Something went wrong. Try again later

Giant Bomb News

178 Comments

Rage's PC Launch Problems Attributed to Driver Issues [UPDATED]

id Software, Bethesda working with hardware creators to smooth things out.

Expect a full review of Rage from Mr. Shoemaker pretty soon.
Expect a full review of Rage from Mr. Shoemaker pretty soon.

UPDATED: ATI/AMD have issued updated drivers for Rage, which you can download here.

We've installed the updated drivers on our in-office machine, and the frame rate and texture pop-in seems much improved. There's still texture pop-in, but that's just part of the engine at this point. There does appear to be some significant tearing, however, which proved pretty distracting.

--

If there was one thing people expected from Rage, it's that the PC version would be impeccable on day one. If PC owners could count on any developer to knock it out of the park, it would be the father of the first-person-shooter. Right? Right?

Unfortunately, for reasons partially out of id Software's control, Rage has had a bumpy launch since its midnight unlocking around the Internet.

The response from players has been...loud. Just take a look at the gaming section of Reddit today.

The main issue is performance, which id Software and Bethesda Softworks are currently squarely blaming on driver issues. Players are experiencing an incredible amount of texture pop-in, especially so on ATI/AMD cards. We can confirm this, having loaded Rage on our in-office PC. It's inexcusably bad right now.

The texture pop-in is not exclusive to PC; it's also very much present on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

There are problems with both ATI/AMD and nVidia cards, but it's reportedly most egregious on ATI/AMD.

"While many folks are playing RAGE on PC and not running into issues," said the company on its blog, "we’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with screen tearing and texture issues. These problems can be attributed to driver issues, and we’re currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve them as quickly as possible."

For the moment, it's recommended you do not update the ATI/AMD drivers and wait for the updated drivers to come "in a few hours," according to AMD's Catalyst developer on Twitter. Also, if you're using the Battlefield 3-specific drivers, the CTD (Crash to Desktop) rate is apparently 100%. A driver/battlefield-3/61-27006/ rollback is necessary there.

nVidia owners should be using the current beta drivers, which will be automatically include more Rage-specific improvements as they happen, so long as you've flipped updates on.

Expect more updates on this throughout the day.

Patrick Klepek on Google+

178 Comments

Avatar image for kerikxi
kerikxi

619

Forum Posts

94

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 3

User Lists: 8

Edited By kerikxi

@Anthony: The difference is you could, and still can, load an unpatched copy of Starcraft onto any computer in the universe, and it'll work.

Avatar image for sooty
Sooty

8193

Forum Posts

306

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 3

Edited By Sooty

@Enigma777 said:

And this is exactly why I game on consoles.

Good for you.

I'll continue playing both console and PC games instead of looking for news articles to justify my platform decisions.

@Matthew said:

I don't get it. I have a 580, 2500k, and plenty of RAM. If anything, this game is awesome, because it doesn't make my gpu go above 60c. The Battlefield 3 Beta is pushing the gpu temp to 87c. Rage is fun to play and is looking great on my pc...

Uhm. Battlefield 3 is putting more load on your GPU then, simple. You bought a graphics card, do you not want games to utilise it? Temperatures increase or decrease based on the amount of load the card is under. It's not a case of one game simply being badly designed resulting in high temperatures.

87 degrees isn't going to damage your card, seriously.

Avatar image for elusionar
Elusionar

326

Forum Posts

7

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 7

Edited By Elusionar

It looks visually great, but it’s not the jump forward that I was hoping for gameplay wise.

I still have high hopes for Doom 4.

Avatar image for dread612
Dread612

190

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 5

Edited By Dread612

Couple of my friends that got this game both have ATI cards and both are getting terrible texture pop in.

id, look you idiots, ATI makes up 32% of the market, how about you make the game functional to a sizable portion of your potential customers.

No Caption Provided

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

See what I did there? I own a Nvidia card and I personally dislike ATI products because they burnt me with their driver bullshit back in the 90s. However, rather than troll ATI owners, how bout we stand up for our fellow gamers against the companies that do this and demand a better product for our $60 regardless of platform or video card.

Avatar image for evilsbane
Evilsbane

5624

Forum Posts

315

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 4

User Lists: 0

Edited By Evilsbane

*hugs* GTX570

Avatar image for dabuddada
DaBuddaDa

306

Forum Posts

13894

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 2

Edited By DaBuddaDa

This is literally the worst possible launch that could have possibly happened to id. You couldn't write a worse situation. It's too bad too, because the game is pretty sweet but nobody is going to talk about anything but the tech issues.

Avatar image for branthog
Branthog

5777

Forum Posts

1014

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 0

Edited By Branthog

@Dread612 said:

See what I did there? I own a Nvidia card and I personally dislike ATI products because they burnt me with their driver bullshit back in the 90s. However, rather than troll ATI owners, how bout we stand up for our fellow gamers against the companies that do this and demand a better product for our $60 regardless of platform or video card.

Yep, I had the same experience with an expensive ATI card back around 2000 that had problems which prevented a lot of games from being playable at all. The first set of driver updates for the card took something like six damn months. Swore off ATI. In fact, the current ATI card is the first one (and I buy a new top of the line card every 12-24 months) in over a decade. Performs very well and the drivers have been great. However, I've been seeing myself leaning closer toward NVIDIA again, for my next purchase. (Part of what drove me away from NVIDIA this past time was the performance, heat, and noise issues compared to the ATI cards at the same time for the price).

Avatar image for evilrazer
evilrazer

550

Forum Posts

1979

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

Edited By evilrazer

Official release for Ukraine is the 7th of October, hope they gonna fix something, because I have already pre-ordered the game.

Avatar image for ken_foo
Ken_Foo

72

Forum Posts

5

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By Ken_Foo

@ajamafalous: Ok... that's funny.

Avatar image for talis12
Talis12

524

Forum Posts

1

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 2

Edited By Talis12

@Vegsen:

you mean back in the day, when they could be stored on 1 floppy disk

Avatar image for jblp
jblp

154

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By jblp

Good news. AConsidering all I had to do to get the game smooth with little pop in was to lower the resolution, I suppose now I can just hope for smooth play at higher resolutions.

Avatar image for enigma777
Enigma777

6285

Forum Posts

696

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 8

Edited By Enigma777
@Sooty: Wow, that sounds like a terrible way to live. 
Avatar image for nadannmagogo
NaDannMaGoGo

338

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By NaDannMaGoGo

Haha they blame it on the drivers...

Haha some people even bite on that...

Avatar image for getz
Getz

3765

Forum Posts

1003

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 4

Edited By Getz

That's the price you pay for better performance: compatibility cluster fucks like this. But really, is it going to kill you if you can't play the game for a few days while they fix the problem? You're on a fucking computer; go play Binding of Isaac or something.

Avatar image for vhold
vhold

577

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By vhold

@NaDannMaGoGo said:

Haha they blame it on the drivers...

Haha some people even bite on that...

A person from AMD confirms there is a driver issue : https://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator/status/121248985557118976

All - don't use the current Rage performance driver - package includes very old OGL files, that's why you're seeing corruption etc
Avatar image for tapoxi
tapoxi

2

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By tapoxi

@James0890: Because Rage is an exclusively OpenGL game. I can't remember the last time a AAA titles used OpenGL instead of DirectX's Direct3D.

Avatar image for eloj
eloj

753

Forum Posts

761

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 7

Edited By eloj
@NaDannMaGoGo said:

Haha they blame it on the drivers...

Haha some people even bite on that...

https://twitter.com/#!/CatalystCreator/status/121248985557118976
 
HTH.
Avatar image for rekt_hed
Rekt_Hed

958

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 6

User Lists: 8

Edited By Rekt_Hed

Its times like this that make me glad to live in the UK when we get games later.  You yanks find all the hidden bugs and we get a patch day 1 when its released over here so its all gravy.
 
will be interesting to see how quickly things get resolved :)

Avatar image for scraz
scraz

94

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By scraz

IF your running a Nvidia 400-500 GTX DO THIS

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2154357&page=3

Fixed my screen tearing issues instantly Didn't have any problems with texture loading.Game is fun as shit but god damn why didn't they add check pointing.

Avatar image for humanity
Humanity

21858

Forum Posts

5738

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 40

User Lists: 16

Edited By Humanity

@Dread612 said:

Couple of my friends that got this game both have ATI cards and both are getting terrible texture pop in.

id, look you idiots, ATI makes up 32% of the market, how about you make the game functional to a sizable portion of your potential customers.

No Caption Provided

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

See what I did there? I own a Nvidia card and I personally dislike ATI products because they burnt me with their driver bullshit back in the 90s. However, rather than troll ATI owners, how bout we stand up for our fellow gamers against the companies that do this and demand a better product for our $60 regardless of platform or video card.

oh man the 90's and 2000's both! I became a huge nvidia supporter back then because their cards actually let me play my games. ATI was pure garbage back then.

Avatar image for clstirens
clstirens

854

Forum Posts

15

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By clstirens

@gbrading said:

Kind of expected this to be honest. This is why I'm probably waiting a few months before I play Rage, to when it gets smoothed out. The same thing happens with many PC games these days, sadly.

True, but I can't help but feel even in the 1995-2005 era of pc games, constant issues, glitches, and crashes were pretty common. Like, I'm not sure there's every been a truly "smooth sailing" experience for pc users.

Avatar image for thor_molecules
Thor_Molecules

792

Forum Posts

10

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Thor_Molecules

Yeah, driver issues, or John Carmack has simply lost his touch.

---OH GOD, Brad please stop hitting me, it was just a joke, I swear!

Avatar image for beiken
Beiken

23

Forum Posts

20

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By Beiken

dunno if its been posted before but i found this one i found on reddit pretty funny

comparison between the different platforms graphicly

http://www.sizefivegames.com/uploads/rage_satire.png

cant wait for the release in europe on friday i think it is, jugding by this image I might run it on my pentium 4 with my voodoo graphics card! :D HEY its an id game afterall

Avatar image for humanity
Humanity

21858

Forum Posts

5738

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 40

User Lists: 16

Edited By Humanity

Chiming in for the "this is why I stopped playing pc games" crowd. I used to be a hardcore pc gamer and didn't even own consoles as a kid growing up. This sorta stuff just completely burned me out and I very rarely look back.

I do have very fond BF1942, Enemy Territory and Fallout 1+2 moments. Fallout 3 really hurt..wish Bethesda would have left it to die..

Avatar image for k4el
k4el

132

Forum Posts

105

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By k4el

@wolf_blitzer85: Sorry man but I'm going to shoot that comment down. You're clearly speaking from an uninformed position.

I guarantee this wasn't "missed" by the testers. They brought it up, it was shot down higher up the chain. QA departments in every company everywhere have to struggle against business and design decisions in order to get issues addressed.

If you're going to put the blame on some one I'd look at Bethesda or higher up the chain at ID and of course ATI may not be completely guilt free in this as well. It's not like they're known for being on the ball lately.

Avatar image for zaglis
zaglis

912

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By zaglis

LOOKS GOOD! SHIP IT!

Avatar image for avidwriter
avidwriter

775

Forum Posts

25

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 0

Edited By avidwriter

I only buy ATI cards because nvida charges too much for only a few more FPS in 90% of the cases. Just sucks that most of the time game developers, only use nvida cards to develop their games.

Avatar image for napalm
napalm

9227

Forum Posts

162

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By napalm
@Getz said:

That's the price you pay for better performance: compatibility cluster fucks like this. But really, is it going to kill you if you can't play the game for a few days while they fix the problem? You're on a fucking computer; go play Binding of Isaac or something.

Or in this case, rage on the internet. Then attempt to load it again in twenty minutes. Then rage some more.
Avatar image for djjoejoe
DJJoeJoe

1433

Forum Posts

508

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 19

Edited By DJJoeJoe

@avidwriter said:

I only buy ATI cards because nvida charges too much for only a few more FPS in 90% of the cases. Just sucks that most of the time game developers, only use nvida cards to develop their games.

ATi are generally cheaper for the performance, in benchmarks. In 'games' though both devs and Nvidia seem to support and optimize faster and more deeply than what can be seen on ATi gpus. If I have to pay whatever you think is 'more' for that then I take it, every time. I like have beta updates for my 4 year old gpu still improve current game performance and stability all the time, and when new games come out nvidia is almost always on top of very fast updates for that game to get it's performance up quickly. They recently delivered 30+% increase for the open beta for battlefield 3, which is kinda crazy. That update has since seen another, and this is for a beta of a game.

Avatar image for cilliablack
CilliaBlack

42

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By CilliaBlack

Good to see people aren't being hyperbolic about the issue on the internet, good work all around folks.

Avatar image for dezvous
dezvous

690

Forum Posts

4

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 15

Edited By dezvous

@zaglis: That is a huge bummer! I have that exact same GPU, and very similar rig all together. I'm running BF3 Beta at max with AA no problem. It runs and looks like a damn dream!

Rage is a great looking game but I can't believe they chose to leave so few video options out of the PC release!! That's what us PC gamers live for! It's silly but it's true and I can't believe iD shipped it like that.

I'm sure the texture pop-in issues will be fixed, but that really does suck for anyone wanting to enjoy the game right now. I switched my copy to the PS3 at last minute and I'm kind of glad I did... I know it won't look nearly as good as it would on my killer PC but at least I can play with my PC-less friends.

Avatar image for outerabiz
outerabiz

717

Forum Posts

16

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By outerabiz

@zaglis said:

LOOKS GOOD! SHIP IT!

developers need to learn how to hold on to their product until it's done

Avatar image for wolf_blitzer85
wolf_blitzer85

5460

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 6

Edited By wolf_blitzer85
@k4el said:


I guarantee this wasn't "missed" by the testers. They brought it up, it was shot down higher up the chain. QA departments in every company everywhere have to struggle against business and design decisions in order to get issues addressed.

If this is how game development works, then things are just going to get worse. I would think that the QA (especially for bigger games) would have a stronger pull in the development process since I would also think that the team would ideally want to put out a fully working game. 
 
I also wasn't trying to put the blame on anyone in particular either. I'm just amazed that this technical issue managed to make it out into the open, especially when the textures are a big draw to the game.
Avatar image for mooseymcman
MooseyMcMan

12781

Forum Posts

5577

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 13

Edited By MooseyMcMan

[Insert troll-ish comment about how consoles are better/easier to use.]

Nah, I'm just kidding.

Avatar image for eloj
eloj

753

Forum Posts

761

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 7

Edited By eloj

The corrected AMD driver is here

Avatar image for thornie_delete
thornie_delete

441

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By thornie_delete

Here's the latest fix. Apparently, the games install doesn't create an important folder that caches textures. This video walks you through creating that folder...

Avatar image for rautapalli
rautapalli

57

Forum Posts

1

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By rautapalli
Avatar image for tourgen
tourgen

4568

Forum Posts

645

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 4

User Lists: 11

Edited By tourgen
@James0890 said:

@Gav47: People have a right to complain when the product they got was shit, if all my others games work fine on AMD cards how is it their fault that Rage is broken at launch?

Because AMD/ATI half-ass implement the specs and cut corners where they think they can get away with it.  If ID is using gfx hardware within spec but outside the scope of what most game companies usually do they can run into ATI's halfassed work head on.  Undocumented behavior and flat our crash-your-desktop bugs await you around every unexplored corner in ATI's drivers.
 
Do not buy ATI/AMD graphics cards.  There is more to performance than carefully controlled benchmarks.  In the real world ATI falls on it's face more often than not.
Avatar image for k4el
k4el

132

Forum Posts

105

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By k4el

@wolf_blitzer85:

Thank Bobby Kotick and his ilk for this sort of attitude. Games are big money. That means big marketing, that means big release dates. Which means compromises are inevitable.

Thankfully there are places where this sort of thing doesn't happen. Valve and Blizzard for instance (yes I know Blizz is part of activision). The indie scene is also amazingly good about this sort of thing because they have a reputation to establish and can't hide behind hype.

Gamers have to vote with their wallets by not buying poorly tested buggy games. The pre-order crazed phenomenon doesn't help either.

Avatar image for rautapalli
rautapalli

57

Forum Posts

1

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By rautapalli

@tourgen: Except the benchmarks most sites do are very much based on real world performance, they play the same parts of the game and record the framerates.

Also you can't blame this all on AMD/ATi, ID released a game that is supposed to work on AMD hardware before making sure that it actually does.

Avatar image for largo6661
largo6661

340

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By largo6661

rage is out on friday in the uk and i was gonna get it on the pc but looking at all this crap I'll just get it for the ps3. shame i thought the pc would be the best.

Avatar image for oldguy
OldGuy

1714

Forum Posts

28

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

Edited By OldGuy
@wolf_blitzer85 said:
@k4el said:


I guarantee this wasn't "missed" by the testers. They brought it up, it was shot down higher up the chain. QA departments in every company everywhere have to struggle against business and design decisions in order to get issues addressed.

If this is how game development works, then things are just going to get worse. I would think that the QA (especially for bigger games) would have a stronger pull in the development process since I would also think that the team would ideally want to put out a fully working game.   I also wasn't trying to put the blame on anyone in particular either. I'm just amazed that this technical issue managed to make it out into the open, especially when the textures are a big draw to the game.
Actually I'm willing to bet that the beta drivers that they were working with didn't contain the OLD Open GL code that wound up in the drivers distributed to users by ATI (“All – don’t use the current Rage performance driver – package includes very old OGL files, that’s why you’re seeing corruption etc… New Rage driver with proper OGL component will be posted later today.”)... That sounds like ATI's fault to me... but... none of us really know, either...
Avatar image for lameimpala
lameimpala

92

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

Edited By lameimpala

Issues with which Driver? San Francisco or Parallel Lines?

Avatar image for declarius
Declarius

127

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Declarius

To fix the tearing, enable Triple Buffering and Vsync through Catalyst Control Center.

Avatar image for k4el
k4el

132

Forum Posts

105

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By k4el

@OldGuy: The thing is though... even if the drivers published on ATI's site are out of date. They're the drivers the end users would be using and testing should have occurred in parody with the end user experience.

ID or Bethesda should have known about this, even if it is 100% on ATI from a technical stand point.

Avatar image for sin4profit
Sin4profit

3505

Forum Posts

1621

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 37

User Lists: 2

Edited By Sin4profit

Updated drivers: wow, and i thought it was unplayable before. Now it locks up for a few seconds every few seconds.

Avatar image for lockwoodx
lockwoodx

2531

Forum Posts

6

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By lockwoodx
No Caption Provided
Avatar image for declarius
Declarius

127

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Declarius

@Sin4profit said:

Updated drivers: wow, and i thought it was unplayable before. Now it locks up for a few seconds every few seconds.

The video above may help you if you haven't done it already. Creating those cache folders solved it for some.

Avatar image for ooame
Ooame

170

Forum Posts

36

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 2

Edited By Ooame

@Buzzkill: But its not like fallout at all...

Avatar image for gunharp
gunharp

356

Forum Posts

283

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

Edited By gunharp

@k4el said:

@wolf_blitzer85: Sorry man but I'm going to shoot that comment down. You're clearly speaking from an uninformed position.

I guarantee this wasn't "missed" by the testers. They brought it up, it was shot down higher up the chain. QA departments in every company everywhere have to struggle against business and design decisions in order to get issues addressed.

If you're going to put the blame on some one I'd look at Bethesda or higher up the chain at ID and of course ATI may not be completely guilt free in this as well. It's not like they're known for being on the ball lately.

+1 to this. Beat me to it, but you forgot this comment;

@InternetDetective said:

How did they not know about these problems, did the play tester not notice?

I am 99% sure all the issues are sitting on a bug data base right now.

If this is truly just a driver issue then a driver update is going to fix it, I hope there is a combo of further optimization in support of better drivers. Terrible that it has released this way though...but we don't know how it happened. Maybe id brought these issues up with AMD or Zenimax/Bethesda but they pushed the current version anyways.

PC will be the best version eventually. I think now more than ever id Software should deliver on the "maybes" Carmack talked about during his keynote at QuakeCon 2011. Such as a high resolution texture pack and what not.

@wolf_blitzer85said:

If this is how game development works, then things are just going to get worse. I would think that the QA (especially for bigger games) would have a stronger pull in the development process since I would also think that the team would ideally want to put out a fully working game. I also wasn't trying to put the blame on anyone in particular either. I'm just amazed that this technical issue managed to make it out into the open, especially when the textures are a big draw to the game.

That is how it works, mostly, haha. QA has little pull because they are not designing, developing, etc. so the “value” of anything brought up falls in someone else's capable hands to make a decision on changes or fixes. Personally everywhere I have been, QA do their damndest to stop the bugs before they get to you, trust me.

It is still kind of amazing how this got out in the open right? I agree with you there. Like I said earlier in this post we have no idea where the fuck-ups began. Maybe AMD didn't even reply to id's emails.

@tapoxi said:

@James0890: Because Rage is an exclusively OpenGL game. I can't remember the last time a AAA titles used OpenGL instead of DirectX's Direct3D.

I can't remember either maybe pre-2005. Despite the problems so far I am glad it is OpenGL 4.2. Hey maybe there will be linux build because why not and id Software traditionally does one.