AMD Frame Pacing Explored: Catalyst 13.8 Brings Consistency to Crossfire
by Ryan Smith on August 1, 2013 2:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Bringing things to a close, today’s driver release isn’t about any grand revelations for AMD, but rather about AMD following through on their plans and commitments to improve frame time consistency on their products. We’ve seen AMD get their house in order with respect to single-GPU cards earlier this year, and now the same is starting to happen for multi-GPU setups.
To be clear here AMD’s initial situation should never have happened. AMD should have been doing the appropriate competitive analysis from the start, never letting themselves fall behind like this. But we aren’t in the business of berating companies that make an honest effort to improve their products like AMD is doing, so while AMD could have done better in the past they are finally making the right moves in the present, and it’s the present that’s going to be the most important for AMD’s customers.
So what does AMD’s present look like? Quite frankly, it looks a lot better than it did yesterday. AMD set out to greatly improve on their frame pacing situation on their Crossfire setups and they have delivered just that. With just one driver revision we have seen the Radeon HD 7990’s frame pacing go from laughable to acceptable; delta percentages of over 100% have been reduced to 20% or lower in 5 of the 6 games we’ve tested. For those sensitive to micro-stutter and other matters of consistency the difference is at times going to be staggering. At the most basic level, AMD has achieved their objectives.
With that said, there’s still room for improvement, and this goes for both functionality and further improvements in frame consistency. AMD’s triage-like approach means that D3D9, OpenGL, and most importantly Eyefinity are still not capable of using frame metering. These will be covered in future phases of AMD’s rollout of their frame pacing technology, and they can’t come soon enough, but for the time being these are limitations that need to be kept in mind.
Similarly while AMD’s frame pacing has improved to the point where we find it acceptable, 20% deltas are still generally twice that of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 690, never mind the extreme consistency single-GPU setups offer. We never realistically expected AMD to match NVIDIA’s frame interval consistency overnight, but in time it would be nice to see them get close, and for both parties to further improve beyond that.
Moving on, while today’s driver release is primarily one part of AMD’s longer term plan to deal with frame interval consistency, AMD is trying hard to also use this moment as something of a second launch for the Radeon HD 7990. With the 7990 launching in April it had the poor timing of arriving shortly after the multi-GPU frame pacing issue came to a head, which is something that has hobbled the card since its launch. In terms of absolute performance (average frame rates) things have changed very little since the launch of the 7990 so we’re not going to get into the matter of performance.
What has changed since then for the 7990 is first and foremost its frame pacing improvements as we’ve seen today. To be very clear here the GTX 690 is still the better card for those users heavily concerned about consistency, but AMD’s improvements have brought the 7990 to the point where we find its frame consistency generally acceptable. This isn’t a rousing recommendation nor is it meant to be, but it’s a reflection of the fact that AMD has brought their consistency to the point where pairing up multiple Tahiti GPUs as is done in the 7990 is no longer fraught with the frame pacing problems it once was. For most users I believe we’re to the point where the consistency differences are greater on paper than they are on the eyes, but of course that is going to depend on the visual acuity of the user.
Moving on, the other thing that has changed for AMD is pricing and competitive positioning. Officially AMD hasn’t cut the price on the 7990, but the fact that XFX is now offering a reference 7990 for $799 after rebate is not a coincidence. With AMD’s Level Up with Never Settle Reloaded promotion still running, AMD is making a clear play for the value segment right now. I don’t believe it’s where AMD would like to be, but there’s no arguing that it’s effective. For users who have a reasonable level of faith in Crossfire scaling and are satisfied with AMD’s frame pacing improvements, a $799 7990 is a very good deal at the moment.
With that in mind, we do want to reiterate that our editorial position here on AFR setups isn’t changing. We still favor strong single-GPU setups over weaker multi-GPU setups, but this is a matter of valuing the lack of AFR profile requirements, coupled with the tendency for newly launched games to have immature AFR profiling, and of course the general consistency issues we’ve covered today. AFR is still the only way to further improve performance once the single-GPU route has been exhausted, and in AMD’s case it’s the only way to exceed the performance of a 7970 GHz Edition, so it does have its place.
Ultimately we have to give AMD the kudos they deserve. They have come forward about their issues, set out a plan to fix them, and have begun delivering on those plans. There’s still room for further improvement within AMD’s drivers, so AMD’s job is far from done, but today they have taken the first step needed to settle the frame pacing problems that have been dogging their products.
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mwildtech - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Are you still signed into AOL...? ;) I also haven't had many issues with either, at least from a single GPU perspective.kyuu - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
What a surprise, the AMD-bashing trolls are out in force with long rants that nobody will read.Give it a rest guys.
Anyways, great write-up Ryan. Good to see AMD is getting the issue taken care of.
chizow - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
Except in this case, "AMD bashing trolls" helped fix your CF drivers. A simple "thank you" would have sufficed.TheJian - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
ROFL...I sincerely thank you for the laugh ;)I liked many products over the years but have been saved by vocal complainers pointing out things to make me run, or at least wait until fixes come. I waited for RROD to get fixed with Jasper. Years of complainers finally got a fix (it took so long I started doubting I'd ever own one). My friend who jumped on x360 early shipped his back multiple times in the first year. I believe it spent more time at MS than in his house...LOL. He was a vocal complainer in their forums etc but I never called him a MS bashing troll for it. I laughed and thanked him for being one of the people who saved me years of that frustration :) He only thought that was funny after some beers...LOL
Thankfully he has a great sense of humor. He's ready with forum accounts everywhere he thinks the complainers will be for xbox1 this time (complainers have value people). But he expects to be a reader this time rather than the complainer ;) I think he'll go PS4 in the end despite the MS love he has vs. Sony. His wallet has no trouble voting against his fanboy thoughts.
I'm torn over the consoles though. I'd love to see AMD start making some cash, but at the same time I'm pretty unhappy they blew a wad of R&D money on something I want completely dead instead of cpus/gpus/arm socs. Had that R&D went to PC's I don't think I'd be making these statements dissing AMD. At the least they could have kept the layoffs from happening (losing 30% of your smartest people will shaft us on PC's for a few years at least and longer if consoles don't take off by the millions), and had good drivers all last year. That also might have given them a better reputation thus not needing to give out free games that are clearly wiping out profits (Q report shows this). AMD has a great gpu. It's a pity they didn't have enough funding for R&D to pair it with a great driver from day1 and funding to avoid the Fcat disaster. Even if it affects a small group it causes a lot of people to paint your other products with that image.
Steveymoo - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Interestingly enough, I seem to remember my GTX 460s having microstutter and performance issues in SLI. To the point where your experience in twitch games would be better if you just disabled on of the GPUs. However, over the years, and many driver updates, I don't seem to notice it any more. Nvidia really must have quite a talented software team, who communicate well with the hardware division. I would say there might be some kind of company structure issues for an issue such as this to go unnoticed, and un-fixed for such a long time.anubis44 - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Ssshhhhh! TheJian will be all over you like a duck on a june bug! Remember, Nvidia's drivers are always perfect! They never make any mistakes......well, except for the chronic problem I had with the GTX670 card I bought for my 3 monitor setup - kept requiring about 20 steps to get all three screens to display due to bad default refresh rate/synch issue in the Nvidia driver. Got so frustrated having to go through 20 steps every time I updated to a newer driver that I sold the card for close to what I paid (~$400) and bought a Gigabyte 7950 for about ~$100 less and flashed the bios to 1050MHz. 3 monitors in eyefinity set up in about 5 minutes in the Catalyst control panel and not a problem since.
DanNeely - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Are you using display port monitors or an active DP-DVI adapter for your third monitor? If the latter, has it finally gotten plug and play vs the problems when it first came out? I was never able to get an adapter to work with my 5870; and since my setup wasn't EF compatable anyway (2x 1200x1600 1x 2560x1600) ended up cutting my losses with a 5450 for the 3rd monitor and went nVidia for my next GPU in response.krutou - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Nvidia is known to suck at multi-monitor support because AMD was the first to develop the technology. One of AMD's few strengths is Eyefinity support.TheJian - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
From the article (and this is repeated at every site reviewing the drivers):"So what’s being addressed in phase 1? Phase 1 is being dedicated to Direct3D 10+ games running on a single display. What’s not being addressed in the first driver are the Direct3D 9 and OpenGL rendering paths, along with Eyefinity in any scenario."
So Eyefinity has issues and isn't even touched with phase1. At the very least AMD is the opposite of strength with eyefinity for now. Phase2 maybe? ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hier...
You've stated a point without backing it (4th, green).
Refutation:
I found your mistake and explained why it is one and backed it with a direct quote (from this article no less...ROFL) thus proving my point ;) That's the purple one :) But I'm pretty sure I made it into the grey anyway. Your central point is debunked. But I can live with purple if it makes you feel better.
Being first has no bearing on who is better later. Horses got us from point A to B first, long before cars right? But that didn't stop a car from blowing them away later. I could say the same about the first car engine vs. say a Lamborghini engine today. First doesn't mean best.
TheJian - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
Why, he's pointing out reality and what most sites point out. All multi cards had issues for a while and still do. NV just spent a lot more to come up with the tools/software to fix it as best as possible (and I'd still go single potent vs. even NV multi given a reasonable choice). You're mistaking an accurate product complaint for fanboyism. That is not what my complaints are. There is no reason to attack his comment as I already know it's at least partially true for all CF/SLI and the fix is proven (so is AMD's lack of it up to now, and still having issues with 3 cards).Would you feel better if I ranted on Bumpgate for a few paragraphs? When a company sucks I point it out. I don't care who it is. Caminogate anyone? I ranted then too. Win8, don't get me started, Vista...(fista? Nuff said). I have equal hate for all crappy releases no matter how much love or hate I have for a company (I hate apple's tactics & pricing, but they do generally have a good polished product). If AMD releases a great 20nm product and NV sucks I will RAVE for AMD and shout at the top of my lungs how NV's product sucks. Based on R&D I doubt NV will suck but AMD can still get out a good product, I just need proof at this point due to lack of funds/engineers pointing to a possible problem launch again.
Comically you miss the entire point of any of my posts (which are backed by data from other sites etc), then rant yourself on NV. Congrats though, at least you made it to the 4th rung here (well sort of):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
But not without making the 2nd worst type of argument first...ROFL. You're not outing me here, you're outing yourself.