AMD graphics CPU driver overhead?

mohit9206

Golden Member
Jul 2, 2013
1,381
511
136
Ok so i didn't know what exactly is cpu overhead and why amd cards when paired with lower end cpu performs worse in dx11 games than a technically lower performing nvidia card.
I just stumbled upon what all that means and i got to know the performance penalty is so high that even an r9 280 gets beat by 750ti when paired with i3 cpu.
Eurogamer digital foundry article stated " the GTX 750 Ti fares much better when paired with a budget CPU than the rivalling AMD R9 280".
I had no idea about all this stuff but wouldn't this mean that it's better for people who own lower end cpu like i3,Pentium, fx series, etc to get Nvidia rather than amd graphics card because of this performance penalty in dx11 games due to cpu driver overhead?
So when RX480/470/460 comes out even though it would be equal to competing nvdia cards like 1060/1050 when paired with high end cpu, the driver overhead will make nvdia cards jump much ahead when paired with weaker cpu?
I got all this info from this Guru3D thread http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=398858
So what does this mean for mainstream graphics card buyers with lower end CPU's? Should they blindly buy Nvidia due to no such overhead in nvidia cards or hope that amd will fix this soon as dx11 games are not going anywhere?
 

TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
4,027
753
126
I had no idea about all this stuff but wouldn't this mean that it's better for people who own lower end cpu like i3,Pentium, fx series, etc to get Nvidia rather than amd graphics card because of this performance penalty in dx11 games due to cpu driver overhead?
Yes,that's what it means and a lot of people have been saying it,here in this forum as well,for years.
Benchmarking sites that use only the best and highest clocked intel cpu to bench GPUs are really missinforming people,same as game bench sites that use SLI for everything,SLI doubles the driver overhead.


Don't wait for a fix,this problem is ancient it's one of the main reasons why AMD was trying to push mantle so hard and now Dx12 will slowly make the problem go away on it's own.
 

Bacon1

Diamond Member
Feb 14, 2016
3,430
1,018
91
It really depends on the game, but yes slower CPU will hurt more on AMD than Nvidia in general.

I wish more sites would test CPU overhead on both AMD and Nvidia for this reason, most only use a 980 Ti to show scaling
 
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casiofx

Senior member
Mar 24, 2015
369
36
61
Generally if you got a quad core i5 it can handle up to r9 390x no problem. It is not an expensive CPU.
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
5,152
5,540
136
Ok so i didn't know what exactly is cpu overhead and why amd cards when paired with lower end cpu performs worse in dx11 games than a technically lower performing nvidia card.
I just stumbled upon what all that means and i got to know the performance penalty is so high that even an r9 280 gets beat by 750ti when paired with i3 cpu.
Eurogamer digital foundry article stated " the GTX 750 Ti fares much better when paired with a budget CPU than the rivalling AMD R9 280".
I had no idea about all this stuff but wouldn't this mean that it's better for people who own lower end cpu like i3,Pentium, fx series, etc to get Nvidia rather than amd graphics card because of this performance penalty in dx11 games due to cpu driver overhead?
So when RX480/470/460 comes out even though it would be equal to competing nvdia cards like 1060/1050 when paired with high end cpu, the driver overhead will make nvdia cards jump much ahead when paired with weaker cpu?
I got all this info from this Guru3D thread http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=398858
So what does this mean for mainstream graphics card buyers with lower end CPU's? Should they blindly buy Nvidia due to no such overhead in nvidia cards or hope that amd will fix this soon as dx11 games are not going anywhere?
Can you point me to where you saw this?

edit:
Don't bother, got it.
 
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