Compute shader in modern games

[Sylvanas]

The only game to date that I am aware of that makes use of DirectCompute in DX11 is Metro 2033 (correct me if I'm wrong link here for more info) and it's used for the 'Depth of field' variable. Now, as we know from user experiences and many reviews, having Depth of field enabled makes performance tank to pretty much unplayable with even the latest cards (5870, GTX480). What happened here? Wasn't the compute shader meant to speed up performance for a given effect? Is it just the way the devs of M2033 implemented it?

In this instance they are using the compute shader for a post processing effect, however I have the understanding that it could also be used for other things like Physcis calculations. If so, would we see a similar performance drop? Perhaps like what we see when PhysX is enabled.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

The thing about new features speeding up things is that yes they do. But that's mainly talking about if they implemented it for current games. In newer games that take advantage of those newer features, they add more shit for the feature to process which makes it look better, but the all the extra shit results in somewhat lower frames per second. That's one thing a lot of people don't think about when you hear them complaining about "New stuff is supposed to be faster but gets less performance, wah wah." Same thing happens for every generation of graphics cards that come out with new DX features/etc.

Keeping up with it for the past however many years, I almost never expect a new game programmed to take advantage of some new DX feature to have higher FPS than the same game that doesn't have it enabled. A lot of people fail to realize that.

 

[Skurge]

BattleForge uses the compute shader for SSAO
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2848/2