AMD Frame Pacing Explored: Catalyst 13.8 Brings Consistency to Crossfire
by Ryan Smith on August 1, 2013 2:00 PM ESTCrysis 3
Our final benchmark in our suite needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers, taking back the “most punishing game” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to driver games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2013.
Our last game and our last flip. AMD and NVIDIA exchange places one final time, with the GTX 690 and 7990 swapping out so that the GTX 690 takes the lead.
Crysis 3 is another game where AMD’s initial position wasn’t quite as bad, and consequently the improvements aren’t as great. 19% gets them to the acceptable range on the 7990, while at the same time with only 4 percentage points separating the 7990 and GTX 690 means that this is the closest the two cards have ever come to matching each other in frame time consistency.
Graphically we can see that both AMD and NVIDIA still struggle with consistency to some extent. GTX 690 in particular has a short run of very high variability about 10 seconds in that AMD doesn’t experience, likely due to their hard cap on minimum frame times.
Finally on the matter of 95th percentile times, our data here mirrors what we’ve seen earlier. AMD shows a smaller gain, with their final value of 20.7ms still leaving them a couple of milliseconds behind the faster GTX 690.
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chizow - Wednesday, August 7, 2013 - link
There was discussions of microstutter on various forums associated with multi-GPU, but PCGH was the first site to publish it's findings in detail with both video evidence and hard data. From what I remember, they were the first to develop the methodology of using FRAPs frametimes and graphing the subsequent results to illustrate microstutter.BrightCandle - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
One of the most shocking revelations to me is that AMDs quality assurance did not include checking the output of their cards frame by frame. I had always assumed that both NVidia and AMD had HDMI/DVI/VGA recorders that allowed them to capture the output of their cards so they could check them pixel by pixel, frame by frame and presumably check they were correct automatically.Such a technology would clearly have shown the problem immediately. I am stunned that these companies don't do that. Even FCAT is a blatantly blunt tool as it doesn't say anything about the contents of the frames. We still don't have any way to measure end to end latency for comparison either. All in all there is much to left to do and I am not confident that either company is testing these products well, its just I couldn't believe that AMD wasn't testing theirs for consistency (it was obvious when you played it something was wrong) at all.
krutou - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
AMD is in the business of being the best performance per price entry in every market segment. Technology and quality come second.How often does AMD introduce and/or develop technologies for their graphics cards? The only two that come to mind are Eyefinity and TressFX (100 times more overhyped than PhysX).
Death666Angel - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
I think ATI had tessellation in their old DX8 chips. nVidia bought PhysX, so that shouldn't count. But I don't really see how having exclusive technology usable by a single GPU vendor is anything good. We need standardization and everybody having access to the same technologies (albeit with different performance deltas). Look at the gimmicky state of PhysX and imagine what it could be if nVidia would allow it to be fully utilized by CPUs and AMD GPUs?krutou - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
Because OpenCl and TressFX are doing so well right?bigboxes - Sunday, August 4, 2013 - link
March on, fanboi.JamesWoods - Sunday, August 4, 2013 - link
If you think that is all AMD/ATI has ever done for graphics then you sir, are ignorant. I was going to use a more degrading word there and thought better of it.Will Robinson - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
LOL...what a load of tosh."NVDA had to take them by the hand"?
You and Wreckage ought to post in green text.
chizow - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Agree with pretty much of all of this, although I would direct a lot of the blame on AMD's most loyal, enthusiastic supporters as well. Every time microstutter was mentioned and identified as being worst with AMD solutions, AMD's biggest fans would get hyperdefensive about it. If those most likely to have a problem were too busy denying any problem existed, it really should be no surprise it was never fixed.And this is the result. Years of denial and broken CF, finally fixed as a result of the scrutiny from the press and laughter of Nvidia fans which brought this to a head and forced AMD to take a closer look and formulate a solution.
EJS1980 - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
"Truth favors not one side."