[CB] Evolve Co-op Performance Review Findings - Radeon 290s Ace High-Res Gaming

[SuiGeneris83]

They said it was because of the configuration, which is what you are saying. I can't see what you are disagreeing with.

Yeah, I misread it. I thought they were specifically talking about the VRAM being the culprit..

My bad..

 

[3DVagabond]

Yeah, I misread it. I thought they were specifically talking about the VRAM being the culprit..

My bad..

It happens. :cheers:

 

[raghu78]

Well it did not take long for that memory partition on GTX 970 to get exposed at 1440p / 1600p. This is why when people rush to defend Nvidia saying that GTX 970 is perfect for 1080p and 1440p/1600p , I always say look at history. VRAM has always been a major factor in performance bottlenecking. If you remember cards like HD 4870 512 MB and 8800 GT 256 MB ran out of VRAM before they ran out of GPU horsepower in games which launched within 2 years from the launch of these cards. Well for GTX 970 the weird memory partition brings bandwidth problems due to the partitioning and the result is not good in games which use 4GB VRAM. The fact that this is happening within 6 months from launch proves how bad the GTX 970 is from a longevity point of view. the R9 290X meanwhile is just cruising with that massive 512 bit memory bus connected to 4GB VRAM. R9 290X is one of the best GPUs built by AMD, the power concerns notwithstanding. I look forward to the next gen flagship AMD GPU with HBM. I am also hoping that AMD fit 6 GB HBM as there is no restriction on the number of memory stacks which can be connected to a GPU logic die on an interposer :thumbsup:

 

[RussianSensation]

Well it did not take long for that memory partition on GTX 970 to get exposed at 1440p / 1600p. This is why when people rush to defend Nvidia saying that GTX 970 is perfect for 1080p and 1440p/1600p , I always say look at history. VRAM has always been a major factor in performance bottlenecking. :thumbsup:

Not according to TechReport in their latest NV-marketing promotion for the GTX960:

"Some people seem to be disappointed that these GTX 960 cards don't ship with 4GB of RAM onboard. Perhaps I could muster some concern about that fact. But it's hard to do so when higher-end cards with 2GB have served me well for the past few years while gaming at 2560x1440" ~ TR -- seems to think 2GB is perfectly fine for 1920x1200 and even 1440P. No forward looking thinking whatsoever from one of the most well known review sites online. All those free BBQs from NV must have paid off now. Sad to see how a review of 1 product has wiped out all credibility TR ever had, and he even tries to justify it based on his own limited gaming usage. :thumbsdown:

It might be the cut down L2 cache and ROPs too that are impacting 970 in a CryEngine game, not just the VRAM. It would be interesting to see frame times of 970, 780Ti, 980 and R9 290X in Evolve at 1440p as FPS sometimes doesn't capture the stutter fest.

 

[Enigmoid]

They said it was because of the configuration, which is what you are saying. I can't see what you are disagreeing with.

He is saying that their conclusion is wrong. Which I agree with. If vram was the problem, the 780Ti would not be doing well.

 

[raghu78]

Not according to TechReport in their latest NV-marketing promotion for the GTX960:

"Some people seem to be disappointed that these GTX 960 cards don't ship with 4GB of RAM onboard. Perhaps I could muster some concern about that fact. But it's hard to do so when higher-end cards with 2GB have served me well for the past few years while gaming at 2560x1440" ~ TR -- seems to think 2GB is perfectly fine for 1920x1200 and even 1440P. No forward looking thinking whatsoever from one of the most well known review sites online. All those free BBQs from NV must have paid off now. Sad to see how a review of 1 product has wiped out all credibility TR ever had, and he even tries to justify it based on his own limited gaming usage. :thumbsdown:

It might be the cut down L2 cache and ROPs too that are impacting 970 in a CryEngine game, not just the VRAM. It would be interesting to see frame times of 970, 780Ti, 980 and R9 290X in Evolve at 1440p as FPS sometimes doesn't capture the stutter fest.

sorry but TR never had credibility. They had a full article investigating HD 7950 frametimes. I can appreciate that since it made AMD pay more attention to frametimes and improved end user experience on Radeons.

http://techreport.com/review/24022/does-the-radeon-hd-7950-stumble-in-windows-8

But when it came to GTX 970's memory partition and its effect on frametimes when VRAM usage crossed 3.5 GB they only had this to say

http://techreport.com/news/27721/nvidia-admits-explains-geforce-gtx-970-memory-allocation-issue

"Interesting. We explored a similar datapath issue related to the GTX 970's disabled SMs in this blog post. In that case, we looked at why the GTX 970 can't make full use of its 64 ROP partitions at once when drawing pixels. Sounds to me like this issue is pretty closely related.

Beyond satisfying our curiosity, though, I'm not sure what else to make of this information. Like the ROP issue, this limitation is already baked into the GTX 970's measured performance. Perhaps folks will find some instances where the GTX 970's memory allocation limits affect performance more dramatically than in Nvidia's examples above. If so, maybe we should worry about this limitation. If not, well, then it's all kind of academic."

The very fact that they did no testing on this important issue shows clearly they are only bothered to highlight issues with AMD products and happy to overlook issues with Nvidia products and not inform the consumer on the ramifications of such issues even if Nvidia said it was only a unintended miscommunication.

 

[showb1z]

Oh just realized the full Evolve gaming experience costs $215. Ha! this game is an epic fail. I guess we have NV premiums, game DLC premiums, premiums all around! Yup, another game for the $5 bargain bin. Between this and GW's titles, PC gaming has never been "cheaper" - $5 Steam bargain bin sales here I come. :thumbsup:

I'm reading this everywhere, but it's just plain wrong. People need to get their facts straight.
All of that DLC is almost entirely made up of skins. They're way overpriced sure, but they're purely cosmetic and don't affect gameplay at all.
All future maps and game modes will be free, which is pretty nice these days. There will be no community division due to DLC.

The only useful DLC content will be the new monster types.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Not according to TechReport in their latest NV-marketing promotion for the GTX960:

"Some people seem to be disappointed that these GTX 960 cards don't ship with 4GB of RAM onboard. Perhaps I could muster some concern about that fact. But it's hard to do so when higher-end cards with 2GB have served me well for the past few years while gaming at 2560x1440" ~ TR -- seems to think 2GB is perfectly fine for 1920x1200 and even 1440P. No forward looking thinking whatsoever from one of the most well known review sites online. All those free BBQs from NV must have paid off now. Sad to see how a review of 1 product has wiped out all credibility TR ever had, and he even tries to justify it based on his own limited gaming usage. :thumbsdown:

It might be the cut down L2 cache and ROPs too that are impacting 970 in a CryEngine game, not just the VRAM. It would be interesting to see frame times of 970, 780Ti, 980 and R9 290X in Evolve at 1440p as FPS sometimes doesn't capture the stutter fest.

Techreport is the place to go if you care about frametimes though. And they were also positive about the 285.

Saying TR loses all credibility because they're ok with 2GB cards is a bit silly. Just because aaa games now ship with a maximum texture quality of well over 2GB doesn't mean you have to max it, you can just set it to high and it'll be fine. It's not like the game will be uglier compared to the times 2GB was enough for max.

 

[psolord]

I just finished uploading my Custom Evolve benchmarks (1080p 60fps videos). All with smaa 1tx (spicy wallpapers alert).

Evolve 1920x1080 V.High GTX 970 @1.5Ghz Core i5 2500k @4.8GHz - 76fps

Evolve 1920X1080 V.High 7950 @1.1Ghz CORE i7-860 @3.9GHz - 41fps

Evolve 1920X1080 High GTX 570 @850Mhz Q9550 @4GHz - 29fps

Evolve 1920X1080 Medium 5850 @950Mhz Q9550 @4GHz - 26fps

I noticed that from all the above tests, the only card that did not have max gpu usage, was my 970.



I also did this test on my 7950, which showed max gpu load in its own run.

Evolve - Graphics settings test and visual comparison


Surprisingly, I saw that going from Very High, to High, to Medium, to Low, had very little impact on the performance itself, while the load stayed at 100%. I did see the vram load getting reduced, I did see the graphics quality getting lower, but I didn't see the framerate going up, or the gpu usage going down. Everything is recorded, tell me what you think.

I am afraid I am missing something here. I thought that MSI Afterburner or Fraps OSD were the culprits, but I did close both of them towards the end of the video and the performance was the same still.

Either SMAA 1TX (it is advertised as the default AA setting by the game) is creating some weird bottleneck on the 7950, or I don't know what.

Still, on my lower grade 570 and 5850, reducing the settings did work wonders. Although they did not score high, their framerate was much worse with the higher settings. Especially on the 570, I tried lowering just the textures, so I can free up some vram, but it didn't help. It seems that it couldn't cope with the rest higher settings either, so I resorted to high for its benchmark session.

I still have to figure out why the 970 was not at max load and why the 7950 cannot produce higher framerates with lower settings.