AMD Frame Pacing Explored: Catalyst 13.8 Brings Consistency to Crossfire

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite is Irrational Games’ latest entry in the Bioshock franchise. Though it’s based on Unreal Engine 3 – making it our obligatory UE3 game – Irrational had added a number of effects that make the game rather GPU-intensive on its highest settings. As an added bonus it includes a built-in benchmark composed of several scenes, a rarity for UE3 engine games, so we can easily get a good representation of what Bioshock’s performance is like.

AMD and NVIDIA exchange places once more, with the 7990 taking a small lead over the GTX 690.

AMD’s initial situation with Bioshock was not as dire as it was in say Battlefield 3, but with deltas approaching 60% it wasn’t pretty either. Once more they’ve managed to get their delta percentages to around 20%, a level that is acceptable for now while leaving clear room for improvement. Especially as once more the 7990 delivers deltas more than twice those of the GTX 690.

Though on a side note, this game is a great reminder of just how much better single-GPU cards are at consistency. The best multi-GPU setup is at 8.2%; the worst single-GPU setup is 2.6%.

Graphically things are roughly as expected. It’s interesting to note that NVIDIA has some significant frame time spikes that AMD doesn’t encounter, though a single-GPU setup would shortcut the issue entirely.

AMD’s 95^th percentile improvement isn’t nearly as pronounced in Bioshock. Meanwhile the higher variability does cost them just enough to have the 7990 fall behind the GTX 690 here.