Directx 12 and async compute

[hal2009]

Hi all,

I ordered a Gigabyte g1 1080 a while ago and have a delivery date for the end of next week.
Since it's been on order i have read on the net that it doesn't do Directx 12 or async compute properly, where as amd 480 does. Would i be better cancelling and waiting for the quicker amd stuff?
My system currently has a 2500k processor and im gaming at 1080p, sold my hd5770 so without a card at the moment but could wait till the end of he year early next. Stuff i will be playing will be the command and conquer series, dawn of war series,company of heroes series, supreme commander series, homeworld series, ashes of a singularity, grey goo and metal gear solid v. i may also upgrade to a 1440p or 4k monitor in the future.

any advise appreciated

 

[Griffildur]

ok, getting popcorn, this should be fun

 

[SiDeards73]

At 1080p a 1080 will be more than enough in those games for the here and now, I bet a lot of them are cpu bound also?

You could get away with the 480 also for those games as your only at 1080p, and pocket the cash for a better AMD card when Vega arrives or even buy an adaptive sync screen now with the difference

 

[Biffa]

Nvidia does support asynchronous compute just differently to AMD.

On the first side it may be that with Async compute AMD will be more competitive with NVIDIA in games that support it.

Either way your 1080 will be at the top end of the performance table for quite while yet.

 

[hal2009]

Thanks for the quick reply's, So there is no problems with directx 12 and async compute on nvidia stuff they just do it differently to amd.

 

[drunkenmaster]

RX480 has a decent lead over similar products when it comes to DX12, Vega is a further changed architecture that will only be more efficient. It's likely to be double the performance of a RX480 in DX12 which should put it squarely ahead of a 1080. It's only 25-30% behind the 1070 in several DX12 games, the 1080 is only what 25% faster than the 1070 so doubling an RX480 alone(without architecture benefits) would likely see it being faster.

Vega is stated to bring a massive leap in performance/watt, so while RX480 isn't on Pascal level it's a good step above Maxwell for DX12 applications, so Vega is likely to be around same performance/watt as the 1080 or maybe a little better.

The main problem I have with the 1080 is it's a 300mm^2 core currently being sold at the 600mm^2 core pricing. When the 1080ti/Titan come out the 1080 will likely drop to the £400-450 price point where as the smaller Vega(the double RX480 one) is likely to be in the £350-400 price range to start with.

Personally I'd wait, a RX480 is a good price, it would make a good stop gap card, well beyond what you had anyway. It's not likely to drop in price drastically so if you bought one today then you could sell it at the end of the year for a not huge hit. In 6-8 months Vega and bigger Nvidia cores come out, either Vega wins and you buy that or at worst 1080 will likely drop in price significantly.

That is basically what I'm doing as well, RX480 as a stop gap to big or small vega. Though I won't buy Nvidia till they change how they do business, when the 1080 drops in price it will also help with AMD card pricing.

Personally I think current 1080 pricing is completely horrendous and they are just ripping off customers and the exchange rate is only making it worse. Buy one if you want Nvidia, I won't tell anyone else not to, but I would wait for it to be priced fairly.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Thanks for the quick reply's, So there is no problems with directx 12 and async compute on nvidia stuff they just do it differently to amd.

There isn't much to suggest Nvidia can do async compute, Nvidia claimed repeatedly that Maxwell supports async compute which it clearly, very clearly doesn't. Pascal to most people seems to not support async compute, what they've tried to do though is minimise the penalty for context switching with improved pre-emption, but this is not async which on a fundamental level one of it's main purposes is to replace pre-emption and the performance impact it brings. Async compute brought huge benefits for GCN vs Maxwell and as yet there is nothing to indicate Pascal makes anywhere near as big gains as AMD from DX12 and specifically from async compute.

There are also other DX12 features that are likely to be used that Nvidia doesn't support and a couple honestly very basic features Nvidia support that AMD don't but that are unlikely to be used heavily and not expensive to do on shaders anyway.

 

[Mayh3M]

Ignore the walls of texts and go with the reviews. The GTX 1080 is the fastest card by far at this time, and will be for at least half a year until the Titan / 1080 Ti comes out. Both of those will have the same DX12/ASync capabilities as the 1080.

Nvidia have dominated the GPU scene for a reason. They know what they're doing. 80% market share doesn't come from no where. There's no conspiracy here. They make the best cards if you can afford them.

 

[bfar]

Nvidia already gets pretty good compute core utilisation via per game driver optimisations. Even if Nvidia implemented hardware asynchronous compute the same way AMD does, it's not clear if we'd see the same impact on performance. Either way, a GTX 1080 will brute force way past anything a 480 can do, async compute or none. There's also the new preemption features, which appear to be another workaround of sorts.

AMDs solution is arguably more elegant, and I suspect Nvidia will implement it fully in future products, but it solves a problem that Nvidia doesn't suffer with to the same degree that AMD did. The whole thing is overblown.

 

[hal2009]

There isn't much to suggest Nvidia can do async compute, Nvidia claimed repeatedly that Maxwell supports async compute which it clearly, very clearly doesn't. Pascal to most people seems to not support async compute, what they've tried to do though is minimise the penalty for context switching with improved pre-emption, but this is not async which on a fundamental level one of it's main purposes is to replace pre-emption and the performance impact it brings. Async compute brought huge benefits for GCN vs Maxwell and as yet there is nothing to indicate Pascal makes anywhere near as big gains as AMD from DX12 and specifically from async compute.

There are also other DX12 features that are likely to be used that Nvidia doesn't support and a couple honestly very basic features Nvidia support that AMD don't but that are unlikely to be used heavily and not expensive to do on shaders anyway.

That's the thing thats been niggling me as more DX12, async compute and maybe vulkan titles come out. Thanks for the replys youve been most helpful. It doesnt bother me whether i have nvidia or amd in my pc i've had both in the past.

 

[Griffildur]

That's the thing thats been niggling me as more DX12, async compute and maybe vulkan titles come out. Thanks for the replys youve been most helpful. It doesnt bother me whether i have nvidia or amd in my pc i've had both in the past.

Don't worry about that. Nvidia cards can more than handle those future titles. 1080 is a monster when it comes to performance. if you can get one of those or a 1070 for that matter then you'll be safe for a long time. They cost a pretty penny but more than make up for that with what they offer.

 

[D.P.]

The fact that the RX48-0 still see a big boost when using async shaders merely suggests that AMD still have major problems achieving anything close to 100% utilization under DX11 and so the architecture improvements in the new GCN 1.3 are pretty minimal, which si backed up by the lack luster performance.

The fact that Pascal doesn't see a bug improvement with async shaders is much less interesting than the fact that the RX480 does. IMO.

 

[SiDeards73]

I find it quite alarming people just happily say buy a 1080 for gaming at 1080p when the 1070 will do exactly the same? With less waste and cheaper? It's almost like some people are just blinded by large fps numbers which don't mean a thing if your gaming on a 1080p 60hz screen?

It's intrepid your getting 200fps in a game on a 60hz screen, it's not different to getting 70fps on that screen.. none, you are simply paying for something you do not need.

The only thing your buying is time on the next upgrade as it will be a good while before something taxes that card at 1080p 60hz. Especially looking at the games you want to play which are mostly RTS if I'm correct ? The type of game that traditionally relies on a lot of cpu power?

Like I said earlier you would be better served getting something lower end and, even a 980ti is cheap now and will hit 60fps in most things at 1080p, or atleast it was a few weeks ago if your read any of the nvidia 980ti threads on these forums, and perhaps upgrading your cpu to an i7 or something.

If it was me personally i would probably buy a custom 480 and a Freesync screen, you would get the benefit of async in titles that support it and also the smootb game play of a Freesync panel. I'd probably go for a 1440p panel and then upgrade the 480 to Vega later, however a 1080p 144hz screen would also be a decent option.

At the current price of a 1080 you can buy a 480 and a decent 27" 1440p 144hz screen and still have some change

 

[shankly1985]

If you buying now and wanting best DX12 and Vulkan performance I can't recommend Nvidia until they openly come out and tell the truth.

1080 is an excellent GPU high price tag you deserve to know if come two years time will it benefit from these new APIs or will it just get lost on the dirt.

Am surprised we still don't fully have an answer yet, even TotalWar devs don't know lol
The lie about maxwell supporting Async compute is a sign that maybe they also lie about Pascal?

 

[Troezar]

I wouldn't worry too much. With Nvidia's resources I can't set them letting AMD have any advantage for very long. I may even move to big Vega when it eventually comes out even though I am more than happy with my 1070. Never thought I'd own an Nvidia card but at this time and 1440p it made the most sense.

 

[karik666]

Buy a custom cooled rx480 and a 1440p monitor,that should be great for the games your playing.

 

[bru]

My under standing of it is that the way AMD go about Async and the way NVidia go about it are completely different. Of course AMD will tell you there way is the correct way of doing it and NVidia will say they can it, but just differently than AMD.
At the end of the day look at the overall DX12 performance, rather than trying to guess at improvements by Async usage alone.

 

[bfar]

Personally I think current 1080 pricing is completely horrendous and they are just ripping off customers and the exchange rate is only making it worse. Buy one if you want Nvidia, I won't tell anyone else not to, but I would wait for it to be priced fairly.

It is absolutely horrific, we all think so. GPUs have been overpriced for three or four years now, but the simple fact of the matter is that demand has grown. There's also no denying the 1080 roughly 30% faster than the product it replaces. Just because Pascal isn't a big chip doesn't mean it isn't a flagship in every other respect.

AMD are just as good at milking the cow when they can. If Vega is good I wouldn't count on it being cheap.

The 480 as a stopgap is a good option, but the Pascal products are also good options. The op will figure it out.

 

[drunkenmaster]

The difference is RX480 is at the price it will be in 12-18 months time still because it's priced as a 230mm^2 finfet card should be(they are unfortunately more expensive than a 230mm^2 28nm card would be, and exchange rate exaggerates the difference).

The 1080 is currently priced as a 500mm^2+ core, but in 12-18 months it will be £400 or less, meaning you're overpaying for a 1080 by 50% currently, while with a RX480 you aren't.

So if you by either card today and sell in a year to upgrade, the RX480 will lose £100 max in value, the 1080 stands to be worth maybe £300 after buying for £650.

Now if a 1080 was £400 today, different story, it wouldn't drop in value massively over the next 12 months so if you upgrade to either Vega or a 1080ti you aren't going to lose a lot of value, in fact you might get very good value out of it for a year of usage.

If the RX480 was currently £300+ and being milked badly then it too would see an unreasonable amount of loss over the next year as prices come down.

 

[Poneros]

For the games you play a 480 is a much better value proposition than a 1080, especially going forward. The 1080 is a fantastic piece of hardware but ultimately Nvidia is not seeing gains in DX12/Vulkan but AMD does, and this automatically ups the value of an AMD card by comparison. So while the 1080 is absolutely the faster card, is the price you pay for it worth it? Imo no, especially for 1080p 60fps. I think a much smarter option is to go for a custom 480 this month and then once the Vega cards come out and maybe the 1080ti you can sell the 480 off and buy one of those instead or a (by then) cheaper 1070/1080.

If nothing else the money you keep from going 480 instead of 1080 can let you upgrade CPU which will mean much more for those games.