madVR issues/bug reporting (particularly Geforce GTX 1000 series, AMD RX 400 series)

[burfadel]

Seeing as the madVR thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228
is full of all things madVR, any issues reported get quickly lost between people talking of the looks of NGU and other picture quality features.

I decided to make a new thread since it seems many people are reporting issues that others are saying are normal, but really are not! For example, the PC sleep bug.

Madshi has done a great job with madVR, this thread by no means criticism, it's just about highlighting possible bugs or compatibly issues that he may not be aware of. If he is, there hasn't been enough information or reported cases for him to follow, so please report if you have had these issues. No reporting will just mean any issues will go unresolved, so it's in your best interest!

Please ONLY report incidences of the specific issues outlined below. Do NOT post that you don't have any issues or anything related to picture quality etc, leave that to the main thread above.

The prime target for this thread are AMD Radeon RX cards (400 series) and Geforce 1000 series cards, since these two seem to be the series affected. Please note that NONE of these issues occurred on my R9-280X with everything else exactly the same, and interestingly the same applies with Geforce 900 series.

Please report here if you have any of the following issues, and also report your Windows version, graphics card, and driver version. Also whether you have Freesync or G-Sync.


Issue 1:
- PC going to sleep, then the player not working on resume
I have found this, and others also reported it recently in the main thread. If you have the player paused in not full screen, or paused in fullscreen, the computer may go to sleep or at least turn off the computer. On Resume, the player does not work or exhibits bad behaviour. This is NOT meant to happen despite what people said in the main thread. As I said above, it does not happen on older generations of both AMD and Nvidia cards, only recent cards.
*If this is a driver issue that affects both AMD and NVidia, a bit weird that it affects both architectures and only the newer gen?

Issue 2:
- Hard lock with the player after many of the other issues
If you have an issue like the player freezing that is related to any of the other issues, the player may become locked as a process. If you open task manager and view processes, you may still see the player there. This lock is likely caused by something with madVR locking a process. You may be able to run a new instance of the player, or it may not work in fullscreen mode (freeze). Your computer may not restart and you have to do a full restart.
*Check in task manager if you have experienced any of these other issues and have otherwise closed the player

Issue 3:
Frame drops or glitches with 'higher settings'. Note that this seems much improved in v0.91.3. A RX 480 and a GTX 1060 can very easily handle:
Post processing shaders adaptive sharpen, thin edges, enhance details etc, anti-bloating, anti-ringing, with NGU upscaling, NONE of the trade quality for performance settings enabled, smooth motion, error diffusion dithering, etc.
*The GTX 1060 and RX 460/470/480 can handle these because the R9-280 can! without any dropped frames and glitches.

Issue 4:
Direct3D 11 fullscreen exclusive mode set results in a black screen.
I have this and someone else reported it in the main thread with a completely different card. Anyone else experiencing this?

Issue 5:
Direct3D 11 Windows mode after long playing sessions (several hours) and several different files may freeze picture. You may be able to close it off properly, or you could face a variation of issue 2 above.

Issue 6:
Other modes such as Direct3D 9 windows or exclusive may have issues. Report these.

Any other issues with these generation cards please report. Again, ONLY report issues with a description of your system. Do NOT report that this is a waste of time, to use the main thread (since issues are getting lost against quality comparisons etc), that you don't have issues or anything of the like. Also don't report performance issues etc with truly lower end or integrated cards such as Intel integrated graphics. The performance issues related to those with all quality settings etc is pretty much expected and not an issue in terms of madVR itself.

I am targetting Geforce 1000 series and AMD RX series specifically since these seem to be the cards that are having the issues. If you have the issues above with Geforce 900 series or AMD R9 series, please report as well.

Remember reporting is vitally important. If you think it will be fixed so you don't need to, you're mistaken! Knowing that issues are prevalent and what cards it affects will help track down the issues, so report! Thanks.

[burfadel]

I will start

I have experiences all issues above, most of the time resulting in issue 2. R9-280X with EXACT same settings (even if they are high quality settings) works beautifully on same Windows build.

OS: Windows 10 x64 Insider 14971
GPU: Radeon RX 480 (XFX)
Driver: Crimson 16.11.5 (previous versions also affected)
Connected monitor 1: Samsung S27F350, connected via HDMI. Freesync enabled.
Connected monitor 2: Samsung TV connected via Displayport to HDMI passive cable.
*Using just the HDMI cable makes no difference with the issues, likewise with that and freesync disabled.

[clsid]

Issue 1/2: I have replied in the main madvr topic with a possible solution
Issue 3: In case of Nvidia, it can help to change power settings from Optimal to Adaptive
Issue 4: Try "use separate device for presentation" option in madvr

[burfadel]

Thankyou for your reply . Have you experienced these yourself, if so, what system do you have?

The separate device for presentation doesn't seem to help with issue 4, at least for me. Issue 2 is interesting, it seems something with madVR hard locks something, I'm not sure reinitialising will help. It seems to lock the player as a process in the memory, such that you can't restart (it hangs). Also, if you try restarting the display driver you just end up with black screens! I believe there could be something changed in the madVR code to properly release handles etc.

Issue 3, that is more of a workaround than a solution. Ideally you shouldn't have to change something that affects the rest of the system, although sometimes I realise that can't be helped.

The main 'interesting' thing is that at least some of these issues affect both AMD RX 400 series cards and Geforce GTX 1000 series cards, but may not affect earlier series cards. Both these cards support newer OpenCL, DirectX features, and possibly some standardised power features? as well, it could some incompatibilities with these features that are causing the issues. It seems some people think that their settings may be too much for their system, but realistically any of the released 400 and 1000 series cards from AMD and Nvidia should cope easily with these features.

Input and feedback from people with these cards is vital in tracking down the cause. The previous generation cards such as the R9-280X and GTX 970 etc can handle madVR very well and don't seem to exhibit any of these issues. Like I said, my R9-280X ran beautifully and I could 'abuse' it in the sense of having the monitor turn off (which powers the GPU of course), using browsers etc whilst it's playing in the background in exclusive mode, swapping between fullscreen and windowed mode consistently etc. In fact, it never ever gave me any issues. This is with all settings for quality. I can't run these same settings on the RX 480 and have it stable.

Unfortunately it seems you have to nurse RX 400's and GTX 1000 cards, hence this thread, and hence why it's important people post their system specs and which issues of the above they are facing (or any others) to get this fixed! Madshi can only work on the feedback give to him.

It's possible that the majority of these issues are actually related to a single issue that is representing itself with multiple symptoms.

[clsid]

The sleep issue is because the D3D device that is used by the renderer is no longer 'valid'.

The nvidia performance issue is mostly a driver bug, maybe only for specific cards. So not everyone may suffer from it. Some also have performance issues with games.

The past few days I helped a user on the MPC-HC bug tracker with a AMD R9 card. He had all kinds of weird crashes and black fullscreen issues. The combo of resetting madvr settings + D3D11 + separate device for presentation solved that.

[Dodgexander]

With issue 1 just thought I'd point out that I have a geforce 660 and upon resume with playback I either get a blank or green screen. I saw clsid posted a potential solution that works with EVR in the other thread.

[ashlar42]

Originally Posted by Dodgexander

With issue 1 just thought I'd point out that I have a geforce 660 and upon resume with playback I either get a blank or green screen. I saw clsid posted a potential solution that works with EVR in the other thread.

I have a GTX 660 in my HTPC which I try to update only when certain stuff works. Are you experiencing what you describe with all drivers release or just one in particular?

[Dodgexander]

All the drivers. As far as I know it's always been this way.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[burfadel]

The new AMD 16.12.1 Relive drivers are great! madVR seems to be working perfectly in it, that includes D3D 11 Exclusive 10-bit output, NGU high, shaders etc!

[aufkrawall]

Why are there still reports of bad NGU performance with Polaris then?

[huhn]

because nothing changed i guess.

[burfadel]

Originally Posted by aufkrawall

Why are there still reports of bad NGU performance with Polaris then?

Originally Posted by huhn

because nothing changed i guess.

They have changed, that's the thing. I'm not saying that it is now perfect for everyone, just that it is significantly better than it was. For me, with the settings I posted in the main madVR thread, it now works fine with those. Before there were huge performance issues as well as all the bugs and crashes I pointed out.

I chose my settings based on perceptible playback quality vs GPU utilisation, I found those settings very GPU friendly. I guess if you put everything on absolute maximum that performance would start to suffer. I think a balance between image quality and performance is justified, since high settings just lead to diminishing returns for the GPU utilisation.

So the bugs for the most part seem to be driver related. It seems both AMD and Nvidia made similar changes to their drivers around the same time, give or take, which lead to people with either brands exhibiting similar issues. These changes are possibly related to driver changes to make use of the API changes coming in Windows 10 RS2? Maybe. In any case, I guess for both AMD and Nvidia they should be using the latest drivers possible to see if the issues are largest resolved.

For AMD currently that is Crimson 'Relive Edition' 16.12.1 (I don't have Relive application installed, that may interfere with madVR?), and for Nvidia 376.20 with driver mod.

Note that in the future, WHQL label doesn't mean so much. It takes about a month for WHQL, and costs them money, so they only have few a year. The beta/hotfix drivers are often better than the main driver, and usually no less safe when you consider some WHQL drivers have had major issues from both Nvidia and AMD in the past.

The official Nvidia driver is at 376.19. The 376.20 is available through a modded inf available here. They do this for all the latest drivers available, and have been around for a long time. I used them on my last Nvidia card, which was a long time ago (10 years)! Only recommended for the enthusiast.
https://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/to...620-hp-mobile/

[huhn]

well it is nice that the driver help you but that doesn't changed that polaris NGU performance is "bad" and d3d9 present in advance is unusable in windows 10.

nearly every windows 10 user that installs madVR will trigger this d3d9 bug that is months old and critical. i mean this bug is able to kill every running problem on your PC

so this driver is still far from perfectly working!

Remember reporting is vitally important. If you think it will be fixed so you don't need to, you're mistaken! Knowing that issues are prevalent and what cards it affects will help track down the issues, so report! Thanks.

and now everything is perfect?

[burfadel]

Ah ok. I just tried D3D9 Exclusive mode and your are right, it still doesn't work. Have you tried D3D 11 Exclusive mode?

[huhn]

well i now there is a "workaround" i mean i posted the "workaround" in the madVR bug tracker.

d3d11 is pointless to me and not the default! and slower on top of it not a lot but still slower.