AMD finally fixing frame rate latency problem

[vitchilo]

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-F...s-348042.shtml

AMD Finally Fixing Frame Rate Latency in Games, Readies Driver

Drivers are something that Advanced Micro Devices could have been spending more resources on, but for a while, it felt like it didn't need to.

Now, though, it is faced with a rather delicate situation: NVIDIA advantage in getting the frames to the displays.

AMD has just released the Radeon HD 7990 Malta dual-GPU graphics card. Paradoxically, it is purported as the faster video board, and yet it loses to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 in frame time in many titles.

While frame rate is the number of frames drawn per second, frame time determines how fast said frames reach the display.

Many feel frame time is as important as frame rates, and the latency in AMD cards has not gone by unnoticed.

This is the problem: AMD's Radeon boards lag behind NVIDIA's GeForce in terms of frame times, even in some cases where AMD's board has higher FPS.

AMD maintains that it's not because of the hardware though, which means it needs better drivers.

It is now reported that the Sunnyvale, California-based company had the first prototype driver ready, but in pre-alpha stage, so only some industry partners can get them. Beta drivers will follow once feedback comes in.

Finally.

[SKYMTL]

Already been benchmarked.

They aren't close to releasing them yet though.

[vitchilo]

According to the graphs, these drivers looks really good.

[DefStar]

Oh I thought you meant they released this new driver already...I had a moment of shear panic as my self esteem felt as if a steamroller ran-over it thinking that Nvidia might not have the fastest board in the world. Thank you God!

[GoldenTiger]

I'll believe it when I see it released....

[BababooeyHTJ]

I'll believe it when I see it released....

The beta has already been benchmarked.

Don't we already have a thread about this? Isn't there more information about this in the 7990 thread?

[Rollo]

Oh I thought you meant they released this new driver already...I had a moment of shear panic as my self esteem felt as if a steamroller ran-over it thinking that Nvidia might not have the fastest board in the world. Thank you God!

You should be more worried about the trend toward $1000 high end cards than who has the fastest card. (unless you're pretty wealthy)

[GoldenTiger]

The beta has already been benchmarked.

Don't we already have a thread about this? Isn't there more information about this in the 7990 thread?

It isn't a beta, it's a prototype pre-alpha driver with purportedly major issues and a release date months out. Please get your facts straight before rolling your eyes .

[Tha Last Meal]

yeah yeah for me i do not believe AMD Because When the card was launched 7990 AMD say less noisy and this is a picture from AMD







And now talking about it repaired the frame rate problem.....Again I can not believe what AMD say until I see myself because I saw a hardwarecanucks review and the results are not promising no different from its predecessor.

[DefStar]

You should be more worried about the trend toward $1000 high end cards than who has the fastest card. (unless you're pretty wealthy)

Yeah, well...Nvidia and "ATI" have always done this at the end of an architecture's life...they make some uber ridiculous card at an exorbitantly hi-price, and then 4-months later the next gen. architecture's $300 card totally smashes the ridiculous last gen. $1000 monstrosity. Its sole purpose is for bragging rights. I'm not worried about it because I don't brag about my rig and i'm not responsible for either company's marketing. They've both had their hands slapped for price fixing before...so unethical business practices from either company really doesn't surprise me.

BUT THIS NEW DRIVER IS GOING TO BE ING AWESOME!

[LordEC911]

And now talking about it repaired the frame rate problem.....Again I can not believe what AMD say until I see myself because I saw a hardwarecanucks review and the results are not promising no different from its predecessor.

Then you don't understand the results or what was being tested.

[Tha Last Meal]

Then you don't understand the results or what was being tested.

yeah right

[LordEC911]

yeah right

So what don't you get?
Did you read what Sky has to say about the results?

[t800]

yeah right

Please enlight us and tell why you don't see improvement in those charts

[Tha Last Meal]

guys relax

Surprised by some that even my own opinion is attacked
my own opinion is, yes, a slight improvement here but I am a believer will not reach More than that,I may be wrong but this is what I see.

[kromosto]

my own opinion is, yes, a slight improvement here but I am a believer will not reach More than that,I may be wrong but this is what I see.

i am sure we will see more improvement but a complete (complete is not a good word for this problem but i think you know what i mean) fix may not be applicable to tahiti series.

[SKYMTL]

yeah right

There is an improvement but let me explain how it works.

The first charts you see are frame latencies. With that in mind, when the "spikes" are smaller, the onscreen delivery of frames will appear smoother. But notice the scale of the Tomb Raider graph in particular. With the new driver, most of the HD 7990's frame times take place well below the 25ms mark, making any stutter all but imperceptible to a gamer. Compare and contrast that with the previous driver where latencies routinely hover around the 35-40ms mark and you'll certainly see an improvement.

Now, the other graphs show (IMO) the best representation of what is seen onscreen in terms of actual frame rates. For argument's sake, let's call this "actual performance". One of AMD's major problems has always been their drivers' insistence to either drop or partially render (runt) frames in certain titles. While FRAPS counts these frames fully, in reality they never make it onto the screen in a complete manner, thus lowering the perceptible framerate. Hence why you see massive dips in the framerate every so often; the HD 7990 drops or runts frames, thus lowering onscreen performance.

What this so-called "frame pacing" driver does is twofold. It ensures that frames are delivered in a synchronous manner in dual GPU setups, something which AMD has historically struggled with. This lowers frame latencies. In addition, it monitors this delivery, effectively eliminating dropped and partially rendered frames. This (when combined with smoother frame delivery) improves visible frame rates.

Back to those last two Frame Rate charts, you will see the effect of eliminating the dropped and runted frames by comparing the yellow line to the bright red one. As you can see, the new driver improves performance, cutting down on the frames that would normally be "lost" sometime in the rendering / display process.

Hope that helps.

[PatRaceTin]

i want to test it in realworld gaming

[behrouz]

AMD releases Catalyst 13.5 beta, 13.4 WHQL graphics drivers

• Far Cry 3: Improves performance up to 4% with Anti-Aliasing enabled
• Shogun II: Improves performance up to 20% with 8x Anti-Aliasing enabled
• Tomb Raider: Improves performance up to 6%
• Bioshock Infinite: Improves performance up to 6%
• Borderlands 2: Improves performance up to 17

[RaynQuist]

Is this frame pacing where the driver purposely increases frame latency to even out frame interval? If so I'm not sure how well it'll work in practice with the additional lag.

[mockingbird]

And as is the custom with ATI, only 7xxx gen cards will "benefit" from this monumental bug fix, while nVidia owners will be able to enjoy the benefits of new drivers with older gen cards as well.

Hah, you paid $500 for a top of the line 6xxx card? Get with the times!!!

[DefStar]

Waiting for this driver fix is like waiting for X-mas (when dad had a good year financially)... I am completely convinced AMD will keep delivering exactly what we want if we support them and Nvidia keeps doing their thing. This is "good" healthy competition benefiting the consumer at its best! As long as the two don't price-fix behind our backs, we are in for some good products (I don't believe they are price-fixing...Rollo, blame Nvidia for settng a $1k class of cards, AMD is only reacting to it... unfortunately some consumers are so dumb they don't believe a lower $ card can compete with a high $ card so AMD had to fill that price category).

[tajoh111]

Goldentiger hating on AMD, what a shock. So whats going to be your big complaint when they do release that driver?

Come on your the last person who should be questioning that people should be skeptical about the fix until it arrives.

You kept on saying its not a big deal, its a none issue. Put a cap limit on and there should be no problems. This is being blown out of proportion.

If there wasn't an issue, there would be no reason for excitement for this driver and no reason for AMD to fix the problem in the first place.

This issues effects a decent amount of games and needs to be tested through a huge battery of test. There is a reason that it is 2 months away at least and this is likely due to issue that have not come up yet in these previews. AMD has likely done some sort of reviewers guide on what they can and cannot show to make this thing look good. The reason I say this is there hasn't been a leak for this driver at all. Meaning its tightly controlled and AMD only wants to show certain things now.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I never said that it was no big deal. Don't put words into my mouth.

What I said is that it might be worth dealing with for people using a 60hz display due to the performance that you're getting for the price. Especially in the case of 7950 crossfire.

What does bug me is certain people acting as if this is an issue that effects every game in every circumstance.

[Rollo]

Rollo, blame Nvidia for settng a $1k class of cards, AMD is only reacting to it... unfortunately some consumers are so dumb they don't believe a lower $ card can compete with a high $ card so AMD had to fill that price category).

Hard to say who's to blame. AMD for not bringing competing products, which allows NVIDIA to gouge? Or NVIDIA for taking advantage of the situation like every company on Earth would?