13.8 AMD Frame Pacing

[Phage]

Hardware Canucks have a test of the new AMD Frame Pacing driver 13.8 Beta.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/tag/13-8-driver/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here is the Anandtech review of the new driver:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...xplorer-cat138

[kompukare]

And here's the Computerbase one through Google translate:
http://translate.google.com/translat...-mikroruckler/

[jonathan_phang]

And heres Guru3Ds take on it too. Going to have a read through all of those articles, but based on the very little subjective forum threads I've read, it seems to be doing the job

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages..._8_fcat,1.html

[Phage]

Yep. An interesting test will be a 7970 cf setup versus the new 9970 in BF4 !

[HalloweenJack]

I wonder how long it will take for NVidia to release another video card killing driver then ignore all the feedback and complaints and law suites about it!

[teppic]

2x7970s should be fine with BF4, it's what DICE used for demos. I bet it runs the same on one 9970 though, it'd be ideal marketing for AMD.

[kalniel]

And might as well add Tech Reports tests:
http://techreport.com/review/25167/f...radeon-hd-7990

Link for DL:
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...etaDriver.aspx

Info:

Feature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta Driver for Windows:

    Support for AMD CrossFire™ Frame Pacing
        Frame Pacing ensures that frames rendered across multiple GPUs in a CrossFire configuration will be displayed at an even and regular pace.
        Enabled through the AMD Catalyst Control Center; Globally or on a per application basis.
        Frame Pacing is enabled by default.
        Supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications, and resolutions up to and including 2560x1600 (single display).
    OpenGL 4.3 support – full support for the OpenGL 4.3 feature set
    Performance improvements found in AMD Catalyst 13.8 Beta for Windows:
        Metro: Last Light – improves performance up to 7% on the AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series
    OpenGL support for User Profiles and Catalyst Application Profiles:
        Users can now create per application 3D setting profiles for OpenGL applications.
        OpenGL applications are now supported through Catalyst Application Profile updates (for single GPU and AMD CrossFire configurations).
    AMD Enduro Technology enhancement - Catalyst Control Center will now show which applications are active on the Performance GPU, and the Power-Saving GPU
    Resolved issues:
        Resolved crash when enabling AMD CrossFireX™ on some AMD 970 platforms
        Improved stability for AMD Radeon HD 7790
        Resolved intermittent mouse cursor corruption when rapidly moving the cursor across window borders

[shankly1985]

Really liking this driver set... All my games tested so far run super smooth

[Willzzz]

What will be interesting is where the 'pacing' takes place, is this an artifical delay at the end of the pipeline or are frames really being generated evenly at even points in game time?

[kalniel]

What will be interesting is where the 'pacing' takes place, is this an artifical delay at the end of the pipeline or are frames really being generated evenly at even points in game time?

You can't generate frames evenly, pacing is an artificial delay. nVidia have been doing this for a while, AMD have just caught on

[Willzzz]

There's no technical reason that you can't.

And yes it would be interesting to know more about nvidia's solution as well.

[kalniel]

There's no technical reason that you can't.

Yes there is - different frames take different lengths of time to render. To present them equally you have to add delays.

[Butuz]

This is really good news. I can't wait for the full release.

Butuz

[Agent]

There's no technical reason that you can't.

Every frame takes a different amount of time in the game engine. There is literally no way you can control this down to the required level that would allow them to be generated evenly.

Even rendering the same frame repeatedly, with the same conditions, will have microseconds of difference due to background processes, system interrupts and so on....
Then remember that other conditions can change (like AI, sound generation and so on), which can also alter the render time of each frame (a game engine is only as fast as the slowest tick). This means even the same visual frame can have vastly different render times based on what else is happening in the world.

[Willzzz]

From what I have heard the length of time a frame takes to render is very easy to predict in advance

There are as you say other factors, but none of these are insurmountable with a fast processor and a well designed game engine.