AMD’s HiAlgo acquisition brings gamer-friendly tools to Radeon Software experience

[shankly1985]

Very interesting read/watch here


While AMD is impressing gamers with its new Radeon RX 480 graphics card, the hardware company is investing more in its software side to improve the playing experience on its hardware.

AMD revealed today that it has acquired 3D-gaming tool developer HiAlgo for an undisclosed amount as part of an effort to make its Radeon Software suite more helpful. The HiAlgo team creates plugins for Radeon GPUs that make games perform better, prevent components from overheating, and can flip between two resolutions at the press of a button. While AMD and Nvidia are best known for their work with semiconductors, the importance of providing software that can unlock the power of those processors is obvious. Nvidia’s excellent GeForce Experience tools are among the reasons why it has a lead in the PC sector of the $140 billion gaming hardware market.

HiAlgo should help AMD close that gap. The developer produces three primary tools, and each of them are ideal for the mass market that AMD is hoping to capture with its $200 RX 480.

HiAlgo Boost: This utility monitors your games and actively adapts their resolutions to keep the framerate as high as possible. It works automatically.
HiAlgo Chill: A CPU and GPU limiter. This tool puts a governor on the processors to ensure they do not overheat or consume too much power.
HiAlgo Switch: Players can use this to set up a hotkey that instantly switches to half the resolution and back again. If players feel like they are entering an area with too much going on, they can go into the lower resolution to ensure they do not lose any frames.

they are entering an area with too much going on, they can go into the lower resolution to ensure they do not lose any frames.

Universal HiAlgo BOOST (ver 4.0) tech demo

“Software is an integral part of advancing the science of graphics, enabling us to best harness the silicon of the GPU to maximize performance and deliver outstanding experiences in games and applications,” Radeon chief architect Raja Koduri said in a canned statement. “HiAlgo embodies our spirit of passion, persistence, and play by delivering a number of creative approaches to software that improve gamers’ experiences, and helps future-proof the GPU.”

Raja Koduri Talks about it here 44.37

 

[shankly1985]

I wish they would sort out their recording software... Actually, I wish they would have some recording software. Geforce Experience is a massive plus for NVidia and ShadowPlay just works. I am not looking forward to Raptr recording for my review but might well have to have a play with something else.

I do agree, but in saying that Greg you should check out Action.
It has everything you need for AMD and Nvidia full support. Best recording software I have ever used to date.

I do like the idea of this software AMD is adding into the drivers, if you played Forza on Windows 10 it has features called dynamic you just set a target frame rate and the game will auto change settings on the fly to try and keep that frame rate.
I can see this being very useful for people.

 

[shankly1985]

It's a nice addition, although as I understand it the 3 applications are already available (for free). This feels partially like it's just to stop Nvidia users having access to it, but hopefully they'll also fund it better to improve it faster.

Also the website says that Boost only works with 2 games at the minute (oddly not the ones in the video). Apparently there is beta support for Dx9 games but many need individual tweaking.

Hopefully with AMD's backing they'll add DX11, DX12 and Vulkan support.

That's the aim without extra work this won't work for dx12 or Vulkan.

 

[shankly1985]

That stuff in the OP looks a gimmick at best tbh, and given AMD have bought it, i guess it will get adopted into Raptr and will just become more bloatware i ignore...

That Raptr thing was only any use when i could get gold tickets from it for free games, since they stopped it, its now basically worthless bloatware as far as im concerned.

They said on live stream it will be getting added into Radeon settings. The guy has signed a contract with AMD Radeon Technologies Group not raptr.
Raptr isn't owned by amd.

 

[shankly1985]

OBS and XSplit can both do recording and streaming too. XSplit uses the Nvidia and AMD codecs and OBS uses the Nvidia one and the new rewrite may support the AMD one too (both also use QucikSync). Both are free although XSplit locks out some features unless you have a subscription.

The thing that neither of these do, not sure about Mirillis, is that they don't give you the facility to not be recording but then if something good happens record the previous X minutes of footage.

Action does let's you set how meny mins you want. It's called timeshift on action.
It's the best all in one recording software out there, honestly and I have used almost them all.

 

[shankly1985]

If you buy, Don't buy action from steam go direct to official website and get it cheaper. www.mirillis.com/en/store/onlinestore_action.html

 

[shankly1985]

That Boost video is absolute trash.

Inlaid comparison videos at a fraction of the actual native resolution used to play which are not even able to resolve the perceivable difference in Resolution/Image Quality with an FPS overlay. Get off.

Never mind the video skirting around the huge difference in visual quality loss running a game at a non-native resolution of your monitor. Also, how nicely will this play with Anti-Cheat solutions?


How about, just set the game to a resolution and quality settings that achieves playable frame rates on your rig.

If they can somehow do what Forza does on Windows 10 into Radeon settings for use with games I can see this helping some people a lot.

How meny times have you bought a new game and first thing you do is tweak the settings till you find playable or turn off crap that isn't needed. What if all you had to do was set a target frame rate and the game would automatically adjust settings on the fly. Forza has proven that this is very possible and I can't even notice what it's changing on the fly either.

 

[shankly1985]

I'm sure Forza's native solution for dynamic adjustment works great, I've not used it however.

My point is that the video promoting Boost is a complete and utter snake-oil fest.

Guess we just after wait and see what comes from this.

 

[shankly1985]

Does Action allow you to record a subset of your resolution?
I play games on 6036x1200 resolution, and use dxtory to capture the central 2133x1200 and downscale it to 1920x1080.

But dxtory has issues with a couple of games (like DooM). I havent found another recorder which does the display window recording though.

You mean like this? You can select a size you want to be recorded etc.

Spoiler

 

[shankly1985]

I doubt very much that it will go into Raptr and not Crimson seeing as they don't own Raptr.

Already confirmed on stream this is for Radeon settings. The company they have bought signed contact with Radeon technology Group.