AMD™ DX11 GPU Optimization and Performance Guide

Overview

This guide will walk you through the proper steps to take, to get the best performance out of your DX11 based AMD GPU for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA. Note that the guide’s primary focus is on AMD™ R9 290 4GB (Hawaii) or higher, yet any and all DX11 based AMD GPU users will benefit greatly from it’s contents.I apologize for the guides late arrival, but hope it helps the AMD™ GPU users in the Call of Duty community experiencing issues in reaching the best possible performance during the rest of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA. Although this guide arrived a bit late into the Beta’s lifecycle, it will continually be updated until the Beta has been completed. The contents that I work on within this guide will be the foundation for my complete AMD™ DX11 GPU Optimization and Performance Guide for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 upon it’s release on November 6th, 2015, which will be continually updated after launch. So I highly recommend you favorite the guide and follow me via my profile, to obtain the futher updates I release throughout the rest of the beta (which ends Monday at 10pm Pacific time) and also so you’ll then instantly have access to the final guide once Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is released.Thank you for your time, enjoy the beta and have a nice day.LordHelmet – https://community.amd.com/people/lordhelmet

Message to the AMD™ Call of Duty Community

Due to the sudden overwhelming personal requests from the Steam and the AMD™ support forums community using DX11 based AMD™ GPU systems that meet the required specifications that are encountering issues, I have created the following guide for DX11 based AMD™ GPU users who have been encountering issues during the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA.

I wish these issues were brought to my attention sooner, but I’ll in the least do my best to get the users with required component specifications or higher up and running as quickly as possible so, you at least get some time to experience the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA while it’s still going on.

Once again I apologize for the delay in this guides arrival, but I ask you all to remember before sending any hate or rage comments my way that I should have done this sooner, that I’m only a volunteer AMD™ community support technician and not a paid employee. I’m a gamer first and have been side tracked by the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA myself as I’m a huge fan of the series. I took time off work to enjoy it and with that being said, I’ve also taken the time out of my schedule to create this guide for the community.

So…..Follow the guide step by step and don’t deviate whatsoever as you’re not qualified to make that judgement or you wouldn’t be here utilizing the guide in the first place…(I apologize for my bluntness).

If you do follow the guide, you will most definitely obtain a substancial leap in performance once complete. So, don’t skip anything or your performance will suffer.

If I have the time available, I will attempt to answer questions in the comment section below, but please remember that this is my vacation time, so….yeah. I’ll likely be playing the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA myself.

Anyways, have a nice day and I hope this guide will assist you in obtaining the best performance available in the games current state…Later noobs, see you in the lobby’s.

Need personal assistance? Contact me at the location below and I’ll respond as soon as possible. Please remember that it may take me more than 24 hours to respond.

LordHelmet @ AMD™ Support Forums – [link]

High end DX11 based AMD™ GPU not providing acceptable performance?

I’ve been informed that users with R9 290’s or higher have stated that they’re having difficulties maintaining 60FPS with all settings set to Extra and/or High respectiveley while utilizing FXAA as their Anti Aliasing. Sadly, I agree that there are some steps that must be taken to obtain the performance that you paid for, yet this is common during graphically demanding BETA’s.

It’s a rarity for a game while in BETA to perform well considering it hasn’t been completed yet and the hardware manufacturer hasn’t released drivers that effectively demonstrate the vast hardware resources that you may have available.

I have good news though……..

Currently in it’s BETA form, it is absolutely playable at a flawless 60fps on a single R9 290x 4GB at 1440p with everything set to Extra and scene rendering resolution (Super Sampling) set to 1.0 in game.

If you prefer not to utilize the AMD Virtual Super Resolution via the Catalyst Control Center, you can instead, at a 1080p resolution set the scene rendering resolution up to 1.15-1.50 depending on the capabilities of the other components (CPU etc.) within your respective rig.

Yet, 1.15 or higher at the above mentioned maximum graphics settings should be fine for anyone utilizing an R9 290 4GB card or higher AMD GPU (R9 290, R9 290x, R9 390, R9 390x, R9 Fury and R9 FuryX) based systems at a 1080p resolution.

If you are using a DX11 based AMD™ graphics card with less than 4GB of video memory, reduce the in game settings until you reach the performance desired after following the guide below.

Known issues users are experiencing during the BETA

According to many users utilizing DX11 based AMD™ based GPU’s, they have experienced the following issues:

General poor performance, low frame rates, texture pop in, visual and geomenty artifacts, shadow glitches, low visual quality, stuttering, high frame times, AMD™ driver crashes etc.

The contents of this guide below should alleviate these issues if followed correctly.

All steps below this section must be followed for best performance

Verifying your game cache (Step by step guide)

You must verify your game cache prior to attempting anything listed within this guide!

How do I verify my game cache?

Go to your Steam library -> Hover over Advanced Warfare -> Right Click -> From the drop down menu -> Select Properties -> Local Files -> Verify Integrity of Game Cache

Make sure to verify Integrity of Game cache for both single and multipler components as they both share files. Once complete, feel free to uninstall the single player component if your HDD or SSD space is limited. Please make sure that both are complete before doing so.

Step by Step Guide to Verifying Integrity of Game Cache

Open the Steam Client ->

Go to your Steam library ->

Hover over Black Ops 3 BETA ->

Right Click ->

From the drop down menu ->

Select Properties ->

Local Files ->

Verify Integrity of Game Cache ->

Steam will immediately begin double checking you game files for any possible missing, corrupted, outdated files etc and will download anything that may be missing/needed. This may take some time depending on your internet connection speed and regional download servers but, not anywhere near as long as the initial download.

Latest AMD™ Discreet GPU 15.8 BETA Drivers (Bops 3 Beta Drivers)

Although a touch on the late side, AMD™ has already begun work on optimized drivers that will resolve many of the issues AMD™ GPU users were having during the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beta. If nothing else, it’s already a good sign that optimizations are most definitely underway on the hardware side and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will see the support upon release that the AMD™ community and Call of Duty series hasn’t seen in quite some time.

I thought, you’d all like to know some positive news for once, anyways have a nice day. :spazwinky::bigups: The link below directs you to the official AMD™ latest dedicated desktop Gpu Beta drivers download page of the 15.8 beta drivers that contain the following resolutions and optimizations. Call of Duty oriented fixes and/or optimizations are in bold.

Resolved Issues:
◾[424009] Adobe® Lightroom may crash if GPU rendering is enabled
◾[423336] Mouse cursor coordinates may be swapped on some 3×1 Eyefinity configurations
◾[421110] The Witcher® 3: Wild Hunt – Corruption may be observed when AA is enabled in AMD CrossFire™ mode
◾[424127] The Firefox browser may crash while opening multiple tabs (2 or more)
◾[425168] Anti Aliasing settings are not retained after Applying in the AMD Catalyst™ Control Center
◾[425156] System hangs when launching Call of Duty® – Modern Warfare 3 or Diablo™ III
◾[424776] Metal Gear Solid® : Ground Zero may crash when launched
◾[425421] Call Of Duty®: Black Ops III – texture corruption observed when launched in DirectX® 11 mode
◾[425452] Sword Coast Legends – FRTC settings are not activated in the game
◾[411945] Project CARS may experience corruption when AA is set to D2SM
◾[425382] A green screen may be observed on some “Llano”/”Ontario” APU’s when playing video under Windows 10
◾[424330] Watch Dogs™ may experience flickering / corruption after changing game resolution
◾[425440] AMD HDMI® Audio is disabled after driver installation
◾[423013] F1 2015™ may experience flickering during gameplay or in game benchmarking
◾[422551] Call of Duty® – Advanced Warfare may freeze randomly when run in Quad CrossFire mode
◾[424168] Text corruption observed when using Windows 10 Mapp application
◾[424222] System may hang when installing the driver on a Windows 10 system with 2 or more GPUs
◾[424710] “Device being used by another application” error is displayed when attempting audio playback on Windows 7 systems

Latest Dedicated Desktop GPU BETA Drivers

Latest Windows Beta Driver 15.8

[link]

All AMD™ DX11 based GPU users must be in Windowed (Borderless)!!!!

When in game make sure to set your display mode to Windowed/Borderless and not full screen otherwise you’ll get poor performance, texture pop in, artifacting and shadow glitches.

There is no CrossfireX support for the BETA!!!

As stated above there is no CrossfireX support for the BETA and no alternative methods of application such as AFR or Optimize 1×1 will make it work whatsoever without negative scaling occuring! Regardless of users stating that they are running the BETA in CrossifreX, they’re lying to themselves and are suffering from ignorant bliss!

CrossfireX will increase frame times exponentially in the BETA’s current state and it must be disabled in the following manner below. Please trust me on this one, it doesn’t work properly! It will run, but will dramatically reduce performance, contrary to how it may seem.

You must entirely disable CrossfireX system wide to increase performance in the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA. You cannot simply disable via the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA Catalyst Control Center profile you may have set up for it. It must be done in both respectively for the game to run properly as outline below!

Disable CrossfireX System Wide (Step by Step)

Open the Catalyst Control Center
Go to Performance
Select CrossfireX
Select disable CrossfireX by checking the “disable CrossfireX” check box.
Apply

Your screen will flicker for a moment while your system is disabling CrossfireX system wide.

Ensure that as noted in the following section, you disable CrossfireX in the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA profile you create! This must be done for all CrossfireX users!

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Catalyst Control Center Profile Settings

Anti Aliasing

Anti-Aliasing Mode: Use application settings
Anti-Aliasing Samples: Use application settings
Filter: Standard
Anti Aliasing Method: Multisampling
Morphological Filtering: Off

Anisotropic Filtering

Anisotropic Filtering Mode: Use application settings
Anisotropic Filtering Leve: Use application settings
Texture Filering Quality: Standard
Surface Format Optimization: On

Frame Rate Control

Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off, unless application specifies
Open GL Triple Buffering: Off

Tesselation

Tesselation Mode: AMD Optimized
Maximum Tesselation Level: AMD Optimized

AMD Crossfire Mode

Frame Pacing: On
AMD Crossfirex Mode: Disabled

Save the Black Ops 3 profile you just created before exiting!!!!

Below is a screen capture of the above mentioned settings for ease of use.

Catalyst Control Center Performance Section Settings

Catalyst Control Center Performance Section Settings

Once finished creating the profile, go into the performance section of the Catalyst Control Center and select the Frame Rate option. Under Global Application Settings, you’ll see Maximum Frame Rate, select 61 Frames Per Second, click the check box and save.

Power

Microsoft Windows Registry Entry Changes (Diabling ULPS – Ultra Low Power State)

Microsoft Windows Registry Entry Changes (Disabling ULPS – Ultra Low Power State)

If after applying the settings, you haven’t been able to maintain a steady and smooth experience, you may need to make changes to the Microsoft Windows Registry for the best results in game. This may be the result of AMD’s Power Play feature which, reduces power consumption, yet tends to reduce performance on high end AMD GPU based systems.

How to Disable ULPS in the Windows Registry?

To circumvent AMD Power Play’s misapropriation of power at time when it’s needed, simply Disable ULPS (Ultra Low Power State) by changing the Windows registry. Note that any time you upgrade you video card drivers these changes will be reset and it must be performed again.

In the Windows search, type regedit and select run command. Once there, atop the heading bar, you will see the sub category “Edit”. Select “Edit” and then select “find”. Once there you will see a text entry area titled “Find what:”. Type EnableULPS and you will be brought to the Ultra Low Power State’s location within the registry. You may have multiple that may need to be changed as each computer is different, usually marked 0000, 0001, 0002 etc.

Change any and all that are listed under the entry EnableULPS from a (1) to a (0).

Do not change any other similarly titled registry entry’s such as EnableULPS_NA. That isn’t for you to touch, so leave it alone, it has nothing to do with this procedure at all. So I say it once again Only make registry changes to EnableULPS!!!

Restart your computer for the changes to take effect!

I highly suggest you overclock your GPU!

Although I cannot offer personalized guidance as to overclocking your GPU, because there are simply too many reference and vendor models to take into account for when writing a guide. I also, do not wish to take responsability for any damage that may occur during the procedure, if in fact you made a maistake when applying any settings, which I hope you understand. Regardless though, “unofficially” I do recommend you overclock your GPU for best performance using MSI Afterburner or AMD Overdrive, but that’s for you to decide.

What I can do however, is offer the capture below of my MSI Afterburner settings, so you have a general idea of what will need to be performed if you did in fact decide to attempt to perform this for a performance gain….If you do, I hope it helps.

Remember the captures below were taken from my personal rig which contains two MSI R9 290’s in a CrossfireX configuration. So please, Hawaii GPU users, like I said earlier the below captures are simply for reference and nothing more….Yet, wouldn’t necessarily be a bad target to achieve once you learn more about overclocking. Msi R9 290’s can actually go much higher than what is displayed below if like myself you have Hynix memory based Hawaii Gpu’s. Anyway’s I’m traveling off the subject….back to the guide, my apologies.

I will be continually updating the guide with more information as the day goes on, when I have time to spare. So I recommend you follow the guide and favorite it, so you get updates throughout the day as I publish them. This will be the foundation for my complete Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 guide for optimization, so any work I perform here will be carried over come November 6th. So with that being said, if you have pre-ordered Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 or intend to purchase it, I highly recommend that you simply “follow” me via my profile, so that you will instantly have it available to you when the final Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 product is launched.

I will ensure to prepare the most comprehensive optimization guide available here on Steam bar none, so the Call of Duty Community is for once given the support they deserve, you have my word. If Activision/Treyarch won’t offer technical support after launch, I will. So pending you have the recommended specifications or higher as marked on the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 store page, I will absolutely be willing to offer individual support to those in the community that require it. Just remember I am only one technician and troubleshooting takes time on a system to system basis.

For anyone wishing to speak with me directly here on Steam for assistance, feel free to send me a friend request via my profile, but make sure to leave a message in the comment section, so I know the reason for your request. Otherwise it will simply be ignored I will accept as many as possible, but may run out of room on my friendslist. If this is the case, I will leave a message on your profile if it is publicly viewable and I will correspond with you attempting to troubleshoot your issue.

Please remember if you choose to do so, that this is my personal profile, thus I expect any and all Steam users contacting me to be respectful and “chill”. Bad attitude or message spam requesting assistance will immediately get you blocked and I will refuse to assist you further. I’ll contact you when I’m available to assist you with your issue.

Have a nice day everyone.

I hope this helps and have a nice day!

Once again I apologize for the creation of this guide coming so late in the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA’s lifecycle, but I hope it’s contents have helped you obtain the best possible performance gains while you had a chance to play it, if at all.

Anyways, have a nice day and enjoy the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 BETA while it lasts….

Once again, if anyone requires personal assistance, feel free to contact me at the below contact URL address. Please remember that a response may take 24 hours or more, but I will respond to everyone when I have a chance. Anyways, back I go to the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beta to make your lives miserable in game, it’s raining hellstorms suckers!!! Later noobs! XD

LordHelmet @ AMD™ Community Support Forums – [link]

Call of Duty: Black Ops III Beta Guide