ATI officially “optimize” catalyst for Furmark, making it run slower
AMD released Catalyst 8.8 a week ago, and according to our test result, some DirectX game title have a big improvement, but in Furmark test the driver shows up a negative result…FPS lower a lot, and GPU temperature also lowered. But things did not happen in OpenGL title Quake War.
After we posted HD 4870 PCS+ issue check, many of you give valuable comments, thank you. Our reader Kazarang hinted that if rename furmark.exe to other stuff, then Furmark will become normal again.
So we give it a try:
Test platform
CPU: Intel Core 2 QX9650 OC 400MHzX10
Mobo: Asustek Maximus Extreme
GFX card: AMD Radeon HD4850 reference-board
Driver: Catalyst 8.8
OS: Windows Vista
Software: FurMark V1.4.0 (default: 1280X1024 NoAA)
Just like Kazarang said, when we renamed Furmark.exe, and benchmark result return to normal status, default benchmark numbers raises from 2329 to 4361, core temperature and power consumption also raises.
Whats more, we tried rename Quake War’s executable to furmark, and saw performance drop from 141.3FPS to 93.7FPS.
In our opinions when GPU makers βoptimizeβ their driver, they just tried to let games or benchmarks runs better. But now it seems ATI driver team adds a “profile” for furmark, make it run slower, and dont burn GPU anymore. why they are doing this? tell us what you think about it.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
astonishing news… Curious about what AMD would say.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
C’mon, this is incredible. AMD/ATI have tweaked Catalyst to become FurMark-proof??? What does it mean??? Anyway very nice find! Yes Babyfish, I’m curious too to read AMD explanation…
August 26th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
they r right, they don’t want their cards to be burned and users don’t want burned cards too
August 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
i remember when run it with reference rv770 they are all fine with furmark…the software just pushing the limit to eliminate issues…all gpu makers should use the software to test their products!
August 26th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I think ati want to make their gpu save. For program that score is not important, the lower the score so their GPU looking cool and easy.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
ehh sorry guys
!!!
August 26th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
ΒΏMaybe the easiest way to hide a bad design for VRM cooling (specially in non-reference HD 4870 where the VRM doesn’t have active cooling)?
August 26th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Hahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!! Complicated buggers!!! We RULE!!!!!
August 27th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
yeah, u do, http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39045/135
August 28th, 2008 at 12:09 am
I posted about this, for weeks now, all over the net…I knew there was a problem with VRM cooling and/or design on the 4870 but everybody seems to ignore it! If you follow the link here http://forums.tweaktown.com/f31/diamond-radeon-hd-4870-xoc-black-edition-27348/#post257403 and follow the links in the first post you will see all of the threads that identify stability issues that at the end boil down to the VRM getting too toasty. This is also why the PowerColor PCS+ fails, and why every non-reference or heavily overclocked reference card so far has been failing if it is put under a lot of stress. Please read the threads that are linked from that post.
Here is one more link worth reading too…
http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=194121
I keep on posting about this, but everyone seems to be ignoring it…maybe now somebody will pay attention…
August 28th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I’ve never even heard of “Furmark” before. I’m sure ATI has a good reason for wanting to lower the score in it.
The ATI 4800 cards don’t do that great in Futuremark benchmarks either, but perform MUCH better in actual games.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:04 am
LOLD HARD
August 28th, 2008 at 9:50 am
There is no good reason to cripple any application other than you know your hardware has serious issues if that application is running on it…
Maybe AMD/ATI should use FurMark to stress test their cards
August 29th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Its the same with my asus 4870 so how meny game did they do that with to
August 29th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
The answer is easy for some HD 48xx owners: Some of this cards crash during Furmark benchmark and that lead to a lot of complaints. Some even added that it’s a driver problem, so I guess this is how ATi software/driver department decided to “fix it”. The real problem is caused by Heat, surprisingly it’s not the GPU that causes this cards to crash since some user had Water Cooling for their GPU and still get a crash in Furmark. The problem is the VRM, with proper VRM cooling this cards can take it.
This driver fix, is not really a solution since all they did, was tricking Furmark on running at lower potential so HD 48xx could take it with original cooler.Let’s say we could forget about Furmark, but what will they do when some Games could stress the cards in a similar way? Cause if they “optimize” those games in the same way, making them run at lower FPS… now, that’s gonna be a real problem.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Because 4850 cooler is so crap and will cause RMA after long Furmark!
August 30th, 2008 at 1:43 am
@AXS7 – That’s the problem. The reason why FurMark heats up the card so much is because it forces constant utilization of the GPU at or near 100%. No games really do that at the moment, but should any game do the same you will end up in the same boat as FurMark. These are not some special instructions that FurMark runs, it just forces heavy use on the part of the GPU that then requires constant high power delivered to it bu the VRMs that then in turn results in the VRMs overheating.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:34 am
ATI seems to have found an issue and has quickly fixed it. They can come back and add more things to fix it up, But right now priority is games that people play. People make a big deal that company’s fixed the issue that caused their card to fry but want to complain about it then. Be happy they found it and fixed it, Nvidia has been a good company for the market but people want to find a reason to hate the person on top, and Nvidia has made people believe they need a new card to get a higher score in their benchmark, NOT in their games. I know the last time I checked my card was to see if it ran the game I was playing not to see if it could break a score in a benchmark. As pretty as the benchmark maybe. Nvidia also proved that they can make numbers false. I dont care what your benchmark scored, At the end of the day all that matters is I can run the games I play. If your card can run the game you play at 70 FPS at a good resolution that you play at, then what else matters ?? So what that you can make fur run around in circles, Until they utilize that feature in a game and I cant run it at 70 FPS at my choice resolution then I dont see the problem. I guess so many people have a mask over their eyes in the benchmark scene that never applies to actual game play. There are so many variebles that make scores go up and down, and if you dont think nvidia fixes their drivers for specific games rename the exe and look for the problems or changes. Its natural to tailor your driver to the games people play most. Nvidia does it, ATI does it and Intel will if Laughabee ever becomes usable. The biggest problem is companies care about these benchmarks, rather then the games we actually play. How much better when our games run if they didnt spend half of the driver time writing code to make sure that such and such benchmark scores better then the other company ??
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:57 am
for Buy4gamesnotbenchmarks:
What you said makes sense. And it puts the peroid on the story.
September 10th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I wondered what happened when my Furmark results were literally cut in half after installing 8.8. FPS was off 50%. (ASUS 4870). I will try the rename and see if it will match up to what I was getting from Furmark using ATI 8.7.
I wonder if ATI realizes that I’m a heartbeat away from going back to Nvidia. (Who is probably just as guilty of crap like this.)
KGW
September 30th, 2008 at 7:48 am
How to:
if you make a profile in catalyst after turning on Overdrive( make sure clock and memory settings are correct). You can then go to the file “C:\Users\Bretware\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Bretw are. XML. the xml file will have the same name as the catalyst profile you saved. right click and hit edit.
Change the value to “manual” and Want value to “65″
Save the file then reload your profile in catalyst.
35% seemed perfect for me, 60% was “loud” but you may(!) need it if your case has poor air flow.
You will have to select the profile everytime you start the computer, but it will work until there is a fix or better info so i can figure how to change the auto target temp.
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These cards arent all that crap that most ppl say, but I guess noone had the brains
to configure it manually
No brain no pain, hf ladies