Deskscapes causes Windows 7 64 bit Graphics GPU to lock

from Stardock Forums

Hello all,

Is anyone aware or had this similar issue?  Deskscapes will cause modern day GPUs to lock at a particular frequency when deskscapes is active even if it is paused.  I have a Radeon 5870 and the clocks will lock at 400 mhz GPU and 900 mhz mem.  The default clocks on my card are 850 mhz GPU and 1200 mhz mem.  When I load any other GPU program the clocks do not move at all.  They stay at 400 and 900.  If I disable deskscapes, the clocks will return to normal and fluctuate based on GPU load.

This sympton does not only affect Radeon cards but also Nvidia.  I tested a geforce 285x and got the same problem.  I thought it was the card and had to RMA it.  It was Deskscapes.  Extremely frustrating to say the least. 

This is a huge letdown.  I love deskscapes and to have to disable it entirely everytime I play a game which is a huge burden to say the least.  Not to mention the fact that I bought such a strong GPU to be able to run all of these things simutaneously.

Anyone know a work around or have similar issues?

I am 100% sure it is deskscapes.  Took me multiple uninstalls and reinstalls of both windows 7 and vista to figure it out.  The problem is only in windows 7.

Thanks.

Zor

deskscapes
12,032 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Is anyone aware or had this similar issue? Deskscapes will cause modern day GPUs to lock at a particular frequency when deskscapes is active even if it is paused. I have a Radeon 5870 and the clocks will lock at 400 mhz GPU and 900 mhz mem. The default clocks on my card are 850 mhz GPU and 1200 mhz mem. When I load any other GPU program the clocks do not move at all. They stay at 400 and 900. If I disable deskscapes, the clocks will return to normal and fluctuate based on GPU load.
End of quote

Can you elaborate on what your talking about here, and what you're using to monitor these effects?

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Shirley, reply 1

Is anyone aware or had this similar issue? Deskscapes will cause modern day GPUs to lock at a particular frequency when deskscapes is active even if it is paused. I have a Radeon 5870 and the clocks will lock at 400 mhz GPU and 900 mhz mem. The default clocks on my card are 850 mhz GPU and 1200 mhz mem. When I load any other GPU program the clocks do not move at all. They stay at 400 and 900. If I disable deskscapes, the clocks will return to normal and fluctuate based on GPU load.


Can you elaborate on what your talking about here, and what you're using to monitor these effects?
End of Shirley's quote

These days the processor speed (GPU) in many graphics cards will speed step just as intel processors do.  My processor speeds are supposed to go up to 850 GPU and 1200 on the memory.  They WILL go up this high in games or any other 3D application when deskscapes is NOT enabled.  If I enable deskscapes the clocks lock at 400 mhz GPU and 900 mhz memory.   Therefore my graphics card cannot perform at its default maximum speeds because deskscapes is limiting its speed for some odd reason.

I use a program called GPUz to monitor these frequencies.  Everest and many other programs can also monitor hardware frequencies. 

Once again this does not happen in Windows Vista, only in Windows 7.  I've submitted a ticket and I hope they get this resolved in a future release.  Until then I am stuck with boring stationary wallpaper as I do not want to keep turning deskscapes on and off when I use 3D.

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

It sounds like you will need to contact your graphics card manufacturer regarding this.

Deskscapes contains no logic to alter / lock the clock speed of the GPU and if the speed is not automatically increasing when a game is started then there is a bug in the video drivers.

Chances are their code is being confused by a Direct3D app running already and so fail to notice the game starting as well.

BTW have you actually noticed the performance loss in games, or are you simply relying on the clock speed information provided by your monitoring tools?

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I think it would make more sense to contact the cause of the problem, which seems to be Deskscapes.  This only occurs when using deskscapes.  Any other 3D application besides Deskscapes does not have this issue.  It would seeem to me that the precise way that Deskcapes is utilizing the GPU is causing the lock.  It could be a combination between Radeon and Deskscapes.

As far as performance goes, it depends on the game.  I think I know what you are getting at though.  Maybe these monitoring tools are faulty.  I do not believe them to be.   

Like I said it works fine in Vista, but not in Windows 7.  The Radeon driver for Vista and Windows 7 is in the same package and may very well be the same driver entirely.

 

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top

The Vista drivers and the Windows 7 drivers will be different.

Windows 7 uses WDDM v1.1 drivers and Vista uses 1.0 drivers.

As I said above, Deskscapes is not doing anything specific to alter the clock speed and in fact it has no control over such a thing.  You will need to speak to ATI regarding this bug in their drivers.

A google search shows many reports of ATI cards getting stuck at 2D clock speeds from people who are not running Deskscapes.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

I read those too, but none of them said they were not running Deskscapes.  Maybe they didn't realize it could be the culprit.  It took me litterally 1 month to figure this out on my own from troubleshooting.

Deskscapes has drivers as well.  How can you be 100% certain that the Deskscapes drivers are not the culprit? I think it is equally feasbile to blame the driver of the program utilizing the graphics card as it is to blame the driver of the graphics card itself. 

I think it could be both but I cannot say whether it is one or the other.  I will post over at ATI as well to gather their info and submit a ticket with them too.  I sense a run-around coming...  I just know it only happens when I use Deskscapes in Windows 7.

BTW, I also tested it on a Nvidia GTX 290 and had the same result.  This does not only affect Radeon cards.  NVIDIA is known to have better drivers than Radeon.  It would seem one of them would have this ironed out by now.

 

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Deskscapes has drivers as well. How can you be 100% certain that the Deskscapes drivers are not the culprit?
End of quote

No, it doesn't.  Not even a little bit.

Neil being the developer of DeskScapes, I would say he is qualified to say what the application is and is not doing.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Shirley, reply 7

Deskscapes has drivers as well. How can you be 100% certain that the Deskscapes drivers are not the culprit?


No, it doesn't.  Not even a little bit.

Neil being the developer of DeskScapes, I would say he is qualified to say what the application is and is not doing.
End of Shirley's quote

Yes, it does.  There are about 8 that I see in the Deskscapes 3 folder.  All .dll extenion files.  No need to get on the defense here.  I love Deskscapes and I think it is a wonderful program.  If I didn't think that I wouldn't be trying to solve this problem.  I would like to get back to enjoying my animated wallpaper without losing my graphics processing power.

Being a customer of Stardock I think I have every right and even a duty to report such bugs and even question the culprit.  These actions will almost undoubtedly help to make sure the program is as polished as it can be, which I am sure is Stardock's intention; to satisy its customers.

Over on AMD they are saying it has to do with anything that accesses the graphics cards UVD (Unified Video Decoder) mode which changes the clocks to UVD clock speeds. In the case of the HD5 series, this can be 400/900MHz (which is lower than 3d/High performance clocks). With previous generations of cards, most had the same UVD speed as 3D speeds so this issue was never noticed and wasn't a problem when the UVD was accessed at the same time as any 3D program.

Thanks for your consideration and time and sadly I take it I have my answer from Stardock.

Zor

 

 

 

Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top

It sounds like AMD have just explained the nature of the bug in their drivers.

Video dreams will be using the UVD (automatically thanks to the MS Mpeg decoder) for playing the videos which would explain the clock speed that is in use.  They should then be switching into full speed mode when they detect a game, but they have not handled this case correctly and so things remain at UVD speeds.

Hopefully they will address this in future driver releases as short of Deskscapes automatically shutting itself down totally when a game starts (which would be a poor user experience) there is probably no way we can influence their UVD mode detection though we will see if we can trick it into thinking there is no video playing.  We will also try to speak to AMD to get them to resolve the driver issue as soon as possible.

It is possible you would see a similar issue with having windows media player / media centre playing the very same video.

BTW the dll files in Deskscapes are not drivers.

You should be able to use non video dreams (dynamic, hybrid or static) without having this issue.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks a bunch Neil I appreciate your support. 

I thought .dll were drivers...traditionally that's what everyone calls them.  I will try on my end to get this info across to ATI as well.  I think you are right about WMP as well.  I remember reading some posters saying that it also caused the problem.  I have no experienced that though.  I have no idea why.

Much Appreciated,

Zor

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I have some good news.  It looks like we have found a way to convince the ATI drivers that they should switch into 3D mode clocks rather than UVD clocks when a game is running.

This will not help any games running in a window, but it should help when running fullscreen games.

Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top

That is perfect and is exactly what I wanted them to do. 

Z

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

[EDIT]

Thanks for your quick reply Neil!

And I'm happy to say that I was wrong.

I posted the reply only by looking at the frequency monitors and without testing in-game first.

You are right! The issue has been solved! I just tested by running a game benchmark.

Thanks very much for taking the time to fix it! I've had to live with static wallpapers for like 2 months and you know how it must feel for someone who have tasted DeskScapes. Thanks again for the fix! It's really appreciated!

 

Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top

This issue was worked around in the 3.2 release.

Note that it will only apply when a fullscreen game is running and you should not manually pause the dream.

Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top

I edited my post above. Thanks again!