Mantle Vs DirectX 11 Star Swarm With R9 290X

[Ace123]

Mantle is apon us and the first benchmark to support it Star Swarm is also out, and can be downloaded from Steam provided you have an account. Mantle will be in the form of AMD's latest 14.1 beta driver which can be downloaded here http://support.amd.com/en-us/downloa...Windows+7+-+64. I decided to test mantle with an R9 290X and a rig with as many cores as I had available to me to me with a fairly low clock speed. This is in the form of a Tyan S7010 and Dual Xeon X5570s clocked at 3.2 (turbo) under full load, and 3.33ghz with 1-2 cores loaded. I ran both the mantle version of starswarm and then directX version directly afterwards at the benchmarks factory settings. Here is the result. Discuss.

CCC Default settings, Tessellation ON




not exactly sure what happened on this run.....



CCC Performance settings, Tessellation OFF

[AliG]

Those actually look very nice, more than double the framerate. I guess the main question becomes is this is an isolated case, and if not, what should be the average expected gain

[DefStar]

I'm not sure if you realize it, but you created this thread in the 'news' section .

[kuroikenshi]

Can Admin merge this with the already Existing Mantle thread?

[mars]

Can Admin merge this with the already Existing Mantle thread?

pretty sure Ace123 is an admin...

my understanding is that this benchmark is heavily CPU bound which explains the 100% performance increase.
Its good to see Mantle + Starswarm scale well across that many cores

[Ace123]

I made a small mistake on my original run. I accidentally had tessellation turned off. I will alter the original post to reflect this.
here is the correct screen shot with everything in CCC on defaults including tessellation.
Im now starting to realize just how random the results will be after several runs. I will now run 10 times each version, and post my results so we can get an average advantage.


^^^^ Im not exactly sure what happened on that last run up there... I reset the computer, verified all settings were defaults and ran three more runs. Again this is with CCC defaults including tessellation

[Tim]

I LOVE mantle. I think this is one of the best things to happen to PC gamers ever.

[MaddMuppet]

I like Mantle too, but the almost constant hitching is annoying as hell. I have gone back to the 13.12's until the next driver release.

[Lanek]

I add my result with I7 4930K + 7970 if you dont mind. ( you remove it if this is a problem )..

System used:

- Benchmark v. 1.0 ( steam version )
- Single 7970 @ stock speed ( 1050mhz )
- I7 4930K @ stock speed
- Ram: 16Gb 2133mhz C9


Follow + extreme setting ( default benchmark resolution: 1080p ( on 2560x1440p screen ).


Mantle: 51.92fps

Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - ?2013
C:\Users\lanek\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_02_06_1540.txt
Version 1.00
02/06/2014 15:40
================================================== =========

== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4930K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Physical Cores: 6
Logical Cores: 12
Physical Memory: 17116585984
Allocatable Memory: 8796092891136
================================================== =========


== Configuration ==========================================
API: Mantle
Scenario: ScenarioFollow.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
================================================== =========


== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 18692

Average FPS: 51.92
Average Unit Count: 4585
Maximum Unit Count: 6068
Average Batches/MS: 835.36
Maximum Batches/MS: 5654.34
Average Batch Count: 18702
Maximum Batch Count: 106006

DirectX: 31.32fps

Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - ?2013
C:\Users\lanek\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_02_06_1548.txt
Version 1.00
02/06/2014 15:48
================================================== =========

== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4930K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Physical Cores: 6
Logical Cores: 12
Physical Memory: 17116585984
Allocatable Memory: 8796092891136
================================================== =========


== Configuration ==========================================
API: DirectX
Scenario: ScenarioFollow.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
================================================== =========


== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 11276

Average FPS: 31.32
Average Unit Count: 4346
Maximum Unit Count: 5443
Average Batches/MS: 539.25
Maximum Batches/MS: 1067.38
Average Batch Count: 19492
Maximum Batch Count: 140942
================================================== =========

Attract scenario, extreme setting, default benchmark resolution (1080p )

Mantle: 48.26fps

================================================== =========
Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - ?2013
C:\Users\lanek\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_02_06_1603.txt
Version 1.00
02/06/2014 16:03
================================================== =========

== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4930K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Physical Cores: 6
Logical Cores: 12
Physical Memory: 17116585984
Allocatable Memory: 8796092891136
================================================== =========


== Configuration ==========================================
API: Mantle
Scenario: ScenarioAttract.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
================================================== =========


== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 17377

Average FPS: 48.26
Average Unit Count: 4422
Maximum Unit Count: 5733
Average Batches/MS: 1256.60
Maximum Batches/MS: 8297.07
Average Batch Count: 29482
Maximum Batch Count: 201757
================================================== =========

DirectX: 25.60fps

================================================== =========
Oxide Games
Star Swarm Stress Test - ?2013
C:\Users\lanek\Documents\Star Swarm\Output_14_02_06_1609.txt
Version 1.00
02/06/2014 16:09
================================================== =========

== Hardware Configuration =================================
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
CPU: GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4930K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Physical Cores: 6
Logical Cores: 12
Physical Memory: 17116585984
Allocatable Memory: 8796092891136
================================================== =========


== Configuration ==========================================
API: DirectX
Scenario: ScenarioAttract.csv
User Input: Disabled
Resolution: 1920x1080
Fullscreen: True
GameCore Update: 16.6 ms
Bloom Quality: High
PointLight Quality: High
ToneCurve Quality: High
Glare Overdraw: 16
Shading Samples: 64
Shade Quality: Mid
Deferred Contexts: Disabled
Temporal AA Duration: 16
Temporal AA Time Slice: 2
Detailed Frame Info: Off
================================================== =========


== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 9215

Average FPS: 25.60
Average Unit Count: 3939
Maximum Unit Count: 5507
Average Batches/MS: 643.51
Maximum Batches/MS: 1172.64
Average Batch Count: 26256
Maximum Batch Count: 187408
================================================== =========

+65%, +89%

[Ace123]

Interesting your 4930k with 7970 achieves with mantle an almost identical score as my r9 290x. Next I will try on fx 4100, then 4960x

[CrimInalA]

It's the blur effect that brings directx to it's knees .
Disable it and Directx gains a lot fps while mantle stays around the same .

I have 14.1 beta drivers installed and ran some tests of starswarm . 7970 BE @ stock speed 15% powertune :

standard settings :


custom settings (2560x1400 , NO BLUR , Glare 48 , Shading Samples 160)

[Hornet331]

Just look at the batch count (aka draw calls), there monition blur algorithm produces 10 times higher counts out of thin air. Thats pretty much the opposite of what a good programmer usually tires to do.

Not to mention this heavy motion blur looks like crap.

[stuffme]

Yeah, it's pretty lame to produce crappy looking effect just to show off how much better the other way of programming is. Why no use all that excessive draw call cout for making something truly stunning while obliterating the competition in fps?

[HTC]

Yeah, it's pretty lame to produce crappy looking effect just to show off how much better the other way of programming is. Why no use all that excessive draw call cout for making something truly stunning while obliterating the competition in fps?

1st it must show how much better it is with the exact same settings and only then aim for something better.

@ least, that's my way of seeing it.

[PatRaceTin]

Very interesting