer to your question is that any tweak is unnecessary. It is enough to place the DLL files. MSI AferBurner can be used for Vulkan API testing.

[johnhardyiv]

Well, I hope Matt and the AMD devs dig into it.  It was working in AMD hardware from a few generations back without incident, even with 20.2.2.  BTW, it does require DirectPlay for its multiuser tourneys.

[mstfbsrn980]

I think it is not right to choose this game seriously.

I am using latest Windows 10 64-bit. And all software requirements are fully installed.

[johnhardyiv]

Perhaps you're using the original .exe.  There have been a variety of patches released over the years. 1.07 was the last one.  See here:

Links Country Club - Official Site for the Links 2003 Golf Game and Links 2003 Courses - Golf Games ... 

[mstfbsrn980]

I just tried the trial version. I should have stated this. But I think this will not change the result. I am not saying DirectPlay is not important. But the number of such games is extremely limited. So you won't see this problem with nVidia or old AMD GPUs... But you may have a different problem with nVidia or old AMD GPUs in a different game.

[johnhardyiv]

Datapoint: I installed an XFX Fatboy RX590 Black and used 20.2.2 and these issues do not occur, so something with the combination of 5600XT and 20.2.2.

[Matt_AMD]

We are having problems getting the game to run at the moment, it is crashing on our test systems running a fresh install of Win 10 1909 and latest AMD driver installed. We have installed the 1.07 latest available patch. 

[mstfbsrn980]

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:DirectPlay /norestart

Use this command and be sure for installed DirectPlay. I ran the game but the game does not use the d3d8.dll file. I couldn't find out exactly which system file it was using.

[Matt_AMD]

Thanks I'll suggest that. 

[johnhardyiv]

Could be something specific to the demo.  I am seeing this issue with the full game, the 1.07 patch is to be layered onto an existing full install. 

FWIW, with the full game you should be prompted to install the legacy Windows 10 component DirectPlay, which then allows you into the intro screen. Or manually Windows Control Panel / Programs / Turn Windows Features on or off / Legacy Components / DirectPlay

Here's the full game for $6.  MyCommerce Online Store 

The game can exist in a flat directory and survive OS re-installs etc. without having to be reinstalled itself, I just use the original reg key it created (though you may need to re-create a player).  Here's my exported registry setting for the full game if you need it.  You may need to update the game paths in the reg key to match your location before importing.

Links 2003 Registry Key

[johnhardyiv]

Oh, and for anyone watching this thread here's a link to all the free courses that are available that are miles ahead of the original included Microsoft courses.  Particularly author Mike Jones' work, look for Links 2003T for hi-res versions.

URL for high resolution Links 2003 courses for after game install

This can also give some additional courses for the devs/qa as they work on this issue.  Note these courses look best with anistropic filtering set to 16 in Adrenaline. 

[mickyfish]

New optional 20.5.1 AMD software fixed all problems with my Sapphire RX 5600XT on Links 2003. All settings (AI), (AA) all work too! Yeah!

[Matt_AMD]

Yes the issue has not been resolved.