Concerned by Nvidia's current state of DX12 and Vulkan performance

LoadsaMoney · 3 Oct 2016 at 19:19

Might have had something to be concerned about, if all those Dx12 games had appeared last christmas like Microsoft said

Gregster · 3 Oct 2016 at 19:22

shankly1985 said:
But you are mixing up my post lol for the record I don't get stutter with dx11 nor dx12

They doesn't after be stutter to make something more smoother to play lol
Do console games at 30fps stutter vs the same game at 60fps on pc? Nope does the 60fps become more smoother? Yes

Keep trying your best at twisting my posts Mr Green you failing.

There doesn't have to be stutter to make something smoother I assume you said and I quite agree. Input lag (something I noticed quite a lot on my 60Hz 4K screen that I had) can be a bad experience as well but smoother means 'less bumpy' to me, so not sure why something would feel smoother on DX12, when you are saying DX11 isn't as smooth. I guess it is getting lost in translation though and I will leave it there, as you seem to be getting offended.

smooth
smuːð/Submit
adjective
comparative adjective: smoother
1.
having an even and regular surface; free from perceptible projections, lumps, or indentations.
"smooth flat rocks"
synonyms: even, level, flat, as flat as a pancake, plane, flush, unwrinkled, featureless; More
2.
(of movement) without jerks.
"the trucks gave a smooth ride"

shankly1985 · 3 Oct 2016 at 19:44

Would you say playing at 60fps is smoother than playing at 30fps?
I think frame rate & timings is very different to a rocky road lol

How the game plays and feels when using these new APIs is much more enjoyable.. Think it's safe to say am not alone either.

Nexus18 · 3 Oct 2016 at 19:48

~>Dg<~ said:
dx12 is nothing....yet. it may not be anything at all.moment its just a marketing tool to get you to upgrade.

The same was said about dx 9, 10 and 11 yet look at all the games that came out and used those apis in the end

DX 12 will be no different, the up take is already pretty damn good considering it was only announced a couple of years ago and iirc the actual tools, source code etc. wasn't provided till quite a bit later on? Game development usually takes 2+ years so the fact that we are even seeing dx 12/vulkan being patched into current games is a good sign...

Also, microsoft is pushing DX 12 a lot more than previous APIs with the windows 10 store now and with AMD being partners not with only EA for most of their games but now also ubisoft, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot more dx 12 and possibly vulkan titles over the next year or 2. Yes new cards will probably be out and most people here will probably be on the new cards but if the current nvidia cards don't get sorted out for dx 12 performance wise (possibly excluding the 10xx...) then those nvidia users are going to have to upgrade a lot sooner than AMD owners if they want to reap the benefits of low level APIs.

Either way, it will certainly be interesting to see performance differences with proper low level api games (especially for the 7xx and 9xx series cards) as so far I am very pleased with what I have seen and experienced with them.

tommybhoy · 3 Oct 2016 at 20:03

Nexus18 said:
if the current nvidia cards don't get sorted out for dx 12 performance wise (possibly excluding the 10xx...) then those nvidia users are going to have to upgrade a lot sooner than AMD owners if they want to reap the benefits of low level APIs.

Not a problem for an awful lot of users, they'll just buy a new one.

shankly1985 said:
Would you say

Some just come at a different angle because they don't have a pot to **** in when it comes to AMD v Nvidia DX12?

tommybhoy · 4 Oct 2016 at 21:21

Most folks in the industry used to believe FPS averages were a good proxy for smooth animation, but as games and graphics APIs grew more complex, gaps between high FPS averages and good user experiences became more apparent. We didn’t always use the right quantitative language to describe these performance issues precisely. I think with the move to thinking about frame times rather than FPS averages, we’ve solved that problem, so we can more easily pinpoint problems like stuttering. This shift in thinking has slowly diffused across the industry in recent years. The push for VR, with its especially strict latency needs, has helped move things along.
That said, if you look back at the work going on at AMD in the Tahiti era, I think you’ll see incredible innovation that has laid the foundation for where the whole industry is now going. Tahiti was the first GPU with Asynchronous Compute Engines, or ACEs, which is the scheduling hardware that enables async compute shaders with concurrent execution. Our competition still doesn’t have that capability. Variants of this same GCN architecture have driven the majority of consumer game consoles. And during the same era, AMD created Mantle, the first modern, low-level graphics API that served as an inspiration for Vulkan and DirectX 12.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...rame-pacing-interview-with-amds-scott-wasson/

Pretty much enforces what shanks said about the smoothness.

shankly1985 · 4 Oct 2016 at 22:43

Thanks Tommybhoy let's see how he twist that post

tommybhoy · 5 Oct 2016 at 01:18

shankly1985 said:
Thanks Tommybhoy let's see how he twist that post

Well after they read 'Our competition still doesn’t have that capability' I'm sure there's a few doing this right now...

shankly1985 · 5 Oct 2016 at 02:23

tommybhoy said:
Well after they read 'Our competition still doesn’t have that capability' I'm sure there's a few doing this right now...

tommybhoy · 5 Oct 2016 at 02:49

humbug · 5 Oct 2016 at 03:14

tommybhoy said:
Well after they read 'Our competition still doesn’t have that capability' I'm sure there's a few doing this right now...

Great image, Tommy, you crack me up

Gregster · 5 Oct 2016 at 07:57

tommybhoy said:
http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...rame-pacing-interview-with-amds-scott-wasson/

Pretty much enforces what shanks said about the smoothness.

Good find and does pull up issues with AMD and DX11 frame times and this is probably why Shanks finds it "smoother"

I will quote the whole thing for clarity.

– AMD looked to be performing well in DX12 scenarios. Is frame time variance an issue that you have spotted internally and are now fixing at an early stage in the product lifecycle? Or does your Frame Pacing implementation bring other benefits with it ?

Delivering frames quickly and consistently is key to good gaming experiences, so it drives a lot of our priorities.
I believe the work the industry is doing to convert to low-level APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan is the single biggest way we can reduce frame-time variance and ensure good experiences. We helped get the ball rolling with Mantle, and we’ve collaborated extensively with the industry since then. AMD has also invested a lot of effort into drivers and software for Vulkan and DX12, and that work has been paying off, as you’ve noted.
Our GCN family of Radeon GPUs is especially well-suited for low-level APIs like DX12. Our advanced scheduling hardware allows async compute shaders to execute concurrently with the main graphics thread. Our support for shader intrinsic functions lets developers take hand-optimized GCN machine code from the game consoles and run it directly on our PC graphics chips. These measures can reduce overhead, improve throughput, and cut frame latencies. The work we did with id Software on Doom Vulkan is a nice example of what’s possible. I think we’re on the right path.
In fact, the frame-time results I’ve seen from our Polaris GPUs look very good across all APIs. Our software guys deserve a lot of credit for that, as does Microsoft for the good work it has done with Windows 10.

To be clear, though, the frame-pacing feature for DX12 only applies to a specific case involving multiple GPUs with AFR, so its benefits are limited to those scenarios.

Nasher · 5 Oct 2016 at 09:11

Nvidia like to cut corners on things and now we are seeing the result. They have pushed their cards as far as they can go with drivers and are now slowly being caught up/overtaken by AMD with cheaper, but better designed cards.

Yaayuh! · 5 Oct 2016 at 10:05

I expect nVidia to tackle this with Volta to have a lot of "DX12 this" and "DX12 that" marketing.

Rezident · 5 Oct 2016 at 10:13

Griffildur said:
I wouldn't worry about it too much. These things have been repeated over and over. There's no point worrying about the future, just buy whatever you fancy and enjoy it. You can't keep planning for what happens in the next 2,3,4 years, just buy something good enough so you actually enjoy it instead of watching a stuttering mess.

1070 is a beast of a card and it will serve you well for a several years whatever happens on the API scene. It has the raw power, the memory and efficiency to not have to worry about anything else. There's no point in waiting for some insignificant gains to be had in 3 years from now, with a 1070 you'll enjoy the power you need right now in all the games not just the one or two where an AMD card might shine for a bit.

Look at the numbers and don't get fooled into believing that Doom or Vulkan will guarantee anything. I played Doom myself and while I enjoyed it, that didn't last more than a week or so. You don't buy a card for a week, you buy it to get performance in everything you're doing, all the time.

If there's one thing I would recommend is to look at 10-15 games you fancy now, check the numbers, settings, quality etc, consider your budget, your monitor and resolution and buy whatever makes sense for you. Just don't buy based on 1 or 2 games and one API which may or not be used by anyone else.

Not according to 1070 owners who are complaining in the Deus ex MD thread that they have to turn the graphics settings down so much just to remove stuttering. Even the wildly-priced 1080 can’t get it smooth at Very High settings (never mind Ultra). I would nearly pay the silly Nvidia prices for Christmas if they could max out current games, but they can’t. And they are even slower in DX12! That’s the problem.

Rroff · 5 Oct 2016 at 11:30

I don't get any stuttering with any settings on my 1070 in DX - but I certainly can't max out the settings and get my ideal framerates - IIRC was averaging about 55fps with drops to 40fps with everything turned up at 1440p - dropped some settings back one level (but most still at ultra) and can hold 60fps most of the time - though the mouse feel is still a bit horrid especially the ADS transition is nasty and needs proper sensitivity scaling.

Boomstick777 · 5 Oct 2016 at 13:00

Just grab a GTX 1070 it's best value / performance card circa £350 atm, all things considered. Don't worry about future to much..

When DX12 really takes off I'm sure Nvidia's / AMD's cards will be so much better you would be looking at upgrading at that time anyway.

A GTX 1070 until Vega lands and Volta shows up seems like a good bet imho. A bet I have taken myself

old gamer · 5 Oct 2016 at 13:52

Boomstick777 said:
Just grab a GTX 1070 it's best value / performance card circa £350 atm, all things considered. Don't worry about future to much..

When DX12 really takes off I'm sure Nvidia's / AMD's cards will be so much better you would be looking at upgrading at that time anyway.

A GTX 1070 until Vega lands and Volta shows up seems like a good bet imho. A bet I have taken myself

But you buy every card

shankly1985 · 5 Oct 2016 at 14:24

Gregster said:
Good find and does pull up issues with AMD and DX11 frame times and this is probably why Shanks finds it "smoother"

I will quote the whole thing for clarity.

Frame Pacing and frame times are two different things!! Just too be clear.

I believe the work the industry is doing to convert to low-level APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan is the single biggest way we can reduce frame-time variance and ensure good experiences. We helped get the ball rolling with Mantle, and we’ve collaborated extensively with the industry since then. AMD has also invested a lot of effort into drivers and software for Vulkan and DX12, and that work has been paying off, as you’ve noted.

Gregster · 5 Oct 2016 at 17:23

shankly1985 said:
Frame Pacing and frame times are two different things!! Just too be clear.

I believe the work the industry is doing to convert to low-level APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan is the single biggest way we can reduce frame-time variance and ensure good experiences. We helped get the ball rolling with Mantle, and we’ve collaborated extensively with the industry since then. AMD has also invested a lot of effort into drivers and software for Vulkan and DX12, and that work has been paying off, as you’ve noted.

Yes they are but why is it smoother for you over DX11? What is the differemnce that makes it feel smoother? I play so many different games and some are DX12, most are DX11 and a few odd ones but DX11 feels nice and smooth to me, as does DX12. I remember there being an article some time back on PCPer about FCAT testing and AMD were dropping frames, so maybe this is what you are experiencing with DX11?