Radeon HD6850 vs HD7790

Previously I had an amazing opportunity to compare HD6850 and HD7770. Two months ago AMD released to market another GPU of HD77xx series – HD7790, so now it is time to test this one.

This time I decided to include some Linux software and to expand amount of games and benchmarks for greater variety. I’m trying to avoid poorly optimized games (for example games based on Unreal Engine 3 with ridiculously high requirements) and games including proprietary technologies which are not working on every GPU (PhysX).

Let me start with few “boring” things such as test environment. These two specific cards are MSI HD6850 Cyclone Power Edition OC 1GB and Gigabyte HD7790 1GB OC. It means they are not referent boards and their clocks are clocked by manufacturer. HD6850 is GPU@860MHz and GDDR5@1100MHz(4400 effective) but HD7790 came with GPU@1075Mhz and GDDR5@1500MHz(6000MHz effective). Hardware I was testing them at maybe is not the latest but enough to show differences between cards. So, hardware specification was:
CPU:  AMD Phenom II x4 B35 @3,4GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR2
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-S2H
PSU: OCZ ZS550
Audio: Creative X-Fi Titanium

Also very important is software specification as difference between drivers can sometimes be insane.
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 x64, Ubuntu 13.04 amd64 (kernel 3.8.0-19)
Drivers: 13.5 beta 2 for Windows, 13.4 WHQL for Linux

All tests were run in resolution: 1920×1080.
Testing I started with running Ubuntu and Windows Unigine Valley v1.0 benchmark at ExtremeHD preset. Valley is very interesting piece of software. It was created with Unigine Engine which is multiplatform and it lets to developers creating games and applications for Windows, Linux and MacOS but it is not only for PC. Unigine Engine tools also allow developers to show their skills on PS3, Android and iOS devices. I can recommend to try out games on this engine: Anna and Oil Rush.
As Valley can be run using various APIs I decided to perform varied comparison without focusing on DirectX only. Here is chart showing some things:

As you can see differences between GPUs are almost none.

Next benchmark I performed was Catzilla (1.0 RC3). I have run it in two freely available modes: Kitty and Cat. Program is rendering animations full of effects, details, physics and other things which make it demanding and useful in overall testing.

In case of Catzilla we can observe higher scores of HD7790.

Next benchmark is semi-synthetic, standalone benchmark of game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat. Of course there were two runs of it, one with AA and one with highest available preset of AA. Benchmark was set up to highest available details.

On left is HD6850, on right, HD7790. Without AA:

4x  MSAA:

Difference is huge, new architecture is bringing impressive boost of FPS.

One of the most demanding games of all time still remains Crysis from year 2007. Version 1.2.1 DirectX 10 x64, ultra detail.

Without AA:

And here comes 8x MSAA:

Without AA there is  no slightest difference between these two very different GPUs and when we turn on highest available in game sample of MSAA we can little, almost insignificantly lower FPS on HD7790. If you read my previous test you know how MSAA in Crysis was dropping FPS down. HD7770 and 7790 both have 16 of ROPs  and HD6850 has 32 of them. Most AA methods are realized by using ROP units so it leads to conclusion that AMD did a lot of a good job on optimizing AA on GCN architecture.

Another pretty demanding game on my list is Hard Reset made by polish studio Flying Wild Hog. As I’m testing hardware in extreme conditions so with this game I did the same and set up ultra detail. Let’s compare some results of built-in benchmark

Without AA:

With FSAA x4:

It is difficult to judge these cards in this game, they perform almost the same.

I love Trine 2 and this game is pretty demanding performance from computer hardware and from Brain hardware. If you want to exercise your brain and have some fun at once you have to try this game Both GPUs, even in very high detail were rendering the game with high FPS rates over 60FPS what is more than just enough for fluid and enjoyable gaming but when we enable maximum preset of AA….

Trine 2 with FXAA+4xSSAA:

FPS drops badly on both GPUs. In my opinion FPS loss is not worth of this what we get back, especially in situation where there is almost no aliasing in game by default in 1920×1080 and higher resolutions.

Time for DirectX11 game with some special things: Tomb Raider. The game is using TressFX which was implemented in cooperation with AMD but this feature works on all GPUs supporting OpenCL, not only on AMD hardware. I did use of course the highest available details and benchmarked the game without AA and with highest available preset of it.

Without AA:

With 4x SSAA:

To play this game in decent FPS rate we have to mess a bit with settings. Disable TressFX or lower any other details or resolution. Choose what you need and like more.

To many people important matter would be power consumption. I’ve measured power consumption of whole rig. HD6850 in idle takes 140W and in load average about 250W. HD7790 in idle 110W and in load 230W.

Radeon HD6850 is almost 2 years old technology and Radeon HD7790 is just almost 2 months old, brand new thing. On drivers side everything what could be done for HD6xxx series was done and probably there will be no more VLIW5 optimizations but HD7790 received so far only few driver releases and only one of these was WHQL. Cards are performing at least the same good or in some cases HD7790 is getting advantage. If in so early period of time after release GPU’s performance is so well there even more will come with another driver updates. In some games you may observe inconstant GPU usage, jumping from 0 to 100%. In my opinion this problem will be fixed soon. AMD is preparing bigger driver update for June so soon, if this will make sense I will retest this GPU. By buying HD7790 except performance boost you are getting also free games. If you bought the GPU in one of selected shops after May 15th you will receive “Unique ID” which you can use to get digital versions of three games: Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bioshock Infinite and Tom Raider.

AC3: Tyranny of king Washington – soundtrack

Do you like AC3? OK.

Do you like set of DLCs known as Tyranny of king Washington? OK.

Did you buy season pass? OK.

 

I know, i know, you came to here to get know something more about Tyranny of king Washington soundtrack and there is a lot of to know. Let’s start from beginning.

 

Over internet was spread rumor about exclusive content only for season pass owners and this content was ToKW soundtrack. Rumor appeared to be truth… on some part. On March 13th every season pass owner who had ubisoft newsletter active received an email with soundtrack. So far everything is OK, right? OK, so let’s go to part which is not correct with previous statement. Exclusivity for season pass owners is… a lie. Soundtrack is not exclusive to season pass owners, link included in email is in none way secured/protected so anyone who got the link can download the soundtrack. This is an email which some season pass owners received:

http://newsletter.ubisoft.com/en-gb/2013/03/14_AC3/14_AC3.html

And in there you have direct link to .zip file containing mp3 files of soundtrack:

http://static2.cdn.ubi.com/gamesites/assassinscreed/ac3/ost-dlc/assassinscreed3–the_tyranny_of_king_washington_original_soundtrack.zip

If you tried to open both links you can see you can access them without problems, it means they are publicly available. You do not have to buy season pass to receive a soundtrack. As i said, link is public, so ANYONE can access it, PC gamer, console gamer, mobile console gamer, smartphone gamer…. it is not limited, do you want soundtrack? You can download it for free from Ubisoft’s servers.

 

Second thing in soundtrack case is: few days ago Ubisoft released soundtrack on sell. So, they want you to pay for something what themselves released for free! Here you can buy soundtrack:

http://world.idolweb.fr/ubisoft-music/lorne-balfe/assassins-creed-3-the-tyranny-of-king-washington-original-game-soundtrack/3700551747733.html

 

But… do you want to buy soundtrack and pay to Ubisoft another few $$$ or download for free FROM UBISOFT? Make your choice.

HD6850 vs HD7770 – conflict of generations

On release date of HD7770 many tech-sites announced there is huge performance gap between HD6850 and HD7770. Since this time AMD released many drivers improving various things and one of the most important of these is improving GCN architecture performance. In theory now these both GPUs are at same level of performance, but how it really is? Let’s take a look at this…

For now my testing platform maybe is not impressive but is enough to show difference between these two GPUs. CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 B35 2,9GHz, RAM: 4GB, PSU: OCZ ZS 550 80+ Bronze, Windows 7 x64 Enterprise SP1, AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 3. GPUs are MSI Radeon HD6850 1GB Cyclone Power Edition and Gigabyte HD7770 OC rev 2.0.

Testing procedure I started with synthetic benchmarks: 3Dmark06 and Catzilla. In moment of test there was no 3DMark (2013) yet, but anyway, after analysis of its scores I doubt if it will ever be on my list of benchmarking software, it is really difficult to compare hardware with this software, maybe with some updates Futuremark will fix their new product.

3DMark06:

Radeon HD6850: 15365 3DMarks

Radeon HD7770: 15572 3DMarks

This one shows these both cards are very close in performance.

Catzilla on day of test been updated and I tested cards with version 1.0 beta 20.

Kitty:

HD6850: 6217

HD7770: 5272

Cat:

HD6850: 5617

HD7770: 4352

This test shows pretty big difference.

Hard Reset, again I’ve benchmarked in few modes, with various samples of AA. Resolution: 1920×1080, ultra details.

No AA:

FXAA:

FSAA x4:

Next game in this test is Crysis, the first. FullHD resolution (1920×1080), very high details, DX10 mode, x64 executable.

No AA:

AA x8:

Crysis is surprise. Without AA cards are performing same good but when we turn on maximum AA available in game difference becomes really big. With 6850 game is kinda playable but at 7770 is totally unplayable.

Trine 2 is masterpiece in gaming industry. Game may seem to many people to be not demanding game but it requires not low-end configuration to run at full detail. Test done in 1920×1080, very high detail and v-sync enabled.

No AA:

Extreme AA (FXAA+4x SSAA):

With Trine 2 situation is a bit twisted. Without AA both cards got fluid, high rate of fps. For HD6850 game is not so big deal and keeps 60fps but with HD7770 there were drops under this rate and even under border of 50fps what is really wondering me. With maximum preset of AA which is really demanding combination of TXAA and 4 samples of SSAA fps drops down horribly on both cards. Difference in performance with AA between these two GPUs is really low but HD7770 got more stable fps and keep play the game with almost steady average 24fps when on HD6850 fps is jumping across whole range from minimum to maximum rate.

Power consumption I measured for whole computer. In idle mode on both cards computer was taking 140W. In full load HD7770 grew to 200W and HD6850 to 250W.

Conclusion.

It is really difficult to fairly judge these GPUs. Without AA they are really similar, sometimes HD7770 performs a bit better and sometimes HD6850, but when we want to enable AA HD6850 is better choice. If without AA these both cards perform almost the same why there is such a huge difference when we turn on AA? Because most methods of AA are using ROPs, HD7770 have 16 ROPs versus 32ROPs inside of HD6850. AMD did a lot of a good job with their drivers and HD7770 can compete with powerful HD6850. The biggest difference for you may do price and power consumption.

Installing AMD Catalyst driver on Ubuntu Linux

A lot of AMD GPUs users are saying it is difficult to install drivers and it is problematic operation. I understand them, installer is not perfect, there is a lot of instructions to do so, most of them are complicated and describing a lot of unnecessary things to do. I will try to describe it as simple as it is possible.

I assume nowadays most of smart users are using 64-bit software, same on Windows and Linux.

So… how to install AMD Catalyst driver? Here we go:

1. Before we start it is needed to install updates. Install all available updates for your Ubuntu and reboot computer (if needed).

2. After reboot open terminal and paste (ctrl+shift+v) this line:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs dh-make dkms execstack dh-modaliases linux-headers-generic lib32gcc1

hit enter and follow instructions, if any will show up.

3. Next step is to download driver. Save file in /home folder. This is very important to keep downloaded file in this folder, it will make many things much easier. If downloaded file is .zip unpack it, if downloaded file is .run go to another step.

4. Default file name is pretty long and complicated, make it simpler and rename it to, for example catalyst.run.

5. Here comes first part of installation: open terminal, paste line:

sudo sh ./catalyst.run –buildpkg Ubuntu/quantal

In the end of line you can see phrase “Ubuntu/quantal”. Ubuntu stands for name of Linux distribution, quantal stands for version of Ubuntu. quantal is Ubuntu 12.10, precise – 12.04, oneiric – 11.10, raring – 13.04.

This step creates installable .deb packages of driver and saves them in your /home directory. This process can take even few minutes.

6. Great! Packages are created and now you have to install them. There are two ways to do so. With one command line or with manual installing packages. Both are simple.

Command line? Paste this line into terminal:

sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

Manual? Go to /home folder and open .deb packages and install them, one after another.

7. Reboot computer and check if everything runs fine.

All this I can short into one sentence: download driver, if needed unpack, create packages for ubuntu and install them, reboot. Simple as that.

Now your drivers are installed! It is not so difficult, isn’t it? I hope this little instruction will help to many of you.

If you installed beta driver you may have visible on desktop watermark with message “AMD Testing use only”.

Install steam and download some nice games Or just use Ubuntu Software Center to try some games.

Tested on Ubuntu 12.10 amd64 and Radeon HD6850 with AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta 3 for linux.

Core i5-3210m and Radeon HD7670M – mobile gaming?

HP Pavilion g6-2260ew, nice looking notebook in mid-price. Device comes with preinstalled Windows 8 x64.

I had an opportunity to test it for few days, And I’m going to share with you all my thoughts about this really interesting lappy.

Notebook been bought for gaming and I’m going to show to you it is a gaming notebook or not. But first things first…

Installation. I’m not fan of new Windows 8 so decided to install Windows 7 x64 instead. That wasn’t as easy as it usually is, why? Because notebook is optimized to work with windows 8 only, has UEFI bios and require to mess a little bit with its settings to allow install Windows elder than Windows 8.

How to do it? You need to go to bios settings with F10 key and in there enable „Legacy mode”. This will allow you to install other operating systems. Press F10 key to save changes and reboot machine. After reboot you will be prompted to enter generated and displayed on screen code. Since now you are able to install Windows 7 without any further problems.

Drivers. I hadn’t faced big problems with installing drivers. Proper software for all hardware in notebook can be found over internet. Little tip on switchable graphics: in fact they do not require special, modded drivers from HP or modders, it is enough just to install latest available driver for Intel HD4000 and AMD Radeon HD7xxxM series graphics and switching graphics will work as it should. If somehow this is not working to you try to install drivers from http://leshcatlabs.net/ which are special, modded drivers for notebooks.

Testing. How and what i did? I checked this notebook with few games and two syntetic benchmarks. For hardware monitoring I’ve used MSI Afterburner and GPU-Z. Windows had applied all available updates. All games and software were in latest available versions. For games I did use native resolution of screen which is 1366 x 768.

Test I started with 3DMark’06. Pretty old software but it does its job as it should. Few minutes of watching nice animations in this program gave score 8801 3DMarks. As for notebook it is very good score.

Next I’ve downloaded and installed Catzilla, brand new benchmark created by polish developers. Program is testing CPU physics, GPU calculations and more. In benchmark we can find 5 profiles of testing: Kitty – dedicated for notebooks and other forms of mobile PCs, Cat – for testing low-end desktops, Tiger – for mid-end PCs plugged to FullHD displays, Catzilla – this one is for high-end computers paired with 1440p displays, and last profile is Custom, where we can customize settings. In moment of testing latest available version of program was 1.0 beta 17 and with this one I tested laptop. For this device was available only two profiles: Kitty and Custom. Kitty at HP Pavilion g6-2260ew is 2298 points high. This is pretty nice score.

Next game in my lab is Hard Reset. This is what I call AAA game! I adore this game so much that I could type in here about it much more than about laptop so I will not start describing this game in details I will say only that this is oldschool FPS with DirectX 9 engine called „Road Hog”. Engine and game were created by polish studio Flying Wild Hog. Demo of game is available at steam for free, it is worth to try. I did use built in-game benchmark. To make this test a little bit more interesting I did 3 rounds, every with other method of AA available in game. All tests were done with Ultra preset of video quality settings. Here are results:

Difference in FPS between various methods of AA is interesting. Depending on method you can have less jagged edges and your performance can slow down a bit or to unplayable level. In case of Hard Reset FXAA seems to be best choice at this notebook.

Next game in series of tests is Crysis, the first one. I did use built-in gpu test. Crysis in 2007 was the most demanding and the most beautiful looking game. For nowadays hardware game is not so big problem but on graphics side Crysis is still rocking on. How about our laptop with i5-3210m and HD7670M 2GB? Test I performed with Ultra preset in DirectX 10 mode and x64 executable file. And the same as in case of Hard Reset I compared how it runs without AA and with highest available sample of AA. Here are results:

With ultra detail of DX10 game is fully playable and enjoyable but in case when we enable maximum available sample of AA game works slow and I doubt if anyone want to play it with this rate of FPS.

Was not last in session but last game in this review is Trine 2. Very interesting side-scroll adventure platformer. Awesome game with amazing graphics, wonderful soundtrack and impressive physics. You might not think about it like this but game is pretty demanding and requires good hardware for playing. This game unfortunately do not have built-in benchmark so I did use MSI Afterburner to log FPS. FPS been logged while run of Amadeus from his house to moment he met Trine again. Settings for game was of course very high, vertical sync on – I do not like screen tearing.

Again, difference between disabled AA and enabled is determining if game is playable or not. Without AA you can enjoy the game very much but when you enable extreme preset of AA quality… better check out lower presets or do not enable AA at all

Conclusion:

Core i5-3210m, 6GB DDR3 and HD7670M 2GB – is this enough for mobile gaming? Most games with ultra quality settings runs over 30fps which is enjoyable, but if you want to enable antialiasing for games you will needed to try various methods of AA and apply this one which performs best.

P.S.

At this laptop I did run also Assassin’s Creed 3 and Metro 2033 benchmark but I will not post their scores, why? In Assassin’s Creed 3 case because the game was released in pre-alpha stage as final product and needs a lot of bugs and performance optimization to be fixed. When game will become fixed probably I will update this post with FPS available in game. In case of Metro 2033 I have a bad news for all of you. On launch the benchmark showed to me message about unsupported video card and during benchmark I was able to see only artefacts instead of proper animation. This maybe will change with future driver updates but nothing can be sure.

Assassin’s Creed 3 Multiplayer – how to make Xfire work?

I’m Assassin’s Creed fan and I adore this series for many things but not for technicals. Poorly optimized engine, uncountable number of bugs and glitches… this is only short description of technical problems with Assassin’s Creed series on PC but still this is awesome and unique game which is worth to play.

Usually I’m not interested much with multiplayer modes but unique, interesting idea in case of this series makes me want to play it. Sometimes during gameplay it is needed to chat with other gamers. Ubisoft’ s Uplay not always works as it should, in-game voice chat is not always working as well (never fixed conflict of Realtek sound cards and Punkbuster and many other reasons to not use in-game voice chat) so it is needed to use some alternative. Steam is interesting but if you didn’t buy the game via Steam it may not work with retail/Ubishop/Green Man Gaming/other versions of game.

Very good alternative to Uplay and Steam overlays is Xfire. This piece of software with long history is very useful for social experience during gameplay in any game. You can use it to do many things, text chatting is only beginning but let’s focus on this one only.

By default, even after update, Xfire is not working with multiplayer of Assassin’s Creed 3 but works with singleplayer. After some research I’ve found out how to make it all work. All you need to do is to replace few lines of text in one configuration file of Xfire.

1. Quit Xfire

2. Open file “C:\ProgramData\Xfire\xfire_games.ini”

3. Find entries for Assassin’s Creed 3 and replace them with this:

[7685_1]
LongName=Assassin’s Creed III
ShortName=ac3
LauncherDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\Steam\InstallPath
LauncherExe=steam.exe
DetectDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Steam App 208480\InstallLocation
DetectExe=AC3SP.exe
;InstallHint=steamapps\appmanifest_208480.acf
Launch=%UA_LAUNCHER_EXE_PATH% -applaunch 208480 %UA_LAUNCHER_EXTRA_ARGS% %UA_LAUNCHER_NETWORK_ARGS%
InGameRenderer=D3D11
InGameFlags=USE_PRESENT|ENABLE_MOUSE|NEW_INPUT_SYSTEM|USE_DINPUT_MOUSE|DISABLE_RELEASE
InGameDelay=5000

[7685_2]
LongName=Assassin’s Creed III
ShortName=ac3
LauncherDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ubisoft\Assassin’s Creed 3\InstallDir
LauncherExe=AssassinsCreed3.exe
DetectExe=AC3SP.exe
Launch=%UA_LAUNCHER_EXE_PATH% %UA_LAUNCHER_EXTRA_ARGS% %UA_LAUNCHER_NETWORK_ARGS%
InGameRenderer=D3D11
InGameFlags=USE_PRESENT|ENABLE_MOUSE|NEW_INPUT_SYSTEM|USE_DINPUT_MOUSE|DISABLE_RELEASE
InGameDelay=50000

[7686_1]
LongName=Assassin’s Creed III Multiplayer
ShortName=ac3mp
LauncherDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\Steam\InstallPath
LauncherExe=steam.exe
DetectDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Steam App 208480\InstallLocation
DetectExe=AC3MP.exe
;InstallHint=steamapps\appmanifest_208480.acf
Launch=%UA_LAUNCHER_EXE_PATH% -applaunch 208480 %UA_LAUNCHER_EXTRA_ARGS% %UA_LAUNCHER_NETWORK_ARGS%
InGameRenderer=D3D9
InGameFlags=USE_PRESENT|ENABLE_MOUSE|USE_DINPUT_MOUSE

[7686_2]
LongName=Assassin’s Creed III Multiplayer
ShortName=ac3mp
LauncherDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ubisoft\Assassin’s Creed 3\InstallDir
LauncherExe=AssassinsCreed3.exe
DetectExe=AC3MP.exe
Launch=%UA_LAUNCHER_EXE_PATH% %UA_LAUNCHER_EXTRA_ARGS% %UA_LAUNCHER_NETWORK_ARGS%
InGameRenderer=D3D9
InGameFlags=USE_PRESENT|ENABLE_MOUSE|USE_DINPUT_MOUSE

4. Save changes

5. Start Xfire, now Xfire overlay should work in Assassin’s Creed 3 multiplayer.

If it is still not working you should to check if there is no conflict with other software. For example running MSI Afterburner may be a problem. Also check if there is no other software using their own overlays running in background. Some AA injectors too can be the reason. If you are using SMAA or FXAA injector for this game disable it.

I hope it helped to you, enjoy your game and be aware of me in there

P.S.

Or if you still have problem after applying this tip just replace existing file with this one:

http://speedy.sh/Bc8mz/xfire-games.ini

2012 – gaming summary

I wanted to create summary of this year in gaming but after few minutes of my analysis I decided to do not make it because there was too many so awesome games! I will not make any top10 or shit10 summary but I can to list all games I liked to play this year.

Games I enjoyed in 2012 are: extended edition of hard reset game, enhanced edition of witcher 2 game, max payne 3, diablo 3, darksiders 2, sleeping dogs, borderlands 2, dishonored, worms revolution, medal of honor warfighter, king’s bounty: warriors of the north, need for speed most wanted (2), hitman absolution, assassin’s creed III, far cry 3… and I hope I didn’t forget about some games

First half of the year wasn’t entertaining much, there were released mostly patches, DLCs, extended/GOTY editions of games. Year as whole was full of awesome and entertaining games but mostly another releases of famous series, not many new titles. It has good sides and bad sides of course so I will not judge it. This year was good for indie games and a lot of them been released. This is good sign.

All these games I listed in here are so called “AAA games”. What does it mean? It mean these games are top class games made with a lot of care about technical, artistic, plot and many other details. Unfortunately not with all of them it is as it should be. Because of this how things really look like I decided to start series of posts – reviews of games. This series I decided to call “game title- is this AAA game?”. In my reviews I will take close look into many details determining AAA game. First review will show up soon!

 

P.S.

Ok, ok… I can give one award… Award of the most bugged game of year 2012 goes to….. Assassin’s Creed 3! Ubisoft, you really were working hard to gain this award, congratulations

ATI Tray Tools – ATIPDLXX error – fix!

Can not initialize ATIPDLXX library! Exiting now….

ATI Tray Tools by Ray Adams – little, simple and powerful program for overclocking, configuring and unlocking ATI/AMD Radeon GPUs. Since some time various software/hardware configurations have problem with starting this program and you can see message” Can not initialize ATIPDLXX library! Exiting now….” instead of running ATT. I have a good news for you, you do not have to abandon this program and replace it with something else, you can fix this problem in very easy way.

You just need to paste into program’s folder file atipdlxx.dll. I uploaded this file especially for you here:

http://speedy.sh/938Kh/atipdlxx.dll

This file was part of elder versions of AMD Catalyst drivers. The uploaded one is from last version I was able to find it in so it mean this is the latest version available.

Latest version of Ati Tray Tools can be always downloaded from this link:

http://www.radeon.ru/downloads/att/attsetup.exe

Enjoy!

Windows 7 Enterprise for free – how to get it?

Windows 8 is out now but many people, including myself, do not like new system from Microsoft and still want to keep Windows 7 on their computers. You bought a computer without operating system or with Windows 8 and you do not like to switch between ModernUI and Aero? OK, you can get your lovely Windows 7 Enterprise for free in legit way! No cracks, no activators needed, as I said in my first post, at this blog I will not publish informations how to get illegal stuff.

Since the very beginning of Windows 7 presence at market there is also available thing called „Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day trial”. What it is? This is free trial of Windows 7, time-limited but not limited in functionality, it has the same functionality as box version of Windows 7 Enterprise.

How to get it? To download .iso with system you need to have account at any Microsoft service, so called Microsoft ID/Live ID. If you have it there is no problem, if you do not, so… there is no problem too You can register at any moment. When you already have this sorted out go with this link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx

Choose your preferred version. For gaming computers I recommend to get x64, there is no point in installing x32 Windows for gaming. Downloaded .iso file you can burn onto DVD disc or with proper software (Windows 7 USB/DVD tool or Ultraiso – free trial of this one is enough) create bootable usb stick and install operating system.

After installation you can extend your 90-day trial for another 10 days by doing… absolutely nothing! This way you can have your free windows 7 for 100 days. After installation you have 10 days to activate your copy of windows and in this time system will be reminding to you to do so. You can activate it at any moment as you wish.

By default trial version installs in English language. It is enterprise edition so it gives you access to language packs to freely change system language to any you want. Just go to control panel/windows update/optional updates and choose language you want to use. Currently Windows 7 Enterprise is available in 35 languages.

What when trial ends? You simply can reinstall your Windows and trial will be able to activate again and again you can use it for up to 100 days.

That’s all, now you are legit user of top edition of Windows 7 without spending money. Remember to keep your windows up-to-date by installing updates available in windows update, this will prevent you from many problems with software and games.

Free games, promo codes, discounts – 13.12.2012

In this series of posts I’m going to provide to you informations about interesting offers, promo codes and possible discounts at various shops for various games.

 

Are you about to buy something from ubishop? 10% discount maybe is not huge deal but it always 10% less To get 10% discount at ubishop use this promotional code:

10THANKYOU

 

Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition – classic FPS, no dumb cutscenes, no pathetic QTE, pure gameplay full of shooting down enemies, searching areas for hidden locations and objects. This wonderful game you can get for free now!!! The only requirement is to be registered at gog.com. The game is working on windows 7 x64 with sp1 – tested by myself few minutes ago. What is more interesting in this particular offer? For a very first time Duke is available for Mac OS X!!! Go, get him now, because offer is time limited! Promotion ends on December 14th 2012. Games offered by gog.com are drm-free.

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition

Metro 2033 – impressive modern shooter with very interesting plot, rpg elements, unique world and amazing audio-visual experience. You can get it for FREE!!! Facebook required to get a code.

http://www.facebook.com/MetroVideoGame?sk=app_395840630491782

 

For today these are all. Soon i will post another offers.