X2,X-T, and X-BTF have problems with AMD rx7900xtx

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Cruser42
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X2,X-T, and X-BTF have problems with AMD rx7900xtx

Post by Cruser42 » Sat, 25. Feb 23, 23:02

Hi Folks,

I just wanted to share this in case it saves anyone else a lot of time later.

I recently upgrade from an Nvidia 1080 to an AMD rx7900xtx and installed the newest AMD drivers. Afterwards, when I tried playing X-BTF,X-T, and X2-The Threat, I saw issues in all 3 games.

While X-BTF and X-T were running, my graphics card usage would spike to 100%, and the gameplay would be very choppy.
X-2 Was much better, and generally ran smoothly at over 200fps during normal flight. However, whenever you'd go through a gate you'd have to wait as much as 30-40 seconds with a black screen to enter the next sector. The same behavior was observed when loading the main menu, saves, and certain in-game cutscenes such as the ones that play when you start a new game.

I spent quite a few hours attempting to debug X2. I disabled anti-aliasing, I did multiple clean installs. I ran DxDiag and looked for bad codecs. I tweaked various graphics settings. I re-installed windows media player. I turned off all graphics enhancements in the AMD driver. I ran the game at minimum settings. I installed ffdshow and configured it to no turn for X2 in particular, I uninstalled ffdshow, Nothing worked.

Then I tried it on a friend's computer which had an Nvidia 980ti and a pretty recent clean install of windows 10, and X2 worked perfectly. Loading times when going between sectors were almost instant.

Since I couldn't find anyone on this forum with a similar AMD specific issue, I assumed I probably had some bad codecs or other software installed, and I would need to do a clean re-install of windows. Before doing that, I thought I'd try swapping back to my Nvidia 1080 to see if maybe it would help.

Once I swapped in the Nvidia 1080 instead of the AMD rx7900xtx, all 3 games immediately became playable, and all gate transit times were almost instant.

It's a bit unfortunate, because the rx7900xtx works fine in just about every other title and is a much stronger card, but these are very old games, so it's not too surprising that a driver issue of some sort could be present.

Lesson learned: If you do upgrade from an Nvidia card to the AMD card, keep the old Nvidia card around. It might save you for some older games like this.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has a similar experience, and I'd be grateful to the devs if they found a way to make things work with the AMD drivers, but I understand if that's not possible due to the very low demand.

Hope that helps someone!

Alan Phipps
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Re: X2,X-T, and X-BTF have problems with AMD rx7900xtx

Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 26. Feb 23, 09:47

There is a brand new AMD driver now that might be worth a try (unless that's the one you have).
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Cruser42
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Joined: Mon, 21. Jun 04, 23:35

Re: X2,X-T, and X-BTF have problems with AMD rx7900xtx

Post by Cruser42 » Sun, 26. Feb 23, 21:07

Thanks!

I have not tried that driver yet because there were some reports of it causing windows to stop booting on rare occasions, so I wanted to wait and see if AMD releases a statement/patch. My plan was just to play X2 on the old Nvidia card, and then switch back to the new AMD one afterwards. I'll be sure to see if a new AMD driver fixes things for X2 after I switch back and report back here with the findings.

I also tried X3 and X4, and both games worked flawlessly on the AMD 7900xtx as far as I could tell.

Alan Phipps
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Re: X2,X-T, and X-BTF have problems with AMD rx7900xtx

Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 26. Feb 23, 21:31

One other thing is that it *might* just be an fps cap issue with powerful new cards. See this thread (albeit for Nvidia).
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

Cruser42
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Joined: Mon, 21. Jun 04, 23:35

Re: X2,X-T, and X-BTF have problems with AMD rx7900xtx

Post by Cruser42 » Sun, 26. Feb 23, 22:15

Oh, very interesting!

I actually did try lowering the max FPS in the AMD Catalyst software, but it didn't have an impact on this issue. (I was just trying to lower GCU utilization so that the fans wouldn't spin because my display is only capable of 60fps). I also tried turning VSync and FreeSync on and off. It also didn't fix the issue.

My best hunch, given that X2 otherwise runs great, is that some kind of "graphics startup" code gets run when entering a new sector, or loading a game, and that is where the problem is. (i.e. it hangs while looking or waiting for something, possibly with retries, then eventually gives up, and runs the game just fine using some kind of backup option)

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