A driver update to reduce Radeon frame times — The Tech Report tests 13.2 beta

[Homeles]

12.11:

13.2:

AMD appears to be making good on its promise to address frame latency issues via driver updates. Andrew Dodd, AMD's Catalyst guru, tells us a variant of the Catalyst 13.2 beta driver we tested will be released via AMD's website next week. That should be a nice first step toward shoring up Radeon performance compared to the competition

Well that was quick.

http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I thought AMD was lying about having already worked on a fix? LOLOLOOLOL

 

[Homeles]

New memory management coming "in a few weeks:"

So what we have in Cat 13.2 is a series of targeted tweaks that appear to work quite well for the games in question. However, Dodd says additional improvements are coming down the pike, including a rewrite of the software memory manager for GPUs based on the Graphics Core Next architecture that should bring a more general improvement:

The driver does not yet contain the new video memory manager. Our intention is release a new driver in a few weeks, which does include the new Video memory manager, which will help resolve latency issues for DX11/DX10 applications.​

Guild Wars 2 took a pretty big performance hit, but now the latency graph for the 7950 is practically indistinguishable from the 660 Ti graph.

 

[Will Robinson]

Awww...the big conspiracy theory about frame rate cheating in drivers gets pwned.
So much for the tattered reputation of...well...you know who

 

[Homeles]

Awww...the big conspiracy theory about frame rate cheating in drivers gets pwned.
So much for the tattered reputation of...well...you know who

You could easily take the Guild Wars 2 results use them to back up the "AMD frame rate cheating" theory...

If anything, I'd say that argument has quite a bit of truth to it. "Cheating" is the wrong word to use, but it does seem that AMD put average frame rates over smoothness.

 

[Rikard]

Our report on this driver was delayed by a couple of factors, including our attendance at CES and an apparent incompatibility between this beta driver and our Sapphire 7950 card.

We still haven't figured out the problem with the Sapphire card, but we ultimately switched to a different 7950, the MSI R7950 OC, which allowed us to test the new driver.

Hmmm...

 

[Homeles]

Hmmm...

What? The "they're using a bad card" theory was put to rest ages ago.

It makes even less sense to bring it up now.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

I think everyone can agree here that this is a good thing overall.

 

[jackstar7]

Wonder if that means the 13.1's are going to do nothing for this... I feel like that's a safe assumption now.

 

[Rikard]

It makes even less sense to bring it up now.

I have that card. I want my new drivers. See?

 

[Homeles]

Wonder if that means the 13.1's are going to do nothing for this... I feel like that's a safe assumption now.

WHQL drivers tend to be lackluster anyways.

I have that card. I want my new drivers. See?

Ah.

 

[SirPauly]

Excellent news!

 

[Rvenger]

Looks like we ar back to 12.8 performance, no?

 

[Homeles]

Looks like we ar back to 12.8 performance, no?

I think it's hard to tell. The only game that had significant regression was Guild Wars 2. Sample size is too small.

I have a strong hunch that this driver, in general, is not a regression.

 

[Red Hawk]

Looks like we ar back to 12.8 performance, no?

Well:

While Guild Wars 2 does take a hit, Skyrim and Borderlands 2 don't. It is too small a sample size to know for sure, but to me that's an indication that while the latency fix could hurt performance in some games, it's not simply undoing the improvements from previous drivers. AMD admitted that it hadn't really given latency much focus before, so it may not be a case of cheating and more like just being careless.

 

[Homeles]

Well:

While Guild Wars 2 does take a hit, Skyrim and Borderlands 2 don't. It is too small a sample size to know for sure, but to me that's an indication that while the latency fix could hurt performance in some games, it's not simply undoing the improvements from previous drivers. AMD admitted that it hadn't really given latency much focus before, so it may not be a case of cheating and more like just being careless.

Pretty much my feelings on the subject, word for word.

I think everyone can agree here that this is a good thing overall.

It's not good for those who were heavily invested in TTR being wrong.

 

[Rvenger]

I wonder why they used cat 12.8 and not 12.11. Typo perhaps?

 

[zebrax2]

I wonder why they used cat 12.8 and not 12.11. Typo perhaps?

^This. It says in the introduction that they used Catalyst 12.11 beta 8 as well as the frametime graph but all the other graph as well as the text says 12.8. I'm guessing they got confused since the driver both contained 8 and 11 in its name

 

[DiogoDX]

I wonder why they used cat 12.8 and not 12.11. Typo perhaps?

Yes, just a typo. 12.8 beta 11 does not exist.

 

[Elcs]

@CatalystCreator mentioned that WHQL 13.1's will be available today (Thursday). They were due yesterday but some delay of some sort came up.

He also tweeted that new beta drivers were a few weeks away, which I would assume are these 13.2 betas. Tech Report may be a little optimistic with 'next week'.

 

[Jacky60]

That was very quick didn't expect this so soon GJ AMD!:thumbsup:

 

[arredondo]

What's the last driver released that improves performance for my card?

 

[MrK6]

Again, I'm still not sure what AMD "fixed." I even tested it myself, especially with the "affinity" fix too, and my frametime graphs don't look anything like TR's:

Again, it seems like TR broke Skyrim, then demanded AMD to fix it (which, amazingly, they still did). I'm not saying there isn't some underlying issue here, but it doesn't seem like we're getting the whole story.

 

[ICDP]

Again, I'm still not sure what AMD "fixed." I even tested it myself, especially with the "affinity" fix too, and my frametime graphs don't look anything like TR's:

Again, it seems like TR broke Skyrim, then demanded AMD to fix it (which, amazingly, they still did). I'm not saying there isn't some underlying issue here, but it doesn't seem like we're getting the whole story.

I was having the issues in Skyrim until I set flip queue size to 1 in a custom profile. I think for these drivers AMD simply created better profiles for the games TR tested. Future frametime fixes may be forthcoming in future drivers with the memory controller fixed.

While I have yet to find a game that couldn't be fixed by using a custom profile in RadeonPro. This does not remove the onus on AMD to ensure these games work as well as possible out of the box.

 

[Fx1]

Again, I'm still not sure what AMD "fixed." I even tested it myself, especially with the "affinity" fix too, and my frametime graphs don't look anything like TR's:

Again, it seems like TR broke Skyrim, then demanded AMD to fix it (which, amazingly, they still did). I'm not saying there isn't some underlying issue here, but it doesn't seem like we're getting the whole story.

I capped my FPS in MSI AB to 60 and all my stuttering is gone and i run at all 4 cores on CPU plus HT.

The stuttering is caused by FPS going above 60. Setting core affinity to 1 does nothing