Microstutter in latest-gen cards - examples included

[Arseface]

Okay, well I think I've found a candidate for "worst-case scenario" as far as microstutter goes. The heaven benchmark seems to really make the cards sweat (~100% load), and microstutter like crazy while they're at it.

Running at 1920*1200, with 4xAA, 16xAF, and starting a 60s FRAPS benchmark right as I start the benchmark in heaven, I get the following:


Normal tessellation, render max 3 frames ahead:


Extreme tessellation, render max 3 frames ahead:







Choosing instead to render 5 frames ahead, I see an improvement, albeit very slight:

Normal tessellation:


Extreme tessellation:



I have to say, as I watched the benchmark unfold I KNEW the value was going to be high. I mean, it seemed pretty smooth overall, but for me 60fps is usually rock-solid (by eye anyway). In this, I saw the framerate counter at ~74, 75, and I could still tell that it wasn't perfectly smooth. As object passed by they seemed to be just a little jerky. Looking more closely at the frametimes file, there is some pretty poor behaviour in there. Not quite as bad as the plot I posted above from the 5870 x-fire vantage run, but still pretty disappointing.

Demonkevy666, I'm not sure exactly how to plot the CPU load... I can take a screengrab of the GPU loads from afterburner easily enough, but the output from coretemp isn't so straightforward as to allow a simple plot in excel.