I recently got a brand new 6950XT (Sapphire Nitro+ PURE) and been spending many hours over the past week trying to solve the stuttering problems in a few games I play, i.e. Destiny 2, Fortnite. I tried every troubleshooting setting in existence it felt like. Using the latest AMD (optional) drivers, full install. I got to the point where I was about to return it and get a 3090TI which is sad because I love this card and the new AMD Adrenaline software.
However, I noticed that the longer I played, the smoother it got which I have seen similar mentions when using DirectX 12 in the forums. It seemed like a cache or something was being built and sure enough when I deleted the shader cache in AMD settings the stuttering came back in full force.
Using Fortnite DX11, which was the worst, I watched the shader cache file grow with every match I did and sure enough the game got smoother each match and as I explored new areas of the map. I only tested it for maybe 45 minutes today and the cache file is now 300MB and but overall stuttering is drastically reduced. I notice the exact same effect in Destiny 2 and also with Borderlands 3. All of these games were noted as having stuttering with this card.
So seems like there are some shader cache issues going on here.
5600x and 6800 here.
BL3, D2, GTA V all suffer from this. D2 the worst and B3 significantly too.
i reconed that it might be a shader issue since it generally got less over time, but certainly nowhere near acceptable.
did you keep your card? im still unsure if this will get fixed or if i should return the card.
i had a 3070 with 0 game issues before, just that the card was **bleep**ty itself..
I'm running the 22.9.2 driver on a reference 6950xt, GTAV doesn't appear to have these issues you describe, and I've had the game run ok for hours at a time. Having said that I wouldn't rule out other odd behavior that an nvidia gpu wouldn't display. (I've had many nvidia gpu in the past).
All I can suggest is DDU your driver and try a different version. I think because the 6950 is such a new gpu it may not be fully optimized yet so one driver that works for someone may not for everyone else. I also know that shader caches shouldn't need wiping if you dont change drivers. There is a benefit doing it if you do however, some games run terrible if you dont wipe the cache (Star citizen does that for me).
I see a new beta driver came out today but @amdmatt hasn't made a post about it yet.
funny thing is i tried a dozen drivers (at least with destiny) and they were all horrible or bad.
namingly: 22.5.1, 22.5.2, 22.9.2, 22.9.1 and 22.Q2 and 22.Q3. and i used DDU each time.
right now im using 22.9.1 as that seems to be the least horrible one. i havent tried earlier drivers as im unsure if they're worth my time. also be aware that im using a 6800 although i think the problem is the same.
gta 5 only has a few frame drops, its nowhere near as bad as destiny, but im assuming its caused by the same problem.
i just hope amd at least acknowledges this issue exists, but so far nothing
doesnt really leave me confident in keeping the card
@Amber_AMD @Wally_AMD @Sam_AMD
hello, this seriously needs immediate adressing and also immediate acknowledgement from AMDs side.
see also multiple threads with identical or related issues: