AMD Frame Pacing Explored: Catalyst 13.8 Brings Consistency to Crossfire
by Ryan Smith on August 1, 2013 2:00 PM ESTHitman: Absolution
The second game in our lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess.
Again there’s nothing really new here. In the previous game the GTX 690 led, while in Hitman the 7990 leads.
Moving on to our delta percentages, we again see the gains AMD has made with their frame pacing implementation, though Hitman was one of their better games in the first place. Consequently they’ve shaved off 11 percentage points, from 31 to 20, just enough to reach our 20% threshold but no more. This is still 13 percentage points worse than the GTX 690 however, so much like Shogun there’s still clear room for further improvement.
Meanwhile the FCAT graph data shows the same thing we saw with our numerical analysis, with the 7990 showing a much greater degree of variability. AMD’s frame pacing mechanism seems to be much less present here than in other games, with the adaptive window less noticeable here than elsewhere, perhaps due to the relatively high variability.
The smaller gains with regards to deltas are reflected in a much smaller improvement on 95th percentile times. Though in this case at the 95th percentile the 7990 is competitive with the GTX 690.
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chizow - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Agree for the most part, but I wouldn't go as far to say boycott AMD, I'd say it's a good learning experience for AMD fans. In order to better their own products, they need to be forthcoming and honest about their experiences. If something's broken, demand a fix, don't sit there and dismiss or minimize the problem, or worst, deflect the issue toward the competition in denial. In the end, they just end up hurting themselves by gimping the products they enjoy.Will Robinson - Tuesday, August 13, 2013 - link
Please go back to spamming the comments section at Tech Report with your NVDA shill buddy Wreckage.Its beyond boring having to read it here too.
chizow - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Tom Petersen, Technical Marketing Director for Nvidia, has stated Nvidia has had built-in frame metering provisions since at least G80. Nvidia invented modern day AFR and they have clearly put a lot of thought behind it with the science to back it up. Every time you see them talk about AFR/microstutter/runtframes you see a lot of detailed technical slides and backup. Not so much from AMD. It should be obvious why Nvidia has had less of an issue with microstutter, they actually knew what they were looking to fix.http://techreport.com/review/22890/nvidia-geforce-...
"Nvidia's Tom Petersen threw us for a loop by asserting that Nvidia's GPUs have had, since "at least" the G80, a built-in provision called frame metering that attempts to counteract the problem."
Sabresiberian - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Tech Reports is a competing company to AMD?While it is very good to see AMD making progress here, it is far from over for both AMD and Nvidia. Both companies have work to do to get frame rates to be consistent and high.
BryanDobbins - Saturday, August 17, 2013 - link
my neighbor's mom makes $72/hour on the internet. She has been unemployed for 7 months but last month her pay check was $19114 just working on the internet for a few hours. Read more on this web site... http://goo.gl/qHdAQ4Mondozai - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Always liked Ryan's articles but I hope he gets to write more for this site in the future. For example, he should write more about mobile GPU's now that that area is gaining importance(this year we get to see PowerVR's newest generation, Rogue and next year we get to see Kepler in Tegra 5). Yet he didn't write anything on Tegra 5's Kepler story on this site even if he is the expert on GPU's.Doing a story on AMD drivers is all well and good but honestly, would like to see moar.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
We have some in-depth mobile coverage scheduled for later this year, though I can't go into any more detail on it at this moment.mwildtech - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Great write up! Thanks Ryan!SeeManRun - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
It wasn't totally clear from reading, but is there any point in upgrading to this driver if you have a single graphics card? It doesn't appear so.DanNeely - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
Release notes aren't out yet; but the 3rd page mentions that it adds full OpenGL ES 3.0 support as well as other not yes specified improvements. Most likely they include the obligatory few games to get a performance boost; but it's not purely a crossfire update.